Some Notes on the Machines

We have three stages so far.

1. Go to support.dell.com, and hunt around for the SUU with items for your particular server model.  “SUU” is what Dell is calling it, it stands for “Server Update Utility”.  You’ll be able to build a complete ISO of a DVD.
2. The “Dell OpenManage Server Administrator” is often the only source of chipset drivers, and it is sometimes not visible on the drivers page for the server.  At this writing, the best method to find the current version appears to be this Google search.
3. Check the individual downloads for your server, too.

A bit out of date, but still quite useful to help us figure out what to do, is this page:

http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/2%2F8%2F2008+-+OpenManage+Download+-+Comments

If you have a PostScript printer whose manufacturer’s drivers are not available or are questionable, there is another way.  Adobe (inventor of PostScript) has for a long time made a complete alternative printer driver engine available:

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=1505

and the OpenPrinting folks have PPDs (definition files) which often work with the above.  In a recently-visited case of Oki C6000 for XP, we have:

http://www.openprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=Oki-C6000

A good place to find Vista drivers and hardware compatibility information:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/compatibility/windows-vista/Default.aspx

Vista/64, 7/64, and probably a few other operating systems will not load unsigned drivers. Here is a free tool which will sign unsigned drivers, and make them work:

http://www.ngohq.com/home.php?page=dseo

Occasionally, text will be rendered unclearly in LCD monitors, even with ClearType on, regardless of refresh rate, resolution, et cetera. In these cases, the Microsoft ClearType Tuner PowerToy:

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ClearTypePowertoy.mspx

is extremely useful. Updated video drivers is the step to test first, however.

Try this:

http://xpdriversforallhpnotebookmodels.blogspot.com/

There is a weird registry issue which can cause CD/DVD drives to not work, to go yellow-questionmark in the device manager. According to many resources, it exists under both XP and Vista. However, the Microsoft web site standard fix does not always work. Here are steps:

1. Search the registry for the word “UpperFilters”.
2. There are likely to be several matches. Only some of them have to do with CD-ROMs. This will be obvious by context. When you see such a one, delete the “UpperFilters” key only.
3. Do the same for “LowerFilters”.

Sometimes, this happens because registry folders have had permissions changed by antivirus or other software. If the key cannot be deleted, this is the problem. You will need to right-click on the folder and add permissions, and then do the deletion. It is usually most straightforward to add the permission to the user logged in, though you’ll have to play with the dialog box if you’re on a domain.

Things to check, if a new burner won’t burn:

1. Some motherboards require that an IDE burner be master, not slave. The symptom is that Windows will call it a CD-ROM only, not a burner.
2. Motherboard chipset drivers need to be updated.
3. The Windows XP built-in CD burning library, appears to lack the ability to wait for very fast burners (e.g. today, 52X), to spin down. So when a built-in burn attempt is made on such a burner, the whole machine is hung during the completion process, after the data is put out.  You’ll need to use ImgBurn or something else more current than the XP builtin.

Sometimes, right after XP or 2000 are installed, at first boot, there will be an error like one of these:

• Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:\system32\hal.dll.Please re-install a copy of the above file.
  
• Winnt_root>\System32\Hal.dll missing or corrupt:Please re-install a copy of the above file.
  
• Cannot find \Windows\System32\hal.dll
  
• Cannot find hal.dll

HAL.DLL is the Hardware Abstraction Layer library. In Windows 2000 and Windows XP, there are several possible HAL.DLL’s which Windows may install. If a message such as the above is seen at first bootup, it is very likely that the Windows installer put in the wrong one for your hardware. It tries to figure it out automatically, and sometimes, fails, especially if your copy of Windows is older and your hardware, newer. Especially this is relevant with multiprocessor systems and ACPI (and lack thereof).

Happily, there is a way to override the auto-figure-it-outer. When the installer first runs, it asks if we want to press F6 to install third-party drivers for RAID or hard drives et cetera. Don’t press F6 — press F5! You will then be able to choose which HAL.DLL to use.

More info is here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/299340

Hardware drivers are starting to come out using .NET. Two scanner drivers, Kodak and Savin, seen today doing this. The latest ATI video driver may well do so too. The two scanners were working until a month ago or so, and suddenly stopped. I thought perhaps it was a .NET update issue, so I downloaded the latest and installed…and they worked perfectly. This was an IE7 XP box, so Windows updates probably are fine; for non-IE7 boxes, I would have installed all Windows updates first, to be sure of .NET.