DELL XPS M1330 crashes at Boot after Vista Update

UPDATE: I ended up replacing the original harddisk with a Samsung model of the same size. The original disk though just works perfectly now as a backup medium in an external case.

Just got my new Laptop (the Thinkpad got stolen), a really nice DELL XPS M1330. It looks awesome, has really good performance and is the most leightweight laptop I ever possessed. My first experiences were discouraging as the pre-installed Vista automatically updated itself. So far so good (yes, we like up-to-date systems), unfortunately after reboot a bluescreen kept it from starting. But luckily I found a way around that by changing two small settings in the BIOS. Specifically the way the Harddisk is configured. Changed it from AHCI to ATA mode for SATA. Not sure how this afffects performance, but hey, rather less than 100% from something than 100% of nothing.

Two steps are required to change settings, first disable the cache, second change from AHCI to ATA. Save and happy working again.

How to secure laptops when stolen

That kinda sucks. Someone broke into our flat and stole my two laptops (working and private one) and my camera. Bastards! And of course no backups from the last 7 month and no insurance either. Well, lesson learned and as soon as I got the money I will go and think hard over my new laptop. So probably in a couple of years. And it will be probably a Mac coz that will allow me to do all the funky Linux stuff along with using my favorite Adobe products. But different story. Read more »

Upgrading Eclipse 3.2 to 3.4

I was installing Eclipse via Synaptic Package Manager and loaded the PHPEclipse extension afterwards. Unfortunately there was a bug that prevented the PHP Editor from working. And as I saw there was an Eclipse 3.4 (codename: ganymede) release, I thought it is about time to upgrade. But how to do without the help of our beloved package manager? Too easy, really.

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