How to install Service Pack 3 for Windows XP on a MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard

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This post is more of a “note to self” than anything else. I spent good part of today fighting against my MacBook Pro, trying to install Service Pack 3 for Windows XP (Bootcamp partition).

After a few hours of frustration, I found this link buried in Apple’s support site that contains a workaround.

The meat of the problem is a driver that makes HFS partitions readable in Windows, and the fact that SP3 sees them as the main partition and tries to copy SP’s files from there.

The fix is trivial, just find AppleMNT.sys, rename it to something else, restart the system, install SP3, rename the file back to the original name and the problem is solved.

Thanks Apple, now if you made the kb article a BIT easier to find, that would be awesome.

The Great Facebook Landrush That Wasn’t

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I know what everybody will think about this matter: vanity URLs are stupid, a fad and so on. I agree, but at the same time I thought it could be convenient to have a memorable URL to improve a little bit my search engine profile, right?

Well, I expected to have to go through hell and back to register mine. I even set up a reminder on my calendar, although I missed it by more than an hour because I had to stay late at work for a change.

Well, let’s just say that I never thought I would be able to register facebook.com/luca.candela and I was ready with creative alternatives; didn’t need them, so there it goes, call me lucky on that.

I must confess, I’m a little surprised.

Could it be that the landrush that everybody and their cats was talking about on the blogosphere was a tad over-hyped?

The human factor

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I live a pretty connected life: I make websites for a living, I own two computers and an iPhone (more on that in my next article). If I lose connection for more than 20 minutes, I tend to get impatient. If the problem goes on for more than an hour, I freak out (and being a Time Warner Cable captive, my life is full of drama…). Continue reading →