MBRWizard

I didn't mention it in the update but my restore from Ghost backup actually messed up my PC's Master Boot Record (MBR). I panicked when Windows wouldn't boot - it choked half way after struggling for a minute or two. Luckily though, Ubuntu Linux did boot up. However, I soon noticed that none of my Windows partitions were visible from within Ubuntu. I panicked again.

I started fdisk to see what is in my partition table. What I saw gave me a shock - there were something like 50 partitions, some overlapping, defined in the MBR. Only one thing that I could do - delete those nonsensical partitions.

To cut a long story short, what saved the day in the end was some scribbled down notes that I have from fdisk of the starting and ending cylinders of the partitions that I have on my hard disk. I just used this to bring some sanity back to my hard disk again. It works - Windows rebooted without any problems. All Windows partition recovered. No data was loss. Phew!

PCI TV Tuner Gone Kaput

"What am I going to do with the analog TV Tuner that I have in my computer?"

That was the thought that I had some years ago when the Malaysian government announced that the free-to-air local terrestrial television broadcast will be going digital in the future. And the future is now set at 2018, tentatively.

Well, I do not have to worry about this question anymore. My analog KWorld TV tuner has gone kaput. Yes, I have had hung PCs and a couple of half captured TV programs over the last couple of days. I never thought it was a hardware problem initially. I kept thinking it was memory constraint instead as I had just installed Avast and have been using Gimp quite a lot lately. Guess I assumed wrong.

Now what I get when I start my TV recordings or viewing in VirtualDub is just a blank screen. Intermittently though, I do get some video and audio if I am lucky, but it only lasts a few minutes. Likewise when I tune in to my local FM radio stations.

But a bit of an oddity that I just found out a moment ago. Gnome Radio on Ubuntu Linux could still pick up the local FM radio signal (the STEREO/MONO indicator changes when I scan the airwaves) but there is no discernible audio. Maybe there is a bad connection on the TV Tuner's PCB board somewhere. I don't think it is bad contacts between the TV tuner and the PCI slot like I had previously as Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux could still detect the the TV tuner. Watching Youtube videos are working fine by the way, so that rules out any problems with my computer's motherboard.

Lazada Malaysia's Best Sellers

Not sure if this is updated in real-time, but here is Lazada's Malaysia's best selling items, sorted by categories.

See anything that you like? Do click on the advertised product to find out more.

Automotive & Gadgets

Cameras

Clothes, Shoes & Bags

Computer & Laptops

Health & Beauty

Problems With My MS .Net Framework 2.0 Setup

The MS .Net Framework 2.0 library on my PC got corrupted a few days ago. I am not sure what went wrong. I did suffer an NTFS file system corruption on the Windows system C: drive before that though. What caused this? I do not know. This is something that I have been trying to nail down since 2013, without much success unfortunately. My previous suspicion was with my anti-virus software Avira, but after uninstalling it (and replacing it with Avast) the problem is still there.

Symptoms

These are the symptoms that I encountered after the .Net Framework 2.0 got corrupted:

• My VirtualDub scheduler, V2CRS, does not launch anymore. Instead a pop-up message saying that "mscorwks.dll could not be loaded" (or something similar; can't remember the exact words) greeted me.

• I keep getting a pop-up error message saying that "Reader_sl.exe: Application failed to initialize properly (0xc0150004)" every time when I boot-up Windows.

• None of the MS Office 2007 applications (Excel and Word in particular) work anymore. They just fail to start.

A Possible Fix

I could have just restored from my most recent backup to fix this problem. But then I would have to reinstall Avast (and uninstall Avira) again. No. Not more work for me if, I could help it. I'll keep that as a last resort for now.

For Sale: My Photos At Dreamstime.com

My photographs, they are up for sale now at Dreamstime.

I have always thought that it was tough to get into this business of selling pictures online. It was not until I read a comment from someone saying that he was doing it with nothing more than his Sony Xperia. A Sony Xperia: that's a smartphone isn't it? Well, I have a Canon Superzoom a Powershot SX530HS; that should be good enough. But is it? So, the only way for me to find out is to upload a test (sharp and with minimal noise) photograph to Dreamstime and see what happens.

An voila, my photo was approved 5 days later.

Running Google+ App On Android-x86 (Virtualbox)

I have finally found a use for my Android-x86 (Version 4.3) system, running under Oracle Virtualbox on my computer. I have had it installed for something like 3 years without actually using it all this time.

The problem with Google+ desktop running within my desktop web browser over the last couple of days - that's what prompted me to try out the Google+ app on Android-x86. This is what I always see every time when I access Google+ on my desktop web browser over the last few days:

I get a similar error message with Google+ Mobile too. I am aware of some changes that Google is making with Google+, but getting a broken link is the least of what I would expect. After all, aren't they a leading technology company these days ?

DroiHealth Alternative That Works

Having problems getting the DroiHealth app working with your new band smartwatch? Do give the FitHealth a try. It works for me anyway. I am quite sure the two apps have identical DNA since they were developed by the same developer zhwuba.

The Lone Asian Glossy Starling

A black coloured bird with blood-red eyes - that's the Asian Glossy Starling.

Rather common in my neighbourhood, but of late I tend to find them darting across overhead at high speed rather than perching nearby around my home. TV antennas and electrical pole appears to be their favourite places if they do come by visiting. You can always hear them when they do.

Extended Entry Marker (Jump Break) And The 'Save' Button

Google's Blogger calls it a "jump break". But Raven/Raven+ calls it an "Extended Entry Marker". What it does, anyway, is to show a summary of your blog post at your Blogger blog's homepage, while providing a link, "Read more >>", to your entire post, which your audience can read in its entirety if s/he so desires.

A Bug

I always include a "jump break" in every one of my blog post. Problem is, I always do it as the last thing after composing my post (sometimes even after publishing it) mostly because of my absentmindedness.

There is this problem with the Raven/Raven+ editor - it does not enabled the 'Save' button (if it was disabled previously) after inserting a "jump break"/"Extended Entry Marker". This is rather annoying as I then have to insert a 'junk' character to enable the 'Save' button, then delete this 'junk' character before saving my now modified post. A prime target for getting this bug fixed here.

Asian Brown Flycatcher

Must be my lucky year 2016. I mentioned that I had a new avian visitor last September. A few weeks later in mid-October, I had another one - an Asian Brown Flycatcher. I was excited, obviously.

Taking a snap shot of this bird was easy. A rather bold bird, it greeted me by flying closer towards me when I was out and about at my backyard. It flew away briefly when approached, but it then flew back towards me a few second later. I suppose there must have been something about me that had piqued its interest. The closest it got to me by the way was about 8 feet away - an ideal distance for taking closeups of small birds.