Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Installing Windows 7 from a USB fob

So, I have this older laptop that has a stuffed CDROM. So the only option fora clean install was to install from a USB key. So after a quick Google search I found these great instructions for creating a bootable USB stick to install windows 7 from. The only change was to use Xcopy to copy the install contents from the CD to the USB Key. This allowed me to make sure i got all hidden and empty folders.

So after alot of mucking around in my Windows VM to finally get the USB fob created its now happily installing on to the old laptop. The laptop is an old HP, with no LCD screen, SO it will be come my torrent downloader and also my VI Client for my EXSi server. I will just RDP into it from the mac.

This will save me having to have the ESXi server running all the time as its a power hog and it was only really running Windows7 as a play thing.

Oh I do still love the Muppets

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Apple TV upgrade to 3.0.1 and ATVFlash

So Apple TV firmware 3.0, then 3.0.1 came out. I wanted to upgrade to the latest version but wanted to wait until the hacks to allow XBMC to work on the new firmware were confirmed.  After some debate I decided to purchase the ATV Flash bundle.

It was a purchased bundle, but they were quick to update to allow functionality on the new release from Apple, and it had all the cool apps as part of the bundle. The decision came down to time. how long would it take me mucking about to get all those programs working, and for the asking price I felt it was a good deal.

I could have waited and done alot of patching and SSHing myself. But I just wanted up and running fast as I use XBMC alot, But also want to try the other media players to conpare. Now if I didnt have the RattyT and other work, I would have taken the time to do most of it myself.

So I went and purchase the download and created my patchstick, In about 20mins.
I then upgraded the Apple TV to 3.0.1 and used the patchstick. In all the process was painless.

Check this Video out to get a good idea of the process and the feature you then get.

Done and dusted