Thus Spoke Herman

I finally got a chance to do some work at the server without the pain of using Remote Desktop. I was messing around a bit, and needed a restart. Restart I did. However, after the initial Windows Server 2003 screen, I got the infamous blue screen of death:

“The registry cannot load the hive (file)”
“SystemRoot\System32\Config\SOFTWARE”

Now thats a failure! Hive file, WTF? I didn’t get a screen shot, but some other dude has had the same thing. I actually didn’t wait for the memory to dump to disk, I have no time for niceties.

Luckily my method of sorting this mess out was less tortured than his:

http://content.zdnet.com/2346-10741_22-39528.html

I tried Safe Mode. No cigar, same screen. Bugger.

I have the Windows Server 2003 CDs so I got them out. 1 issue. No CD Player in the server and I do not have a USB CD player, just IDE ones. Bugger.

Get the server out of the rack, take the hood off and connect the CD drive to the spare IDE slot and connect (just reached) to the spare molex. Was not recognised by motherboard. Bugger.

Swapped jumper on CD Drive to cable select - was on master. We are off and running. Changed the BIOS to try the CD drive first. We are into the Windows installer! When given the option, I press R for the Recovery Console. After being prompted for the admin password, I ran the following commands:

cd system32\config
ren software software.bak
copy c:\windows\repair\software

This goes to the directory where the dodgy registry software crap is, takes a copy (just in case) and then copies a repair, older version from a repair directory. Reboot time…

exit

It works!
Shutdown, remove IDE CD player, close hood. startup. It works!
Put back in rack
It works!
Wow. I can now do some work!

Now, when ordinary people attempt to find happiness, I’m not sure that the happiness found is really happiness or not. I study what ordinary people do to find happiness, what they struggle for, rushing about apparently unable to stop. They say they are happy, but I am not happy and I am not unhappy either. Ultimately, do they have happiness or not? I regard actionless action as worthy of being called happiness, though the ordinary person regards it as a great burden. It is said ‘Perfect happiness is not happiness, perfect glory is not glory’.
The whole world is incapable of judging either right or wrong. But it is certain that actionless action can judge both right and wrong. Perfect happiness is keeping yourself alive, and only actionless action can have this effect. This is why I want to say:
‘Heaven does without doing through is purity
Earth does without doing through its calmness.’

Just a couple from the master.

“While ordinary people rush busily around, the sage seems stupid and ignorant, but to him all life is one and united. All life is simply what it is and all appear to him to be doing what they rightly should.”

“Do not do what is good in order to gain praise.
If you do what is bad be sure to avoid the punishment.”

I got a copy of Office 2003, and installed using CrossOver again. I used the existing Microsoft Office 2003 installation rather than the custom one this time. After downloading many fonts, I just chose to install Access. This did not take very long. I could not create and save a new blank database though. PokerTracker would also still not start. Without access even running, I might have to use a VM image.

I decided to cut my losses and install Parallels and give it a go this way. I don’t want to dual boot, so Parallels seems a good option. I downloaded and installed and have 15 days to evaluate. I used Parallels Transporter to install a Windows VM from a Windows 2003 server installation I have running on a server tucked away in a dusty corner of the basement. It took a very long time. Once installed, I installed PokerTracker and took a snapshot. I also got myself a PokerTracker license, so I could use the postgres stuff already installed on the Mac. I activated PokerTracker and took another snapshot (also installed SopCast as a bonus before taking the snapshot, which also didn’t work fully in CrossOver). The issues now remaining are how to access the postgres DB running on my host Mac and how to access the directories of the FullTilt application, also running on the Mac. I want the DB on the host so I can simply use a Parallels snapshot and just restart the snapshot each time for obvious reasons. I also want the DB available outside of Parallels, as the less I have running in Windows the better.

I haven’t gotten PokerTracker talking to the Postgres DB on the host yet though. I am posting as I haven’t had time to look at this in a while and believe the longer things stay in draft mode, the less likely anything will ever happen….

conclusion of this saga can be found here