Cheap tires in Las Vegas?

[uncle ned]

I still get out the old kaypro   and play dugeons and dragons.   It is a cpm machine. I also can set my own parameters on my man   make him unbeatable.

uncle ned

[Sean]

OK, OK, before we all take a trip down "memory" lane (pun intended), I will explain why I need a (gasp) floppy disk.

First, though, an update:  Napa eventually got my oil and I now have two spare gallons of Rotella-40 on board, and today Ted Wiens Tire over on Blue Diamond mounted up a pair of Michelin XDN Grip take-offs on my tag.  I really would have preferred rib tires to these traction items, but they were literally the only two take-offs from here to Holbrook.  They were also five years old (1204 date code), and show some weather checking on the sidewalls.  But they looked to be in good shape, and had perhaps 25% tread left, which is good, considering the Firestone FS560s they replaced can now used as racing slicks -- I will try to post a photo on the blog tonight or tomorrow.  They ought to tide me over until the steers wear down some, at which point I will move the steers to the tag and put fresh rubber up front (the steers were just replaced a few months ago, and have barely 6,000 miles on them, so I was definitely not ready to consign them to tag duty just yet).  Best of all, the whole thing only set me back $350, with tax and mounting.

So, about that floppy:  My computer crapped out a few days ago, and I am trying to recover it without reinstalling Windows from scratch, which would be a lengthy and painful process considering how much other stuff I would have to reinstall.  It is a laptop with a CD/DVD drive and a 500GB SATA hard drive -- no floppy, of course.

All the files are on the hard drive, and the drive checks out, but Windows will not boot, even in "safe mode."  It hangs after the splash screen, at shell load time.  I know the hardware is good, because I was able to boot it right up after reinstalling an old hard drive that I had removed from the machine many moons ago when I upgraded it.  In fact, I am typing on it now.

The very next step in the troubleshooting process now is to launch the "Recovery Console," which is a challenge when you don't have a Windows CD (Windows was pre-installed, and all I have are recovery disks that would erase the hard drive and restore the machine to it's original state).  However, using stone knives and bear skins, I was able to create a bootable Recovery Console CD.  That's great, except that bootable CD's, whether they are just a recovery console or an entire Windows CD, can not detect SATA hard drives, only IDE.

In order for the recovery console to access the hard drive, one needs to press F6 at a certain point in the boot sequence, at which time the system will prompt you to insert a FLOPPY DISK with the appropriate drivers for your hard drive controller.  And Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom, has made it such that only a floppy disk in the A: drive will work -- you can't use a CD, USB Drive, or anything else.  They might as well have insisted on paper tape.

In any case, I have a USB floppy drive which I can attach to the machine, and I have the hard disk controller drivers ready to load, and I am hoping that the Recovery Console CD will detect the USB floppy and allow me to load the darn drivers and make progress on this problem.

Fortunately, we finally met up with Van today and his lovely wife, and he brought me a handful of the relics.  Tonight I will load the drivers up and give 'er a shot.  BTW, we had a nice visit with them, and chatted for well over an hour at the Welcome Center right there in Boulder city before we headed over the dam.

-Sean
http://OurOdyssey.BlogSpot.com

[Busted Knuckle]

Fortunately, we finally met up with Van today and his lovely wife, and he brought me a handful of the relics.  Tonight I will load the drivers up and give 'er a shot.  BTW, we had a nice visit with them, and chatted for well over an hour at the Welcome Center right there in Boulder city before we headed over the dam.
-Sean
http://OurOdyssey.BlogSpot.com

I sure hope ya meant across the dam, not over!
  BK 

[oldmansax]

Sean,

You probably know this but you can use Nlite to slipstream your SATA drivers into whatever boot disk you are using so that it loads the drivers automatically. I had to do the same thing a couple of years ago for a server recovery. I don't remember enough of how to give you a step by step but can probably recall enough to really screw it up with Googles help.

Nlite site is here:

http://www.nliteos.com/

PS: It's not that hard but don't tell anybody. I make my living doing this   


Have fun!

TOM

[Sean]

You probably know this but you can use Nlite to slipstream your SATA drivers into whatever boot disk you are using  ...

Actually, nLite requires you to start with an actual Windows installation disk (or image).  The way I made the recovery console CD, nLite will not recognize it as such, and refuses to go any farther -- I tried.  That said, if the F6 trick does not work, my next step will be to recreate, from first principles, an XP install disk using only the already-installed files on my machine.  That's a pretty long process in and of itself.  Once I have a real install disk, I can then use nLite to slipstream the SATA drivers.  (When faced with this, I decided that finding a floppy to try was an easier first step.)

-Sean
http://OurOdyssey.BlogSpot.com

[johns4104s]

Just what is the diffrence besides size between 11R22.5 and 12R22.5 is the 11 an 12 the width?? Are the 12r,s better, why? Are they more expensive, My MCI 9 came with the 12R,

Thanks

John

[belfert]

The 12s should have more weight capacity.  Weigh each of your axles and determine if you need the extra capacity or can go with an 11.  I don't know if a 11 will fit on the same wheel as a 12.

[Sean]

Just what is the diffrence besides size between 11R22.5 and 12R22.5 is the 11 an 12 the width?? Are the 12r,s better, why? Are they more expensive, My MCI 9 came with the 12R,

John,

These are entirely different tires.  Yes, the "11" or "12" is a "nominal width," but that actually defines other dimensional aspects of the tire as well.  So an 11R22.5 will not only be narrower than a 12R22.5, but it will also have a smaller diameter.  This would lower the ride height, as well as reduce your speed for any given rpm in any gear.  Your speedo would need to be recalibrated, and it would also lower your top speed.

More importantly, as Brian wrote, the load capacity of an 11R22.5 is much lower than a 12R22.5, which is one of the reasons for the price difference.  The 12R, in addition to simply having more material overall, will have heavier belts and sidewalls to handle the additional load.

Lastly, while most 12R22.5 tires can be fitted to either 8.25" or 9" rims, most 11R22.5 tires can only be fitted on 8.25" rims, so it would be important for you to know which width rims you have on your coach before making a switch.

-Sean
http://OurOdyssey.BlogSpot.com

[Sean]

... considering the Firestone FS560s they replaced can now used as racing slicks -- I will try to post a photo on the blog tonight or tomorrow. ...

OK, photos of the bald tires are up on the blog, here:
http://ourodyssey.blogspot.com/2009/08/ahhh-cool-at-last.html

PS: It's not that hard but don't tell anybody. I make my living doing this   

Tom -- well, the F6/diskette thing worked like a champ, and I got the Recovery Console loaded, but that still did not solve my problem.  If you are feeling charitable and want to give me some free advice, the gory details of the problem and where I am at with it are here:
http://ourodyssey.blogspot.com/2009/08/seeking-reader-assistance-xp-gurus.html

I'll take any help I can get

-Sean
http://OurOdyssey.BlogSpot.com

[HighTechRedneck]

Sean, those symptoms sound a lot like a situation I once had under XP Pro.  The file explorer.exe became corrupted.  The byte size was correct and the file attributes were correct and there were no problems related by any of the trouble shooting you mentioned. But I found a tip that said to replace it with a clean copy of it.  So I tried it and that did the trick.

hth

[johns4104s]

Sean, That sure is bald, was the other tire identical? How long had they been on the tags?

John

[Sean]

Sean, That sure is bald, was the other tire identical? How long had they been on the tags?

The last photo shows both tires.

One of them had perhaps 40,000 miles on it -- we replaced both as a set with brand new Firestones in October of '07.  That would be the bald one, which was on the undamaged side of the axle.  The other one has unknown mileage -- the bent wishbone on the right side of the tag ate the brand new tire in just 15 months, which would be about 25,000 miles.  We had it replaced in January of this year with a take-off from a fire apparatus; an identical Firestone FS560 to the one it replaced.  We had the bent wishbone replaced in February.

Sean, those symptoms sound a lot like a situation I once had under XP Pro.  The file explorer.exe became corrupted.  The byte size was correct and the file attributes were correct and there were no problems related by any of the trouble shooting you mentioned.

Thanks.  Explorer.exe was the very first thing I looked at, since it is the default "shell" program and it looked to me like things were hanging at shell load.  However, it was fine, with an identical MD5 hash to the working one on the other drive.

That said, I have made more progress.  Using a free utility from Microsoft called WinDiff, I found several corrupt DLL's, including the event logger, which starts up just a little before the shell.  By restoring those, I was able to boot into Safe Mode last night, but something is still not right and I could not get the System File Checker to run.  I found another pair of corrupt DLLs this morning and will be trying again in just a few minutes.

-Sean
http://OurOdyssey.BlogSpot.com