Chris May

I had recently tried to use my Windows Home Server to restore a laptop image to a VM running inside HyperV. 

In the event that my machine totally died (not just a hard drive issue) I could restore the image to a VM and work from there while I got back on my feet with a new laptop.

Unfortunately I didn't find any way to make this work.  I ended up doing all this work and in the end, I couldn't boot.

A disk read error occurred
Press ctrl+alt+delete to restart.

I tried everything I could think of, repairing the MBR, running fixboot, doing a windows repair, restoring the hal dll from i386 etc.  Nothing worked.

So I gave up on using WHS to create an instance of my dev machine, and fell back on just trying to do a P2V of any type.

I came across Disk2VHD, a free Systernals tool.  This tool includes the options to run on the source machine while online, and also provides an option to "Fix" the HAL (hardware abstraction layer).  I think this was part of my original problem (the HAL issue).  My computer was setup to use SATA drivers, and HyperV only supports virtual IDE drivers.  I think (but am not sure) that this is what was causing my problem w/ using the WHS restore.

So anyway, Disk2VHD runs super fast, and pretty soon I had a VHD to try out. 

Now, this VHD didn't work either, but it would get me further along.  I would see the windows splash screen before the black screen of death.

What followed was a weird set of steps trying to figure out why things wouldn't work, but in the end, I never ended up needing to disable anything.... so I'm just going to try to write down the steps I took as best I can.

1. After the first BSOD I booted to safe mode (using F8).
2. Safe mode worked, and it seemed to find some new hardware, as I would have expected, but I don't think it found any of the drivers it needed (so maybe I had ejected the virtual windows CD or something).
3. Booting normally gave the black screen of death again.
4. I then found this page with instructions on how to replace the HAL.  Really these instructions were how to do Disk2VHD to a working VM, but I had already done most of the steps except the hal replacement.  I'm going to replace those instructions below:
1. 1)Downloaded Disk2VHD (v 1.3) from sysinternals (free) and unzipped on the laptop
   2)Find a place to store the new vhd - I used a 320GB external USB, but any storage device that pc can see and is big enough to hold your hard disk should work
   3)Run Disk2VHD and input the name and location for the new file
   4)On your virtual host create a new VPC (I use Virtual PC 2007) and add that new vhd you just created as the primary hard disk.
   5)Make sure you have an ISO of WinXP or an actual disk. If using an iso you'll need to mount it so it can be booted from.
   6)Fire up the new vpc and have it boot from that XP disc.
   7)Let it run setup and then select option 2 (R) to get repair console
   Login in to windows (need admin pw)
   9)Type “cd system32” press enter
   10)Assuming your CD (or mounted iso) is drive D - Type “expand d:\i386\halacpi.dl_” press enter
   11)Type “copy halacpi.dll hal.dll” press enter and then press y
   12)Reboot
   13)Press F8 to get to safe mode
   14)After the message that new stuff was installed, click OK for reboot
   15)After system boots back up, log in and install VM Additions
5. IIRC I still got the black screen of death.  It's possible that at this point behind the scenes it was doing a check of my disck or something, but I can't tell in the VM if the HDD is going or not so I just assumed it was locked.
6. I booted to safe mode and used MSconfig to disable everything, and also used /SOS, and some other options.
7. What followed was just a series of successful boots with me enabling more and more until I had everything enabled and it all still worked, so I'm not sure why I was getting the BlackSOD before I started this set of SafeMode boots.
8. Another thing I did at some point (maybe more than once) was try to install the VM Integration Services, which says that it's updating the HAL, so maybe that had something to do with it too.

The next 2 things that I'm going to try are, running a WHS restore to a VM that is already working (I don't think this will matter, but we'll see), and 2 trying to use the Disk2VHD on a machine that has a VHD mounted as a secondary drive.  I don't konw if this is even possible, but I was thinking that I could use WHS to create the VHD, mount the VHD as X: on some machine, and then tell Disk2VHD to create a VHD from X: and instruct it to to the "Fix HAL" thing.  I'm guessing that will not work as well, but we'll see.

 

Here is the article on how to install the update on the EX47X machines.

When HP released the HP MediaSmart Server 2.5 Update for the EX48x machines, they also ^[1] announced the full software would not be available to first generation users due "to hardware differences" anhd "the underlying software architecture". Based on that statement, Nigel Wilks (Cougar) and Alex Kuretz (Yakuza) started work on a way^[2] to make the update available to EX47x owners, dubbed "SanEncore" after the code names for the EX47x (San Juan) and the EX48x (Encore).

Cougar and Yakuza have also developed a Windows Home Server Add-In to fake the Update package into thinking it is running on a 2.1 machine, and handles some of the missing configuration items so that the 2.5 update is sucesful.

This chat takes place after I have already chatted with a different support group, called the IBM parts divions, and the IBM tech support division:

Mohammed: Thank you for accepting our chat service, how may I assist you?
you: When I customize an x3500, at last screen it says: (5652) Planar Base [$699.00] is required for this configuration and has been added for you.
you: What is Planar Base and what about my configuration makes it a requirement?
Mohammed: Is this for yourself (your company) or a client of yours?
you: mysefl
Mohammed: I see. I'm not too familiar with the planar base. I can have a specialist contact you to further discuss this need of yours
you: ok. How long does that normally take?
Mohammed: our usual turnaround is 48 hours
Mohammed: however we can try to have somebody contact you by end of day tomorrow
Mohammed: but I can't make any promises
you: ok my number is (630) 708-1234
Mohammed: May I have your full name, telephone number, email address, job title, company name and physical address?
you: Chris May, (630) 708-1234, cmay@RealNameRemoved.com that should be good
Mohammed: unfortunately without all the information requested above, I will not be able to have a specialist contact you
you: ok forget it I'll just buy a Dell

UPDATE: I did buy a Dell.  Stupid IBM couldn't have someone take 5 minutes and answer a question for someone who wanted to give them $3000. 

Today I was trying to do a backup to my WHS and I was getting the message on my client:

Backup is waiting on (cleanup).

After quite a long time, it was still on this message.

I did some investigating on the server and saw that 45 minutes earlier my server had kicked off a backup cleanup process.  This was indicated in the event viewer under "Homeserver". 

Task Manager also showed whsbackup.exe doing a lot of work.

So, if you run into this, just wait a bit and when the server is done with the cleanup the client backup will start like normal.

What the heck?  This ad does in fact go to Mozy.com.

 

Ever been logged into a machine via RDP and you need to do a reboot but guess what, "restart" isn't one of your options.  You only have Disconnect and Log Off.  Ooops.  Now what?

No problem, just run this from the command line:

shutdown -r

And thats it.  The system will reboot in 30 seconds.

It took me a while to figure out that I didn't have a driver problem.

I was looking everywhere to find the switch for the wifi on this HP Elitebook 8730w, but it turns out the LED icon in the upper left that shows the WIFI status IS the button, but clicking it does nothing.. why?

Well, b/c HP is using "LAN/WLAN switching" which means that it automatically turns off the wifi connection if you are plugged in.

Just unplug your network cable and your wifi card will enable! 

 

I bought a cheap version of NeatWorks and downloaded a demo of Paperport from Nuance in an attempt to find a good option for digitizing all my mail.

My experience with NeatWorks isn't great.  It mostly works, but some problems have cropped up from time to time that make me have some concern.  For example, when I first installed the application it automatically searched for updates: it found one, and I installed the newer version of the app (newer that what was on the CD).

Well, it turned out over the next few days that much of the text that it would OCR would not make it into the search index.  So when you went to search for some keywords nothing would be found.

I contacted support and after walking me through a bunch of stuff, it turned out that there was a much newer version of the app available (but somehow their auto update didn't find it).  This new version seemed to fix this problem, but I basically had to rescan all my documents.  At that point, it was only a few, but what if I run into another problem after I have a few hundred scanned documents?

Speaking of a few hundred documents, right now I have 50 pages scanned and my database is 300MB.  This is insane!!  Even if you backup your data and compress it it ends up being like 500KB / page.  WAAAAAAY to large.  I guess it really isn't THAT big of a deal.  I mean if I end up with 5000 pages (100x what I have now) and my database is 30GB, it will really be stupid, but it won't really be a problem I guess. 

Another concern of mine with NeatWorks is lock-in.  What if I want to move to some other software product in the future?  How can I get my documents out of NeatWorks?  Well, it turns out not very easily.  You can export each document to a PDF, but you have to do it 1 at a time.  If you select multiple documents, it puts them into 1 giant PDF.  This is completely useless.  If you have 5000 pages and you want to start using some other PDF indexing product, it will take you forever to export all those files.  Also, you can only use the software with their scanners.

Also, last night I noticed that some receipt that I had scanned never showed up in my "inbox" (it goes from the Quick Scan to the Inbox).  This has me concerned.  I got no error message or any indication that something didn't work right.  It just never showed up.

Paperport has some nice pluses on its side.  It uses any scanner (not just 1 like w/ NeatWorks).  It stores all images as PDFs in a folder on your file system so you can manage them as you would any other file.

Reviews for PaperPort were not good, but others claimed the newer service pack fixed a lot of problems.  I did have it lock up on me once, but otherwise it seemed to work. 

The main problem with Paperport is it is trying to do to many things.  NeatWorks is for exactly what I am doing, Paperport is trying to be a fully featured Scanner software product, helping you to manage photos and stuff like that.  The UI is pretty poor also.

Basically though, the only reason I can't see myself using Paperport is that there is no way to attach and search by a date field.  I don't care about the date I scan a document (the file created date), I care about the date of the document.  So when I search for Mastercard statements, I can filter out what I want by date.  I didn't see any way to do this with Paperport.

Then when I went to submit a question to their support team asking about this, I was totally convinced to not buy their product (click for full size):

As many users have commented, it really does look like Paperport WAS a good product which has just morphed into a big, bloated, difficult to use product.

UPDATE: Now Nuance has changed me for the full product.  I'm guessing part of their trial is that they will automatically bill you for the software if you don't cancel your trial.  Wonderful, I am really glad I didn't pick Paperport: time to call and demand a refund.... again (they charged me 8 bucks for some BS extended download service on my free trial... these guys suck).

You may notice that your clipboard will sometimes work over RDP(TS) sessions, but sometimes not.

Normally the problem is that the server has clipboard access disabled.

Just follow these instructions to enable it

1. Log into the TS (on an account that has administrator rights)
2. Run the Terminal Services Configuration program
3. Select the Connections folder (under Terminal Services Configuration on the left window pane)
4. Right-click on the RDP-tcp connection (in the right window pane) and select Properties.
5. Click the Client Setting tab
6. Un-tick the Clipboard Mapping option under the Disable the following: heading.

Presto.

I am working on some stuff with WHS that would require me to have access to the bios and POST screens on my WHS, but unfortunately there is no video output on the HP machines.

Thankfully, cakalapati has started making cables that connect into a port inside the HPs.

http://www.mediasmartserver.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1290

Nice!  No soldering!

I have been looking into some of the options for streaming music from my WHS to devices in my house.

So far I don't seem to be finding many good options.  There are some that you point to a UNC share and then have to deal with a crappy UI to select the songs you want.

2 of the nicer options I have see are:

http://www.sonos.com/howitworks/

 

 

and

 

http://www.roku.com/products_soundbridge.php

 

 

 

http://www.roku.com/products_soundbridgeradio.php

 

 

I'm going to have to keep my eyes open for other options, but these seem like viable candidates.

 

I am in the process of testing out a Windows Home Server (WHS) for possible use in backing up multiple machines.

Today I ran into a problem.  I noticed that when logging in remotely (using mydomain.homeserver.com) it was sending me to an http page and not an https page.

Asking me for my username/password that will allow anyone to access my machine over https is not acceptable.  I tried manually changing the url to https, but I got a certificate error.

I took a look at the certificate error and it appeared the certificate was for the URL https://MYDOMAIN  which is the name of the server, but not the full domain name.

I am not fully sure which change I made fixed the problem, but I went into Settings-> Remote Access and changed the "Web Site Home Page" from the HP page to the "Windows Home Server Home Page" because my friend had it setup this way and he had a button that took him to an HTTPS page to login, but I don't think that solved the problem.  I then clicked on "Change" on the "Domain Name" section and just re-confirmed all the same settings.  At this point I think it grabs a new certificate from homeserver.com and it made it start working.

Now if I could only figure out why my one laptop is not backing up....

 

This article from Petri is pretty nice for showing you quickly and simply how to do basic shadow copy tasks:

http://www.petri.co.il/how_to_use_the_shadow_copy_client.htm

Very useful if you need to explain the process to someone.

 

On Dell machines running Windows Server 2003 they are nice enough to stick an ugly bitmap on your background.  So when you VPN and RDP into the server, you get to sit and wait as it paints this image:

Thankfully, you can remove it.

Just use regedit and navigate to:

HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop

Then delete the key for WallPaper.

It's that simple!

 

Microsoft appears to be ready to offer a windows based service similar to Amazon's ec2.

I am not sure that I would make much use of this type of service, as I am looking for something more like GoGrid or Mosso (which I wrote about a few days ago).

Should prove to be very interesting...

In the next 72 hours, you expect the new campaign to generate 10x more traffic than you have had in the last 72 days.  How do you scale to deal with this problem?

Do you buy more servers?

A few companies are starting to offer instant scalability for needs like this.  Amazon has been doing this for a while with their web services, but it isn't very useful for people who need the site to be running 24x7 (and it isn't very MS friendly).  But now there are other companies coming into play to provide the service I am talking about.

https://www.gogrid.com/

and

http://www.mosso.com/

Both offer the ability to instantly scale up your infrastructure as needed.  You can buy more CPU cycles, storage space, bandwidth etc, for a short time period.

This may (or may not) be ready for prime time, but it an interesting development for sure!

With Windows Servers, you can setup a cluster using built in Network Load Balancing.

The interesting thing about doing load balancing via software, is that once you get up around 4-5 servers, you stop gaining in performance when you add new machines, because of the added overhead associated with mainting N number of new relationships between the servers.

Also, if you use NLB and you set them up to not use any type of server affinity (i.e. a users request might hit any of the servers at any time) you will pay a serious penality if you are using SSL because each new request to a new server will require a new negoation of the SSL credentials.

I was working on my father-in-laws laptop the other day and noticed that he was using up a lot of drive space.

I started poking around, but things were not adding up.  Of his 80 GB drive, about 30GB was unaccounted for.  I called a buddy of mine who was also running Vista to see if he had the same problem, and as it turned out, he was.

After some more investigation, it looks like this might not be a Vista issue, but is instead caused by IBM/Lenovo's Rescue and Recovery software.

I will have to confirm this later by actually fixing his computer, but I wanted to get this out there in case anyone else has a Lenovo laptop that is missing drive space.

Keywords:

Missing drive space, Missing disk space, Where is my drive space, Lenovo hard drive missing space.

On my new laptop, I had lenovo build it with a Sierra Wireless 1xEV-DO Network Adapter card built in to the laptop.

This means I should be able to access EVDO RevA "BroadbandAccess" basically across all of Chicagoland.  However, lately the VZ Manager software from Verizon has been only connecting me to the dialup-like "NationalAccess" and not the DSL like BroadbandAccess.  The signal shows that it is plenty strong, and I am using in the exact same places where I have used my old EVDO card, and even in places where my laptop worked at first.

This is so frustrating I can't explain it. 

I contacted Verizon, and of course they were no help.

So now I might end up in the situation of having to buy (and keep plugged in all the time) a pcmcia card for the verizon network, even though I already paid to have this functionality built into my laptop. 

This really stinks :(.

I had one of my clients call me today with this message showing up on their production server after the power went out (big storm in the area):

17xx-Controller in lock up State

The server is old, and so I started to think worst case scenarios:  the controller probably died, the data is probably lost, backups probably don't have everything, we are going to need a temp server, we are going to need a new production server etc.

Thankfully, this did not come to fruition, so if you get this error message on your Proliant, there may be some hope.

Go into the setup menu for the raid controller and you should be able to clear out the lock state simply by saving the settings.

Of course if your controller really did die, then this won't help you.

We had a problem last night as we attempted to update our site certificate on our NLB website.

We have 2 machines in the cluster, and after updating the certificate on both of them, the site stopped responding over https.

We spent a LOT of time trying to figure out what was wrong with our new certificate, or the way we had set it up.

In the end, it turned out that that when we updated the certificate, it AUTOMATICALLY removed the NLB IP address from the IPs that are listening for port 443. 

So the result was that each server would respond over SSL on it's own, but when you tried to access the cluster by it's IP address over SSL, there would be no response.

It was really easy to fix, but a real pain to find. 

I have been getting this error in the event log of one of my clients servers:

Access to performance data was denied to UserName as attempted from C:\WINNT\System32\WinMgmt.exe

I first tried this:

Open the "Computer Management" app
Expand the "Services and Applications" section
Right-click the "WMI Control" entry & select "Properties"
Go to the "Security" tab
Expand the "Root" node and then select the "WMI" node
Click the "Security" button
Add the account & give it access

That didn't work, so I found another suggestion:

1. Run regedt32
2. Select the key SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Perflib
3. From the menu select 'Security/Permissions'
4. Add the Internet Guest Account granting only 'read' permission

In case that doesn't work, here are some more articles on the subject

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/226494

http://www.eventid.net/display.asp?eventid=1000&eventno=1700&source=Perflib&phase=1

 

FreeNAS allows you to quickly convert an old PC into a NAS hosting machine for extra storage.

I really feel pretty stupid...

This weekend I read on a few tech blogs that Steve Jobs had invited his friends to attend his keynote address at MacWorld.

Obviously he was going to unveil something very cool, and obviously that "something" was probably going to be the long awaited iPhone.

It was at this point that I moved on to other things, instead of making the next "obvious" step.

Obviously this would cause Apple's stock to go up.

APPL was trading around 85 on Monday and 97 on Wednesday, an increase of 14%.

Maybe next time I will hear news like this and make the final connection :).

 

I have been researching ways to reset a domain admin password for a client who forgot what they typed in when they set the password.

Most password crackers work only on local accounts, not for anything on a domain.  It seems like the way to go about this is to reset the local admin account, then login using Directory Service Recovery Mode to reset the domain admin account.

Here are some of the articles I have been reading:

http://www.jms1.net/nt-unlock.shtml  <-- this idiot won't let you view his pages if you are running IE, so use firebox, but again, that's just stupid

http://www.nobodix.org/seb/win2003_adminpass.html

http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/

http://www.loginrecovery.com/about.html

http://www.petri.co.il/reset_domain_admin_password_in_windows_server_2003_ad.htm

 

I figure I should put up a review of my Sansa e200 incase anyone else is thinking of getting one.

I had a couple trips I had to take last month and my old Archos mp3 player decided to die on me.  Luckly for me I was able to find a Sankdisk Sansa e200 or e220 or e2XX whatever.  My model is the 6GB version, which is the largest they offer at the moment.

The unit cost $280 at Circuit City and while I could have got it online for $250 or so, I was going to be on a plane the next day so I didn't mind paying a little extra to have it with me on the trip.  Have I mentioned that I hate Circuit City?  Why is it that every time I got there I end up getting frustrated or pissed off?  I guess the one time I went there to see a TiVo demoed was ok... except now that I think about it they didn't know how to work the Tivo.  I ended up buying one and loving it though (this was back in '99).

Anyway, I have to say I am very pleased with the Sansa.  It was exactly what I hoped it would be in almost every way.

Battery life is awesome.  I think I read somewhere that it does 15 hours, which sounds about right.  I haven't had it run out on me yet.  Oh, this does bring me to one of the few things I don't like about it.  You can't listen to it while you have it connected to your computer, which means you can't listen to it while you are charging it thorough the USB.  Maybe you could "disconnect" through windows and have it still get power, but I don't know.

Playback quality and volume are good.

Navigation is IPod-like, which is ok, but rather than use a "touch wheel" they have an actual wheel you can turn that makes navigating easier in my opinion.  The only thing I don't like about navigation is that if you want to change to a song on another album by the same artist, you have to click Menu (down), Back To List (Middle), and then "Back" (Right).  I guess there is not obvious way to improve that, so overall I can't really complain.

FM Radio / Video: Well I will never be using the video, and I am sorry to say that as soon as I started using the FM radio I realized how much I would have rather had AM.  Oh well.

Audio Recorder: Haven't used it.

Graphics: I was a little suprised that there were now "Themes" to choose from, only the 1 default theme.  It's not bad, just something I would have figured they would do.  They show the album cover if you downloaded it, which is cool.

PC Integration: Awesome.  My winXP computer saw it right away as some kinda media device, no driver installs or anything.  You go to My Computer, click on the Sansa icon (it's almost like an external hard drive), and you just drag over your folders.  Once loaded, the Sansa will look at your MP3 tag info and index them all like the IPod does.

My wife bought me a little rubber case for it that I leave on all the time, and I have no worries about it breaking.  The thing feels really solid. 

Size: It looks bigger in these pictures than it is.  It's smaller than a large pack of gum.  Very nice.

Overall I am very happy with it!!  I would really recommend it to anyone who wants a great MP3 player, but doesn't want to get stuck with an IPod.

 

Almost all of my friends have IPods, but I have held off. 

There are a number of reasons why:

1) ITunes:  It sucks.  I hate it.  My current MP3 player simply allows you to drag and drop the files you want onto your MP3 player.  No syncing, no problems.

2) User interface.  I know a lot of people think the wheel is really cool, but I think it overly involves the user.  Tell me what is wrong with up/down buttons before you redesign the interface to use a wheel.

3) Batteries.  As noted at http://www.ipodsdirtysecret.com/.  The battery in an IPod can not be removed, and some say they start to fail after 18 months.

Well I came across a site called http://www.idont.com/, which went live today (before today it had some anti-ipod message up there). 

Turns out it is a site for the new SanDisk MP3 player.

The e200 (really catchy name... not) looks pretty cool, and might be worth me looking into more: http://www.anythingbutipod.com/archives/2006/03/sandisk-sansa-e200-series-review.php

 

This weekend I helped a client of mine move their computer system to a new factility.  In the new location I racked up and configured an HP Procurve switch, and 2 Cisco APs.

All in all the move went well.  I had some problems getting into the Procurve at first.  I think the problem was a bad serial cable, but in the end I got it working right.

We didn't quite have enough ports on Procurve, so I uplinked a couple of their old switches until I could procure some more modules for the HP.

The Cisco 1100 APs had great range.  I was able to blanket the entire facility with WIFI access.  Pretty nice!

I have been thinking about getting a white board for my room now for a while.

Here and here are a few places that sell pretty big ones for not a lot of cash.

I was just messing around looking at some hacks for installing a PC into a car. There doesn't seem to really be a good product out there, but here were some of the links I found:

http://www.gnetcanada.com/

http://www.via.com.tw/en/VInternet/Peter_Bridger_Car_PCPower.pdf

http://www.microsoft.com/automotive/windowsautomotive/

http://www.mobilevideo4less.com/mobile-pc.html

http://myhtpc.net/

http://www.caseoutlet.com/

http://www.opussolutions.com/itx_work.html

http://www.trumanmobile.com/prod/Default.asp

http://www.dashpc.com/

Slashdot had a review for a book on hacking TiVo, which led to a discussion of that topic and the various other PVRs out there.

I could walk to this guy's store from my parent's house. $85 to do the HDD upgrade, or you can buy the HDD yourself and just follow his directions. I'm not sure if it is worth $85. I could probably do it in an hour myself, but maybe just to make sure I don't screw it up.

Here and here you can find some forums on TiVo and hacking it.

Most interesting to me was the mention of MythTV, a linux based product that is free, and can support 2 tuners. Aside from that, it also can do a lot of other cool stuff from what I have read, such as pictures, audio, weather reports, web browser, web server, etc. I also read somewhere that you can setup one as a "

Interesting.

The details of my contract with Dell might be here somewhere. They are clueless. They said they will mail the details because they don't know what their webiste's address is. Man they are dumb. www.dellcustomer.com? Nope. www.dellcustomerservice.com? Nope... Idiots.

Finally someone is taking computer manufactures to task for advertising hard drive sizes in a false manner.

Hard drives store BINARY data. 1000 bytes != 1 KB, 1000 KB != 1MB, and 1000 MB != 1 GB.

So what does that mean?

1 GB is really 1,073,741,824 bytes. So the result is that a hard drive that is a "150GB" hard drive is really only going to store around 140GB of data. You just got screwed out of 10GB!

Here is the story.

Amazon has the Archos Jukebox 10GB MP3 Player (I love it) for only $99 bucks .

I had left my old 6GB version of this one by Archos on the train, so I need to get another one.

Well.... it started with a buzzing CPU fan. I then tried to replace my entire motherboard, CPU, and memory. I got lots of STOP errors when trying to boot up after that as I realized that the newer mobo needed different IDE drivers.

I decided it wasn't worth it because I was going to be upgrading from a total POS to a not as crappy POS.

Some time in the future I'll just buy another dell server, move everything over, upgrade the mobo and use the computer as a test machine or backup server or something else... But I did migrate the server into the main floor of my house, so now its out of my room and hidden behind the entertainment center. The backup machine is going there next.