He’s familiar with installing software on his machine, trust me, I regularly have to delete stuff that he’s installed for no reason. But tonight he was worried because of the convoluted install instructions and warnings he was being told.

Basically, here were the steps that specifically stated:

• Turn-off all firewalls and anti-virus
• Turn-off all power saving features
• Make sure running on power and not battery
• Disable anything that could interrupt install
• Make sure GPS device is fully powered

Generally I wouldn’t think too much of those steps, but turning off the anti-virus and firewall I didn’t really like. Luckily the install process didn’t require an Internet connection for updates. Everything needed was available on the installation DVD.

What concerned my dad, and why he was asking for my help was that the instruction clearly warned that if anything interrupted the install process the entire installation would be corrupted. The instructions suggested that the install would take up to 2.5 hours. If errors did occur in the installation process, he would need to ship the entire device back to Magellan for them to fix and repair and then send it back. Sounds like if it failed during install it would completely "brick" the device.

All of this would be at his expense if it happened during his installation update.

That just seems very harsh to me. Has anyone else experienced this type of risky install errors where you would have to resend the entire device back to the manufacturer?

Image: Magellan Product website

Post from: EveryJoe

Magellan GPS Installation Procedure Very Risky

First I downloaded the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor just so I’d be aware of anything that might be important before I started. No real major issues to report. A warning about RAM size. RAM available was listed at just under 2GB, Microsoft recommends 1GB as a minimum, but more if available. The laptop is holding as much as it can.

I’m proceeding with the install and am told I’ve got to uninstall Windows Live OneCare. It’s interesting that nothing was reported about that having issues with the upgrade advisor scan. Now I’ve restarted and I’m trying again.

I’m really afraid that I’m going to absolutely love Windows 7 on my wife’s computer and then want to install it on my own business laptop. That will prove to be too much of a risk in case of unknown issues. I’d be open to looking at dual-booting to give it a try, but the stupid hard drive on my laptop is excruciatingly tiny.

I’ll follow-up with a post tomorrow on my experience with the rest of the upgrade process and what I think about Windows 7. Here’s crossing your fingers.

Image: Windows 7 Installation Screen

Post from: EveryJoe

Replacing Vista with Windows 7

1. Download the Cygwin setup file, if you haven’t already.

2. Choose the installation type: Install from Internet or Install from Local Directory or Download without Installing. When installing Cygwin for the first time, you’ll have to choose either the first or the last option unless you already have the packages through some other means. I tend to choose the last for two reasons. One, network issues while downloading are preferrable to network issues while installing. Two, a reinstall for whatever reason is faster and smoother from a local directory. However, this will consume a few hundred MB to just download. Disk space these days isn’t an issue anyway.

3. Choose the root directory. I’ll talk about this structure later. Default options usually suffice, but if you have to choose, choose a new empty folder in a drive with several hundred MB disk space, say, E:\cygwin.

4. Even if you’re installing from the Internet directly, a few logs with setup-related information are created during installation. These logs are important for the setup file to recognize the existing states of various packages. Specify where you want these logs to reside in.

5. Choose a mirror that is closest to your location, or just pick any.

6. This is the major step, of choosing the packages. You could simply skip this step, whereby the default base packages will be installed. To experiment more, it will be worth your time to browse through these packages and select a few additional ones. Dependencies like underlying packages and libraries are selected automatically when you choose a package.

There are five modes of View: Category/Full/Partial/Up To Date/Not Installed. Choose the “Category” mode. Every package has a line of info written about it to the right. That should give an idea. I’ll mention the packages being used in the future posts where and when required.

The next step will end the process. If you’re first downloading the packages from the Internet, then you will have to rerun the Cygwin setup file, this time with the “Install from Local Directory” option and let all those packages downloaded be installed.

We’ll use Cygwin, starting with customizing the terminal from next week.

Image Source: Cygwin screenshot from my PC.

Post from: EveryJoe

How to Install Cygwin

Every company out there has to run about the same way. Sure, a publicly traded company has rules and regulations they must follow but when it comes down to the real work, it takes small teams of people to get the jobs done.

Take for example, a recent need — a few switches installed in a data center. These were not production switches but they were being used for development and testing, so they were no laughing matter. Rather than the normal steps:

1. Submit a ticket (with a difficult system)
2. Wait for a reply from the helpdesk (shouldn’t take more than 2 hours for them to type in a ticket)
3. Talk to the person the ticket is assigned to (good luck reaching them by phone, email or telepathy)
4. Go back and forth with IT and the group that needs the switches (because IT likes to feel real important)
5. Order the parts (even though they exist somewhere else in an old storage area)
6. Wait for an outtage window (that isn’t necessary because it’s not production)
7. Have the switches installed and tested (that means, make sure the lights are on)

The way that a good IT department handles it is by skipping steps 3-6. In most organizations, that just saved 2 weeks worth of waiting time. Don’t get me wrong, it’s very important to keep track of what everyone is working on. It’s even more important to test things, especially if they might impact something else. But it’s not always necessary for IT to put up a tough image that says, “I am IT and I can put you off and make you wait for my help because you have no option.”

Next time, the finance or HR guy needs a bit of help, keep in mind, you have to give a little to get a little — And sometimes, acting little isn’t always bad either.

Photo credits: clayirving on flickr

Post from: EveryJoe

Big or small, we do it all