Update: Vista Service Pack 1 Nightmare continues?

It has been several days since I installed Vista SP1. I've been configuring the system and playing with bbClean
and Vista SideBar. Often I had to reboot the system and all of a sudden, during a particular reboot, Vista said "Configuring updates: stage 3 of 3" !!! This was last stage of SP1 update and this happened already few days ago when installed SP1 but why it showed up today? Only Microsoft knows! Fortunately, the system rebooted fine.

On the Vista Sidebar, its cool but its buggy. Often sometimes after a reboot, the order of gadgets changes!

Update: Vista Service Pack 1 - Installation Nightmare

The repeated reboot madness continued until 7pm, for over 8 hours. I knew that my installation is doomed so I tried to recover the system from this situation. Earlier, the Safe Mode attempt and last known good configuration options didn't work. They work only if the system had crashed before.

The only option I had was repairing the installation through the recovery console using the original Vista DVD. This option also did not work because it couldn't figure out what went wrong with the installation. So, I tried RegEdit. My thinking was if I can delete any auto start programs, the SP update would stop. But I didn't find any such programs in known locations. I tried renaming some of the system folders and restarted Vista. Still, no luck.

Only at this point I realized that I never created System Restore Point before. Had I done that, I could have simply restored the system to a good state.

Finally, I gave up! Since, I have all the data on my hard drive intact, I initiated complete re-install of Vista Ultimate.

Once I installed it, I created a restore point first and kicked off SP1 update. This time, it worked flawlessly! It took about an hour and half.

Now, I am working on installing Office 2007 and other stuff. I think it is going to take couple of days to get everything restored the way it was before!!!

Microsoft Vista Service Pack 1 RC - Installation Nightmare!!!

I downloaded the service pack from MSDN this morning and kicked off the installation around 11am. It is now 3.15pm and it is still installing...

I think the installation has gone bad. I can tell because for the past 4 hours or so, it has been rebooting my notebook repeatedly. The sequence is

1. Vista starts
2. I see "Please wait..." message and then "Configuring updates..." message
3. Shutting down...
4. Step 1

When I ran the single executable, it said "it will take about one hour" but 4 hours? I am not sure how to stop this! I tried pressing F8 during boot and tried Safe mode etc. No luck yet!

Microsoft, please help!

Stockbee

Whether you are new to trading looking for a mentor or if you just want to know how someone is trading and what his strategies and methods are, then checkout Stockbee.

He is very helpful if you have any questions and his blog is one of the best trading blog. Inside you will find
awesome collection of posts on his trading methods and various interesting trading insights.

Get a membership and its worth every penny!

Slogger

Like everyone I spend hours browsing net usually researching a particular topic. Often I stumble upon good blogs or good posts which I want to save off for future reference. I didn't want to book mark them because usually they (the post contents) disappear after sometime. I don't use RSS because not all websites support RSS. So, I was looking for a good off-line browsing tool. I tried almost all the shareware/freeware crap out there but none met my needs. Some don't support sites with authentication. Some don't save the pages properly. Like broken links etc. Also they didn't have good support for organizing those links. Some were not customizable so they saved lot of crap along with the stuff I wanted. Some didn't support Java scripts. They were not able to get the pages that were pulled dynamically off of database or something.

In short, off-line browsers have lack of support for something one way or the other. Finally, I ran into Slogger
It is a Firefox extension. You can configure Slogger to save the pages you want with simple click of a button. You can control where and how it is saving the pages. You can also add "html" code to the pages when it saves. It also save the pages to furl and spurl etc. It is a awesome neat extension for Firefox! Now, if I find something interesting on the net, I just save it.

For some reason, Slogger comes with support for furl disabled. Once I can enable it, then the saved pages will go into furl so that I can access them from anywhere!

Update on StrategyDesk

I'm not getting enough free time to compile the results and post them. I guess it would have to wait...

Book for an absolute beginner

If you are completely new to trading & investing, try this book http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Stocks-Michael-Sincere/dp/0071409130/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196578168&sr=8-1

Should take only couple of hours to read but you will be introduced to basic concepts and various trading methods.

How One Pro Finds "Great Companies"

http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/oct2006/pi20061022_150988.htm?campaign_id=rss_daily

Good read! Goes with Value investing concept. Speaking of Value Investing, I'm currently reading "Margin Of Safety by Seth Klarman".

Free Guru Stock Screener

This free guru stock screener from Nasdaq lets you to screen stocks based on your favorite investing guru's strategry! That's neat!

http://www.nasdaq.com/reference/guru.stm