Today I am really pissed off. That's the reason for my blog entry. I am trying to come down by writing what happened.

I am owner of a Lenovo Thinkpad X200 Tablet since nearly 1 year now. Until a few weeks ago I used this notebook exclusively with linux. Now I need windows for a special CAD software. As Windows XP seams to be to old for a fresh install (10 years is definitely more than a generation when it comes to operation systems ) I decided to use Windows 7 - especially because it got some good reviews.

In short: "I could never run windows 7 longer then 15 minutes until getting a blue screen".

• At first I started to test the RAM modules with memtest86+ - and - what should I say - memtest86+ showed me a lot of memory errors. This problem was only reproducable with two memory modules installed. It was quite strange for me, because I never had any problems with linux. Afterwards I greped threw my log files in linux - and there were indeed some kernel traces reporting memory errors but I never had a dead lock or any stability issues

• My first call at lenovo support. They told me to put out all memory modules and wait for system board beep code. After a few other in and out of memory modules I wasn't able to reproduce the memory errors any longer. That was a bad situation because lenovo expected me to reproduce the problem with a "PC Doctor" version they gave me.

• Because of the fact that I wasn't able to reproduce the memory errors in "PC Doctor" they ordered a minidump file from me. I sent them the minidump file and the first response was that this is a windows issue. I couldn't believe that because the memory faults happened in different OS parts introduced by different applications.

• I downloaded the debugging tools from microsoft and started to debug the core dumps. The reason for the dumps was not reproducible either - some times windows crashed inside the ntfs.sys and sometimes even deeper in the memory subsystem.

• I tried to communicate my understanding of problems which led to the situation that they ordered more minidump files - which of course - I sent to lenovo.

• Today they called back and the final resume was: "Your windows license is not legal" ... heeeee???? That's an activated windows 7 enterprise installation licensed by TU Graz. The only advice they could gave was: "Reinstall windows." This was the point I nearly freaked out! What should be the difference after a reinstal.

• But you want believe it - I really reinstalled the windows 7 64 bit with a windows 7 32 bit version. The only problem is: "nothing changed!"

What should I do now? Of course I can use the PC with linux but ATM I would need windows. The next problem is that I am no longer sure about the reason for my problems. Is windows or my hardware the reason?

Today it happened. I worked 2 hours on gentoo despite the fact that I wanted to leave gentoo. Due to some changes in ebase.eclass stable ebuilds where affected by new bugs. I fixed these issues as it looked like that nobody else would fix it. I don't really know how I can get out of gentoo without leaving the whole kerberos stuff unmaintained. Suggestions are welcome!

After a while I finally had the time to write a little summary about my last Project - AHP GSM Communictaion. Hopefully I'll find the time to expand the description and put some pictures in it.