My FUBARed Windows

So anyway, despite being a Linux fan, I still use Windows 2000 and XP on my desktop and laptop computers respectively. Maybe it’s because Linux’ Suspend-to-RAM doesn’t work on my desktop, and STR is a great feature: 5, maybe 10 seconds to return to the desktop you left a few days ago.

But as it is Windows, sometimes you need to reboot. The last few months (has it been a year already?), my Windows 2000 has failed to boot properly, with consistency. It blue-screens after the splash screen with IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL, saying ntoskrnl.exe did it. Not even safe-mode saves me from it.

The fix was hard to find, but easy to apply. Restore the WINNT\Config\SYSTEM from the backup, a file called SYSTEM.ALT. This can be best done on my xubuntu installation.

After wondering how the the 2 files differ, I did a diff, and figured out it’s mostly in the first 10 bytes. The SYSTEM file begins with regf (to signify that it’s a registry hive?), 2 bytes, 2 null bytes, and a repeat of the first 2 bytes after regf. The difference usually is those 2 non-null bytes. Replacing SYSTEM with SYSTEM.ALT – which has different magic bytes – almost always saves the Windows installation.

So my question is, what the hell is Windows doing? Why does it write bad bytes into the SYSTEM hive file, that makes it fail to boot. Or is it doing that on boot? WTF is wrong with you, Windows?

Pictures in Google Maps

Wow, so Google Maps now has geo-tagged pictures from Panoramio. At least my account has it, I think it’s a limited beta which I got a lottery for.

I must admit, it’s pretty cool, to see pictures of Monaco, you just browse to Monaco. How intuitive!

The first time I visited Panoramio, I wasn’t really impressed with it: it had the Google Maps Javascript application embedded in every page, which slowness-effect just annoys you on a Gigahertz computer. And every time you click an image you navigate away from the current page, loading another page, with another JS-bloat, argh! [And here I am with a cool answer to this problem, but I'm just sitting on it!]

But then, even something as simple as that can be bought by Google. Geez, I wish I had thunk of that!

Swearing Helps…

Anyway, here’s one for the Googlers out there.

If, while trying to install mod_python into Apache in Windows, you get an error like this:

Syntax error on line 173 of C:/Program Files/Apache Group/Apache2/conf/httpd.conf:
Cannot load C:/Program Files/Apache Group/Apache2/modules/mod_python.so into server: The specified module could not be found.

, here’s how to fix it:

Include the python directory into your PATH environment variable
(set PATH=%PATH%;C:\Python24 or something similar to that), and then try again.

The “fucking hell, so simple and it took me so long!” some people heard from my room was proof that the solution worked for me.

The error is incorrect, anyway, it’s supposed to say something more in the lines of “the module failed to load.”. If it still doesn’t work, make sure you’re using the module for the correct versions of Apache and Python.