Just not too long ago, I had an assignment whereby I needed to virtualize some OSes on my laptop. Despite the fact that my Lenovo Y430 was well equipped with the technology to run Intel VT (it’s a P8600 Processor), things didn’t go as smooth sailing as I wish they would be.
What could be wrong? I’d thought it was just a simple switch I needed to flick in BIOS just like on my mum’s HP Computer. It wasn’t as simple as that. Lenovo has decided that IdeaPads don’t need VT since they’re for entertainment and not work purposes, hence they left the setting out in BIOS. How smart of them.
So I was paying for something, but I couldn’t use it to the maximum extent of the processor’s power because Lenovo said so. I’m not giving up there, and certainly some people aren’t too.
Too bad for them, I found a thread on a forum where someone gave relatively vague instructions as to how to enable VT on the Y430. It wasn’t a simple process, but it was all worth it, and thankfully, I understand Chinese – the original thread was written in Chinese.
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I’ll write a quick guide here on how to do it, in English. Here’s the original source: http://bbs.pcpop.com/090603/5442969.html (via http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/IdeaPad-Y-and-U-series-Laptops/Y430-and-Intel-VT-Technology/td-p/181901)
I don’t know if they’d work across all BIOS versions, I was using the latest at this time of posting. This is the “2009-06-15 BIOS Update”. You can get the BIOS update at Lenovo’s Support Site.
I will not provide support for this technique of enabling VT. Do it at your own risk! I don’t think Lenovo encourages this either.
Items that you’ll need to perform this task: A Thumbdrive that you are willing to format.
Downloads that you’ll need to make to perform this task:
First and foremost, install the formatting toolkit by HP.
Next, extract the MS-DOS Boot Files somewhere.
Place the thumbdrive into your computer. Launch the formatting toolkit.
Note that this will format your thumbdrive.
Select your thumbdrive, then select the option that let’s you choose the source files to format to. Locate the boot file folder and select it, then let your computer format the thumbdrive.
Once done, copy syncmos.exe into the thumbdrive.
Now boot your computer and have it load the USB Drive, this is done by hitting F12 repeatedly and selecting boot from USB.
It’ll load the MS-DOS prompt.
Type:
"SYMCMOS -LBIOS.TXT"
Now press the power button on your computer and turn it off, then boot it up into Windows now.
In your thumbdrive, there will be a file called BIOS.txt. Open it in notepad.
Search for REG-0369 and change the value from [0000] to [0001].
Make sure the file is still in your thumbdrive after editing it. Restart your computer and load the USB drive to go back into MS-DOS.
Now type:
SYMCMOS -ubios.TXT
Turn off your computer now and boot it up again.
Congratulations! VT should be enabled.
I had to test a website on Internet Explorer 7 today, after someone said that it was broken on IE7.
Having already upgraded to Internet Explorer 8, I was unable to test it, since the design appeared perfectly fine for me. It was also, needless to say, troublesome to downgrade.
One could use the newly introduced Compatibility Mode to display the website so as to view the website under the old rendering mode, but I still don’t feel safe with using it. It’d still be better to use the old version to really make sure things work.
One could also use Browser Shots or any service like that to do it, but your website has to be online to do it. I was running the website on my own PC – which wasn’t online.
There was another alternative that seemed feasible: Installing “standalone” packages of Internet Explorer. I’d thought it was a good idea too, hence I tried installing Internet Explorer 7 Standalone. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to work for me – in fact, it made things worst than things needed to be. It rendered the system almost totally unusable.
I found another few third-party packages that I could use too, but after that ordeal with Internet Explorer 7 Standalone, I decided that it wasn’t worth the effort to try. Besides, if you’d read on, you’ll see why running multiple versions of IE on the same OS isn’t a good idea.
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Fortunately, I found out that Microsoft actually (amazingly) provides Virtual PC Images for developers to use, at a cost of $0.00. The only downside is that you’ll need to download the images every few months, since they’re time-bombed to expire about every 5 months. I figured the hassle to try and install standalone packages (and the risks that come along with it) wasn’t worth it. Hence I tried, and so far things are working out great 
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Whilst this isn’t really installing Internet Explorer 6/7/8, since it’s really just running a Virtual OS, it still is a great and most importantly, legal way to go about doing it.
Besides, the people at Microsoft advises against running multiple versions of IE on the same Windows Installation. To sum it up: there’s possibly security issues and conflicts between the different versions.
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You can get the Virtual PC images at Microsoft’s Developer Center and you can get Virtual PC 2007 at the Download Center too.
I would suppose that getting the images for IE6 on Windows XP and IE7 on Windows XP would do. There shouldn’t be too much of a difference if you’re using Windows Vista or not, hmm.
Virtual PC 2007 claims to not support Windows Vista Home Premium, which I am, unfortunately, using. Luckily, it seems to work fine for me, just the first two annoyances of scaring you into the fact that it doesn’t work. The installer still goes through with installing and the virtualisation process works nicely.
The only thing that you’ll probably need to setup correctly is the Network Adapters so that you can connect to your PC’s local webserver (assuming it isn’t online like mine).
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Now I’m able to nicely test stuff on IE6 and IE7 before I hand them over to others…
As most of you should have figured out by now, I’m a fan of writing long posts. I sure do have a few long posts such as Part 2 of my Malaysia Trip, the Nucleii Chalet in 2008 and last but not least, the Nissan Bus Farewell Tour. Of course, I’d be expecting many more to come…
But anyway, Wordpress isn’t too supportive of my extremely long posts. It seems to hate it, it doesn’t display them on the page at all – however, they save perfectly in the database. As such, I’ve dived right into the core of Wordpress to figure out the cause of this problem – its certainly not some post length limit in Wordpress…and after much searching and testing, I’ve deduced that the cause is this evil piece of code in wp-includes/formatting.php.
It wouldn’t do much harm in removing it if you don’t use shortcodes, so here’s the fix. Just for the record, I don’t use shortcodes.
In wp-includes/formatting.php, find the following line in the wpautop() function:
$pee = preg_replace('/<p>\s*?(' . get_shortcode_regex() . ')\s*<\/p>/s', '$1', $pee); // don't auto-p wrap shortcodes that stand alone
Just comment out that line by prefixing a “//” and your extremely long posts should display fine again – clear the WP Cache if it doesn’t work.
This quick and dirty fix works out just fine for me.
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Okay okay, part 3 of the Malaysia Trip soon – must start sleeping early.
Some life updates too – recently I’ve been watching 百万大歌星 on Youtube. It’s the Taiwanese version of Don’t Forget the Lyrics. Quite an interesting show, with all the celebrities vying for the 300,000 NTD prize. All sorts of Chinese Songs come up during the show, and I know quite a number of them .
Just search 百万大歌星 on Youtube, it has an episode every Saturday, then there are two uploaders for this entertainment show too, so it’s relative easier to find . It’s usually split into ten parts, with it occasionally going into 11 parts!
This article is much outdated now. As of today (10th March 2009), I’m closing comments for this post. You should seriously be using the latest version of ffmpeg and ffmpeg-php 0.6.0, they seem to work fine with each other. There shouldn’t be a need to go back to the old version – besides, we should just move on.
Prelude: There are a million and one possible errors that can appear when you install this. But seriously, I don’t have the answers to most of them, if I do, I’d have recorded it down here. Chances are that I won’t be able to answer your question/problem because I don’t do FFmpeg installs often enough to encounter all the weird scenarios. Hence, please do not post comments asking me about these problems, comments giving thanks to this walkthrough or correcting minor typos, or wanting to donate money to me via PayPal 
are all fine.
Kindly do some Googling on your own and I wish you all the best in resolving these issues, as I certainly had problems myself trying to Google out answers and had to trial and error certain parts, while hoping that I don’t wreck the live server I was working on.
Just earlier today, I had to install FFmpeg and ffmpeg-php on a cPanel server. WHMXtra had previously been used to install FFmpeg and ffmpeg-php, but it didn’t quite work out.
There are probably a million guides out there, but seemingly most of them I’ve found are not so complete – and I’ve had to continuously search for solutions on the various (I must say, many…) errors I’ve encountered.
Here goes, my first time writing an installation walk-through:
Read the rest of Installing FFmpeg and ffmpeg-php on a cPanel Server…