Blog | OSX | mechdrew

When I moved two weeks ago, I didn’t anticipate how busy I would be afterward. With a rigorous school schedule and early-morning work duties, my free time has been occupied with homework and inadequate sleep. I’ve maybe spent a total of ten minutes on MyDellMini during that time.

As such, my inbox has steadily filled, and the comments here have gone unanswered. I’m really sorry about that, but I have finally caught up on a few things so I should be able to complete them by the end of the week.

On a final note, I have seen a few message subjects about the NBI 2 guide. I’ll answer them still, but really everyone should be trying all three methods for Windows, not just one. There are three posted because no single method works for everyone.

It had better work for everyone this time.

dylar at MyDellMini pointed me to Image Writer, which is way better than the dd command that I’ve been using in the guide forever. Plus, it shortened down the instructions quite a bit. Since the whole Windows section has changed, you’ll want to reread it through if you were having trouble before. And as always, leave a comment or send a message about how it worked.

If you’re trying to use the NBI 2 guide, wait. dylar over at MyDellMini gave me the single best recommendation I have seen from anyone in a while. It’s a program that will make the whole process a lot easier and is almost foolproof. Update: Looks like it has to wait until tomorrow. Sorry for the wait. If you think you can use it properly, you can give the software a try: http://bit.ly/Mv4Sq

Title says it all. Turns out that the previous version’s instructions (which were deleted in the last update) weren’t completely inaccurate, they just needed some additions! I can verify that the files DO work, so there is nothing wrong with the guide itself. I still need to investigate the Linux side, but everything else should be just fine.

Please make sure to follow every warning and detail, and PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not attempt to contact me if you are using a dowloaded/torrented/pirated/illegitimate version of Mac OS X, it wastes time for both of us and I will eventually find out since they don’t work with my guides.

I’ve never used Twitter before, but I’ve seen others’ accounts and it looks like the perfect thing to keep people updating on stuff like this whole NBI 2 fiasco. I’ll update Twitter whenever I feel like posting a note rather than a complete blog post. You can find the latest fifteen tweets and a link to the account on the right side of this page.

At long last, I’m done updating the main guides. This is the quickest I have been able to update all of the guides, but that’s because I spent most of my time this evening focused solely on completing them.

The big update for the NBI 2 is a flat image based on NetbookInstaller 0.8.3 Final. I’ve also changed the Windows instructions so that all three major versions (XP, Vista, 7) use the same instructions. I found a bunch of errors throughout as well during the process. I had to remove the Windows screenshots because they were horribly inaccurate with the new instructions, I will try to upload new ones in the next few days.

So that should be it, besides adapting the updates for the MyDellMini Guides section.

In preparation for updating the NBI 2 and NBI 3 guides, I am currently uploading NetbookCD and a flat image of the Chameleon bootloader from the NetbookInstaller 0.8.3 Final release. For some reason my server is exceptionally slow at uploading (it certainly isn’t my connection) so it’s going to take a while. But I figured I would at least inform everyone that I do have those working and am updating the guides as well to correspond to the new information. The new guides should be up by tomorrow somewhere around 12 PM MST.

After a lot of feedback from several users, I have updated to guide with more accurate information. The NCD ISO has been done away with in favor of an actual USB disk image, which is more compatible. Also, Tiger instructions have received a necessary addition concerning the partition of the larger USB drive, and Windows received an important note about Windows 7 issues. Let me know if there are any more nagging problems still lurking around!

Several people have reported problems with Windows 7 and the dd tool used in the NBI2 guide. As I was replying to e-mail, an interesting idea was proposed: is Windows 7 64-bit the issue? I don’t know if dd was meant to work on 64-bit machines, or if it is just Windows 7. So if anyone who has had issues could report back with the error code and their version of Win7 (32 or 64-bit) by leaving a comment, it would be appreciated.

Since a few people were having a hard time understanding the written instructions, I added a few screenshots of the dd process. I took them from virtual machines running in Sun’s VirtualBox but the process will be similar on a real computer.