LafnPlayground

In my case taking a week to complete this procedure was entirely because I failed to read one word on a regular basis.  That word was SAVE.  After all the little things I thought were problems, I created more for myself.  But I also found solutions, so I thought I’d share those with you and leave out the gory details.  I hear that sigh of relief;O)  Okay, here are the steps.

1. BACKUP data, drivers, email clients, software setup files.  This includes boot cd/dvd with drivers and basic programs needed to get everything working (such as EasyBCD).  If you will not have another computer handy with web access, make SURE everything is double backed up.
2. SLEEP and EAT well before starting.  A tired brain and fatigued body just don’t help you think straight.
3. Go to  SevenForums.com and read everything you can about dual-booting and both operating systems boot disks, etc.
4. See this article at SevenForums and and print it out so you can follow along easily once your system is down.  You can let this one go if you’ll have another system on the internet nearby while you proceed.  READ and FOLLOW each step including when it says SAVE!
5. Make sure after the dual-boot is successfully done that your drives are identified in both operating systems with the same drive letter configuration BEFORE attaching any other devices or using a flash drive.  You’ll find the disk management system in Windows7 to do what you need reconfiguring those to match what is in your XP install.
6. After all drives, devices are installed and before you do anything else, create a mirror image…yeppers, you knew I was going to send you back to SevenForums, huh?  THEN you can freely add all the other stuff to your heart’s content.
7. Take a moment and thank the tutorial writer(s) at SevenForums for contributing their expert ideas for all to use.  You also might want to thank the author of any freeware you use to accomplish the task as well with a couple quarters in the jar.

Oh I have been a busy woman all week….you just didn’t know about it.  I started out last weekend plotting the dual-boot configuration change I would implement during review week (when my responsibilities in PSP Made EZ are minimal) so had done all the prep work ahead of time.  Planning to be gone overnight, I glibly signed off telling everyone I’d return Monday or Tuesday at the very latest.  HA!

Although it took a seeming eternity, I did learn many valuable lessons.  The most important was to read even the small words, you know, like SAVE…eeegads.  Anyways, glad to be back amongst the living and I will be posting about the details once I’ve sorted them out….figure it might help someone, and definitely will help me if I have to do it again.  I know I remembered about the freeware games blog and went there to avoid a lot of unneccesary steps.  Whatever did we do before the internet?

I have been gathering information to be able to get a dual boot setup between Windows 7 and Windows XP so I can have the best of both worlds.  In that effort to learn what I should be doing I’ve run into lots of tech forums, many with lots of great information.  Today I hit on one that seems to be a really good one.  I like the tutorials in that they give detailed information but have less technical and more screenshots than most paint shop pro tutorials.  The front page of the forum is here, and if you scroll down you’ll find the tutorials…and there are plenty.  Hope you find help there.

I will be going down to repartition and restore/reformat into a new configuration.  With any help from above I should be back tomorrow.  The specific tutorial I found was here in the event you’re wanting to get a dual boot done on your machine.

Today was a bit busier than normal, but not at all as planned.  It was my hubby’s 59th birthday.  Sunday our youngest son was over and redid his car to match a card he’d found for him, and we were all cracking up…it was fun.  Although I’d been flaring the past week after breaking a toe and then doing battle with an ice cream carton (it won) there was a lot around the house that hadn’t gotten done.  I had high hopes for the day, speculating on a regime of cleaning and baking that wonderful pineapple cake Pam had given me the recipe for.  After a few attempts at standing up and a short jaunt to the market the old toe was throbbing.  Hubby was beginning to glare.  I let him know that I was officially giving in, and he smiled, thankful I wasn’t going to make it all worse;O)

Then after he’d gotten done with his single slice of chocolate cheesecake it dawned on me that was probably a good thing….after all he’d seen the doc for his physical this morning and acknowledged the need for a little more weight to come off.  Amazing how things just work out, huh?  Jeremy called him to wish him happy birthday.  Then we shared a hug and life was good.  It’s the little things in life sometimes that are the best.

Since I’ve changed back to XP I have not had time to do a dual boot, so was unable to test this software in Windows 7 also, sorry ’bout that.  However, I really like this freeware, and it’s almost as smooth as the SolSuite that must be purchased (every year I have found out now).  It is Big Solitaire 3D, and version 1.4 is here.  I like the fact that you can change settings and there is an undo and redo.  While there are only 40 games they include my favs – Canfield, Free Cell, Klondike and Spider, so I’m happy!  Farewell to paying for my morning fix;O)

Well, I have been playing a bit with the latest version of PSP.  The photo features are great, and I really appreciated how easy it was to use the new smart capture.  Here’s my result after playing for about an hour with the smart capture and clone tools.  It was very simple to do and I will be checking out the rest of the tools soon.

Window View

I’m still not sure I’ll upgrade.  There is one reason and I haven’t had a response from Corel yet about it.  When it installs you default X3 as your .pspimage file association (which each version before did also).  I attempted to undo this association (as I had with previous versions) so that I can use my preferred version (9) for that default and was unable to do so.  If it weren’t for that issue I would quickly upgrade as it is quick and doesn’t seem to bog down nearly as much as X, X1 and X2 have.  I used it easily with several full-size photographs without bogging it down.  More as it comes.

ADDENDUM:

Okay, so slower-than-a-rock has figured out how to redo the file associations so that X3 doesn’t re-default.  What I did was go into the file associations, click on remove all in X3.  Then I shut it down and re-opened 9 (version I wanted to default for .pspimage), went to reset it as the default to open that file format again and after testing a couple times, it’s worked fine.  WOOHOO!  Okay, so now I have to buy the new one, and I’m totally sure hubby will understand this need;O)

Sadly I found yesterday that Matt passed away Sunday as a result of a stroke….way too young.  His wife Judi is one of my lifelong friends (well over 35 years), so the sense of sadness is pretty strong today.  My heart is sad, but I know his wife and two boys David and Daniel (young men now really) are suffering immensely.  I know he’s with the Lord now, but we’ll miss him now.   It always reminds me that we need to spend time living every minute as though this were our last day because we never know.  Farewell Matthew, you’ll be greatly missed, and I look forward to seeing you again someday.

Okay, so I was determined to dislike this because it’s all about photos and there doesn’t appear to be much improvement on other tools, so that was that.  Then while discussing the latest output of Corel, one of the Mods over at EZ sent this to us about the new Smart Carver tool.  Sigh, I will be now forced to check this out.  I’ll let you know my thoughts once I’ve played a bit…in the meantime go try it yourself with the trial at Corel.

Okay so while making my new computer subservient to me I was suddenly and rudely kicked out of the SolSuite card game that I’d purchased in 2008 by a cranky code number.  I wrote the author’s contact well over a week ago and have had no response.  Last time I changed computers I had the same issue so I’m done.  I just like playing solitaire games while trying to crack open these peepers (I am NOT a morning person even though I am up early) and Microsofts’ pre-installed versions are rather poorly done in my opinion (even in Win7).

Being a freeware junky has many pros and cons.  The biggest con is that it’s a time killer going through proggies to see what works and what doesn’t, and sometimes you have to go through a restore when it screws up your computer….but every once in a while you grab a freebie that is a “have-to-have” proggie, like Iceows, RevoUninstaller or IrfanView, ya know?  So to help others avoid some of the hassles, I’m going to document my results with the games I tried to gather.

Note:  I am using a Dell Inspiron 1545 built for Windows 7 but installed with Windows XP Home Edition with all updates applied.  The computer has a T4300 Dual Core @2.10GHz with 3.46GB RAM.  I am currently not using a different display but do have an external hard drive and usb hub installed with trackball and keyboard usually applied.  Instead of giving links to all the freebies, I will give you links to the freeware sites I made the searches in…you never know what goodies you’ll find.  Yesterdays’ stroll brought me to SourceForge, FreewareFiles, and FreewareGuide.

Card Games:   I downloaded 123 Free Solitaire 2009, AS Solitaire, Big Solitaire, Free Spider and Royal Solitaire.  I noted that both Free Spider and 123 Free Solitaire 2009 are made by TreeCardGames, the same company that sells SolSuite.  AS Solitaire is okay, and there is a way to create your own cards and backgrounds – which sounded perfect for me.  But it’s hard to understand unless you read Dutch, although there is an English translation.  As it is I found the interface too busy and the numbers too small for my early morning ventures.  Big Solitaire was my next trial as it’s advertised as being larger for those hard of seeing (which I’m not anymore, but we’re talking early mornings, eh).  The play goes well, however there is only one game-type and there are no options.  Royal Solitaire has 6 different card games, but has a very clunky interface that someone supposed was clever and 3d.  I get irritated with it as there are several clicks to get to the actual game, and then you have to re-motivate it to be easy for you to see and use.  It’s also not user-friendly as you have to use the escape key to get the exit interface since I’ve not found any link on the interface area.  The play itself is fine although a bit slower than it would be if the interface wasn’t 3d I’m thinking.  To be frank all of the TreeCardGame softwares were the best, even though I was trying to distance myself from them.  I don’t like being taken advantage of and that is what I feel like when I purchase something but am not able to re-install it easily to my new computer.  The freeware versions do not have as many games, options and won’t allow undo/redo as it gives a little popup to remind you of that every time you hit the button.  I say they shouldn’t have the undo/redo button if it’s not going to work, eh?  So I suppose I’ll use 123 Free Solitaire 2009 and I’ll continue to revisit this type of software search until I’m truly satisfied or TreeCardGames get off their position of treating customers in a non-satisfactory way.

Tetris games.  Yes, I’m old, and love to play Tetris….I started out with the Dos (my fav os) version after my kids had introduced it to me when Nintendo was first out, so it’s hard to break away from it.  In my search I tried ClickTris, Tetris Unlimited and Arcade Classic which all promised a great Tetris game experience.  ClickTris has fine play options, however the graphics are quite garish so it hurts my morning eyes too much for comfort.  Tetris Unlimited will not run in my computer other than show the splash screen, so it quickly came out.  Then I tried Arcade Classic which has several old time games as the title indicates.  This wound up to be my choice as it’s play was actually closest to the original and it has several of the other games I truly miss like Invaders, PacMan and Pong, oh yeah!  The graphics in this is just mildly better than the original games but I think that’s part of the charm…yeppers, I’m old-school for sure.

Yahtzee:  Love to play this game whether in real life or on the computer….although it’s great to be able to turn the sound off with this one, ya know?  I tried Yahtzee2, Yatzay, All Five and Yahtzee 123.  I quickly uninstalled both Yahtzee 123 and Yahtzee2 as I found both to have real basic graphics althoughYahtzee 2 played alright.  I was okay with Yatzay, but it was a bit basic as well, but wound up uninstalling it once I tried All Five.  All Five gives a smooth interface, easy to see everything you need and is quite user-friendly…it’s my pick.

Mahjongg:  Here’s another classic that I really enjoy.  I currently have a super Mahjongg game called Ultimate Mahjongg 5 created by Gunnar Games and produced by ValuSoft.  I picked it up in a $5 bin somewhere and just happened to get lucky.  Problem is that the video graphics on it are resetting my settings to use it, and I’m not sure if the updated version works the same as there isn’t a free trial period.  So let’s see what freebies I can scrounge up.  I found and tried two of them, Mahjongg 3d and Mahjong Champ 3d.  Mahjongg 3d worked in a very erratic manner and the link to the website was a dead link…so out it came.  Mahjong Champ 3d works okay, however there are no options to change the tilesets and they are hard to see.  Many of the tiles look very similar and it soon gets frustrating.  So for now, I’ll be continuing my search and using my old standby.

Other types:  Okay, so while scoping out the freeware sites I frequent looking for solitaire I came across other games that I wanted to try.  Here are the rest.  I tried Frozen Bubbles, TouchMeGames, Monopolie, Super Othello, Bomber Bay, Alien Under Attack, Asteroid ES, dxBall and aMaze.  Frozen Bubbles had a confusing and incomplete setup…out it came.  TouchMeGames was a joke.  It first of all calls home to play, then the graphics are horrific and to make matters worse there are no games that work…LOL…outta here!  Monopolie just really got my curiosity up because I have one son who made us play Monopoly incessantly.  While this isn’t really my style of game I must say that it was really pretty cool.  The graphics are not in 3d but are true to the game, even down to the player pieces.  It was easy to use except for needing to pay careful attention to the popups (like community chest and such) as they are for faster readers than I.  While I may never play it again, I’m sending it to Jeremy to see what a fan thinks…LOL.  Super Othello is awesome….but I have to put it away sometimes because I get angry at the computer when it wins all the time.  The graphics are not 3d but the play is simple and fast.  Bomber Bay is a game I thought would be perfect…it’s advertised as a game to shoot up your monitor….and considering what I have gone through and do regularly when my computer doesn’t behave I assumed it would be a great stress reliever.  Not sure if the graphics is wrong for XP or my display but it didn’t work right at all so it’s gone.  Alien Under Attack came out and I unfortunately can’t remember since my notes simply say “forget about it”.  Sorry I can’t be more specific.  Asteroid ES is a great old-style asteroid clone.  The only drawback is you have to be a lot more coordinated than I as I lose as frequently as I did with the original.  Now I have had and thoroughly enjoyed dxBall, but when I attempted to install it I couldn’t get it to work now.  I see there is a pro version which should work and I may save my nickles for that one since I loved the freebie so much before.  It’s a breakout-type game and the graphics and play were pretty good.  There wasn’t an installer with aMaze so I was too tired to mess with it.  It was advertised as a maze game.

So there you have my freebie search from yesterday.  Oh shoot….forgot about Wink, but it wasn’t a game.  Wink was advertised as a quick way to create flash tutorials from your screen.  Run don’t hide as it was more of a development tool experiment than a program that was user-friendly.  I couldn’t believe it really was that bad.  Okay, now on to today’s venture, I just never know what that’s going to be.

Okay, so some things are just exciting!  The much anticipated engagement happened several weeks ago while I was in Durango.  Woohoo!  Congrats you guys – your uncle and auntie are certainly wishing you all the best.  Today Vero let us know they plan the big day for September 4th.  Now we need to save our nickels so we can go to Florida and celebrate with them…but I promise no bikini;O)