Today I spent an embarrassingly large number of hours trying to automate the install of IE 8 along with some related updates. So I would have as updated of a machine as possible when I do a fresh install. Using VirtualBox of course. I’ve got it done actually. Except for this one update, KB981332. I have it auto-installing during the Windows install process and I just double-clicked the thing and restarted the VM and still Windows Update comes up and says it needs to be installed. Still. It’s very, very frustrating. Only thing I can think of is that is must be one of those two separate updates by the same name thing that MS does sometimes. I guess they have to replace an update with a newer version because there was something wrong with the original.
There is one thing I can do though: there’s an update log recorded and left in I think the Windows directory. It says the updates installed and the actual download location too actually. So I’ll just let it install on the VM and then see what the log says. Then download the update as an actual file and copy it from VM land to my updates folder. Ya, that should work…
Of course, it’s not that big of an update either at 670KBs or whatever. So there’s that.
Well that did allow me to download the update fresh from MS. Then I renamed it and over-wrote it in my directory structure so I could make a fresh ISO and try the whole thing again. Doesn’t that sound exciting? Okay sure I suppose I should be moving on. I still have to fix the IE policy that apparently is making downloads disabled by default and figure where all my beloved .REG files went that did things like disable to stupid accessibility bar and turn off all the sounds for me. Also find and package up all the drivers for the computer I’m going to loaning my land lady.
Oh and perhaps I should mention that I’ve come across a new piece of computer equipment. Ya see I worked for free at this non-profit place for like four months at or near 40 hours a week. Well half of May/June/most of July. So three at best. Anyway there was a major screw up with their OEM vendor supplying monitors and long-story-short I now have an extremely nice 24 inch monitor on my desk next to my existing 24 inch monitor/TV combo thinger I have had.
I had actually been waiting for my even older 19 inch 4:3 monitor to die. But damn all the luck it works as good as the day I bought it three or four years after I bought it. I wanted it to die so I could buy a second 16:9 monitor. But oh look, I’ve come up against a new one on my own. And all I had to do was work for free for three moths. I need a “will work IT for…free….and monitors…” sign I can hold on a freeway on ramp or something.
So I never thought I’d be that guy looking at two 24 inch monitors on his desk like some kind of glutton or some other more appropriate term possibly. And I didn’t plan it that way obviously. I didn’t plan the eight gigs of memory in my computer either. I bought all the parts with six gigs then won two gigs in a raffle.
So at the risk of getting philosophical here does this mean I’ve used up and depleted all my luck/karma or does this mean my luck/karma is merely paying me back for the 14 months of otherwise bad luck? I mean will this be balanced out by bad luck in the future? Pfff. I can’t think that way. This is all a coincidence. The memory. The monitor. It was going to happen anyway. It doesn’t “mean” anything. Right?
In between the VMs I was also trying to work with Damn Small Linux. I was originally using some even-more-stripped-down version of it in which the mouse and keyboard worked plenty fine in the VM. Then I found this ISO for “current” (actually called current.iso) so I tried that. And the good news is it is way more functional and workable with lots of colors and useful icons for extensibility the bad news is the keyboard and mouse don’t work, period, in the VM. I tried search on this issue and apparently either my google-fu isn’t much today or no one else is having this issue. Maybe if I left it up a while or something. For the system to detect it. I don’t know if that work. Probably not. I really wanted to get this administrator package installed on it called Webmin to do just what it sounds like. But I couldn’t get that to work either. Kept telling me I didn’t have the right version of perl but also refused to update my version of Perl. No, not annoying. And I haven’t tried yet to install VirtualBox but I’m guessing that wouldn’t do much better.
Well I decided to try out the “IE 8 Admin Kit” and see if it did any good. Couldn’t do any worse right? Well it certainly asked all the right questions and has apparently generated a good install package apparently but I’m going to go to bed and find it out what happens tomorrow.