RiskFactor

Recently I decided to virtualize all three of the primary servers that I have running on my network.  To do this I decided to install Windows Server 2008 R2 on two new servers.  To save space I chose smaller cases and to save money I left out the optical drives since I have a USB DVD drive that would work for my installations.  In addition I downloaded the latest drivers onto a large flash drive in preparation for the install.

The motherboard that I chose is the MSI 890FXA-GD65 which supports USB boot as well as RAID 0, 1, 5, 10, and JBOD.  So, I chose to run a RAID 1 setup with two disks. After setting the array up in the BIOS I inserted the USB DVD drive, a flash drive with the RAID drivers, and cranked up the machine.  Things moved pretty fast and I landed on the screen for selecting the drive to which I wanted to install Windows.  It was blank and so I simply loaded the drivers from the flash drive and the RAID drive appeared with full capacity.  Normally the next thing you should do is select the drive and hit the next button, but when I did that I got this wonderful error message:

“Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing system partition. See the Setup log files for more information.”

To make a long story short I had a heck of a time figuring out the cause of my problem.  In the end what worked for me was leaving the USB Flash drive out of the system until I was ready to install the drivers.  I inserted the flash drive, selected “Load Drivers” and when through the browsing, selecting and loading.  Right after the drivers were finished loading I pulled the flash drive and then hit “Next”.  And the rest, as they say, is history…  Windows installed fine from that point on and within about 30 minutes my new server was up and running.

Tags: windows 2008, tips & tricks, hardware, general tech

For the next 9 weeks I will be teaming up with a friend of mine, Adam Procella, to teach a series of lectures entitled, “Christianity in the 21st Century: A Biblical Worldview of Technology” at Memorial Presbyterian Church on Sunday Mornings.

Adam Porcella is a fellow classmate of mine who is, like me, working toward his Masters degree in divinity (M.Div.).  Adam graduated from Covenant College just outside of Chattanooga, TN with a degree in Philosophy.  Adam has previously co-lectured on Science and Christianity with another very good friend of mine, who is an internationally known astrophysicists, Dr. A.J. Poelarends.

In this series, Adam and I will cover some of the basic ground work toward a Philosophy of Technology and will also discuss how our life of faith intersects with Technology.  It is designed to help construct a basic framework for thinking critically about technology in general as well as Information Technology in particular and how our daily lives as Christians impact and are impacted by technology.

We will cover a number of topics and  areas that will include to a lesser or greater extent the following:

1. A History of Technology
2. Toward a Philosophy of Technology
3. Social Networking and Relationships
4. Identity and Technology
5. Video Games and Virtual Reality

Last week was the initial introduction to the series.  This week I will be presenting a lecture entitled: “A History of Innovation: Toward an Understanding of the Nature and Course of Technology.”

I hope to have a running series of blog posts related to this that I will post on my other blog (technologian.us) which will be less technical than this one and geared more toward things such as what will be contained in the lecture series.  If you are interested or want more info on this lecture series then shoot me an email.

Tags: general, general tech, personal growth