WORKAROUND: Catalyst 9 Drivers Blue Screen Windows 7 On Install

Symptoms:

When you try to install the Catalyst 9.x drivers for your ATI Radeon video card on Windows 7 RTM on a machine with an Intel ICH9 chipset, the installation blue screens at the device detection phase.

Cause:

You have a USB device plugged in that isn't compatible with the Catalyst device detection routines.

Workaround:

Unplug every USB device except for your keyboard and mouse. If your system has a Windows SideShow device on it, you may have to disable it in the BIOS.

After doing this, reboot your machine.

Install the drivers.

After a successful install, reboot your machine.

Plug everything back in.

Silverlight's Trojan Horse

Microsoft found the perfect way to get Silverlight out to more people...by getting the Java guys to bundle it with their runtime.

Yes, the Bing Toolbar is powered by Silverlight. Personally, I think this is a great idea. After spending over a year learning Java, I realize exactly how much better the .NET Framework is for everyday development. With more penetration, perhaps more developers will see it as well.

Mail Server Down

For some reason, the romsteady.net mail server has gone away. I'm working on figuring out what happened. If you need to contact me in the interim, send it to romsteady [at] gmail.

Heading Back To Utah...For Work

I'm going to be back in Utah this coming Friday evening through Wednesday noon for work.

If any of the old SLGTest guys are reading this, feel up for dinner Friday night?

Unfortunately Accurate

(via Dilbert.com)

By the way, a new skin will be coming to the site shortly to move nav back to the left to keep things like this from getting chopped off by the nav.