Productive weekend

Some of you may have noticed earlier today, the 3.50 tips page mysteriously changed to “3.60 tips????”  In all honestly I am not completely satisfied with the release but we’ve been working on it for too long.  I think we were trying to do too much and it was driving me crazy.  So earlier today I quietly pulled the trigger and announced the release on our Burrows Solutions Support Forum.

I am probably going to hear a lot of complaints too because I did not have the time to even do 1/4 of the work that is necessary when we release a new version.  I haven’t even announced it on our UBCD4Win site yet!!  The pages there haven’t been updated at all either.  I hope to contact our mirrors tomorrow and get them all on board with the new release and over the next few days get the UBCD4Win site updated.  Over time (after questions are asked and/or problems are found) the “3.60 tips” page here on my blog will gain more content and evolve into a great resource for 3.60.  Hopefully better than the 3.50 tip page?

I want to thank everyone that pre-ordered 3.60 for their patience.  I apologize for not being accurate with my predicted release dates.  All of your orders are out at the post office tonight, so they will start their journey to you tomorrow.  Anyone else interested in ordering, go ahead I have many ready for shipping.

It has been a long weekend and it is getting late so for now, I must go.  I thought we were supposed to rest over the weekend so we are ready for another hard week at work?  If that is how it’s supposed to work…..then damn, it’s gonna be a long week!  For now, to download 3.60 check out my post here in the Burrows Solutions Support Forum:
http://burrowssolutions.com/forum/index.php?/topic/11519-here-is-ubcd4win-360/

Podcast

Another update for today.  This afternoon I was invited to a “Great Tech Debate” at the last minute.  About 2 years ago I did an interview with Steve and it was fun.  This time there were 5 of us and we were debating topics, it was even more fun than last time.  I will have to find the time to do it again!  It was live a few hours ago.  I don’t know how long it takes him to get the podcast up for people to download and listen to.  I am happy to report that I don’t think that I personally caused any possible reasons for him to have to edit it?  Check out his site, I highly recommend it.  He is a smart guy and has a lot of great information in his Podcasts and on his site.  He is also the author of some great Laptop Repair Videos that I highly recommend and try to help promote:
Check out his videos here: link to my Repair Video discussion
Check out his site here: PodNutz official site

Thank you for your time. I hope you enjoy the Podcast we did, find good information on his site, and find his Videos to be helpful.

UBCD4Win updates

Everyone is always asking questions and emailing me and all kinds of stuff.  Every time I think I have time to get beta #3 rolled out something has to happen to ruin that.  Saturday the puppies came so I was distracted.  Tonight I planned on it but a buddy came over and I had to burn some CDs for him and visit, he is usually out of town a lot.  I always seem to have so much on my plate and I know I will be so relieved when 3.60 is finally released.  Work keeps me busy, side repairs keep me busy, family, and everything else.  Fighting with HP tonight was no fun neither.  I’m starting to get a little pissed about my DV9000.  I spent way too much money on that nice laptop almost two years ago for it to be dying now!!  Evidently they do not feel that my problem is related to the motherboard or GPU so they are refusing to repair it.  I have only tried chatting with them so far and plan more of an attack on them.  I don’t understand why no one started a class action lawsuit about this??  I still have about a month on the supposed additional year of warranty but they refuse to honor it??  This is not going to happen.  They will replace my motherboard.  Well ok maybe not?  I don’t know what to think anymore.  I really like their laptops and past customer service was pretty darn good, but I’m a bit pissed right now.  I expect a $1200 laptop to last at least 2 years!!  Plus I was stupid and went out and purchased a new laptop this weekend.  It was a killer price though for another 17″ laptop, just with less processor and features when compared to my other.  With my SSD though, it is doing just fine with it’s lower speed Core 2 Duo processor.  This new laptop screws up my building and testing abilities with UBCD4Win because for some stupid reason this model doesn’t have a spot for a second HDD?  I’m using an external to help me with testing though since my SSD is pretty well full.

UBCD4Win updates are coming.  A few time over the last few weeks I had been promising to hopefully get a public beta out but other stuff always squash my plans.  I hope you all can understand that paying jobs have priority over free stuff.  So I am really hoping to get some free time over the next few days so we can get the next beta tested and then hopefully get it out for all of you to test.  Keep an eye here and over at our Burrows Solutions Forum, news should be posted this week somewhere!

UBCD4Win, UBCD, and hosting updates

We have a lot to cover so here it goes.  Yesterday I attempted to put an update on the beta testing for UBCD4Win and talk about the new UBCD 5.0.1 release.  Because of yet another (but final) hosting move that post was lost.  Of course I wasn’t smart enough to copy and paste so I could have a back up of it, but oh well.

UBCD4Win Beta news, we are closer to a release.  Our beta testers have been doing a pretty good job so far and I must honestly say the delays have been my fault.  I have not been able to dedicate enough time to watching the comments, applying fixes, and releasing new betas for them to test.  We should have probably had it released by now but like always I have been busy.  So here is the plan.  I hope to be able to get the next beta out to the testers within the next day or two.  After a few days of testing I will probably open up the testing to the public, kinda like a Release Candidate.  I’m hoping very few problems or errors are reported so that then after a few more days we can make the release official.  So I’m hoping we can have this finished up within the next week or two.  Right now on my Burrows Solution site 3.52 is no longer available for sale and there is a 3.60 version with a “preorder” status.  If you are interested in getting the new version right when it comes out then feel free to place an order, but with the understanding that it probably won’t ship for at least a week.

UBCD 5.0.1 has been released!  Yesterday I announced that 5.0 was released and between that time and the propagation to the new IP address we had a comment from one of my readers.  I was initially embarrassed because it took me 10 days to notice that 5.0 was released and then the comment yesterday let me know that 5.0.1 was released 3 days ago.  I can’t remember who it was, but I thank you.  I have a few of the old version and RC1 on my shelf and I hate to throw them away, so I’ve marked them down below cost to at least try to find them a good home.  Check out my Burrows Solutions site and place an order if you would like the latest version or want to pick up an older version for a friend or something.

Hosting donation rally is over!  A huge thanks to everyone that helped us reach our goal.  I apologize for not being more vocal with updates but I think you understand.  This donation rally was a bit strange but still successful, it just seemed to drag on longer than usual?  I think I had mentioned before that I was pretty sure that it was because it has been quite a while since we released a new version.  As always though, we do have other costs and fees throughout the year.  So if you didn’t get here in time, you can always still donate.  The money you send us is always used responsibly for costs for the site, software fees, rare hardware fees or needs, future ideas , and an occasional six pack of beer!  Thank you all so much because with out your help and support we would not have made these 6 years and counting!

Sorry, support forums are down

Well a strike of bad news this morning.  I had called our hosting company earlier this week and evidently the person I spoke with did not know what he was talking about.  I was under the impression that our resource usage was down to an acceptable level and that we had more time.  They did give me 2 weeks to correct the high usage but that time is up tomorrow.  I have checked many log files and tried a lot of different things to make sure that a glitch was causing the high usage.  Since none of that worked I started the donation rally earlier this week and I though we had several weeks to work with.  I was wrong and had to go to drastic measures.  I received the “immediate action” email just a little while ago and had to make some hard decisions.

This morning I took both of our support forums down.  Luckily I am able to at least keep access for the beta testers in our new forum so we can still work on the 3.60 release.  Please understand that this is NOT a tactic to try and get more donations.  This was NOT an easy decision.  I just hope that it buys us more time to get more donations to pay for the new dedicated server.  Thank you very much for understanding, your past donations, and your future donations.  Hopefully the forums will be back up soon and we can soon release 3.60.  If you haven’t donated yet, please consider doing so:

**Donation button removed 5/26/10, rally was successful THANK YOU! Donations are needed all year long so if you still want to donate please visit: http://www.ubcd4win.com/donations.htm

UBCD4Win hosting woes….please donate

Well it is almost that time of the year.  Time for us to ask all of you to please dig into your wallet and send us a little money to help us keep our sites up.  Last year was a bit messy because I had the months mixed up so it was close to an emergency.  You all came through though and it was good.  I was going to wait until later next month before starting a new donation rally however there is a new need.  Over the last several weeks the UBCD4Win domain has been putting a lot of stress on our server.  It has gotten so bad that the hosting company is requiring us to update to a better and more expensive server.

I really wanted to get 3.60 released before we started asking for money, mostly because then there would be a better reason for you to donate.  However, things always have to pop up and put us in an emergency situation.

So please donate as much as you can afford to help us keep everything up.  As always I will be tracking the donations and will close up the rally as soon as we meet our goal.  Thank you very much for your support!

**Donation button removed 5/26/10, rally was successful THANK YOU! Donations are needed all year long so if you still want to donate please visit: http://www.ubcd4win.com/donations.htm

Let the testing begin!!

First, if I have not responded to your email yet I might find the time tonight.  For the people that have already been allowed to enter our inner circle, testing is on!  I released to them the first beta which I actually call an Alpha this time because I’m pretty sure I screwed up a bunch of stuff.  Hopefully we can continue to refine and fix up the build over the next several weeks to then get an official release out there for everyone to enjoy.

I will honestly be a little distracted over the next few days because I received my Aluratek Libre eReader today.  So I will be reading a few things I’ve put off over the past year and checking out the features on this thing.  It is not the most feature packed device but I honestly only really need it for reading.  I also bought it at a really kick ass price so I shouldn’t regret the purchase.  Only bad thing about it is the wife will probably want one now.  I don’t know how well we are going to be able to share it???

Want to beta test UBCD4Win 3.60?

I’ve been wanting to get 3.60 of UBCD4Win released for quite some time now.  There have been a lot of updates in the last year since the last UBCD4Win release and I want to do as much as possible to avoid 3.61 and/or 3.62 releases.  I should be putting out the first beta within 2 days but I want to be prepared so I want to recruit some new beta testers now.

Beta testing guidelines:

• Will you have some free time to test over the next several weeks?
• No distribution of the files or discs.  This is a beta and is not yet meant for public consumption.  So please do not give it to all of your buddies and put it up on torrents.
• No public discussion, reviews, or similar about the betas.
• You must register in our new Burrows Solutions forum, that is where the discussions will be.
• Probably a few other minor things, we’ll discuss it more later.

So if you have some free time and enjoy being abused, shoot me an email and we will consider you for beta testing.

UBUSB, what is it?

I think that very few of our users know and/or pay much attention to what we include in UBCD4Win?  I will admit that part of this is my fault because I honestly do not always have the time to put up all the proper documentation on our website.  UBUSB.exe has been included in UBCD4Win for at least a year now and has been actively developed in our support forum.  I will say that Tom has done an excellent job with the tool and it works pretty well.  However because of the lack of me being able to update the UBCD4Win site in a timely manner and sometimes not having all the information I need for it I think very few people have really used UBUSB.  Very few of our users utilize our support forum anyways.

So I am happy and proud to help Tom announce the latest build of UBUSB!  It is still technically a beta but we need your help testing it more and making sure it is stable.  A really cool and nice compatibility that he has been able to work into it is that it will work with Windows 7 to a certain degree.  It does not have full Win7 support, but the tool will run and create your bootable USB drive while you are in the “XP Compatibility mode.”  All you have to do is attach it to the VM and it will work.  He does promise better support for Vista and Win7 but only in 32bit versions.  We need to do more testing with that.

If you are interested in having a bootable USB version of UBCD4Win, I highly suggest you check out the post in our forum here:
http://ubcd4win.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=11375&view=findpost&p=79840
In that announcement you will find some information, instructions, and download links for the tool. Please test it out and let us know what you think and if you happen to run into any problems.

UBCD4Win and UBDVD updates

We have all been busy, either with work or family or even deep in development testing.  I honestly haven’t had much time to do much of anything except work and spend a little time with my family.  We will however have a 3.60 version of UBCD4Win going into beta testing soon and hope to have that released before Christmas.  I’m pretty excited because John and Tom are making good progress with our new Ultimate Boot DVD project.  There will be a lot of really cool stuff with that DVD and with that we will be launching a new forum for support.  Since we have several ideas in the making it’s silly to create a forum at every domain to support each one.  After all these years I now feel that it would be a good idea to have one central forum for support on all the projects we have created over the years.  That should be launching within the next few months.  Once we have that running good then we should have a UBDVD4Win7 almost finished up and then we will launch that.  I have talked a lot about that over the last year but progress has been slow on its development.  I really hope we can launch that within the next 6-9 months.

So, there are a lot of exciting things going on and I highly encourage you to visit us here to get the latest news.  I will be giving updates on a regular basis.