Looks like my nice new Intel SR1630HGP server, with its Intel Xeon X3460 processor is affected by the CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT STOP error discussed in KB975530:

0: kd> !analyze -v
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*                                                                             *
*                        Bugcheck Analysis                                    *
*                                                                             *
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CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT (101)
An expected clock interrupt was not received on a secondary processor in an
MP system within the allocated interval. This indicates that the specified
processor is hung and not processing interrupts.
Arguments:
Arg1: 0000000000000019, Clock interrupt time out interval in nominal clock ticks.
Arg2: 0000000000000000, 0.
Arg3: fffff880021e1180, The PRCB address of the hung processor.
Arg4: 0000000000000006, 0.

(additional details follow that but don't really add anything)

GRRRRR!!! Looks like, at the time of this writing, the KB article needs to be updated, since the Xeon 3400 series aren't Xeon 5500's, nor Core i5's, nor Core i7's...

Now playing: The Beatles – One – 26 Let It Be

A couple days ago someone mentioned Pidgin, so I thought "what the heck, I'll see what the commotion is about". And hey! It's come a long way since the Gaim days when I last used it! Support for Jingle and XMPP audio/video is very cool, and it really doesn't look & feel that bad (okay, other than the "OK" and "Cancel" buttons being backwards from the Windows norm on every dialog). Unfortunately I haven't been able to test the Jabber support, since it appears the entire amessage.de server that I used to use is just gone...so I tried using my old FBE28E45 AIM account & what the heck????!!!! it still works!

I mean, it's been years since I used that account! (this is where someone is going to point out that I've actually been logged in this whole time (from some random transport server), and that this explains why I've been such a jerk and not responded to thousands of IM's over the years...)

But yeah, not only did logging into the account still work, all my contacts were still there! A whole bunch of people were online that I haven't talked to since the beginning of college...plus all the defunct accounts from people that have moved on. So I think I'll keep Pidgin around for a bit & see if I can't "reconnect" with some people (translation: Pidgin is going to sit around and run in the background for a while, until I forget about, then get uninstalled once I rediscover that something's using a bunch of resources...hehe...).

Update: hey, it turns out that amessage.de is still there...I'm just an idiot and 1) remembered to add the enabled AIM protocol to the TMG firewall access policy, but 2) forgot to define XMPP, add it to an access rule, and enable the rule. So I'm also reactivating NTSN@amessage.de! Yay! (although, ouch, it turns out people were trying to contact me on that account...sorry Taylor!)

Now playing: Jim Croce – I Got a Name – 11 The Hard Way Every Time

0xc0000225 error when trying to boot into the Windows Server 2008 R2 installer? And you're running on a Broadcom HT1000 based motherboard? Solution: hide/disable the XIOAPIC functions of the HT1000.

On the Supermicro H8SSL-i board this means going into the BIOS, Advanced tab, Advanced Chipset Control menu, "HT1000 Southbridge Configuration" menu, and finally changing the "Hide XIOAPIC PCI Functions" option to "Yes". Save the changes and reboot. (Note that this applies to v1.2 of the BIOS...which based on its age is probably going to be the last one ever released for that board...)

Now playing: Emm Gryner – Public – 08 Your Sort of Human Being

Got a brand spanking new Intel Xeon X34xx (Nehalem based!) server recently (like within the last month). It’s a barebones Intel Server System SR1630HGP, with an Intel S3420GP motherboard. Which means...it supports EFI! So I'd finally be able to see what all the hype & excitement about the cool new BIOS replacement was! And I'd be able to boot off a storage array > 2TB in size! Or so I thought (insert thunderclaps, lightning, and other ominous (or just drama enhancing) signs here).

It turns out there's a bit more to getting EFI to work with Windows than just popping the DVD in the drive and powering up the computer. A brief caveat here at the beginning: these comments apply to the following firmware, so the settings may change as new releases are made:

• BIOS: S3420GP.86B.01.00.0027
• BMC: v01.14
• FRUSDR: 15
• Windows Server 2008 R2 (RTM)

So, first of all, the RAID functions of the chipset don't work with EFI. Period. Neither the Intel Matrix RAID option ROM, nor the LSI/ESRT2 option ROM, appear to support EFI. Sure, they're useable with the CSM enabled, and the system setup may make it seem like they can be enabled, but as soon as EFI is used, things just stop working and any arrays either wont be bootable or wont even be found.

Actually, even with a standalone LSI MegaRAID SAS 9260-4i, things aren't that easy to get working. The CSM has to be enabled in order to get into the controllers firmware ("WebBIOS" or something now). And there's only like half a second to press the right keys to get into it the first time... But once the arrays and any settings are configured, EFI does work with the controller and CSM can be disabled.

Oh, and if using an internal SATA DVD drive, apparently it has to be plugged into port 5, otherwise it doesn't always show up as a bootable device. This might just be a legacy of leaving the Matrix RAID enabled when it shouldn't have been, but with the drive on port 5 it always worked.

Once the storage stuff is taken care of, the big tricky bit is that Windows apparently requires a VGA BIOS to be present in order to work properly. This little nugget of crucial information can be found by digging around the Windows Hardware Design site and reading up on firmware & UEFI/EFI. In the system setup, there's a setting for "Enable Use Legacy Video for EFI OS" that becomes available when "Enable EFI Optimized Boot" is enabled. BOTH settings need to be enabled for Windows to successfully run. I think I may have been able to get WinPE to start off the DVD without the video setting enabled, but it certainly wasn't stable & reliable. May just have been that the setting didn't actually get cleared, got temporarily turned back on again, or I'm just confused by having tried too many different things.

A final bit of trouble I ran into was getting Windows Setup to not encounter errors. For some reason it kept saying that Windows couldn't be installed to the drive because the system couldn't boot from the selected drive (although Setup would let you continue with the installation, true to its word, Windows wouldn't boot after setup). To fix this issue, I had to boot into WinPE (with CSM enabled/EFI boot disabled again! otherwise you can't get a command prompt from the setup disks!), fire up diskpart, convert the disk to GPT, then manually create the EFI System Partition (ESP) and Microsoft Reserved Partition (MSR). The next time setup started from an EFI boot, the error was gone and setup worked correctly.

So, a summary of what needs to be done:

1. Make sure the DVD drive is connected to SATA port 5!
2. Get a FAT32 EFI System Partition created on the disk somehow.
3. In the firmware setup:
   1. Switch SATA controller to AHCI mode
   2. Disable AHCI Option ROM
   3. Enable EFI Optimized Boot
   4. Enable Use Legacy Video for EFI OS
4. Save changes to firmware setup, then reenter it to double check that the settings took (& to verify the boot settings...those have an annoying habit of changing all the time)
5. Start up Windows Setup and install

Now playing: Emm Gryner – Public – 05 Phonecall 45

• No comment
• Cute video. Not sure about the Bladerunner ref.
• I hope this isn't true, but it'd explain a lot...
• I should just find a way to replace my "Favorite Book" listing on Social Networks with this comic (plus, now I have a couple of extra books to try and find :P)
• Oh how true this is...
• All the time too...all the time...
• Cool graphic; not so cool typhoon. And it doesn't help that after Ondoy there was Pepeng...and now maybe Ramil? :(
• Very cool (astronomy pictures)
• The robot revolution; it's coming! (more on the computers taking over in November...if I remember)

Now playing: Joel Plaskett – Three (Disc 1) – 09 Run, Run, Run

So as a follow on to the Grand Coolie Dam trip back in June, my friends up in Seattle for the summer decided to head up no the North Cascades National Park area and see that. On the whole, the trip wasn’t a whole lot of fun (for a bunch of reasons); but the area was really pretty and get back there sometime. Maybe make it all the way through the park next time…maybe actually hike the trails a bit… Oh well; here’s pictures!

Top of Baker Dam…it creates Baker Lake (to the right). To the left there’s a canyon/gorge that was fairly impressive…too bad none of the pictures turned out.

We stopped at Lake Shannon too & I was able to get a picture of this old abandoned(?) building (house?).

I like the curvature of Diablo Dam…makes it easier to get pictures of the dam face than the straight ones like the one at Baker Lake :).

Decent capture of what North Cascades National Park is like (that’s a little bit of Diablo Lake in the bottom left).

Now playing: Amy Millan – Masters of the Burial – 09 I Will Follow You into the Dark

Retracted. This scenario is not supported, and there are numerous additional issues that need to be resolved that were not covered in the original post.

Now playing: Amy Millan – Masters of the Burial – 02 Low Sail

Windows Live has this cool thing where it reminds you about your contact’s birthdays (the “Birthday Calendar” I think…). And yes, I’ve come to rely on this feature. Unfortunately, I can’t quite bring myself to trust the system completely, so whenever I get the alerts, I also get this nagging doubt that it’s not really that person’s birthday and that I’ve really just misentered their contact info…

Wow Windows XP is showing it’s age…the RTM installation disc I have is reacting badly to the >127GB hard drive I’m trying to install on…(yes, I know the way to correct this is to use SP1…which is why I’m slipstreaming SP3 onto a new installation disc right now…)

Hey! xcopy on Windows 7 seems to have a new option: /J (“Copies using unbuffered I/O. Recommended for very large files.”) Cool!

Command just used to build the Windows XP with SP3 disc: oscdimg -n -b"amd64\boot\ETFSBOOT.COM" -lWXP_VOL_EN_SP3 -t04/14/2008,07:53:59 -g -h -maxsize:4096 "E:\CD Build\windows_xp_sp3" "E:\CD build\windows_xp_sp3.iso". I’m probably a short DVD burn away from finding out just how wrong that was…(much later)…hey, that actually worked!

Oo…coool…Windows XP does have regional settings for Filipino…too bad the timezone stuff doesn’t have one (instead I end up guessing…”it’s close enough to Singapore, right?” note that this results in the timezone being "Malay Peninsula Standard Time")

Who makes & sells a DVD drive that can’t play DVD’s?!?!?! I mean, I could sort of understand a bare OEM drive…but these are boxed retail drives from HP! Grrr…

Now playing: (nothing but the sound of computer fans)

• Disaster movie parody: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW2qxFkcLM0
• I live in the orange building in the background :) : http://twitpic.com/e5ggu
• Hey, I was *there* back at the beginning of July! : http://j-walkblog.com/index.php?/weblog/posts/good_brakes/
• Interesting site...don't like the pay part though, since it's simple enough to get all the information yourself : http://www.spokeo.com/single/search?e=jstults@live.com (via http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2009/08/how-to-figure-out-if-youre-dealing-with-a-nutcase.html)
• Cool explanation of differential (used in cars) : http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=4642
• Not sure any of these really apply : http://graphjam.com/2009/08/26/song-chart-memes-have-girlfriend/
• Interesting application...I doubt my TV supports it though : http://www.istartedsomething.com/20090829/windows-7-application-controls-backlight-ordinary-webcam/
• Oh no! Squid! : http://scienceblogs.com/bioephemera/2009/08/the_ultimate_squid_self-portra.php
• Someone has too much marketing money : http://channel9.msdn.com/forums/Coffeehouse/488414-Do-you-bing/
• We don't have fancy IP phones at work. I've thought that it'd be a good idea to actually upgrade to modern technology, but this post (and especially the comments!) has been making me reconsider that idea... (update: surprise! guess what phones we're getting now at work!) : http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2009/08/25/9883078.aspx
• Amusing : http://j-walkblog.com/index.php?/weblog/posts/rotated_images/huh...never knew this was how a sewing machine worked : http://j-walkblog.com/index.php?/weblog/posts/sewing_machine/
• For some reason the geek in me wants one of these trash cans now : http://j-walkblog.com/index.php?/weblog/posts/advances_in_trash_cans/
• Ah, to be a kid again. Although going this far might be a bit too much. : http://j-walkblog.com/index.php?/weblog/posts/lego_house/

Now playing: Pete Samples – Yours Makes Mine – 04 Between Exhales

So back at the end of June I headed up to Seattle to hang out with my friends Emil & his girlfriend. First goal: stop by Leavenworth, see the faux-Bavarian-ness, and have Emil's girlfriend eat one of the pig legs (there’s an actual German-ish name for it that I can’t remember…) that had been recommended to her by her coworkers (co-interns?) at Microsoft. It was…larger…than anticipated. Leavenworth was fun in a ludicrously touristy way, complete with the crazy thick crowds. Second goal: get to Grand Coulee Dam and check out that engineering marvel. It’s definitely impressive! And the laser show at night was really cool. Third goal: stop at Lake Chelan and see that “gateway to the North Cascades”. That was less interesting for me, but it was still a nice chance to get out of the car for a bit. Yeah, there was lots of driving on this trip :). And all of this was just on the weekend!

So after that weekend I had another 2 days up in Seattle, so I did touristy stuff around the city. Got to finally the Space Needle, the Experience Music Project (EMP), general downtown (was looking for the SafeCo office, but I couldn’t remember the address at all, so it ended up just being just wandering over dozens of blocks), and the wharf area. Also stopped by Pike Place Market, the University of Washington campus, Gasworks Park, and took the Ride-the-Ducks tour. So lots of stuff, and lots of fun!

And lots of pictures :). But here are a select few; the full photo set can be found in the Seattle, WA Vacation (2009-06) album.

US-2 on the way out to Grand Coulee Dam

Grand Coulee Dam itself, as seen from the top of the extension added to accommodate the third powerhouse

Marion Oliver McCaw Hall screen-thingys at Seattle Center

Space Needle (and a little bit of the Experience Music Project (EMP))

Seattle waterfront, seen from a pier on the wharf

Hill in Gasworks Park, Seattle, plus a bit of the tops of the remains of the gasworks

Now playing: Learn Filipino – Book 1, Disc 1 – 12 Pronunciation-Malumay-03-82*
* Note on now playing: yes, I’m trying to multitask, and no, this probably isn’t a good idea…hehe…but it’s now abundantly clear that my mapping of sounds-to-language needs mountains of work…