Kludging Dangerously

I decided to do a clean install of Vista on a XPS M1210 in order to
switch from a 5400 to an extra 7200rpm drive that I was not using.

It went very well at first. Almost everything installed just fine.

I hate the 80 / 20 rule ... or in this case the 95 / 5 rule.

I couldn't get the laptop to recognize the memory card reader. The
Dell download options indicate it's probably a Ricoh, but the system
wouldn't recognize the drivers. So I decided to manually install what
I thought would be a driver that would work from a list of available
drivers for the system.

Bad decision. Blue screen of death. I couldn't even boot into Safe
Mode. In retrospect, yeah -- that's what I get for carelessly
installing a driver that I thought might work just because I found one
from the list that had "Ricoh" and "SD" in it.

But now no matter what I try, I get a blue screen of death. Anxiety
city -- nothing gives me instant anxiety as much as a recurring blue
screen of death! In addition to the current problem, I have
post-traumatic stress disorder from all the times in the past that I
have had blue screens of death. MS puts a glassy interface on Vista,
why couldn't they change the blue screen of death to be something
different. But no... it will never change. I think in the next Star
Trek movie they should show a blue screen of death while trying to
negotiate peace with the Klingongs... but I digress.

I know what F2 does -- gets me into the bios. I've never done F12 so
I tried that but that didn't help. I thought that F8 also does
something and just lucked upon the "Start using last known
configuration" option. Whew.

The fine art of kludging relies heavily upon taking what little I know
and remember and using that with the brute force method of trying all
the different combinations. F2, F12, and for some reason I remembered
F8 even though that doesn't show on the boot sequence.

THEN I realized that I had turned off the card reader a while ago on
the bios, along with anything else I didn't really need, to get more
battery life out of the laptop. DOH!

I turned the card reader on in the bios, but due to prior steps I
think I messed things up because no matter what I do now I can't get
it to recognize the drivers.

I've tried uninstalling the "SD Host Controller" in Device Manager
because it flags as not having drivers, but when it tries to recognize
it again it can't find the drivers. However, when I install the
drivers from the Dell site, it says I am already using the best
drivers (?). I install the drivers anyway and it doesn't work.

I give up. I will live without the card reader working.

Oh... one more thing I can do is put the old hard drive back in, boot
it up, find out what drivers the system used when it was working, and
then see if that helps me understand what I need to install on the new
hard drive.

Yeah right... I am going to cut my losses here. One of the worst
sounds is hearing the birds welcome the morning after a sleepless
night of trying to get a computer to work. If it ain't (too) broke,
don't fix it. The enemy of the "good enough" is the best.

Goodnight Mary Ellen .....

Great essay!!!!

I have noticed that many of us are gluttons for punishment. We have a Blue
Screen of Death WISH!!!!!

We tinker with this stuff for the sole purpose of tinkering. We just can't
get away from it.

Well, YOU can't anyway.

Mel




"Journey" wrote in message
...
I decided to do a clean install of Vista on a XPS M1210 in order to
switch from a 5400 to an extra 7200rpm drive that I was not using.

It went very well at first. Almost everything installed just fine.

I hate the 80 / 20 rule ... or in this case the 95 / 5 rule.

I couldn't get the laptop to recognize the memory card reader. The
Dell download options indicate it's probably a Ricoh, but the system
wouldn't recognize the drivers. So I decided to manually install what
I thought would be a driver that would work from a list of available
drivers for the system.

Bad decision. Blue screen of death. I couldn't even boot into Safe
Mode. In retrospect, yeah -- that's what I get for carelessly
installing a driver that I thought might work just because I found one
from the list that had "Ricoh" and "SD" in it.

But now no matter what I try, I get a blue screen of death. Anxiety
city -- nothing gives me instant anxiety as much as a recurring blue
screen of death! In addition to the current problem, I have
post-traumatic stress disorder from all the times in the past that I
have had blue screens of death. MS puts a glassy interface on Vista,
why couldn't they change the blue screen of death to be something
different. But no... it will never change. I think in the next Star
Trek movie they should show a blue screen of death while trying to
negotiate peace with the Klingongs... but I digress.

I know what F2 does -- gets me into the bios. I've never done F12 so
I tried that but that didn't help. I thought that F8 also does
something and just lucked upon the "Start using last known
configuration" option. Whew.

The fine art of kludging relies heavily upon taking what little I know
and remember and using that with the brute force method of trying all
the different combinations. F2, F12, and for some reason I remembered
F8 even though that doesn't show on the boot sequence.

THEN I realized that I had turned off the card reader a while ago on
the bios, along with anything else I didn't really need, to get more
battery life out of the laptop. DOH!

I turned the card reader on in the bios, but due to prior steps I
think I messed things up because no matter what I do now I can't get
it to recognize the drivers.

I've tried uninstalling the "SD Host Controller" in Device Manager
because it flags as not having drivers, but when it tries to recognize
it again it can't find the drivers. However, when I install the
drivers from the Dell site, it says I am already using the best
drivers (?). I install the drivers anyway and it doesn't work.

I give up. I will live without the card reader working.

Oh... one more thing I can do is put the old hard drive back in, boot
it up, find out what drivers the system used when it was working, and
then see if that helps me understand what I need to install on the new
hard drive.

Yeah right... I am going to cut my losses here. One of the worst
sounds is hearing the birds welcome the morning after a sleepless
night of trying to get a computer to work. If it ain't (too) broke,
don't fix it. The enemy of the "good enough" is the best.

Goodnight Mary Ellen .....

Yes about tinkering. Tinkering is fun until I run up against the blue
screen of death. I got my zzzzz's last night and avoided hearing the
birds welcome in the new day, but I already know that I plan on
solving this problem today.

I've learend what I know through tinkering. I think I would have been
better off tinkering with PC's through the 80's and mid 90's rather
than Macs.

Anyway, time for some coffee :-)

On Sat, 4 Aug 2007 12:24:16 -0400, "MZB"
wrote:

Great essay!!!!

I have noticed that many of us are gluttons for punishment. We have a Blue
Screen of Death WISH!!!!!

We tinker with this stuff for the sole purpose of tinkering. We just can't
get away from it.

Well, YOU can't anyway.

Mel




"Journey" wrote in message
.. .
I decided to do a clean install of Vista on a XPS M1210 in order to
switch from a 5400 to an extra 7200rpm drive that I was not using.

It went very well at first. Almost everything installed just fine.

I hate the 80 / 20 rule ... or in this case the 95 / 5 rule.

I couldn't get the laptop to recognize the memory card reader. The
Dell download options indicate it's probably a Ricoh, but the system
wouldn't recognize the drivers. So I decided to manually install what
I thought would be a driver that would work from a list of available
drivers for the system.

Bad decision. Blue screen of death. I couldn't even boot into Safe
Mode. In retrospect, yeah -- that's what I get for carelessly
installing a driver that I thought might work just because I found one
from the list that had "Ricoh" and "SD" in it.

But now no matter what I try, I get a blue screen of death. Anxiety
city -- nothing gives me instant anxiety as much as a recurring blue
screen of death! In addition to the current problem, I have
post-traumatic stress disorder from all the times in the past that I
have had blue screens of death. MS puts a glassy interface on Vista,
why couldn't they change the blue screen of death to be something
different. But no... it will never change. I think in the next Star
Trek movie they should show a blue screen of death while trying to
negotiate peace with the Klingongs... but I digress.

I know what F2 does -- gets me into the bios. I've never done F12 so
I tried that but that didn't help. I thought that F8 also does
something and just lucked upon the "Start using last known
configuration" option. Whew.

The fine art of kludging relies heavily upon taking what little I know
and remember and using that with the brute force method of trying all
the different combinations. F2, F12, and for some reason I remembered
F8 even though that doesn't show on the boot sequence.

THEN I realized that I had turned off the card reader a while ago on
the bios, along with anything else I didn't really need, to get more
battery life out of the laptop. DOH!

I turned the card reader on in the bios, but due to prior steps I
think I messed things up because no matter what I do now I can't get
it to recognize the drivers.

I've tried uninstalling the "SD Host Controller" in Device Manager
because it flags as not having drivers, but when it tries to recognize
it again it can't find the drivers. However, when I install the
drivers from the Dell site, it says I am already using the best
drivers (?). I install the drivers anyway and it doesn't work.

I give up. I will live without the card reader working.

Oh... one more thing I can do is put the old hard drive back in, boot
it up, find out what drivers the system used when it was working, and
then see if that helps me understand what I need to install on the new
hard drive.

Yeah right... I am going to cut my losses here. One of the worst
sounds is hearing the birds welcome the morning after a sleepless
night of trying to get a computer to work. If it ain't (too) broke,
don't fix it. The enemy of the "good enough" is the best.

Goodnight Mary Ellen .....

On Sat, 04 Aug 2007 02:12:35 -0500, Journey wrote:

I decided to do a clean install of Vista on a XPS M1210 in order to
switch from a 5400 to an extra 7200rpm drive that I was not using.

It went very well at first. Almost everything installed just fine.

I hate the 80 / 20 rule ... or in this case the 95 / 5 rule.

I couldn't get the laptop to recognize the memory card reader. The
Dell download options indicate it's probably a Ricoh, but the system
wouldn't recognize the drivers. So I decided to manually install what
I thought would be a driver that would work from a list of available
drivers for the system.

Bad decision. Blue screen of death. I couldn't even boot into Safe
Mode. In retrospect, yeah -- that's what I get for carelessly
installing a driver that I thought might work just because I found one
from the list that had "Ricoh" and "SD" in it.

But now no matter what I try, I get a blue screen of death. Anxiety
city -- nothing gives me instant anxiety as much as a recurring blue
screen of death! In addition to the current problem, I have
post-traumatic stress disorder from all the times in the past that I
have had blue screens of death. MS puts a glassy interface on Vista,
why couldn't they change the blue screen of death to be something
different. But no... it will never change. I think in the next Star
Trek movie they should show a blue screen of death while trying to
negotiate peace with the Klingongs... but I digress.

I know what F2 does -- gets me into the bios. I've never done F12 so
I tried that but that didn't help. I thought that F8 also does
something and just lucked upon the "Start using last known
configuration" option. Whew.

The fine art of kludging relies heavily upon taking what little I know
and remember and using that with the brute force method of trying all
the different combinations. F2, F12, and for some reason I remembered
F8 even though that doesn't show on the boot sequence.

THEN I realized that I had turned off the card reader a while ago on
the bios, along with anything else I didn't really need, to get more
battery life out of the laptop. DOH!

I turned the card reader on in the bios, but due to prior steps I
think I messed things up because no matter what I do now I can't get
it to recognize the drivers.

I've tried uninstalling the "SD Host Controller" in Device Manager
because it flags as not having drivers, but when it tries to recognize
it again it can't find the drivers. However, when I install the
drivers from the Dell site, it says I am already using the best
drivers (?). I install the drivers anyway and it doesn't work.

I give up. I will live without the card reader working.

Oh... one more thing I can do is put the old hard drive back in, boot
it up, find out what drivers the system used when it was working, and
then see if that helps me understand what I need to install on the new
hard drive.

Yeah right... I am going to cut my losses here. One of the worst
sounds is hearing the birds welcome the morning after a sleepless
night of trying to get a computer to work. If it ain't (too) broke,
don't fix it. The enemy of the "good enough" is the best.

Goodnight Mary Ellen .....


That's the problem with the geek in us, we try to fix things that
aren't broken g. I know what you mean and have gone thru the same
stresses you so well describe (I'm not as good in words as you). My
family still remembers me not going to a family Christmas party
because my main pc was crashed and I couldn't enjoy a party knowing I
had a BSOD waiting for me at home and so I stayed home to fix it.
I did fix it but my family will never forget or forgive me for that
but in all fairness, they don't understand how important my pc is to
me... it's never a gaming or recreation pc but really a work pc for me
so any BSOD is a serious matter to me.

Hope you sleep well now after the fix !!

On Sat, 04 Aug 2007 12:36:40 -0500, RnR wrote:

That's the problem with the geek in us, we try to fix things that
aren't broken g. I know what you mean and have gone thru the same
stresses you so well describe (I'm not as good in words as you). My
family still remembers me not going to a family Christmas party
because my main pc was crashed and I couldn't enjoy a party knowing I
had a BSOD waiting for me at home and so I stayed home to fix it.
I did fix it but my family will never forget or forgive me for that
but in all fairness, they don't understand how important my pc is to
me... it's never a gaming or recreation pc but really a work pc for me
so any BSOD is a serious matter to me.

Hope you sleep well now after the fix !!

I decided for now to keep the media card reader turned off in the
bios, mainly because that setting is also tied to firewire and it's
either both on or both off. In order to make the laptop more power
friendly, I chose both off.

I also turned off the LAN connector and the internal modem because I
don't use them.

All the efforts were not in vain. The laptop actually runs much
cooler (not sure why), faster, and has better battery life now. I
don't seem to take any battery hits with a 7200 rpm drive over a 5400
rpm drive -- at least any noticeable ones.

Word 2003 starts in less than a second. Word 2007 starts in about one
second. It's really nice to have a laptop as portable as the M1210
with that kind of performance.

I bet the new 13" XPS notebook is a real winner.