Previously on booting PC-BSD through USB flash drive, I mentioned that I used Linux to perform “dd” operation towards the pendrive.

Yesterday, I just found that, my 8G pendrive now only 2G. There are 6G storage missing. I used Windows’ Disk Management Utility to check, then I found that there were two partitions in USB pendrive. And we know that, we cannot perform partitioning in Windows platform. Try to search from Internet about some information for partitioning USB pendrive, but none of them works.

Hahaha. When I wrote my previous post, I found that I possibly made a mistake when copying the IMG image to USB pendrive. Yes, I used “dd” incorrectly because I didn’t know how to use it exactly.

This was how I used “dd” in Linux:

dd if=PC-BSD-7.1.1-x86.img of=/dev/sdb1 bs=1024

Now, the problem was the “/dev/sdb1”. We should use “/dev/sdb” instead of “/dev/sdb1”. This is because “sdb1” indicates the partition, yet “sdb” indicates the drive. And I should copy (dd) the whole file system and data of IMG to the drive, not to the partition. That was why, after I used the statement above, I still found that my pendrive was in FAT32 format.

The story continues from my previous post.

I used Parted Magic to perform the partition tasks. However, I found that Kingston DataTraveler 2.0 USB Device cannot boot as LiveUSB. It cannot find pmagic-4.5.sqfs. And even Parted Magic 4.8, there is something like dev_list cannot be found. But, there is no problem for Kingston DT 101 II USB Device. Weird!

Okay, after I delete E: F: and resize D: to occupy the space. But in Windows, I found that the D: properties show that the space is still the same. But in Disk Management utility, the space is already used for D:. I tried CHKDSK, the problem still there. Then I remember a phrase from a movie:

The problem I faced on UNR on HP Mini 1109TU is the Wireless Network driver. The Wireless device of HP Mini 1109TU is Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g.

After the installation of UNR Karmic (9.10), there is no Wireless Network support. I cannot access internet with WiFi. So, the network cable is needed for internet connection.

I have tried several ways to enable the Wireless Network driver. First, run the System > Administration > Update Manager to update everything (remember to find the fastest repositories). After everything is updated, reboot Ubuntu.

I always got this type of message in Windows XP when installing with MSI:

The Windows Installer service could not be accessed

But this occurs on my friend’s PC. So, I tried to start the service Windows Installer service. And the message shown:

Could not start the Windows Installer service on Local Computer.
Error 1053: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a
timely fashion

A very bad experience for me to upgrade COMODO Firewall. The update was slow. So I decided to download the latest version installation file.

Then tried to install from the latest version. And the installation detected the existing of the older version. I was asked to uninstall the older version. Right, I uninstalled it. Then I was asked to restart the computer. But I didn’t restart. (I know, this was my fault). Then I continued installing the latest version. Finally, restarted the computer.

Previously I said that Firefox is just like an OS (Operating System), with the add-ons like the applications. If this is the metaphor, then all the bookmarks will be the important files that we own.

Sometimes I will reformat the harddisk and reinstall Windows due to some error, registry corruption, virus infection, some unexpected performance, etc.

And recently, I found that my Firefox have some problems. When the Firefox opened for a long time, 2 or 3 hours, there will be a high CPU usage. Which hinders me to work properly. I don’t know what happened, may be add-ons. I tried to uninstall some of the add-ons, but the problem still there. So, the final solution is “reformat” it.

For me, Firefox is just like an operating system, with the add-ons like the applications.

I always have a problem on managing the tags of Firefox 3. Unlike the bookmark system of the other web-browser, tagging is allowed for the Firefox. The tagging feature is based on the SQLite database in Firefox.

I had an experience that I corrupted the tag because of installing the Wizz RSS in Firefox. Thus, I seldom manage the tags. And previously, I installed StumbleUpon toolbar, this add-on generated a lot of tags which I don’t like.

The ISP in my area just upgraded their system. So, there is another challenge for me to setup my home network.

First, my condition is very weird, the ISP gave me an Ethernet cable. And to online, first need to access any website, then the ISP server will redirect me to a website, then key in the username and password. Only then, I can access internet.

So, the router I know cannot solve the problem like this. So, I searched from Internet and found that there is a method, “Internet Connection Sharing” in Windows XP.

When we are busy using our computer, normally we will open a lot of windows, web browser, word processor, file explorer, audio player, video player, PDF reader, etc. Especially, we need to open a lot of word processors and refer to one another.

There are 3 tools I used in Windows XP to help me for the window management.

allSnap - All the windows has the snap feature when we resize them. So, you can adjust them with better arrangement.
Taskbar Shuffle - When we open a lot application, our taskbar will be full of items. If we switch off the “group similar window” feature, then there will be a lot of items in taskbar. This tool allow us to drag and drop our own taskbar item manually, so we can put two word processors side by side.
TaskSwitchXP - Alt-tab replacement. Too many applications, alt-tab might be useless, because we need to tab tab tab to the application. But still don’t get what we want, because we can only see the icons. This tool allows you to preview the application and integrate with the mouse.
Visual Tooltip - Mouse over to the taskbar item, a thumbnail will be shown. Just like Vista.