Weak Product, Bad Design

Received with Bulbs Bumping Around Loose in Box

Purchased the product on eBay to replace burnt out bulbs. The package came pretty fast. I heard something knocking around inside. I opened the padded envelope, took out the box and saw the bulbs running loose in it.

The plastic piece in the box is obviously designed to hold the bulbs in place for transportation. But it is not doing the job. I actually spend a couple of minutes trying to figure out if the bulbs could be put in the holder. I finally give up as it seems that the bulbs simply would not fit.

From the packaging, I am sure that this is not the only box that went out with the product jumping around inside. I do not know if that could damage the bulbs or shorten their lives in anyway. But I am positive that the manufacturer does not want the bulbs running loose, as otherwise they would not need the holder and save a penny with the packaging and transportation.

I installed the bulbs and turned on the low beam. I was not sure if I messed up or something since there seemed to be no light coming out of the headlights -- Only did I see the lights when I stepped right in front of car. The light was bright white, but not as much as I expected.

All in all, I have to say I am less than impressed by the product so far. It seems to be much weaker than advertised. I will have to wait for a drive out in the dark to get a real feeling of how the bulbs work.

VirtualBox Raw Disk Access Problem on Windows 7

For quite a while I have enjoyed running a guest Mint Linux virtual machine on a laptop that must run Windows 7: I pulled out the PC's SATA CD/DVD drive and put a second SSD in its place. To run a VM from a raw disk, VirtualBox has to be manually configured to do that and it must be run as Administrator in Windows.

All that was well, although not without a few kinks I considered minor, until this morning. All of a sudden, I got a dialog box from VirtualBox saying that it failed to start due to permission issues. Here is a list of relevant messages I've copied from the log file, which should read better than the small dialog box:

00:00:01.774460 VDInit finished
00:00:01.775010 AIOMgr: Endpoint for file 'D:\MEMEME\vbox\mint.vmdk' (flags 00040723) created successfully
00:00:01.775716 AIOMgr: Endpoint for file 'D:\MEMEME\vbox\mint.vmdk' (flags 00040781) created successfully
00:00:01.775867 AIOMgr: Endpoint for file '\\.\PhysicalDrive1' (flags 000c0781) created successfully
00:00:01.775885 VMSetError: D:\tinderbox\win-4.3\src\VBox\Devices\Storage\DrvVD.cpp(3061) int __cdecl drvvdConstruct(struct PDMDRVINS *,struct CFGMNODE *,unsigned int); rc=VERR_VD_IMAGE_READ_ONLY
00:00:01.775911 VMSetError: Failed to open image 'D:\MEMEME\vbox\mint.vmdk' for writing due to wrong permissions
00:00:01.775923 VD: Opening the disk took 1593453 ns
00:00:01.776149 VMSetError: D:\tinderbox\win-4.3\src\VBox\Devices\Storage\DrvBlock.cpp(1077) int __cdecl drvblockConstruct(struct PDMDRVINS *,struct CFGMNODE *,unsigned int); rc=VERR_VD_IMAGE_READ_ONLY
00:00:01.776153 VMSetError: Failed to attach driver below us! Image is read-only.
00:00:01.776169 VMSetError: D:\tinderbox\win-4.3\src\VBox\Devices\Storage\DevAHCI.cpp(8450) int __cdecl ahciR3Construct(struct PDMDEVINS *,int,struct CFGMNODE *); rc=VERR_VD_IMAGE_READ_ONLY
00:00:01.776171 VMSetError: AHCI: Failed to attach drive to Port0
00:00:01.776180 PDM: Failed to construct 'ahci'/0! VERR_VD_IMAGE_READ_ONLY (-3205) - Image is read-only.
00:00:01.910243 ERROR [COM]: aRC=E_FAIL (0x80004005) aIID={8ab7c520-2442-4b66-8d74-4ff1e195d2b6} aComponent={Console} aText={Failed to open image 'D:\MEMEME\vbox\mint.vmdk' for writing due to wrong permissions (VERR_VD_IMAGE_READ_ONLY).
00:00:01.910298 Failed to attach driver below us! Image is read-only. (VERR_VD_IMAGE_READ_ONLY).
00:00:01.910299 AHCI: Failed to attach drive to Port0 (VERR_VD_IMAGE_READ_ONLY)}, preserve=false
00:00:01.927049 Power up failed (vrc=VERR_VD_IMAGE_READ_ONLY, rc=E_FAIL (0X80004005))
00:00:02.011279 UIMachineLogicFullscreen::maybeAdjustGuestScreenSizeOpenGL Error: Render SPU: (MakeCurrent) failed to make 0xe00112d5, 0x10000 current with 0x6 error.

I have checked the permissions on the "mint.vmdk" file, both my account and the local Administrators group had full control on the file. So that couldn't have been the file with read-only permission causing this indigestion.

I have also run DISKPART and checked that the disk was not set to READ-ONLY.

I have discarded my saved image and tried to start the VM from a clean state. All to no avail.

I am trying to fix this problem, but thought I may be able to get some help from the community by posting it to the VirtualBox forum.

[EDIT 2014-12-02]:Upgraded to VirtualBox 4.3.20. The problem persists. My suspicion of DDP|E grows deeper.

[EDIT 2014-11-25]: No progress on this issue. Sent email to Credent support (DDP|E was purchased from Credent, I guess.) Falling back to boot Linux on the laptop.

[EDIT 2014-11-23]: From every troubleshooting I could think of, it seems that the disk is held by some process that prevents VirtualBox from being able to write to it.

C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox>.\VBoxManage.exe internalcommands
listpartitions -rawdisk \\.\PhysicalDrive1
VBoxManage.exe: error: Cannot open the raw disk: VERR_SHARING_VIOLATION

C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox>.\VBoxManage.exe internalcommands
listpartitions -rawdisk \\.\PhysicalDrive2
Number  Type   StartCHS       EndCHS      Size (MiB)  Start (Sect)
1       0x07  0   /130/3   1023/254/63        122747         8192

From the SystemInternals Process Explorer, it seems that the Dell Data Protection's CmgShieldSvc.exe process is the most suspicious.

[EDIT 2015-05-08]: The issue is resolved in the latest DDP|E release --- kudos to our Windows image team and their working with the Dell (Credent) engineers.

Come On! USPS!!

The US Postal Services has been losing money for years and years. It seems to they just can shake the bad karma.

I am trying to send a flat-rate first class package. I remember I could fill out the forms and print shipping labels online. So online I went.

I registered a personal account -- I want to support the government, I do, then filled out forms, and here is what I got:

We're Sorry

We're sorry

Our system is experiencing problems. Please try again later.

I think I am probably the one feeling sorry: It seems that they are reenforcing people's perception that the USPS can't do anything right. They seem to be letting someone else' incompetence drag them down the drain.

To all those who say The government is the problem, my suggestion is that they need to take a course in basic logic. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that the government doesn't have problems -- It's just that we all do. With regard to problems in the government, like the one shown in the screen shot above, the problem is not the government. The government doesn't know how to build a website. In this case, I don't really blame the USPS. I would rather see whomever contracted to build this website gets exposed. I would like to see every contractor's name printed on every government website ever built, so we the people can get to know who those idiots are: They seem to have no problem taking the money from the government, the tax payers' government and the tax payers' money, but they seem to lack the basic decency of trying to do the job.

So, how about that, the USPS? Whoever built this broken website, print the names of the contractors, the company, the project manager, the project team leads, on the website, so they can take pride in what they have done with our money.