Installing Fresh Windows 7 on Mirrored Volume

I am fan of software mirroring in Windows 7. Yes, I know, hardware RAID is better, faster, more reliable etc. However, it has one big disadvantage. It is notoriously difficult beast to find. All those RAID controllers integrated on motherboards are usually just software RAID with some hardware support. And their drivers are notoriously bad.

Usually we first install Windows 7 on standard MBR partition. Only after setup is done we can convert disk to dynamic one. After that mirror can be added. Well there is a little bit better way of doing things.

First you need to go into dark dungeons of command line interface. Just boot Windows setup as usually and press Shift+F10 on first screen. This will just open command prompt in which you just write “DISKPART”. That utility will be your host for the day.

Now you need to create some dynamic disks. CLEAN command is there to ensure that you start with blank drives and same procedure needs to be done for both disks. If you are not certain which disks are in computer, you might want to execute “LIST DISK” first - just to get numbers right:

SELECT DISK 0
 Disk 0 is now the selected disk.

CLEAN
 DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk.

CONVERT DYNAMIC
 DiskPart successfully converted the selected disk to dynamic format.

SELECT DISK 1
 Disk 1 is now the selected disk.

CLEAN
 DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk.

 CONVERT DYNAMIC
DiskPart successfully converted the selected disk to dynamic format.

After this you’ve got two dynamic drives that need to go into some form of RAID. I opted here for RAID 1 (mirroring) but you could also select RAID 0, RAID 5 and a simple volume:

CREATE VOLUME MIRROR DISK=0,1
 DiskPart successfully created the volume.

Volume isn’t worth anything without it being formatted. Next step is just that. Do notice that I call this volume by number 1. On my system volume 0 is CD-ROM and newly created volume got next number. If your system has additional disks (or preexisting volumes), you can check which volume you need with “LIST VOLUME” command:

SELECT VOLUME 1
 Volume 1 is the selected volume.

FORMAT QUICK
   100 percent completed
 DiskPart successfully formatted the volume.

In order to boot from this volume you need to give it a partition:

RETAIN
 The selected volume now has a partition associated with it.

Of course, given partition needs to be activated. Here you will start counting from number 2 since partition 1 is reserved for “system stuff”. If you are not sure, quick check with “LIST PARTITION” is recommended:

SELECT DISK 1
 Disk 0 is now the selected disk.

SELECT PARTITION 2
 Partition 2 is now the selected partition.

ACTIVE
 DiskPart marked the current partition as active.

SELECT DISK 0
 Disk 0 is now the selected disk.

SELECT PARTITION 2
 Partition 2 is now the selected partition.

ACTIVE
 DiskPart marked the current partition as active.

With this done you can type exit twice (once to exit DISKPART and once to exit command prompt) and do installation as you normally would. Only other thing worth mentioning might be slight confusion regarding two separate drives where you can install Windows. Everything will work no matter which disk you select there.

And this was all. As soon as installation is done your mirror will be ready.

P.S. Although I talk about Windows 7 whole post, same procedure will also work on Windows Server 2008 R2. It might even work on earlier Windows versions - I haven’t tried it.

Java Loves MSVCR71.dll in 64-Bit

As I installed DevMail on fresh 64-bit Windows system, I was greeted with “The program can’t start because MSVCR71.dll is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem.” Although program started normally when I dismissed error message I found it annoying.

After some troubleshooting I narrowed issue on Java. And I found pretty good explanation of this problem. After knowing this, solution was simple.

I went into “C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre6\bin” folder and copied “msvcr71.dll” from there to DavMail’s application folder (“C:\Program Files (x86)\DavMail”). This way DavMail found his dll and everybody was happy.

P.S. It was interesting to see that DavMail developers had more than one ticket open on this subject. They closed them with solution “reinstall Java”. That solution is invalid. Real solution would be to include this dll with installation.

P.P.S. I found it annoying and idiotic of Sun Oracle to remove this bug from their bug database. That bug used to exist (and thus we know that it’s ID is 6509291) but they removed it. Only reason that might fit Sun’s Oracle’s FAQ is “security reasons”. How this applies to this situation is anybody’s guess.

Fujitsu and Search

I needed some Windows 7 drivers for Fujitsu LifeBook S710. At first glance support page looked promising.

It asked for serial number and I gave it one but this hasn’t worked for some reason. However, I did got link to Fujitsu tool that reads your system and it promised that it will take me to correct page. I executed it and it got me back where I started. Tool just read serial number and it redirected me to the same page that failed me first time.

I would have gone through model selection but that part of page was also broken. It just kept showing single item: “Please select the product line”. I spent quite some time having fun making circles around Fujitsu web pages. I found driver’s bits here and there but some of them haven’t worked at all and some of them were meant for other notebook models. It took some googling to find useful product search page that gave proper list of drivers.

When manufacturer shows that level of laziness and lack of quality control, it really inspires confidence in it’s computers.

Mercurial Summary

I noticed that I wrote quite a few posts regarding Mercurial and they are spread all around blog. This post will give just a quick summary.

Server:

• Basic Linux server setup
• Mercurial over https
• Mercurial over both http and https
• Nicer Mercurial URL
• Mercurial on FreeNAS
• Mercurial on CentOS

Converting:

• Moving parts of existing Mercurial repository to new one
• Converting from SVN to Mercurial
• SVN to Mercurial

Tricks:

• Pushing/updating/commiting multiple repositories with single command
• Rollback in Mercurial
• Mercurial keyring
• VisualHg in Visual Studio 2012
• BOM away

Clients:

• TortoiseHg (the best Windows client).
• VisualHG (the best Visual Studio source control plug-in).
• Mercurial for Ubuntu (PPA package, stable snapshots).
• TortoiseHg for Ubuntu (PPA package, stable snapshots, nautilus extension).

5Nine

I was happy like a little puppy when I read that there is graphical manager for Hyper-V Server running on server itself. For me that was single missing link in my Hyper-V adventures.

First step was to download their free version. As it became usual, I had to create yet another another account and leave my password at yet another site. Well, at least I will get download link after installation and that will be that.

And that was that. Sometime I overreact. :)

Well, it turns out that this is not all. All that you get in mail is link to god-knows-what executable file. I guess after running that download manager you will be presented with additional application that would let you download what you want in just three-four simple steps. And let’s hope that this company is legit and that you don’t download some “toolbar helper” application alongside.

I don’t know about you but I am pretty allergic to this way of treating your potential customers. While I do understand their “need” to collect e-mail addresses of their potential customers so they can (annoy them) better help them in future, I do not understand why they don’t let you download their FREE application without any additional garbage. Which idiot of a manager thought that this was good idea?

I shall just wait for some normal company to come with same solution.