Comments for Getting Older and Wiser

Comment on How to add HP SFF SAS Drives to your desktop pc by Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:44:59 +0000

I had been having the same troubles. I build gaming pcs as a hoby. my buddy wanted to decrees boot time and make his games launch faster and what not so i told him to get a faster hard drive. He ordered a hitachi 15000rpm hdd and asked “Is that fast enough?” It took little time to discover that it was not SATA and i had never seen SAS before. It took me weeks to find out what it was called. After i did, i ordered a sas to sata cable like the ones that come with this raid card and hooked it up to the mobo. bios had no idea there was anything there. here it is 6 months later and i stumble across your article. I am ordering one of these cards now. I hope it works.

Comment on How to install VMware VSphere ESXi 4 on a desktop PC by Ron

Ron — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 04:26:05 +0000

Hey, it is good to know stuff like this. I am currently experiencing with virtualbox running windows 2008 64 bits server and multiple station joined to domain. Actually, I have internal network and works perfectly…also I have Exchange server set up and my clients can send and receive emails….all this in one single PC. Anyway, my next step is to setup a VMware server and virtual clients. My question would be, can I emulate virtual client and have more server on VMware Sphere in the same pc? I only set up view 5 clients at work and not know much about the server side. I saw another guy that installed VMware sphere in a VMware client pc.
Can I write you if I have any question?
Thanks.

Comment on Gigabit connection not working on Dell Dimension 9200 (XPS 410) by Colorado Techie

Colorado Techie — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 04:32:46 +0000

Exact same problem, I followed the same steps, exact same result: 100 Mbps only.

Grrrr. I even updated to the latest drivers from Intel 9.15.11.0 (10/14/2011).

Bleh.

Comment on How to install VMware VSphere ESXi 4 on a desktop PC by James Smart

James Smart — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 16:42:24 +0000

Interesting replies, but other than trial and error does anyone know if ESXi will work on a Dell XPS 8300 Quad-Core i7 8GB. I’m currently running VMServer 2.0 on it and it has some serious limitations. I want to wipe it clean and put ESXi either 4 or 5 on it. However, without them publishing desktop compatibility, it is hard to find out. The box is in a PROD state right now, so I don’t get the chance to play with it and test.

Comment on How to install VMware VSphere ESXi 4 on a desktop PC by The Dood

The Dood — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 00:57:46 +0000

Hi Richard. The vmfs is the vmware file system so it sounds like it is having trouble with your drives.

I’m not sure about the drive grouping. I have my drives set up as separate drives and do all of my spanning within the vc console.

Lastly, just to clarify, I’m running ESXi as the full blown esx gave me too much trouble trying to install.

It also helps as vmware is phasing out esx in favor of ESXi.

Let us know if this helped at all and what you end up doing to get it to work.

Comment on How to install VMware VSphere ESXi 4 on a desktop PC by Richard Berends

Richard Berends — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 13:06:27 +0000

Hi there,

I have a HP Pavilion Quad Core2 (not i series) with 4Gb of Ram. I downloaded the latest vSphere ISO image, put it on a disk. When i start with the CCD, it goes fine up to the point where you can Enter to install. Almost immediately it hangs with mention that vmfs3 module can not be loaded. From this point on I’m stuck. I hope someone has a clue for me.

About the disks:
The harddisk is a SATA SSD of Intel, the other two disks are 1Tb Western Digital. They are installed on SATA port 3, 5 & 6, the DVD drive on SATA port 4. 1 & 2 are currently unused. (I doubt if the problem is this, a windows config did boot properly, and it has booted from DVD – In the Setup menu of the BIOS it refers to a harddisk group to boot from, with the Intel drive specified as boot device in that group)

Comment on How to easily add space to your DVR by Gerry

Gerry — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 14:12:26 +0000

I plugged a 1Tb Western Digital My Book Expander into an Scientific atlanta 8300+. The DVR records the shows but they don’t get listed in the recorded shows list. I ‘ve tried unplugging it and re-plugging but it just won’t list them

Comment on Upgrade To SSD Hard Drive And See Speed! by Lorell

Lorell — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 00:56:41 +0000

Crix,

I have the same machine as you I think, unfortunately it only has 2 hard drive bays and cables for only 2 SATA drives, which are used up by the existing RAID 0 pair. So you can’t use them as storage drives and the SSD as the boot drive, but you could use one of them as a storage drive, and swap out the other for the SSD. (or you could try to sell the pair and buy one TB/2TB HDD as a new storage drive)

Because of the RAID 0 you will lose the data on both original drives if you remove one. There also may be hassle at the BIOS level to tell the machine that you no longer have a RAID 0 pair, I have yet to look up information about de-striping a pair.

But once you’ve gotten past that, it will be the same as any guide out there on how to clean reinstall your OS on a new boot HDD.

Comment on How to install VMware VSphere ESXi 4 on a desktop PC by The Dood

The Dood — Mon, 09 May 2011 01:43:52 +0000

Hi Robert, the main specs you’ll want to go with are Intel Processors. I went with the Quad Core just to be able to support more simulaneous VM’s.

Right now I’d suggest the Quad core i7 version of the machine. I’ll update the link to a machine that’s in stock that has similar components for compatibility.

Let me know how it shakes out for you!

Comment on How to install VMware VSphere ESXi 4 on a desktop PC by Robert

Robert — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 16:11:00 +0000

I’m thinking along exactly the same lines you are.
Trick is, the HP Pavilion you link to is out of stock at Amazon.

If I wanted to find another desktop that would play the game,
what are the vital features? What is it about that HP that made you think ESXi would work?