Why do I have to spend days laboring on s**t that ought to just work?

[Prime95]

My i7-860 disk died. I yanked an old disk out of a decommissioned P4.

Problem #1: Installed Win XP-64. Windows Update refuses to recognize the brand new install and apply necessary service packs. Thanks, MS. Web site says XP is no longer supported but updates are still available. I've always been conscientious about not running Windows XP/Vista/7/8 on more machines than I have purchased licenses. This machine was happily running Win XP-64 before the disk died. IMO, MS has fallen down on their end of the license by de-supporting my win xp-64 machine -- would it be ethical to now run Win 7 on two computers even though I only have one Win 7 license?

Problem #2: Instead, I decided to go the Ubuntu route. I had good success with this machine running Ubuntu 10.04. In fact, all the mmff development was done on this machine. Well, why not use Ubuntu 12.04?

Installed the OS. Applied the updates. Selected the first nvidia driver in the list (they all had the exact same description). Ran for two days. Mprime is happy. CUDALucas 2.03 stopped twice with error 6 - timeout during launch. Hmmm. Went back to the nvidia driver selection screen. It now has better descriptions. I'm running driver 304. The third choice is driver 319 with followed by a "[Recommended]" --- what could go wrong? Selected 319, rebooted the OS. Ubuntu won't reboot -- blinking cursor. Crap, maybe it was the horrific and convoluted vncserver4 setup I had tried a day earlier. Repartition the disk so I don't lose the 2 days work. Reinstall the OS and driver 319. It is the damn 319 driver that causes the system to be completely and irreversibly unusable.

So, I've turned the damn thing off in disgust awaiting recommendations. What nvidia driver is recommended? How do I get that driver, the system setting dialogs only offer 304 and 319? Is CUDALucas 2.03 the best choice - it is the only precompiled version I found on sourceforge?

P.S. [venting]Please leave out any "Linux is supposed to work this way" in any replies. One shouldn't need a PhD in Linux kung-fu to do a plain vanilla installation. On ease of use, Windows is a hands-down winner (and I'm not a Windows fan either). On stability Linux is the winner, but getting damn near anything setup is a hair-pulling nightmare.[/venting]

[EdH]

Sorry to hear of your disk failure - bummer!

I, too, have had the WinXP troubles you describe, trying to install from an official installation disk. Even when I found the stand-a-lone SP1 & SP2 packages, they wouldn't complete installation, so Update won't take over.

As for the Ubuntu route, I have had increasing troubles with 12.04 and "little" oddities, although a lot is due to system age. I started using antiX a while back, but am now moving to Debian, which antiX is based on, for my newer additions. I can't say Debian would solve your problems, for sure, but you might give it a try. I'm using Fedora on a couple machines and I had more trouble with some aspects - I still can't get pari/gp to work properly in Fedora.

I don't know if this was of any help, but good luck with getting it figured out.

[TheMawn]

My two cents is run windows 7. I almost universally have a huge problem with pirates but in this case... You're turning the machine on, setting up some crunching and then walking away. You're not using any of the features a full license is giving you. You basically just need a ride. [EDIT: Plus, you already own a ride. It just doesn't work, and MS themselves are to blame,]

If you can't get anything else to work, go windows 7. At worst, you won't be able to get updates or support, not that you really need any.


Don't hold me to any of this, naturally. If MS release a patch that sets your CPU core voltage to 12.000V whenever it detects an illegitimate installation, I can't be held responsible. I'd use an illegitimate installation as a last resort. See if a free OS can be made to work yet. Driver stuff seems a bit fishy...

[kladner]

Originally Posted by Prime95

My i7-860 disk died. I yanked an old disk out of a decommissioned P4.

Repartition the disk so I don't lose the 2 days work. Reinstall the OS and driver 319. It is the damn 319 driver that causes the system to be completely and irreversibly unusable.

So, I've turned the damn thing off in disgust awaiting recommendations. What nvidia driver is recommended? How do I get that driver, the system setting dialogs only offer 304 and 319? Is CUDALucas 2.03 the best choice - it is the only precompiled version I found on sourceforge?

I've been using the CuLu 2.04 BETA for a long time without issues.

FWIW, attached is the current 64 bit Linux list. I have some suspicion of the fan default settings in the context of quite a few people out there who are certain that something about a driver bricked their graphics cards. On the Asus 580, if I turn off my User fan curve in MSI Afterburner, I've seen temps climbing steadily into the 80s C plus while the fans are running at 30-35%. This made it seem likely that the temp would go on up and batter against the throttling level which might make the GPU rather unhappy.

I don't know if this happens in Linux as I currently only use Live Linux CDs to do some hard drive rescue-related things which seem to work better there.

So am I correct in thinking that under Linux, GPU temps and fan speeds can be monitored, and the fan speeds influenced in some way? You might want to keep an eye on those.

Nvidia Linux drivers are in here somewhere-
http://www.geforce.com/drivers

[paulunderwood]

Recovering from a failed graphics driver installation must be a common issue and well documented. In the old days that might mean re-running XF86config or haxing the X86Config file and running startx and checking the appropiate /var/log file, but things have moved on. Today there is Xorg with xorg.conf, Wayland and Ubuntu's graphics server project.

[petrw1]

Originally Posted by Prime95

My i7-860 disk died. I yanked an old disk out of a decommissioned P4.

Problem #1: Installed Win XP-64. Windows Update refuses to recognize the brand new install and apply necessary service packs. Thanks, MS. Web site says XP is no longer supported but updates are still available. I've always been conscientious about not running Windows XP/Vista/7/8 on more machines than I have purchased licenses. This machine was happily running Win XP-64 before the disk died. IMO, MS has fallen down on their end of the license by de-supporting my win xp-64 machine -- would it be ethical to now run Win 7 on two computers even though I only have one Win 7 license?

I had a HD die a month ago on a PIV. I go another old PIV disk; installed a OLD (Pre SP2) XP disk ... it all worked except it was too old to have the necessary web drivers. So I needed new ones but I could not connect to the web to get them... SO I had to put them on a memory stick from another machine and it worked!!!. I'm not sure if it is downloading any new updates though.

And to your last point above.....might it be that the second PC is a "backup" install? That is ok I believe?

[chappy]

Originally Posted by Prime95

would it be ethical to now run Win 7 on two computers even though I only have one Win 7 license?

No. I don't believe it would be. Illegal perhaps, but unethical? No.

Originally Posted by Prime95

Problem #2:
P.S. [venting]Please leave out any "Linux is supposed to work this way" in any replies. One shouldn't need a PhD in Linux kung-fu to do a plain vanilla installation. On ease of use, Windows is a hands-down winner (and I'm not a Windows fan either). On stability Linux is the winner, but getting damn near anything setup is a hair-pulling nightmare.[/venting]

Linux is only free if your time has no value.

(Another completely unhelpful forum posting^(tm) by Chappy.)

[Prime95]

Originally Posted by chappy

(Another completely unhelpful forum posting^(tm) by Chappy.)

Humor to relieve stress is not unhelpful.

For now, I've reloaded 12.04 and driver 304. I'm wrapping Cudalucas in this

#!/bin/sh

RC=1
while [ $RC -ne 0 ]; do
   ./CUDALucas
   RC=$?
done

I'll see if this low tech approach can work for a while. I'll run a double-check to verify CUDALucas is running properly.

[mdettweiler]

Originally Posted by Prime95

Problem #1: Installed Win XP-64. Windows Update refuses to recognize the brand new install and apply necessary service packs. Thanks, MS. Web site says XP is no longer supported but updates are still available. I've always been conscientious about not running Windows XP/Vista/7/8 on more machines than I have purchased licenses. This machine was happily running Win XP-64 before the disk died. IMO, MS has fallen down on their end of the license by de-supporting my win xp-64 machine -- would it be ethical to now run Win 7 on two computers even though I only have one Win 7 license?

Is it not passing WGA validation, or failing at some other step? If it is a license validation issue, your best bet might be to torrent one of the many "cracked/passes WGA" versions out there - you already own a perfectly good license and are using it (or at least trying to) well within its terms, so I don't think there'd be any legal issue with using a fully equivalent pirate version given the situation. IANAL, but my understanding of the law in this area is that since you have a valid license to use one copy of Windows XP Professional x64 edition, any fungible copy of Windows XP Professional x64 edition will do. It's the same thing that was dealt with by the Supreme Court back in the VCR days with regard to TV recordings - what's important is that you have the right to possess and use said intellectual property, not the specific technological hoops you may or may not jump through to exercise that right. (For instance, if you could have used your own VCR, or nowadays DVR, to record show X, it makes no difference to the law if you make a copy of your friend's recording of show X and use it instead; and that "friend" can be anyone who chooses to freely share his copy with you, including the shady fellows on BitTorrent. )

If it's not a WGA issue, it might be that the service pack installers are unable to work without having certain "base" updates installed. I had to set up a new Windows 2000 installation last year and Windows Update didn't work initially because some component of the vanilla setup was too old. I was able to give it a "kickstart" by individually installing a number of key updates (downloaded as individual .exe installers from a third-party website). Once I did that, Windows Update worked and took over for the rest of the updates. Maybe something similar is happening with your box. The unfortunate thing is that Microsoft doesn't list what these exact base requirements are in any clear way; your best bet might be to search for a "old-version fan/hobbyist" type website who's worked it all out already, like I did for my 2000 installation.

[TheMawn]

How about a bootable copy of Prime95? Screw operating systems.

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by Prime95

Problem #2: Instead, I decided to go the Ubuntu route. I had good success with this machine running Ubuntu 10.04. In fact, all the mmff development was done on this machine. Well, why not use Ubuntu 12.04?

FWIW, I personally have standardized on CentOS for all non-mobile installations.

The upsides are:

1. It's based on Red Hat Enterprise, so if my clients want to fire me (or I'm hit by a bus, or am otherwise unavailable) they can simply pay Red Hat and get support.

2. It's enterprise class. As in, it doesn't play the "bleeding-edge" game.

3. The code tends to be much more seriously reviewed from stability and security perspectives.

4. The NVIDIA proprietary drivers work on in. http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html

The downsides are:

1. Some bleeding edge code might not compile "out-of-the-box" because the very most recent libraries are not always available from the repositories. Any serious programmer knows how to deal with this.

2. You don't get the "cool" GPU assisted UI special effects like fade and a 3D cube.

In my opinion, the above upsides far outweigh the above downsides.

But, yes George. I often tell people (seriously) that I hate computers (seriously).