Update the BIOS before installing Windows 7 on a Dell Optiplex 760

I tried installing Windows 7 Enterprise x64 on a Dell Optiplex 760.  I used the Windows Media.  The installation was so slow that I didn’t let it complete.  I tried a 32bit version and there was no difference.  I did some searching online and found a comment on Microsoft’s site that updating the BIOS should work.

I was using BIOS version A02.  Updating to the latest version (A08) worked.

I then had a problem where the Windows 7 installer couldn’t see the physical hard drives.  I went into the BIOS and changed the SATA mode from its default setting to something which I don’t currently remember and it worked.  Windows detected the disk drives.

I’ve seen talk about installing the drivers and the problem goes away, but that’s not practical in manual pre-installation.

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Another day, another problem with a third party free application (iTunes)

I feel like I’m spending too much time tending to the Flash player, iTunes, and AIM’s of the world.  My company allows some of this stuff because there’s a legitimate business need.  Managing these apps have become an unnecessary time drain.

Flash player stops working on its own.  AIM threatened users with loss of service for weeks unless they upgrade.  Apple has done both of those in the past with iTunes.  Now they seem to be going for a more passive aggressive route.  They throw up an error when users try to access the iTunes store that has nothing to do with the store and with upgrading.  The only (easy and obvious) way to access the store is upgrading to the latest version.

The error is “Your request cannot be completed.  The item you’ve requested is not currently available in the US store.”  This line of BS translates to “Upgrade or Else.”  So if you find this post after hours of trying to figure out why you can’t access the iTunes store, the answer is that you must upgrade iTunes.

Error 1327.Invalid Drive: [drive letter] while installing or updating Adobe Acrobat

Another in the long list of annoying Adobe issues is the “Error 1327.Invalid Drive: [drive letter] while installing or updating Adobe Acrobat” error.  It comes up when installing Adobe Acrobat 9 or Adobe Acrobat Reader 9 or X on Windows 7 Enterprise on machines with mapped network drives.  It may also come up with other versions of Windows 7.  I don’t know if it’s an issue on machines with multiple physical or logical drives (E, F, G, etc.).

It has not been a major issue for me because I have found that installing with the local admin profile which doesn’t map drives works.  I don’t know what happens if it tries to auto-update on the profiles with mapped drives.  Users aren’t permitted to update software, so it shouldn’t be an issue there.  I also suspect that this won’t be an issue if you dump software using a tool.

Adobe has a KB article about it here.