Hey. I recently partitioned my laptops HDD into two equal-ish sized partitions. On one I installed Windows XP, and on the other I installed Windows FLP. This would seem okay, but over came a problem, Windows FLP automatically tells the MBR (the first sector of the HDD that contains the partition tables) to boot from Windows FLP, thus rendering Windows XP inaccessible.

I noticed a really simple way to enable dual-booting, which means that when you turn your computer on, it’ll ask you which operating system you want to run. Here we go, in Windows FLP (or the Windows operating system that your PC first boots into) go to “Start” > “Run…” > type in “notepad %systemdrive%\boot.ini”. Notepad will return a file a bit like this:

[boot loader]

timeout=30

default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\Windows

[operating systems]

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\Windows="Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs" /fastdetect

Now go to “Start” > “Run…” > and this time type in “notepad [drive]\boot.ini”, but replace [drive] with the drive letter of your second partitions Windows installation. Mine is e:\, so I’d type in “notepad e:\boot.ini”.

You’ll then have two notepad files open. One is your current operating systems boot information, and the other is your previous operating systems’ boot information.

Go to your previous operating systems file, the operating system that you can no longer access, and copy the first line of code under [operating systems], mine looks like this:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /TUTag=2IQPAQ /Kernel=TUKernel.exe

Then go to your current operating systems file, and paste it directly under [operating systems] again, being careful NOT to remove any other information. My entire boot.ini then looks like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\Windows
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\Windows="Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /TUTag=2IQPAQ /Kernel=TUKernel.exe

Make sure you save this file. You can then reboot and see for your self the fundamental possibilities of dual-booting while having two operating systems installed. If you follow this tutorial, what you’ve achieved is something useful, as you’ve not used any sort of advanced partitions/boot selector applications, which was my aim while writing it.

More useful info…

In your boot.ini file, notice where it says timeout=30, what this basically means is the amount of seconds you have to select an operating before Windows automatically boots your first operating system for you. I have mine set to 15 seconds as I’m always at my PC when I turn it on.

Its also possible to have more than two operating systems use this method, but I wont go into that now.

I’ve recently been invited to Windows Live Mesh, after signing up on Microsoft Connect. I’ve shared the Mesh Experience with Mark, an internet friend and someone who I trust, and we both agree that its an amazing peice of work, and it has a lot of potential in todays world.

If you don’t know, me and Mark started network467 together, and Windows Live Mesh allows us to share documents and files quickly and easily, as we often use MSN transfer, which is really slow.

My idea of Windows Live Mesh is that its the result of Microsoft’s vision of VPN thats heavily simplified. But it works, and thats good. Okay so its not finished and you can’t delete subfolders in your Mesh Desktop, it doesn’t work on Windows Vista when UAC is turned off and it doesn’t work at all in Windows FLP. Putting those issues aside, it works great.

In my opinion, they’ve also got the design right too. The shades of blues and gradients they’ve used are very web 2.0 and I think they are great. Its browser functionality isn’t the best, as remote control uses ActiveX, where listening to MP3s in the file explorer uses Silverlight. Never the less, its the sort of app I don’t mind starting IE up to use.

Over all, Windows Live Mesh is a great product and I’ll be a future user for a long time, as its only a “Tech Preview” at the moment.

Yep. Basically its to do with music and digital restrictions management; DRM from hereonin.

Some while back, in order to compete with Apple and their iTunes, Microsoft made PlaysForSure, a system thats in certain music files, and means you can only play them on certain machines, which is basically DRM. All of the music brought from MSN Music is affected with PlaysForSure.

PlaysForSure works by asking some Microsoft servers if the file is legitimate every time you go and open it. The problem is, on August 31st 2008, Microsoft will turn off these servers that are used. That means, yep; you guessed it, the music files are going to try and connect to the servers, but they aren’t going to be able to because they’re turned off. The Microsoft music player will then conclude, incorrectly, that the music files were downloaded illegally and that the victim is a filthy pirate, and it will refuse to play them.

That really concludes it. Destroying the customer’s music collection will really help DRM catch on. And they wonder why people pirate music…