BimmaBlog

In the old days, you just untightened and removed the two terminals from the battery, and that was that, but now its got over-complicated! I hadn’t used the Rangie for a week or so, and got a flat battery, couldn’t jump it from the little Mazda Eunos, so needed to try a charge up before it was off to Halfords for a new battery. Read through the Rave CD which required reading of four different sections, just to disconnect the battery, so here it is in all its glory:

DISCONNECTION:

1. Turn off the ignition, and remove the key. (Keep the key close by you though, as the alarm may go off and you need to disable it)
2. Ensure the alarm is disabled.
3. Wait at least 2 minutes ( I gave it 5) for car systems to shut down such as the SatNav and Fuel Guage
4. Yes, now you can lift the bonnet and disconnect the Earth terminal (brown lead)
5. Now wait 10 minutes ( I gave it 20) for the SRS system to shut down. This is important because of what is to follow!
6. You have a positive lead running to a fitting on the bulkhead in front of the battery, this fitting is used for connecting jump leads. Undo the nut (13mm) at the back, and release the cable, placing out of the way.
7. Now unclip the cover for the battery terminal nut and undo the nut until loose.
8. Now unclip and take apart the multiplug which runs to the positive connector.
9. Now unclip the cover and undo and remove the nut for the battery disconnect system. Lift off the cable and set aside. (This is why item 5 is important, as this thing is designed to explode and break the battery connection in the event of a crash, so it works alongside the SRS)
10. OK, now you can wiggle and remove the positive connector from the battery terminal.
11. Battery disconnected!

RECONNECTION:

1. Refit the battery disconnect lead to the positive connector unit and tighten nut.
2. Refit the positive connector to the battery terminal and tighten nut.
3. Reconnect the “jump lead” cable to the bulkhead and tighten the nut.
4. Reconnect the multiplug.
5. Reconnect the negative terminal and tighten nut.
6. Start the engine, and allow systems to fire up and do their thing.
7. Finally, with the engine running, turn the steering wheel from full LH lock to full RH lock. This resets the DSC so it knows about the steering wheel position.
8. Hopefully, everything back to normal.

NB: I left the battery in-situ to charge it, even though handbook and workshop manual recommend removal (Removal is for another blog post, which might mean gaining greater access under the bonnet, and pulley and levers to lift the flaming thing out!)

It’s list time again:

Because so much good open source software has been ported to Windows, its possible to do just about everything on Windows with the open source programs I use regularly on my main Xubuntu 9.10 system:

Open Source:

Open Office
Abiword
Gnumeric (a bit buggy)
Gimp
Inkscape
Gwhere
Geany
Audacity
ProjectX (java)
HJSplit (java)
Frostwire (java)
VirtualBox
FireFTP (firefox extension)
Firefox (of course!)
Mplayer & SMplayer
VLC

This list will grow. Keep up the good work guys

Plus, some notable “freeware” applications:

PhotoFiltre
ProgDVB6
puTTY
ImgBurn
AVGFree 9
Shark007 Codecs Pack
UltraVNC
VNCViewer
Windows Movie Maker 2.6
CPUz
JellyBean Key Finder
WirelessKeyView
Google Chrome
CCleaner
DeFraggler (Piritin)
Free Screen To Video (Koyote Software)
Winamp (with iAmp skin)
WizMouse (scroll without focus)
Powerpoint Presentation Viewer
RocketDock (just like my wbar!)
CDex
Adobe Reader 9
Scanner Application that comes with my Brother Network Printer (Brother very good at drivers and support for Windows and Linux)

[EDIT 12/2010 add DVD Flick to your list of freewares, encodes / authors / burns ]

Shareware I just can’t live without:

Winrar

[EDIT 12/2010 - now found I can, try Izarc, copes with just about everything ]

Hacks:

Also done a few registry hacks to sort out the awful unintuitive default behaviour of Windows Explorer. These are easily found on any Windows 7 sites.

Remove Libraries from Explorer
Remove Favourites from Explorer
Remove HomeGroups from Explorer
Adding Directories “I want” to the SendTo drop down
Removing “Drives” from SendTo
Adding Copy To folder and Move To Folder to Right Click
Adding Open Command Prompt to Right Click

Nearly got my Windows PC behaving and looking just like “Linux”  :D

Been dual booting W7 and Ubuntu for some time using the RC version, but upon purchasing an Asus EB1012, which is now proudly bolted out of sight to the back of my 24″ Hanns.G screen, I found I had a proper licensed copy of W7 Home Premium to look after, alongside side my 9.10 Xubuntu install. With a linux samba server also on the Lan I needed everything to run smoothly, and after fiddling about for a few weeks, I believe I am finally there.

DO:

1. Dual boot W7 with Linux. It makes so much sense, as what you can do in Linux is what you can’t do in W7, and vice versa (although the latter has now almost dimished to zero :))

Setting Up for Samba Server File Access

2. The following to get your samba server working with W7 to stop it BSODing:

edit your /etc/samba/smb.conf on the server and ensure that:

• Your workgroup name is listed
• Your netbios name is listed, and is the same as your workgroup (OK, this means you can only have one samba server, but it helps
• Ensure that your security entry is set to user

So in the [global] section of smb.conf you should have these entries (assumes workgroup of MYHOME)

workgroup = MYHOME
netbios name = MYHOME
security = user

3. Follow all the steps in this howto by stormbringer on ubuntuforums to setup your samba server and shares.

4. Follow all the steps for W7 in this howto by dmizer on ubuntuforums to setup W7 for samba access

5. Add a registry key to W7 for LmCompatibilityLevel=2 - see here

6. Make sure your W7 workgroup matches the one in your smb.conf file

7. Have a look at your Antivirus program. Crashes have bee experienced when using free versions of Avast, Avira and AVG. I have AVG 9 Free installed and have disabled the Resident Shield and Link Scanner (the latter of these is apparently the root cause). If this doesn’t fix things, uninstall your AV all together.

8. Add your linux file server to your lmhosts.sam file in Windows 7. You will need to open notepad as administrator to do this. Simply add the ip, followed by a space or tab, followed by the netbios name you chose:

192.168.0.100   MYHOME

Save and reboot to get it to take effect.

Sharing Files on the Dual Boot

9. Create an NTFS shared partition separate from Ubuntu or Windows. If you don’t have the space, keep your files on the windows partition somewhere. ntfs file access is facile under ubuntu and you can automount through fstab with a simple line like this:

UUID=05AAD3F54R0B9BDA                           /media/DATA     ntfs-3g defaults 0 0

And of course you would use a similar line for accessing the windows partition.

At the moment, you won’t easily be able to access your Ubuntu partition from windows, well, not with read/write access, but to get at least read access, you would need to do some work prior to installation. I’m not going to recommend this route, as I believe it leads to instability. So you will need to be strong, and always copy or move files to your shared partition when in ubuntu. If you really must have read access, look here

DON’T:

1. Try to use Ext2ifs or Ext2fsd to access your ext4 partition. It doesn’t work, (bar the workaround above) and can cause your W7 to crash.

2. Don’t use EXT3 as your file system for a shared partition. Although it “works”, its just asking for trouble, because you will need to run one of the two programs in 1. above, which can increase instability.

3. Use Samba as your file server when on the ubuntu side of the dual boot. Setup NFS on the server for linux file access. Much better.

As you can probably see, I have set out to keep things as native as possible; give W7 what it expects to find and it will work well, give Ubuntu what it expects to find and the same applies….

Observation, after a recent Windows update, or due to something unrelated to all the above, my Server disappeared from the Network section, so have found the need to create a persistent mapped network drive. Wonder if it will ever come back….? [EDIT] it did, following a cold reboot the next day.