New EJBDESK 2024

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Overview

EJBDESK is 6 years old and will not run any Microsoft OS beyond Windows 10. It is also obsolete in other ways, particularly the boot drive, which is a SATA SSD, and a 6th generation Core i5 processor with 4 cores. I am replacing it with a Lenovo S3 tower workstation that I bought through the Intel Retiree purchase plan with a pretty good discount on April 9, 2024.

Hardware

Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Tower Workstation. This is a full size tower, so there is room to add stuff

• 13th Generation Intel® Core™ i5-13500 vPro® Processor
• Memory: 2 x 16 GB DDR5-4400MHz (UDIMM)
• 2 x DataPort to HDMI dongle. My monitors have DataPort inputs, but these dongles are $25 for two, so if I don't use them, they might be handy to have on hand.
  • Update: the DataPort inputs on the monitors work fine and it is easy to switch between HDMI on the old computer and DPort on the new one during the transition.
• M.2 SSD Gen4 boot drive (1TB)
• Integrated ethernet and graphics (no extra hardware)
• No WiFi, no keyboard, no mouse.
  • Using existing Logitech keyboard and trackball
  • No need for wireless because it is a fixed machine on ethernet
• 3 in 1 card reader for camera cards ($5)
• 2 x Storage kits for installing my 4TB Raid 1 content storage.
  • Turns out I only needed one storage kit because the chassis came with one installed, including cables. I returned the extra one.

Raid Physical Move

The plan is to just move the drives. Windows should recognize them as a raid. Update: There is a function in the disk manager for rescanning the disks. I had to do this to get the system to recognize the mirrored volumes, then it went into an extended time of "resynching," presumably the check that the volumes are properly synchronized to form a raid array. Based on research, I think I was supposed to disconnect (dismount) the mirrored volumes from the original system before I moved them.

During resynch, one of the drives started with 100% utilization, so the raid was very slow. After waiting over night, the two drives are running at just over half utilization (resynch 65% done), so I was able to do a backup on the raid. Update: resynching is finished.

IP address

This machine is on 192.168.1.71 connected via ethernet

Software

• Windows 11 Pro 64

Installation Plan

• Reinstall all software I want to keep
  • Topaz tools
    • Topaz Photo AI ✔
    • Topaz DeNoise AI ✔
    • Topaz Adjust AI ✔
    • Topaz Gigapixel AI ✔
    • Topaz Studio 2 Obsolete. Subsumed by Photo AI. Not installing
    • Topaz Mask AI ✔
    • Topaz Sharpen AI ✔
    • Topaz JPEG to RAW AI ✔
  • LibreOffice ✔
  • Messenger (Meta) ✔
  • Norton 360 ✔(removed license from old machine)
  • VLC Media Player ✔
  • EPSON sCAN ✔
  • TurboTax 2023 ✔ Opened my 2023 tax return file. Everything looks OK.
  • PyCharm Community ✔
    • After installing, I needed to set up my projects and configure the tool with Python and Git. All of the stuff I work on with PyCharm is in one GitHub repository I call PycharmProjects, so importing that repository from GitHub gets me up to date. But to make that happen, I had to make sure Git for Windows and Python were fully installed and I had security set up for the new machine on GitHub. Quite a few steps and mistakes to fix along the way. Some key things: make sure the needed environment variables are set. Some are automatically set by the installers, but some I had to do manually.
    • I also had to add the pip tool for installing python library modules that get imported by my code. I also used it to install all of the modules I use.
    • Pycharm likes to have a private copy of the python interpreter for each project, and that was causing a problem with initializing the interpreter. I will solve that later. For now, I just set up the default system interpreter for the project.
    • I did manage to run my biggest python project from PyCharm, though I did not do a thorough test.
  • Python 3.12 ✔
  • Synology Drive Client ✔
  • Adobe Acrobat ✔
  • Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop (This manages all my adobe prescription stuff) ✔
  • Nikon NEF codec (for raw file thumbnail display) ✔
    • Downloaded https://downloadcenter.nikonimglib.com/en/download/sw/203.html and installed.
    • After reboot, NEF thumbnails are working.
  • iDrive (cloud backup) ✔ installed, transferred to new computer, initial backup successful
  • IrfanView ✔
  • JAlbum
  • Solidworks
  • AVS tools ✖ At least for now, I am leaving these with the old machine, which is now the new EJBSHOP. The license is for one machine, and there is not a strong need to move it to this one.
    • Audio Editor
    • Document Converter
    • Disk Creator
    • Audio Converter
    • Image Converter
    • Media Player
    • Video ReMaker
    • Video Converter
    • Photo Editor
  • Disk Drill (recover deleted files)
  • WinDirStat ✔
  • VEGAS Pro 18.0 ✔ license transferred
  • Elgato Video Capture
  • FireFox ✔
  • Chrome ✔
  • Google Drive ✔
  • UltraEdit, UltraCompare ✔ license entered
  • Oracle VM Virtualbox ✔
    • And VMs I have (VMs copied, not working windows XP is the only one I have care about, so I can run corel 8. Installed Ubuntu.)
    • Fixed the Windows XP VM after a little research. The error message was about a GUI issue and the resolution was to enable the I/0 APIC under settings->system->motherboard. This stands for Advance Programmable Interrup Controller, which allows and operating system to use more than 16 interrupt requests, thus not having to share them, which seems necessary for some old operating systems like XP.
    • Of course, I also forgot my password for Windows XP, so I had to play some games with safe mode boot and use an administrator command line to reset it. Actually much too easy...
    • I have never seen Windows XP run so fast. This is a fast machine and VirtualBox is a great VM.
  • VMware Workstation 17 Player ✔
    • I had not planned on this, but there are display problems with Ubuntu 22.04 on virtual box that they don't seem to be making progress on. Trying VMware instead, and it seems fine.
    • Note VMware was spun off by DELL into an independent company and then purchased by Broadcom. The workstation player is still free for non-commercial use.
  • Kindle reader ✔
  • BitTorrent ✔ (but no torrent source at this point. Good for torrent based downloads if needed)
  • Better File Rename ✔
    • problem with the license
    • I had a license for version 5.x, and the latest version is 6.27
    • Bought an upgrade for $9.95. It looks like the developer is keeping it up, with the latest release in 2022. License email is from Frank Reiff
  • Discord ✔ logged in through qr code on phone
  • FileZilla ✔ -- still need to add ftp server login stuff
  • Git for windows ✔
  • LinuxLive USB Creator ✖ No longer supported. Replaced with Rufus
  • Rufus ✔
    • This is an open source ISO creator tool that is currently supported. There are others, but this seems to be the first choice. I have used it before. It is installed by just copying the file and running it. I put rufus-4.4 into the c:\applications directory with a shortcut to it called just rufus
  • Perigee copy ✔ Installed and it seems to work, even though the developer states Windows 7 as the latest target OS.
  • PrivateInternetAccess ✔ installed and running. Found the dedicated IP token and enabled it. Gets ride of a lot of google search are you a robot capchas.
  • Visual Studio Code ✔ Just installed and opened. No projected use any time soon.
  • WinRar ✔ Installed latest and copied the key file from the NAS to the winrar appdata area. Even the ancient key I have works.
  • Zoom ✔
    • Installed Zoom Workplace app
    • Tested webcam video and mic plus speakers with zoom online test page
  • UPS ✔ (CyberPower Uninterruptable Power Supply) software - PowerPanel Personal
    • Done, including setting up email on power event. This was complicated and it took some time. The updated version of the software (updated since before installing this machine) makes you jump through more hoops to use gmail for this service. You have to create a password for the specific App (PowerPanel Personal) so it can log into the gmail smtp server. You also have to specify the smtp server (smtp.gmail.com) the type of secure connection and its port (TLS, 587) and add in the sender name (PowerPanel Personal,) sender email (my gmail address,) specify Authentication, and account (my gmail,) a password you get from Google (App password) to bypass two factor login, and then a receiver email address (my gmail.) Whew!

• Possible reinstalls (not on day one)
  • Folder Size Explorer
  • Autodesk tools
  • OpenShot Video Editor
  • AOMEI tools
  • Amazon Photos
  • Handbrake
  • NX Studio (raw file software)
  • InkJet printer support stuff
    • But we never use that printer, so maybe we just get rid of it...

File Transfers

There are a lot of files in my user area and on the C drive that need to be copied over. Doing this with an external ssd as a sneakernet. My main content is on the V: drive, a software RAID that I will physically move to the new computer.

• User area files:

Lots of documents going back through history. This needs to be cleaned up, but for now, I am just moving them over. Done see comments above.

Physical Swap

The old machine is connected to

• Uninterruptable power supply. Just need to unplug it and plug in the new one and connect the usb cable.
• Scanner by USB
• Powered speakers. Need to add adapter for trrs socket on new machine
• Logitech keyboard and trackball. These are wireless and (I think) share one usb dongle.
• Logitech USB webcam

These are all working. May want to add the Canon inkjet printer...

Connect network printer

• This magically already happened