1 - Download files:
I started by creating a folder C:\XP_From_USB. Download the following files to your newly created directory.
*Usb_prep8.zip - http://www.2shared.com/file/2581432/a65c092a/usb_prep8.html
*PeToUSB_3.0.0.7.zip - http://www.2shared.com/file/2581436/a131cd33/PeToUSB_3007.html
*Bootsect.zip - http://www.2shared.com/file/2585881/5ad9ef68/bootsect.html
*2shard.com has the “Save file to your PC : click here” area at the bottom of each window. It took me a little while to figure that out.
Step 2 - Unzip files
First, extract bootsect.zip to the C:\XP_From_USB folder. It will create a sub-folder called bootsect. Now, extract usb_prep8.zip to the C:\XP_From_USB folder and then do the same for the PeToUSB.zip file. These too will create sub-folders under the C:\XP_From_USB folder.
Step 3 - Arrange Files
Copy the PeToUSB.exe file from the PeToUSB_3.0.0.7 folder into the USB_prep8 folder.
Step 4 - Run usb_prep8 - Format
Go to the USB_prep8 folder and double-click on the usb_prep.cmd file.
You will see the following screen:
Press any key to continue…
Now you will see the following screen:
I selected the Quick Format option, but the default setting should be fine for everything else. Keep this window open when the format completes. Click Start
Then Yes to Continue.
Click Yes
Click OK
If your USB drive opens a window showing it’s (empty) contents, please that window. You should not have any folders open displaying the USB drive contents.
Step 5 - Create Boot Sector on USB drive.
At this point you will need to open a Command window by going to Start / Run and type “cmd”. Now, type “cd C:\XP_From_USB\bootsect” and hit enter. You should see the following:
Now type : “bootsect.exe /nt52 J:” and hit enter
You should see that this step was successful. This wrote the boot sector to the USB drive. Here is a screenshot to show the successful completion:
Once successful, you can close this window. You should still see the usb_prep8.cmd command screen, don’t close it.
Step 6 - Back to usb_prep8 - Settings
Now it is time to update #1 in the menu above. Type 1 and hit enter. Now, select the drive where your windows XP disk is located. G:\ for me. On to #2: type 2 and hit enter. Select a drive letter that you currently do not have mapped. T: is the default and I don’t have anything on T:\ so I will leave this step alone. #3, is for you target USB drive. Type 3 and hit Enter, then type the letter of your USB drive. I chose J.
Your window should now look similar to this:
Step 7 - Create and Copy XP Image to USB
This step is as easy as running #4 from the above menu. Type 4 and hit enter. You should see the screen pause at this point:
Type ‘Y’ to proceed with formatting the temp space at T:
Now, you will see another pause at this point:
Press any key to continue
Processing…
Press any key to continue
Click Yes
Processing…
Click Yes
Click Yes
You will now see the following screen:
We are finished with usb_prep8 program and you can close this window.
Step 8 - Load Windows XP on Mini
Insert the USB drive into the mini and turn it on. At the menu, hit F9 to bring up your Boot Device Selection and select the USB drive.
Choose TXT based installation and continue on the picking drive for the installation and format it. After the first reboot, just let it boot to the Hard Drive. You will receive an error and it will take you back to the initial Install menu. This time, choose GUI based installation.
When the Windows installation is complete you may have difficulty booting continue to choose GUI based installation. When you get into windows you will need to edit your Boot.ini file. To do this go to Start / Run and type “msconfig”.
Go to the Boot Tab and hit the Check All Boot Paths. This might correct your issue. In my case I had another step. Close msconfig and re-boot. If you are not able to boot without the USB drive, then you will need to edit directly your Boot.ini file.
[boot loader] timeout=30 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=”Microsoft Windows XP Professional” /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
Once you have edited the Boot.ini file, save the file, exit notepad and reboot without the USB drive. This should take care of the boot issue.
Good luck!
From this point follow through the Windows XP installation as you normally would. When you are done, you will probably need to install Network drivers in order to be able to get online and download anything else you need.
Here are two great sites that helped me to be able to complete this process. Thanks eeeguides and liliputing!!!
http://www.eeeguides.com/2007/11/installing-windows-xp-from-usb-thumb.html
http://www.liliputing.com/2008/04/install-windows-xp-on-mini-note-usb.html
The cell phone upgrade
Well, it’s that time again, time to upgrade my cell phone and checkout my plan for any potential savings. As an Alltel customer, I had been looking at a few different phones but the one that I had been most interested in was the HTC Touch Pro. So, last week, I went out and got one. I didn’t actually save any money, but for about the same price I went from having a state wide service to a national plan and now that I have a smartphone/pocketpc, I had to go with an unlimited internet plan.
So far, I am enjoying it. I’d have to say I’m stumbling around a bit getting used to it, but slowly I’m feeling more and more comfortable each day. My last phone was a standard flip phone (LG AX8600), which was a nice size and weight and would easily fit in my shirt pocket without any trouble. The old phone weighed 3.26 oz and had Bluetooth, an MP3 player, and a 1.3 megapixel camera, and I was able to get online with it, but with 220×176 resolution and 1.4″x1.7″ screen, I found it to be fairly pointless to browse the internet. The HTC Touch Pro boasts all the features of the old phone and more, plus it’s using the Windows Mobile 6.1 operating system.
Comparing the features I had mentioned, the HTC has Bluetooth, an MP3 player, and a 3.2 megapixel camera and the screen is an amazing 640×480 resolution with a 1.7″x2.25″ touch screen. From a size and weight perspective, it is a little bit longer and a similar width to the old phone, but the depth is a lot more on the HTC. This is mainly due to the nice slide out full qwerty keyboard. The HTC is 5.3 oz which is almost twice the old phone. Even though it fits fine in the shirt pocket, quite honestly it looks and feels a bit goofy in my shirt as it pulls down too much. So, one of the things I am getting used to is where to put it. It comes with a nice, Velcro belt carrier thingy, so I have been using that.
The most fun I have been having is with the applications. Since it is using the Windows Mobile 6.1 OS, adding apps to the phone is pretty easy. It comes with Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and OneNote Mobile as well as Outlook. The fact that I can synchronize, easily, my Outlook contacts from my desktop to my phone is a wonderful thing. Prior to this I was maintaining my contacts in both places and finding myself letting one or the other get out of date.
It also came with the Opera and Internet Explorer browsers. I find myself using the Opera browser over IE 100% of the time. The last time I played with a hand held computer (IPAQ 4750, I believe) I found that the websites I would go to were not “mobile-ready” sites. Fast forward 5 years and it seems that there are so many sites that cater to the mobile community, so browsing has become productive and fun. The HTC has a cool feature where you can zoom in and out on the sites that are not as mobile ready and use the touch screen to scroll around the page. Slick Stuff!
Now that I have talked about a few (but the ones I use the most) of the preinstalled applications, I am going to talk about the cool apps I have downloaded. The first app I downloaded and one I would consider a must have is Google Maps for Mobile. This gives you the power of Google Maps at your finger tips and on the go. The integrated GPS power of the phone with Google Maps makes this a great replacement for most GPS devices. I wouldn’t necessarily use it as my everyday GPS in the car, if you are one that relies on a GPS for everything, but it is awesome for closing in on that location you know is getting close, but you are not quite sure if it is this turn or the next.
I have an Audible.com membership and have downloaded their Audible Manager Mobile. This gives me the ability to purchase, manage and listen to audio books using my HTC. I think there is a way to connect the HTC to my AUX audio port on my car stereo so that I can effectively listen to audio books when I am driving. Audible has some good membership deals if you listen to a lot of books. I have been known for only downloading free, pamphlet-like, audio books in the past, and purchasing the actual CD’s for those “real” books that I listen to, but I plan on changing that.
Another book related app that I downloaded is the MobiPocket Reader. This is a decent eBook reader and their main website can be used to purchase and download eBooks. The selection looks to be fairly large and the prices didn’t seem to be too bad. Personally, I am not much of a reader (although I am trying to change that) and will mainly use this for eBooks that I run into that I would like to read, but can’t find on Audible or in an audio format of some sort.
PockeTwit is a handy app for managing/reading your twitter account. I found that going to twitter.com on the HTC’s browser wasn’t the friendliest and decided to look for a good twitter app. I didn’t do a whole lot of research, but found that this one seems to get good ratings and got the job done. It will be going on my list of recommended Mobile Apps.
Finally, the last app that I have downloaded worth mentioning is FreeCaddie. FreeCaddie is an app, yup you guessed it, for help on the golf course. If you are familiar with the SkyCaddieTM GPS device, this does pretty much everything the $250+ device does. The free version is sufficient for range finding. It will give you a measurement, using the GPS feature of the phone, to the front, middle and back of the green. You can download any of the courses found on their site and at an initial glance there are quite a few in the Charlotte area. I have already downloaded the local course I go to most often. There is a pay for version that I will probably buy and the price is a mere $25. The Pro version gives you: On the fly downloading of courses, distance to bunkers/hazards, measures length of shot, scorekeeping, statistics and course editing. This is an amazing app for a low, or no price and I highly recommend this app to anybody that does any amount of golfing.
My Recommended Downloads for WM6 (as of 4/16/09):
Google Maps Mobile - Standard Download - Mobile Download
Audible AudibleAir - Standard Download
MobiPocket Reader - Standard Download - Mobile Download
PockeTwit - Standard Download
FreeCaddie - Standard Download
I love Friday’s!
A few years back I was on my way home from work and I thought I would stop at the local cigar shop. At the time, the shop was on Johnston Road and the owner, Larry, was in that day. With a smile he welcomed me to his establishment and showed me around. “Charlie’s Cigars” had a wonderful walk-in humidor with a very large assortment of humidors and accessories. I grabbed a couple of my favorite cigars and proceeded to the checkout counter. Larry asked me if I might be interested in the cigar club membership which was a no-brainer as the deal was ten percent off for and only ten dollars to join. Larry also mentioned that a few members liked to hang out after work on Friday until his seven o’clock closing time. I signed up and went on my merry way.
It was a Friday, a few weeks later, and I decided to stop by again. Forgetting about Larry’s comment about the Friday hang out, I was pleasantly surprised to find about six people enjoying their cigars and hanging out at the shop. I went into the walk-in humidor and grabbed a couple cigars and decided I too would participate in the relaxation. Thus the beginning of a new tradition… “Cigar Fridays”.
Since those initial days of meeting the guys at “Charlie’s Cigars”, I have met many great people and have establish a nice camaraderie with many of them. It has become an event I have looked forward to each week.
The introduction of wings after cigars fell into place soon after I began going to Charlie’s. Near the Johnston Road cigar shop is a wing place called “D D Peckers”. I have known about this place for years but had yet to try them out. Always on the lookout for a great wing place, I decided to try Peckers one night after cigars. I called a couple friends from the old apartment complex where I had used to live and we met up at Peckers. To date, this is the best wing place I found in the Charlotte area. So this extended the Friday night tradition from cigars to cigars and wings.
Unfortunately, two events occurred that disturbed the Friday night traditions. The first disruption was the moving away of a good friend of mine who participated in the wing portion of the Friday tradition. The second was the closing of the Johnston Road location of “Charlie’s Cigars”. Either one of these events would have not have changed the tradition because we had plenty of people who liked to participate in the wing portion of the evening and Larry has a second location of “Charlie’s Cigars” over off of Weddington Road. But with both of these events happening together, they impacted the logistics of the Friday tradition.
Closing the Johnston Road location was a disappointment although Larry had a big surprise up his sleeve. He had been working on a new location in the South Park area. This past October (’08) Larry opened this new location and what a beauty it is. After receiving an e-mail detailing the new spot I knew I had to stop by and check things out. Early in November I stopped by for the first time and the e-mail did not do the new shop any justice at all. It was more beautiful than I had imagined. You drive up to the shops area and are initially impressed with the class of the South Park shops at 4300 Sharon Rd. There is a “U” shaped drive giving easy access to the various shops with plenty of parking all around and above you see the additional five stories of condos . About half way down on the right is Larry’s “Charlotte Cigar & Collectibles”. You walk inside and on either side you see the custom made enclosed, humidified cabinets with shelves full of many fine premium cigars. Along the back wall are the pipes and pipe tobacco with all kinds of gifts and accessories throughout the store. But it gets better… At this point you are only seeing half of the store. In the back is the cigar lounge that is where my new Friday home has been established. The member only lounge is very comfortable with it’s four leather chairs, two large LCD TV’s and a nice large table in the corner, perfect for playing poker, or browsing the web with the free wireless access.
Weathering the disruptions of my previous Friday traditions, I have been able to substitute my Johnston Road cigar smoking experience with a new South Park cigar smoking experience. Quite a few of the Johnston Road “regulars” have joined along in the experience of South Park, and some of them have ventured over to the Weddington Road location. Missing old friends, I have been making an effort to visit Weddington Road as well and I feel a new tradition beginning over there. But, Fridays have been established as my time to relax in South Park with Larry, Kathy and Don over at Charlotte Cigar & Collectibles in South Park. Even now I am writing this in the comfort of one of those nice leather chairs.
Here is a link for you to see a couple pictures of the shop and lounge.
So, i decided to get the domain name www.Rare-eLife.com and I backed up the old site and created a new one with the new domain. What I forgot to do was backup the actual database. Oops. I lost my About information and my posts. Fortunately, I did have the “My Fridays” post saved on my hard drive from when I was editing it. So, the site is starting fresh.