Thursday May 8
23:34
Sleep N Shake
Last night was the worst earthquake I’ve felt in Tokyo. Again, it was during the night and it woke me up - and it seemed to last forever. Just when I thought it had stopped, a few minutes later it would start back up again. It was very scary.
My computers seem to be having similar ups and downs. After the problems with the Acer, today I was playing with my Kohjinsha SA1 - increasing the Video RAM in BIOS and plugging in an external monitor - and I managed to bluescreen it. Continually. As soon as Windows started, it would find a new USB peripheral (why?!), then crash. Thankfully after switching it off and leaving it cold for 15 minutes, it recovered. I guess after allocating more memory to the graphics card in bios, some garbage must have been left in memory somewhere that caused problems. Who knows.
Then I came home, and as I was playing with my LG laptop (LW25), I noticed that the fan wasn’t on. I tried toggling the fan speed and no joy, so I turned it over and looked at the fan. There looked to be a little bit of dust, so I got a toothpick and pulled out… what can only be described as a hairball.
There’s a cat living inside my LG.
The fan started to whizz away again. I wonder how long it has been like that? I noticed it had been getting hot lately, but I thought it was just normal heat from being switch on all the time. Now that I feel the laptop being cool again, I wonder what damage I - or the cat - has done.
Spurred on by a bit of success, I decided to take a big risk. My LG has 2GB of memory - 2 x 1GB. According to the online documentation and everything that I can find on the LW25 on the internet, the maximum memory is 2GB - but then again, the online documentation says my computer has a Pentium M, and that’s poppycock. It has a 2GHz Core Duo.
I read elsewhere that some manufacturers specified “maximum RAM” not by what the BIOS or motherboard actually allows, but by what chips were available at the time of machine launch. Since I have a 2GB module hanging around from the Acer - the one that I bought to put in the Acer - I thought I’d whack it in the LG and see what happened. If all went well, I’d have 3GB (2GB + 1GB). If all went tits up, I’d have a burning mess.
With my luck with computers lately, it probably wasn’t a good thing to experiment with - potentially blowing up my long-time-reliable PC - but it worked. I now have 3GB running quite happily. It’s also a relief because I did wonder whether the 2GB card was dodgy and had caused the Acer problems, but since it’s working fine in the LG, I know that the card is OK (I also used ran the Microsoft memory test program that comes on the Vista DVD to verify the chip was OK in the Acer and it gave no errors - but I still had slight worries until now).
My experience with the Acer was annoying - I thought I’d be left with a non-refundable 2GB memory chip, as well as the time I wasted - but as things have turned out, it’s thanks to the Acer that I realised I could upgrade my LG to 3GB, and my Kohjinsha to 1GB. So even though I lost 3+ days out my life, I’ll hopefully gain them back slowly through increased computer performance ;)
Wednesday May 7
19:31
I Tried - I Really Tried 2
I was all happy because I managed to wipe Vista from my 5520 and install XP instead. Unfortunately not all was as grand as I thought it to me.
Despite installing well, surviving several reboots, and running nice and fast, I found that after leaving the machine OFF for 1-2 hours and then rebooting into Windows, I was presented with a VGA screen. Going into Display - Settings, I was presented with the error:
The currently selected graphics display driver cannot be used. It was written for a previous version of Windows, and is no longer compatible with this version of windows. The system has been started using the default VGA driver. Please contact your hardware manufacturer to get an updated driver, or select one of the Microsoft provided drivers.
There’s a Knowledge Base article about the error here - but it seems irrelevant to the times when the error hits me, and it’s supposed to have been fixed by now.
I tried reinstalling XP again, even updating to SP3. It appeared to work - then wham! Same error.
What’s most strange is that by rebooting the PC, it starts working again. So what seems to be happening is that after booting from cold, the display driver doesn’t work - but every reboot after that is fine.
So, I have a lovely Acer laptop with a NVidia GeForce 7000M graphics card which crashes with “Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding but has successfully recovered” every five minutes under Vista, and fails to load the display driver correctly after a cold boot in XP - ie. a laptop that I effectively can’t used.
I called Bic Camera and they agreed to collect the machine and refund, though they did say the refund could be delayed until next month due to timings in credit card processing. That makes me very wary - but there’s not much else I can do.
The saga doesn’t end there, however. Since the machine is going back tomorrow, I decided to use the opportunity to try the Vista DVD that I grabbed from torrent - it was going to be my “fallback” incase I couldn’t get English menus in the Japanese edition. Since I have a Vista license, it’s not illegal to download an install CD.
As expected, a fresh install with that DVD gave me the same “Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding but has successfully recovered” error - as soon as I switched on Aero.
Experiment complete, I whacked in the Recovery DVD that I’d made with the Acer eRecovery suite when my machine arrived. It should have reformatted my hard drive and restored the machine to the state it was when I first received it. Instead it gave me a pop-up with:
Type Mismatch
Doh!
I tried Alt F10 to being up the recovery mechanism from Bios. No response.
Owch!
If I send the machine back with XP or a non Japanese version of Vista installed, it’s asking for trouble.
I tried searching around on the net and found that Vista has most likely changed the partition details so that Alt F10 no longer was responding.
I also found out that the C and D drive should exist and be formatted to FAT32 - since I don’t remember my Acer being formatted FAT32, that seemed wrong to me.
In the end, I was able to get the machine to boot from the recovery DVDs’ I’d made and restore Vista without “Type Mismatch” by doing the following:
1. Use the XP Pro CD and boot into XP setup.
2. Remove all partitions EXCEPT the recovery partition (F: on my machine, 10GB in size).
3. Create C and D partitions with half of the available space each (70GB each in my case).
4. Start XP installing onto C, but reboot after formatting has taken place.
5. Start XP installing onto D - again reboot after formatting has taken place.
What a pain in the neck, eh? A recovery mechanism should do just that - recover. Offer the option to format the disks if necessary, not breakdown and cry and shout “Type Mismatch”.
I know that I’ll never buy another Acer laptop again, or any laptop with NVidia graphics. I’ve no idea why PC makers keep using graphics cards from a company that caused almost 30% of logged Vista crashes in 2007.
In fact, faced with being FORCED to buy a machine with Vista installed and not be sure that it’ll work properly, it seems that the only way I can get a machine which is guaranteed to run XP properly is to buy an Apple! Ironic, eh?
Monday May 5
03:44
I Tried - I Really Tried
I really did try to give vista a chance. I really wanted to love the sidebar which showed the weather. I tried to smile when it took 10 minutes to unzip a 62MB file. But the last straw came when the NVidia graphics driver kept crashing every five minutes with “nvlddmkm stopped responding”.
How on earth could Acer sell a laptop with a driver that continually crashes?
So it’s now 3am, and I’ve just finished wiping the hard drive and installing XP.
For any Acer 5520 (or other Acer model) users in Japan, here are some tips:
1. Vista Ultimate allows you to switch language from Japanese to English using the MUI language packs. Home Premium does not. If you’re going to stick with Vista and want to change Home Premium to English, get Vistalizer. Just remember to change the language back to Japanese before installing SP1.
2. Vista doesn’t give up without a fight. The 5520 (and other Acers) has SATA drivers which no XP install CD can find. This page describes how to install XP on the Acer Aspire 5520 if you have a floppy drive - but I don’t. Instead I downloaded the files as recommended, extracted them using WinImage, then used NLite to create a new WinXP CD which contains the drivers. XP installed with no problem. This page provided all the XP drivers required for the 5520 after installation.
I cannot describe how much of a combination of pleasure and pain Vista was. On the one hand, I wanted a nice glossy toy to play with. On the other, it just felt so slow and buggy - aside from the display issue, I’d need to upgrade Photoshop, DVD Region Free, and probably a whole lot more.
It’s amazing to think that a single piece or hardware, which is make fully and 100% functional by XP, is crippled so severely by Vista. I only wish Apple would release MacOs X for PCs - they could take over the world.
As an aside, I’m deeply disappointed by Acer as a company. Not only does the NVidia driver crash continually under Vista, but Acer have plastered a “Warranty void if seal broken” sticker over the memory slot access. If you want to upgrade memory, you lose all warranty - unbelievably confirmed by a phone call to Acer. Luckily for me, I have a Bic Camera 3 year warranty (coast about 30 USD) and BC confirmed that they will still cover the warranty if I upgrade the memory myself and break the seal.
I really dont get how a company can advertise a machine as 1GB upgradeable to 4GB, and then tell you after purchase that if you want to do the upgrade, you will lose your warranty. They even include upgrade instructions in the user manual. Very dodgy.
Friday May 2
14:28
Retail Therapy
I bought some computer goodies yesterday.
First was a new laptop: Acer Aspire 5520 AS5520-7A1G16.
Second was new memory (2GB) for said laptop, raising the specs to:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 (Dual Core) 1.9GHz
3GB Memory
160GB HDD
DVD burner
15.4″ screen
This isn’t a “power laptop” - I don’t play games - but for the price I think it’s amazing value: 69200 yen, about 665 USD, for a dual-core machine with 3GB memory. I paid nearly 3 times that for my Intel 2GHz Dual Core / 2GB laptop 2 years ago.
The reason for buying it at first was to replace the little Kohjinsha SA1 that sits beside me at work, to surf the internet, check email, etc. The Kohjinsha is great for travel, but using it with logmein to connect to my home PC is a pain: 800×600 screen trying to display a 1280×800 screen - not nice.
However, I’m going to benchmark it against my machine at home first. If there’s little difference (Intel Dual Core 2GHz, 2GB memory), I’m going to use the new machine at home. Not only will I appreciate the larger screen for viewing photos, but I’ll be able to get all my iTunes on the internal drive. My current home machine is also smaller, so it will fit better on my desk at work. In honesty, I want a nice desktop machines with multiple monitors at home - but I’m trying to resist that, because I don’t want to have yet more junk to carry from country to country. If this machine performs well, it’ll make it easier to resist splashing out :)
Speaking of small: Third purchase - new memory for my little Kohjinsha SA1.
I had no idea memory prices were so cheap these days.The 2GB for the Acer was just 4400 yen, about 40USD - that’s nothing.
My SA1 has been struggling running XP with 512MB and its little 500MHz AMD Geode chip. While looking for the Acer memory, I just happened to search for memory for the SA1 out of interest. If I’d known I could have upped the memory to 1GB for just 6000 yen, I’d have done it months ago. I’ll never get over the limitations of the processor - but for the price of 6 pints of beer, XP can now breathe.
The Acer hasn’t arrived yet - they will deliver it on Sunday. It comes with Japanese Home Vista Premium, so my first task, after slotting in the extra memory, will be either installing XP or an English version of Vista.
Links:
Acer Aspire 5520 AS5520-7A1G16 laptop (with 1GB memory): biccamera.com. Price is 64,800yen until the end of this weekend.
This laptop is not available in the shops, so with the help of Google Translate, I had to buy it online. What astounded me is that even though the website is Japanese only, when I phoned them up to confirm the delivery date after buying, I was able to talk with a guy who speaks fluent English. And they’re delivering on a Sunday. Cool.
Memory: Ark in Akihabara, found from Kakaku.com price matching site.
Kakaku is a brilliant site - I check the price of everything electronic there before I buy.
Ark is a shop that I didn’t know about before, though I knew the street it’s in. As well as very cheap prices on memory, I noticed they also have 4GB SDHC cards for 1,770 Yen - that’s almost giving them away!
Tuesday April 29
01:21
Tonight McDonald’s Called The Police On Me
Tonight McDonald’s called the police on me in Tokyo. Why? Because I asked for mayonnaise on a Big Mac.
I kid you not. I have a 30 minute video to prove it, where I’m told by McDonald’s staff that it’s “impossible” to put mayo on a Big Mac - that if I want it, I have to buy a burger which has mayo AND buy a Big Mac and then they will put that mayo on the Big Mac. When I refused, they said “wait a minute” and five minutes later, four, yes FOUR, policemen turned up.
I’ve got to work out how to upload videos onto YouTube. Almost arrested in Japan for asking for mayo on a Big Mac. It’s ridiculous.
It almost reminds me of when I was trying to buy an S11HT - the big Bic Camera in Shibuya argued and refused to allow me to return it if there was no signal at my home or office, so I couldn’t buy it there. I then went to the small Bic Camera in Shibuya and they said “Sure, no problem” and even wrote on the contract that I could return the phone in 14 days if I had a problem getting a signal. Completely ridiculous. Just like McDonald’s calling the police because I wanted mayo.
