McGrane.co.uk

Parent UUID of the medium does not match UUID of its parent

06/04/2013 18:29:56
Luke McGrane

 

I recently discovered a problem with Oracle's VirtualBox that seems to be caused by having snapshots stored in a directory that is not right below the VHD file. I don't know if this affects other virtual disk formats but VBox seems to assume you have this set up:

My Super VM/
My Super VM/Snapshots/

Instead of this standard installation I had my VHD files on a separate disk (H:/ in my case) but forgot to change the snapshot directory so vbox was saving to C:\users\Luke\VirtualBox VMS\VirtualMachine Name\Snapshots and in doing so seems to forget the Parent UUID of the main VHD and give this error:

 

Parent UUID of the medium does not match UUID of its parent medium stored in the media registry

 

After some investigation and learning how the IDs are stored in the VHD files I built a tool called SetVHDParentUUID which you can download here

Quick screenshot...

SetVHDParentUUID interface

Windows Server 2008 r2 Preparing to Configure Windows Stuck

05/04/2013 19:13:11
Luke McGrane

After setting up a fresh 2k8r2 VM I did a round of updates like a good little admin and then got stuck at this:

Stage 3 of 3. Preparing to configure Windows

Why? Well it turns out this is a known bug and there may be a fix available through Microsoft but you can get past the stuck screen simply by pressing CTRL+ALT+DELETE

 

Thanks to http://www.petenetlive.com/KB/Article/0000640.htm for this information.

Yarvik GoTab Zetta 9.7 - Tab466

06/08/2012 20:01:58
Luke McGrane

The Yarvik GoTab Zetta 9.7 inch Tablet is a budget device but, like anything, extremely powerful when used properly. The official tech specs are available on the Yarvik website (http://www.yarvik.com/en/products/tab466euk/) but here is my experience with this particular Android tab. First, lets have a few pictures:

 

Tab466 Front Tab466 Back Tab466 Ports

As you can see, the tab looks fairly standard and is in the classic Star Trek PADD design. I took these pics on my HTC Desire S and they're pretty terrible so here's a close up of the most fuzzy part showing the rear camera and mystery buttons.

Tab466 Rear Camera

The Bad

  1.  BBC iPlayer will not currently work with this device so if you want it just for that you need to invest in a different tab.
  2.  YouTube does work but is incredibly jittery and most often unusable.
  3.  The device isn't powerful enough to run Android and other apps smoothly. By this I mean that it becomes very sluggish when typing notes or manipulating a workflow diagram during a meeting.
  4.  WiFi only - no 3G/4G

 

The Good

  1. This tab is under £200.
  2. It has a front and rear camera! (VERY useful for barcode related software)
  3. It can just about run the official Chrome for Android.
  4. You can download from Google Play (the replacement for Android market)
  5. Keep it charged and you have a replacement for the trusty notepad you've been steadily destroying with doodles over the past 6 months!
  6. In landscape mode the screen is big enough for the keyboard to be useful! No thumbing around is needed, you have a full QWERTY keyboard at your fingertips and, with just a little bit more movement than normal, you can tap out text at a decent rate but you'll have to go over that text before you email it! Typos are too easy when you do not have physical feedback.
  7. Comes with ES File Explorer that can do things like looking around network shares
  8. 10 point multi-touch that actually works

 

Summary

If, like me, you're looking for something to replace pen and paper at work then I would say this is a good tablet and I'm very pleased with it. However, if you're looking for a toy this is certainly not something you'll enjoy because it just isn't powerful enough for modern websites and the fancy games available from Google Play.
 

Recommended Free Apps:

 
Kingsoft Office - This is a great office product and I use it to make meeting notes all the time.
 
Google Drive - Excellent service, but no offline editting (hence Kingsoft Office). I just copy my notes from the Kingsoft document over to this when I have wifi back.
 
Google Chrome - Probably the best browser currently available.
 
Smart Diagram - Exceptionally useful for meetings. I've made simple workflows while people have been talking and then used them actual documents.
 
Ping & Dns - Very useful for checking if that server is alive and your DNS is working.
 
ConnectBox - Telnet/SSH on your Android!
 
Remote RDP Lite - I use this a lot and may buy the full version but there's a bit of a bug with the keyboard getting stuck in caps only. If this happens to you, delete the connection and re-make it.
 
ifconfig - Tells you the device's IP and all the other useful information you'd normally get from ifconfig / ipconfig.
 

 

Blogroll
Paul's Blog
WWII in Colour
Phillip Cooper
Tim's Blog
Spirytus Band
Ghosts Wear Clothes

© Luke McGrane 2013 Login