Technical Support Network

Dell d430 | Triple Boot | OSX Lion - Windows 7 - Ubuntu | Chameleon Bootloader

2012-04-06T00:56:40-05:00

This post is to summarize my experiences with digesting all of the incredible, valuable knowledge on the web regarding multi-booting multiple operating systems on my laptop. I have to extend endless thanks to the people who sacrificed so much time in supporting this effort....you know who you are. It only took me two weeks to get all of this going for me! ** This post is no way intended to take credit for anything...it is merely my experience on my laptop and what I had to do to get it all working. STEP 1 buy a copy of Apple OSX Lion & Windows 7 STEP 2 download Ubuntu and burn the .iso it to a dvd (I used IMGburn in a Windows environment) STEP 3 have a few 8 to 16 gb flash drives around (i used 3 I think!) STEP 4 if you are working on a Dell, the guys at OSXLatitude.com were instrumental in supplying the necessary tools, kexts & knowledge base. I had to download their EDP 2.2 and Bootpack 1.9.2 to flash drive #1. The instructions on their site work flawlessly for so many.....but me! It is true! STEP 5 next head on over to SojuGardens's website and download myHack to flash drive #1 STEP 6 I did not have a working copy of OSX to use SojuGarden's myHack app to create a usb pen installer...so I followed the instructions under 'Method Two' of SojuGarden's website . That premade image will have to be burned to flash drive #2 (at least 8gb in size). To burn this image I relied on our trusty live Ubuntu DVD we burned earlier. Boot to that live environment (Try Ubuntu) with flash drive #2 and flash drive #3 plugged in. We are going to burn that premade image that is on flash drive #2 to flash drive #3, using the Ubuntu Live Environment. Open up a terminal and type: sudo chown 777 /dev/sd# sudo bzcat SLD430USB.img.bz2 | dd of=/dev/sd# *in terminal, running 'sudo fdisk -l' will show how the usb drives are represented STEP 7 now that we have burned SLD430USB.img.bz2 to flash drive #3, lets boot from it. For me, the internal keyboard and mouse worked out of the box and I was able to use the disk utility to format the internal hard disk as a GPT disk and create three partitions...the first one being named OSX and formatting it for Mac with journaling enabled ( I left the other two partitions blank). After that, I was able to install OSX on the newly formatted HFS partition. STEP 8 boot from flash drive #3 again and select your newly installed partition to boot from....it will boot to OSX and your mouse / keyboard may/may not work. This is where my experience began to significantly become different from what the rest of the world was experiencing. Typically, the guide over at OSXlatitude would call for installing EDP, Chameleon and updating and that would be all! For me, everytime I installed EDP and rebooted, I would lose the mouse / keyboard and video. Literally nothing worked to get it back....so from here on out is my unique set of steps that got it all working *up to this point I was following the instructions to install OSX 10.6.....then I realized I could try to install 10.7 because it was on the supported list over at OSXlatitude's website... STEP 9 Now that we at least have a running copy of OSX I figured I could plug in flash drive #1 and run that myHack app we downloaded to burn a Lion USB Pen Installer. So follow the instructions on SojuGarden's website for that and I used flash drive #2, considering we already burned that image and this flash drive could be overwritten. In this step I used the myHack app and InstallESD.dmg (from the Lion DVD) to burn a Lion USB Pen Installer.....SojuGarden's guide explains it well. STEP 10 Boot from that new pen installer and basically follow the same instructions as before when booting from that premade image. I wiped the OSX partition, installed and then booted from it on the first reboot. It was then I was able to plug in flash drive #1 and install EDP, Configure EDP and install Chameleon. After all of this I was able to boot to my copy of Lion without the help of any usb drives. STEP 11 I booted from my Windows 7 DVD and installed it to the next partition. The windows boot loader will take over and Windows will only boot from here on out. STEP 12 Boot to that Ubuntu live dvd and install it to the last remaining partition and make sure to install the bootloader to the EXT4 partition. STEP 13 I booted back to OSX with that Lion pen installer and reinstalled chameleon so I was able to boot to OSX and Ubuntu (Windows will still throw that /BCD error) STEP 14 Boot to Ubuntu and open up a terminal and run: sudo apt-get install gptsync sudo gptsync /dev/sda STEP 15 Now you will only boot to windows. Open up a command line and: diskpart select disk 0 select partition 1 <= this is the osx one with chameleon installed for me active quit STEP 16 After all of this, Chameleon listed all three os's and was able to boot to all of them. **I know there are easier ways out there..but none of them worked for me and this is what ended up working.**

Ubuntu | Internal Wifi | Dell d430 | Broadcomm

2012-04-06T00:47:02-05:00

After installing Ubuntu 11.10 on my Dell d430 I found my self with no available wired network in reach and the internal wireless card not recognized by Ubuntu. I did have a D-Link Air Plus (DWL-G630) pcmcia card laying around and the os recognized it out of the box. With Internet access I was able to use the following commands to get that internal wireless card working: sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer sudo apt-get remove bcmwl-kernel-source sudo shutdown -r now I popped out the pcmcia card and Ubuntu recognized that internal wireless card! W()()T!

Business Spotlight: Fastbin.com

2011-09-14T17:42:12-05:00

How to Promote Your Website with Online Article Submission The major engines now issue a search rank to a particular site based on how important THE REST of the Internet thinks they are on the topic. In other words one of the main standards by which sites are ranked is how many people related to that particular search term actually link back to the site in question. It’s necessary to point out here that a site's ranking is not based on HOW MANY sites link to yours, but the quality of that link with regard to the search term. On any particular day, Dell, Apple or another computer powerhouse may inhabit the top rankings for the search term ‘computer’, for instance, simply because there are more people out there in the computer industry that link to them or link to them within documents that reference computer specific content. Life is a little more difficult these days for the little guy. All is not lost. While it's still good practice to include properly targeted meta tags, document titles and succinct page text on your site, all of that hard work must be supplemented by increasing your sites presence or footprint on the web - a site must, in a sense, have a relationship with the net rather than exist within it and with a little luck and a lot of patience the little guy can still compete. Article submission is the key to developing this quality relationship. Authoring articles with direct links back to your primary site will increase its ranking with search engines such as Google and as an added bonus introduce readers to your products and services. There are many venues out there that allow authors to post informational and how-to articles, but one in particular has a unique method which we think maximizes exposure: Fastbin.com helps your company receive quality exposure to millions of web visitors by allowing you to post quick how-to or informational articles. Fastbin not only displays the articles for all to see, but attaches your logo, a description of services and your contact information as a letterhead to each article. You can add pictures, video or other media to your articles and if you need a little more instruction there is a link right at the top of the authoring page with tips on how to write articles. Better yet, Fastbin works to index all articles in search engines, so the next time someone searches Google or another search engine for information in that industry, they may not only find the articles you submitted, but the contact information necessary to explore more of your products and services. Fastbin also generates an icon for you to post on your own website. The icon acts as a link to your article archive on Fastbin and allows your visitors easy access to your articles. There is even direct interactivity between Fastbin and other social networking sites like Facebook. When authoring articles on the web, the higher quality and more informative the article, the better impression you have on your readers and the more faith they have in your products and services. Lastly, remember not to oversell your products or services in your writings – it’s very doubtful the reader was specifically looking for information on what you are selling. Choose entertaining topics that you know relate to your market and then weave in a plug or two as it applies. You’ll find that you are selling to a captive audience that is reading your article because they want to and not because they were misguided. Whatever venues you choose to find an audience, a little extra effort can go a long way