Jacken’s Blog

In my continued effort to get a Windows PC to act as an HTPC for using with my projector I got a problem with DVD playback. When watching a DVD, the PowerDVD player would start to playback the video in four times the normal speed. This would occur sporadically. After fiddling around a bit, checking that the DMA settings was correct for the DVD player, I started to test different audio settings. And I realized that the video would play back normally if i DID NOT use the SPDIF Digital output to the surround amplifier. So my guess was that their was a problem with the settings for the audio card. But after trying all possible scenarios I gave up. So instead I uninstalled the drivers for the Soundblaster Live! card, rebooted and reinstalled the drivers, but this time just the drivers and not all the other gunk you get with it. And low and behold, it worked.

And so I sat back in the sofa, feeling really good about myself, being able to figure this out, until I realized I just wasted three hours of my life trying to fix something that should have worked the first time. My Windows HateoMeter just jumped a bit. So I thought that it couldn’t get worse than this.

Time to fix the problem of getting an internet connection. The card I put in the machine would install ok, the drivers loaded and I could configure it, but not a bit (or byte) would leave or enter the card. I tried everything. Recreate the setup. Uninstalling the drivers, and then reinstalling it (because I have now learned that on Windows, there need not be a reason for having to uninstall and reinstall a driver) But it refused to work. So out went the card, and in with another, but for safety sake I put it in another PCI slot, knowing that Micosoft never realized that the PCI bus was created to be independent of in witch slot you put stuff in, so you move something, you have to reinstall. And now it worked. I later tried the first card in a linux machine. Worked like a dream.

So now I have an internet connection, so I start Internet Explorer. I had already set up www.slashdot.org as my startpage and that loaded fine. I surfed to Microsoft.com to get some updates, and BANG! my machine had a dialup virus. That’s pretty good, 14,5 seconds until I got Virus. Considering I’m behind a firewall and all. Ok, download virus program and install. I still need to do the updates from Microsoft to gaffer-tape the operating system somewhat.

Next up, setting up a Satellite DVB TV card. I’ll leave that for tomorrow.

And to think that a lot of the network guys at bigger companies refuse to let me connect my customers macs to the network because “They are unsafe” What a load of crock.