Scribble, scribble, scribble...

17th October, 230,000 words (admittedly we've slowed down... only 555 words per day since the last announcement).

Yesterday was a bit of a wipeout on account of Patch Tuesday's various Windows (in my case Vista HP) and other updates (Office etc.) being applied Wednesday night - leading to catastrophic failure of special goodies I've written to add functionality to Word to help me with navigating it...

To be specific, the ActiveX killbits patch not only prevents vulnerable ActiveX controls from being used by Internet Explorer it does so (via the "killbit") by stopping anything from running them... in my case MS Word - the Office XP Web Component I had on a userform simple wasn't there, which also meant the VBA code fell over "Cannot compile module" because the code referenced a now non-existent object.

However, lest you think it has been all work and no play (oh what fun to have to rebuild and restore one's work PC?) maybe I should share the news that traversable intra-universe wormhole mouths can not be charged! Took me a while to work it out (think: Gauss/divergence theorem + lack of horizon = lack of inside/outside distinction for a surface surrounding a wormhole mouth: think of the two types of circles that go around or though the hole in the middle of a torus/doughnut - they don't divide the surface)... but then I found confirmation in a footnote on p1200 of Misner, Thorne, Wheeler's Gravitation, which was nice. Still don't see how they can have mass either, I mean, come on...

Also worth mentioning, just in passing, something that occurred to me over a nice Lamb Madras at Indigo last night (a line of thought prompted by discussion of a recent New Scientist article on why the mind encourages superstition) which is that according to Your's Truly's theory of mind two contrasting styles of meditation (defocussing (e.g Zen ) vs. e.g. focussing (e.g. Tibetan though e.g. chanting)) lead to two different (but of course, the same) states of non-being, which we may summarise as:











If you know what I'm taking about, you know what I mean; if you know what I mean, why aren't you laughing?

We are in a jolly mood, aren't we?

Enlightening Stuff, eh?

Windows Cannot Find... Resolved!

Ha!

Recently, whenever I double-clicked a Microsoft Word (Word 2002/Word XP) document, Word would start but I would also get an error message from Windows that ""Windows cannot find..." and then the full path to the file I just double-clicked . Naturally I was able to open the file perfectly well once Word was running.

I don't think the general cause or symptoms are application or Windows version specific, so the hint should be good across the board... Vista, XP...

So what gives in this particular case? It could have been a shortcut whose target no longer exists, a missing registry entry perhaps, or if it had been an Excel document (Excel ~20020 ) it might have happened if Excel had been set to ignore other applications - but it wasn't, though the Excel thing a clue (it's a DDE - Dynamic Data Exchange - thing in the end... (or Automation (as they call it now, I think)).

In this case it was all to do with "AutoExec" - which was taking too long to run (lots of Programmatic Stuff). Microsoft has a knowledgebase article for Word2000 that says if AutoExec includes a "Wait" this error can arise, but it's really not the waiting that's important it seems, it's how long the AutoExec takes to complete before Word can respond to the Windows instruction to open the file.

So, the message "Windows cannot find..." is, not unusually, completely misleading: Windows can, has found the file - but the application requested to open the document hasn't responded in time.

And that's it really... to work around the issue I simply took all the long winded stuff out of AutoExec, put it in "delayedAutoExec" and put in this line in the leaner, slimmer, more responsive AutoExec. The delay is short but just long enough for Word to OK the document open request.

Application.OnTime when:=Now + TimeValue("00:00:05"), Name:="delayedAutoExec"

I expect it's also going to cure the bizarre error that was "Application.Activate" failing (during the AutoExec code) because there wasn't, as far as VBA was concerned, any Application to activate!

et voilà, the file is no longer not found.

Pie/Cake Stuff.

"Klum" - A Vital Vista Update

I may need to restart my machine after this - they are clearly tinkering with deep OS code in the update KB955020... it is marked as "Important" - which usually means it fixes something that causes crashes or let's some teen bit-racer leave his hack-tracks all over your disk drive.

What is it about, I hear you ask?

"The words "Friendster," "Klum," "Nazr," "Obama," and "Racicot" are not recognized when you check the spelling in Windows Vista..."

Oh My God! How could they be so stupid?

Or [irony off]... WTF? Is the built in dictionary supposed to know every proper name under the sun? And more to the point, is it not supported by a "Custom Dictionary" to which new words can be added?

When I think of all the little things that Microsoft should be attending to, such as, including but not limited to:

The File Delete/Copy dialog that stays on screen muttering about Zero Seconds to deal with Zero Items after I hit the Cancel button, instead of just disappearing?

The way the Sound Volume, Network and Battery icons disappear from the Sys Tray a.k.a. Notification Area and require a Registry Edit to get them back (hardly beginner stuff, mucking around in the registry).

That folders - and things like the Add/Remove Progams control panel - still forget what columns you chose; that you can't set "File Preview" on a per folder basis.

That if you use 3rd party gadgets in the Sidebar, you get two instances of the Sidebar process - each using up valuable resources - instead of just adding all gadgets to one instance.

That shortcuts to mapped network drives still don't correctly indicate whether or not they are connected/mounted.

[Yes they are getting progressively more trivial... I trust I am making my point]

That if you use the Start button search facility, you don't always get an "Open File Location" option.

No... much more important to ensure that "Klum" is recognised (I suppose that is Heidi Klum), and in all fairness I suppose, Racicot - whoever he/she/it may be. On second thoughts the dictionary should be updated - because unless it is sentences such as "In lieu of serious functional updates, Microsoft has recently taken to issuing turdbright updates in order to better fulfil 'customer expectations'." would get seriously annoying little wiggly lines in them...

Turdbright: chrome-plated faeces. Crap Stuff.

A Bug! Fie on it!

I know it's putting one's head in the lion's mouth to adopt a new operating system as soon as it's released, but my old previous machine - a pathetic HP Pavilion [ab initio defective DVD, crashy, screen died at 1 year warranty + 1 day, etc. etc. etc.] - just had to be replaced and I hung on as long as I could...

In the end I was actually very pleased with Vista (Home Premium) - the Rock Xtreme CTX pro has plenty of horse-power and elephant-memory to support Vista and everything was absolutely fine. Some things omitted from Vista Home Premium were absolutely ridiculous omissions, I thought , but it ran nicely and very solidly (even allowing for the fact that it has nVidia Go 7950GTX graphics - and we all know about nVidia drivers now, don't we?).

There were a few hiccups along the way (VS2008 for instance) but the basic system was Rock solid...

And then along came SP1 - after which every day was a Blue Screen Day! Yes - every day a STOP ERROR "DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE" 0x0000009F error when I moved the laptop from home to the cafe where I write. SP1 actually installed OK, but it was after I had fixed the newly introduced nVidia drivers issue that the real problem became apparent.

I've now been in regular touch with Microsoft Technical Support for over a month now (though I haven't heard from them for a week), emailed other technical types who run blogs and so forth but the issue is still not resolved... though I hasten to assure you, dear reader, that my system no longer crashes.

Eh? Issue not resolved but not crashing? How come? Simple - turn off the offending piece of Microsoft software - the issue hasn't been resolved but it can be avoided. As of this moment the system has been running continuously for 958,054 seconds (that's 11 days, 2 hours, 7 minutes and 34 seconds). Not bad.

But what is this obscure issue that has so far apparently defeated Microsoft. Obscure - of course.

As noted here I had added a little bit of extra storage (1.3TB of RAID5 to be precise) and set up a persistent iSCSI connection (for technical reasons I shan't bore you with this was Necessary... couldn't do what I needed to do with a simple drive mapping, etc.) It was absolutely fine - until...

SP1. It seems something changed: if an iSCSI connection is set up as persistent, it seems that even an Administrator cannot log-off a session (if it's not persistent logging on and off works just fine). But! If - post SP1 - the laptop is put to sleep, disconnected from the network, moved, woken and reconnected to another network something goes very badly wrong... with the iSCSI port, the Virtual Disk complains and it all goes titsup. I didn't change how I worked, but one day Vista was happy and the next day it had developed epilepsy.

Took me a while to figure this out...I had to download a Microsoft debugging tool (windbg); I had to learn how to use it; I had to decipher the dumps, I had to learn all about IRP's (I/O Request Packet)s... (I know... me me me me me) - and then I had to communicate with various people and still largely do the job for myself (I hasten to add however that all of the people I contacted have been surprisingly willing to help - I'm surprised easily by helpful email support- although unfortunately unable to help... thus far).

It took me three weeks - losing at least half an hour a day to nail this - and I'll go so far as to say, dear Mr Microsoft, that I really wouldn't object to some tangible expression of sympathy (e.g. free upgrade to Ultimate or license to run the existing system under Virtual PC which would have been/may be handy for debugging purposes)

[Suggestion: MS should do this automatically anyway once an incident crosses a certain threshold of severity - no one wants to be without a primary work tool, so clean installs, etc. etc. are (they were for me) completely out of the question... but a lot could have been achieved in a virtual machine and it would go some way to compensating users without actually costing MS anything really. If you are tempted to mentioned e.g. System Restore, please don't.]

The bottom line is: if you are experience regular BSOD's with bccode 0x9F and you use iSCSI and you move the machine just before each crash - check to see if the iSCSI is a persistent connection... if it is, turn it off and see if the problem goes way. (There are similar issues recorded in the MS Knowledgebase for Windows Server 2003 but nothing for Vista)

The sad thing is that Microsoft has still been unable - or unwilling - to acknowledge this issue, and I think a month is perfectly adequate to get that far - a fix might take longer but such a reproducible BSOD should be gently squeezing someone's gonads... just cos you don't log off a connection the whole damn machine shouldn't crash!

And now, some Mozart...

Classic Stuff.

Vista SP1 - BSOD, Bugs and Aggravations Part Deux

Does your system seem sluggish? Do you have one of those dashboard gadgets that says how much memory you are using and its seems to be saying "A Lot!"?

Or more specifically, have you checked the Processes tab of the Task Manager and seen row after row of taskeng.exe processes... tens? Hundreds? Thousands?

It pays to check occasionally. I only had a few hundred taskeng.exe processes, but that's more than enough to say WTF!

Quick Summary...

Taskeng.exe is the process that shows up for tasks created by the Task Scheduler. In Task Scheduler you can see which process belongs to which task by showing the Preview Pane and selecting a task event on the History tab and looking at the info on the General tab just below, where you will see something like

Task Scheduler launch task "\Start AVG Control Centre" , instance "C:\Program Files\Grisoft\AVG7\avgcc.exe" with process ID 2424.

But, if you have the particular problem of taskeng overload you won't find any corresponding tasks or events unless you select "Show Hidden Tasks" from the View menu... and then voila!

What you should probably be looking for is a task in Task Scheduler Local Library called "User_Feed_Synchonization... This task takes care of RSS feed collection, so if you don't use RSS feeds at all you will probably never have this problem, but if you do, look at its History... lots of failures? Yep, "UFS" is spawning another instance of itself every 5 minutes by default, and if they don't also terminate automatically that's an accumulation of 288 a day, each consuming a bit less than 1MB. Leave your machine on for a few days without restarting and >95% of the processes will be doing nothing helpful at all.

To resolve the problem - which is that the task has been corrupted - delete all existing "User_Feed_Synchronization..." tasks and then open a Cmd window.

Type "MSFEEDSSYNC DISABLE" (belt and braces approach) and then "MSFEEDSSYNC ENABLE", which will create a new feed collection task. The default task runs Once at 01:45 and then every 5 minutes until the next midnight... and then every five minutes thereafter so feeds won't be collected until either 01:45 or you kick start the task...

But at least you will own (a bit more of) your PC again

More info on checking the RSS User_Feed_Synchronization task, registry entries etc. from a Cmd window can be found on the Microsoft RSS blog, and my thanks to the guys, especially Andrew208, in the Technet forum who initially sorted this out in the post Re: Solved: 1055 spawned taskeng.exe threads... WTF? It seems this is an SP1 RC1 bug that didn't get stomped properly.

One of the few occasions on which one finds a problem and almost immediately a full answer... Nice Stuff.

Vista SP1 - BSOD, Bugs and Aggravations

I'm fed up with this particularly useless piece of "assistance" from Microsoft. Nice idea the "Problem and Solution Centre", especially since this Vista HP laptop is BSOD'ing every day now, so I thought I'd check to see what it had to say about the current state of my somewhat poorly system...

Aha! Let's follow that link and follow those obviously helpful steps...


What driver? Which device? How about a link to the Knowledgebase?

I have lost count of the times I have clicked the "No" brackets- this-was-not-helpful-at-all-quite-the-reverse-thank-you-very-much- if-you-want-to-add-my-blood-pressure-to-the-list-of-problems-now- close-brackets button and conveyed my displeasure (in decreasingly moderate terms of course) in response to the helpful question "Was this information helpful?", so maybe, just maybe, a little humiliation is in order.

Yes, it's in order - but whether it will help or not is another issue.

(BTW, the laptop manufacturer reliably informs me that the BIOS does not need to be updated and rather wished that MS would stop suggesting this as it creates an inordinate amount of completely unnecessary work for them...)

And, just to round things off, in case you are ever worried about whether your Drivers are properly signed and aren't entirely certain, please be aware that neither is Vista, so don't expect much help there either...

So, as you can see snapman.sys (of which there is only one on the system) is both signed and not signed... maybe Acronis signed for the fact that they weren't signing it? Who knows, but I see the imprimatur of MS behind it all.

By the way... the BSOD's are all 0x9F "DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE" errors and I suspect MS again with regard to the USB drivers: instead of just dying some 10-20 minutes after plugging in my Lexar JumpDrive Lightning II drive when I plugged it in today Vista refused to acknowledge the existence of the device at all then crashed when I took the non-existent device out again...

Of course everything was just dandy before SP1... but, 'tis true - plus ca change...

As as I saw in a forum sig recently "The mouse has been moved - please restart your system to apply the new settings"...

Annoying Stuff

Part II of The Case of the Disappearing System Restore Points in Vista Home Premium

The Scene: a variety of rooms around the globe. People are gathered at the PC's reading "The Lotus Position".

The Story So Far: Vista Home Premium is throwing away restore points; this led to a messed up PC becoming unrecoverable except by the good fortune of an external Acronis backup. It seems that Vista's Shadow Storage system is taking copies of everything not just System Restore points; as a result the storage space is quickly consumed and old restore points are lost... The question is, is it a bug?

Enter: Inspector I-Do-Stuff....

You may be wondering why I have asked you here... the answer is that this is the denoument - all is about to be revealed...

[A subtle piece of code injection locks the electronic doors...]

One of you works for Microsoft. One of you - you know who you are - is responsible. One of you is going down...

Yes, I have the answer. It is not a "bug", it is not something that has recently changed so as to render my System Restore functionality totally and absolutely bloody useless, it was a cold, calculated decision by Microsoft to remove the "Restore Previous Versions" feature from Vista Home Premium and Vista Home Basic.

I don't mind that there are backups I can't access; if I had really wanted that I could have upgraded to Ultimate. What I do mind, what I do mind very, very much is that I am left with no control over this system... Vista is deliberately - wasting time, space and resources - taking shadow copies of everything that changes on my C drive and putting them in ShadowStorage where

a) I can't get at them, but so what
b) So rather a lot, they are taking up the space that I want for System Restore Points.

Apparently this "feature" is not quite as obscure as I had thought - it was written about some time ago (see The Vista backups You Can't Have, and The Illusions of Vista, or here for example, to give but a few examples once I knew what I was looking for).

I am however absolutely furious about this.

System Restore is a major feature - under XP I used to have a restore point history going back weeks, now I am lucky if I have 5 or 6 restore points spanning less than a week.

This is catastrophically useless. But what are the chances of Microsoft doing anything about it?

Negligible I expect.

However, I remain on my high horse until hell freezes over if necessary to get this fixed.

We have ways you know...

Stuff moves in mysteriousways...

The Case of the Disappearing System Restore Points in Vista Home Premium

I should be writing but this could be of use...

Since at least Windows XP, many (esp XP and now Vista) Microsoft OS's have had a rather useful feature called System Restore that allows the user to restore their system to a previous point in time, thereby undoing the accidental removal of good software or the deliberate installation of something less helpful. System Restore doesn't touch data files, only the operating system and applications, however...

In Vista this facility is supported by "Shadow Storage" - a hidden area of a partition where Windows keeps copies of things for future recovery - and the use of Shadow Storage now includes keeping copies of data files so that users of high-end Vista systems (Business/Ultimate) can even restore previous versions of data files too.

Having recently encountered a bizarre problem (certain key services not starting automatically and completely un-re-enable-able - my finger points suspiciously as Visual Studio 2008 as the culprit) I naturally went to do a System Restore... only to find that I had only one restore point from midnight that day when whatever actually caused the problem (aplication, Windows Update, whatever) had probably been installed several days ago.

I was a bit miffed (he said understatedly), but to cut a very long and anguished story short I eventually recovered my system thanks to my Acronis True Image Home backups on my Thecus storage server.

But since then I've been rather keen on keeping track of my restore points because, well, shit happens and it's nice to be able yank the chain and flush the system with System Restore.

Alas the System Restore history never seemed to accumulate more than 5-6 restore points before all but the latest suddenly disappeared - and since they were scheduled by Vista to be created every midnight and at Startup, useful restore points were disappearing in a matter of days - which is so short an interval as to make System Restore effectively useless: unless a system is very unstable I wouldn't expect to notice and identify a problem requiring a system restore within a week of it arising.. Under XP the restore point history used to go back months...

I used the Event Viewer and watched SR (System Restore) create points regularly, only to have them cleaned out just as regularly by volsnap because ShadowStorage was filling up. Could restore points really be so big as to make the whole system effectively useless. On the one hadn that seemed utterly stupid, on the other hand... well, there's no fathoming MS sometimes.

The questions were: is a System Restore point the ~2GB it seemed to be... or was something else going on - which actually seemed more likely.

Why should a Restore Point be much less than 2GB? Well... I unthinkingly thought that restore points ought to be only differences in system state, and if not much is being installed, uninstalled, updated etc. the changes should be relatively small. But as Rick Rogers pointed out this is (my words, not his, seems like a nice chap) bollocks: there can't be a "full backup" to reference "differential" backups to because it might get thrown away as the system manages shadow copies to keep the total space under the nominal 15% - and I now see that my flash idea that somehow they were referenced to the current state isn't any better. (But - if my Windows folder is ~10GB and a Restore point is say ~1GB what is being saved and what isn't - and how are the choices being made?)

Anyway, I eventually turned up the Cmd window command "vssadmin" (Cmd needs to be run "As Administrator" for access to this command) which allows me to see how much ShadowStorage space is available and how much is in use. ShadowStorage can be up to 15% of the partition size and a quick check showed that indeed my 83.5GB C partition had 15% available for ShadowStorage - and most of it was used, but I only had 5 restore points.

I kept a very careful eye on Shadow Storage usage and did some experiments: I tagged a large number of photos... shadow usage went up (thought not by the total size of all the files tagged - it was about 25%); I forced certain other files to change (Outlook.pst) and it might have changed a bit, I created a System Restore point and it went up by 2-400MB. Generally however ShadowStorage usage seemed to be creeping up continuously whether I was making Restore points or not.

At which point, "Mark" directed me to a new piece of 3rd party freeware called ShadowExplorer (at http://www.shadowexplorer.com) which would allow me to take a peek into ShadowStorage and see what was there.

The application is only at V0.1, but after a virus and malware scan I installed it and took that peek...

Woah! It looked like my whole C drive was there - specifically including all my music, which hasn't been touched in months. Of course it couldn't all be there, but there was enough to apparently account for the lack of space. I restored one music file just to establish it really was in ShadowStorage and the file played perfectly, so I have no reason to doubt that everything else that appeared to be there really was filed away (and of no use to Vista HP users whatsoever)

So, I have an answer to why I have so few restore points - Vista HP is eating ShadowStorage space with copies of files that Vista HP itself would never let me get at!

Which leads to the Great Unanswered Questions of the day: why?, and how do I stop it?

I'll let you know when I find out - and in the meantime, thanks to Mark and the currently unknown author or ShadowExplorer.

And Mr Microsoft, if you are reading this - could you perhaps explain what is going on?

More Stuff later... perhaps.

Thiotimoline.dll

Some years ago (back in 1999 apparently - whatever happened to Moonbase Alpha?) I sent an email to Xircom's technical support service and received the surprising response that my message was received "tomorrow" (I sent it to New Scientist's Feedback column- the original item is here)

Eight years on and I am (partially) delighted to announce that whatever the underlying technology was/is/will be it has been/is being/will be developed to undreamed of heights of sophistication by none other than Microsoft and has been implemented as some sort of precognition extension to Windows Explorer.

Last night, I thought I was editing some photos - but I suspect now that this was merely paramnesia: when I looked at my photo folder I found this...


Not only did Vista know that I would be editing these images, it knew precisely how I would edit them - and most helpfully actually provided the resulting files, which could have saved me considerable effort if I had only known about this feature beforehand.

Unless of course, now that I have seen these files I do in fact modify them myself and Vista didn't do the work for me and is merely telling me that I am going to do some more editing...

Suddenly I realise that I can now test one of the good-old-fashioned paradoxes of time-travel (without the aid of a black-hole): now that I know I am going to edit these files today, what will happen if I don't?

Apologies if, as some fear, this results in the complete collapse of space and time as we know it and the banishment of the entire universe into neverness.

Actually, this is now a "very real" (as opposed to merely slightly real) fear: using the Windows "Start"button search I typed "modified: today" and, as expected, received a list of all the files I have worked on today... but searching instead for "modified: tomorrow" there is... nothing.

Oops!

Woah! The two files that were, yesterday, to be modified "tomorrow" are listed as modified "today" even though I haven't touched them - so there's no fiddling with time after all! I am truly impressed! Vista was right all along!

And on the further-up-side, if Vista seems not to keep your files where you think they are, let it search more widely - it may tell you where they will be, and then of course you can look them up there.

PS You can read more about Thiotimoline here. It makes a very good screen cleaner in solution - effectively removing tomorrow's grubby finger marks today! (Reapply every 24 hours for optimum results)

Vista Missing Icons in Systray aka the Notification Area

Ouch...

1st November 2007... no recent updates

Wifi connection disappeared, and for some reason I couldn't re-enable it (the lights are on, but no one's home, i.e. the Rock laptop's indicator lights said the devices were on but Vista wasn't buying it), so reluctantly I rebooted and...

Certain important icons in the Notification Area (the area previously known as the "systray") gone... to whit, battery status and network (and possibly sound volume).

Under Taskbar properties (Notification Area) I eventually find controls to display certain "System Icons" all the time... but apart from the clock they are all disabled (greyed out)... hmmm...

Tried letting Vista "hide" inactive icons to see what it thought was there, and the missing icons aren't in the current or past list... stranger and stranger...

Google... newsgroups... fixes!

a) Log off and back on again - Nope.
b) Regedit and clear the keys "Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\TrayNotify...
"PastIconsStream"" and "IconsStream" - then log off and on again.

No good... but! Aha! The "System Icon" display controls are re-enabled! Click them on and they are all back - battery, network and sound volume!

But for how long?

That's the fun of it, isn't it? Everyone surely needs more such Stuff from Microsoft to keep them occupied. How else would I have wasted the last hour if not for this teeny-weeny little bug...

[Rock Xtreme CTXPro, Dual Core, Vista "Home Premium" (sic)]

Cancel or Allow

Yes... it does feel like this to have Vista.

Data... Lots and Lots of Lovely Data

Well, it's been bugging me for some time... I had a little Freecom Storage Gateway - only 250 MB - and that just filled up with... stuff. Nice little box but still awaiting a firmware update to make it properly compatible with Vista

It seems we have >50GB of photos (ah, the wonders of digital photography), backups of other hard drives and GB of media generally and it was all here.

I'd been meaning to get some serious storage for a long time and I finally bit the bullet yesterday (ah... that reminds me of a malapropic (?) former boss who, when faced with a particularly difficult decision, said, "we have to bite the bull between the horns")

Anyway, here on Revay u in Budapest we are well placed with local amenities... the opera is a 5min walk away, the wonderful open air and subterranean venue known as Godor (can't reproduce the accents, but its pronounced "girder" and means "hole" because for a long time it was just a big hole in the ground while the city argued about where to put the arts palace - it ended up a way down river), 24 hour shops, the basilika for those last minute imprecations to the almighty...

...and a little computer shop called Modding.hu full of Stuff.

Now despite my predilection for Stuff I had walked by it hundreds of times, but it is a little shop so I never paid it much attention. The one day I walked by and saw this thing called a Thecus N2050, and I was keen on some extra storage and thought "hmmmm...", but I'd never heard of Thecus so I walked on by. Then a short while later PC Pro reviewed the latest Thecus N5200 RAID array...

So, on a whim I Googled PC shops and Thecus etc. in Budapest and where was my closest outlet... no more than 20m from my window (that's 10m down and 10m across and ignoring Pythagoras), so I went in and asked whether, having curtailed my Walpoling activities, they might have be able to help. A quick call to the importer later "Yes sir, one N5200 Pro arrived today..." I asked them to hold it for me while I checked a few things (like what disks I was going to put in it)

The next day at 10:30 I went back with a large pile of cash and ordered one N5200 and 5 Samsung 400GB SpinPoint disks (because PC Pro said they were good - and quiet); picked it up at 17:00.

Last night I got it out of the box, fitted the drives and turned it on... absolute doddle to set up... but it took overnight to build my lovely 1.33TB RAID 5 array (wheeeeeee! I have TERABYTES of storage!)

Today I started copying stuff across, but the rest of the network is only 100Mb/s so it's going to take a while.

Then I thought I'd try and see if I could create a Steganos safe on the array. Answer: not by placing the SLE on a mapped network drive, and not via direct access to the network (they're quite clear that it doesn't do this, but I thought I'd try...!)

However, the N5200 has iSCSI, which makes network devices look like ordinary devices... A bit of fiddling around (Vista has the iSCSI initiator built in but then you need to go to computer management and initialise and format the disk) and voila! the I: drive is mounted AND Steganos Safe happily begins to build a safe... but it was hogging all the bandwidth so I cancelled it - I'll do it later.

My only complaint - about myself for a change - is that in my eagerness to build the RAID array I only left 75GB for iSCSI and as far as I can tell there's no way to shrink an array (expand yes - shrink - no), so I either go back to square one or I leave things as they are... 1.33TB is a lot of data space to rebuild, and I really can't be arsed to start over so I'll live with it.

Next stop, probably Acronis to get some drive imaging software to backup various machines properly.

My only slight concern is that I bought an HiDef camcorder for the wedding and I have a sneaking suspicion that HD files are going to eat a lot of space... still, I can always swap the 400GB drives for 1TB drives later I suppose... but that would only be 4TB and I'm concerned that it won't be long before Petabytes are de rigeur.

My opinion of the Thecus so far (<24hours) - nice, quiet, does what it says on the tin even if the web interface is a bit... primitive.

Masochist or Pragmatist? Only time will tell.