You pop in your Linux installer or live CD, go to boot up, and you get this stupid msi quirk detected error. Booting hangs. Ain’t nobody got time for dat.

You can sort through your bios, unplug everything from your motherboard, and try hacking some crap, but there might be an easier fix.

Look in your BIOS for “Legacy USB” support. Disable it. Reboot. Viola!

Yes, it’s working. I have no idea if data is working or not, but frankly I don’t care. I started with a Droid Bionic that was running the stock Verizon ICS build. I did not use the automatic update installer, but instead found the .zip file and installed it via recovery mode. If you’re running out of hope as I was after 1.5+ hrs of looking for answers, have hope! The solution for me was too easy.

1. Download the OTA update file onto an external SD card (micro SD)
2. Flash new rom in recovery mode
   • Power off
   • Hold up and down volume, power on
   • Choose recovery
   • When the broken android shows up, hit the up and down key again
   • Install update from external sdcard
   • Choose the zip file of the OTA update
   • Wait forever
3. Install motorola drivers from their website. Reboot phone into BP tools mode (same as recovery, above, except last option)
4. Connect phone to computer. Add COM port for whatever your QC Diag port is. (Check Device Profile if you need to)
5. Bust out QPST and connect to phone
6. Under 1x/HDR security tab, set R-UIM to NV-Only. Write.
7. Under CDMA Tab, under Phone Number type your number into IMSI_S box. Write.
8. Literally, that’s all it took for me to do.

I never found a way to get *228 to work on jb, despite lots of searching and failed odd attempts. Thankfully, since my phone was already activated on ICS, it didn’t ask to activate at all–I just had to manually set the phone number because OTA programming couldn’t do it for me.

This is very YMMV, and if you have questions I almost undoubtedly won’t be able to answer them. Good luck, but there is hope!

Stuck trying to get your doggone USB key to boot so you can install Windows 7 on your new Series 9 Ultrabook? Have no fear!

It was way harder to figure out how to do this on my 900X3D, so I figured I’d write it up and save you the hassle.

1. If you haven’t already, set up your USB key to install Windows from.
2. Reboot your computer, HOLDING DOWN the F2 key. Don’t try to mash it, you’re not quick enough.
3. In your advanced tab, make sure that Fast Boot is disabled.
4. Set your boot device priority to boot from your USB key first.
5. It may also help to select the SSD and hit Shift + 1 to keep it from booting to that.
6. In your boot tab, disable “Secure Boot”.
7. For the OS Type, choose CMS.
8. F10 to Save and Exit.

Your computer will boot into your installer. I wiped all the existing partitions before installing, since I don’t want some joker accidentally restoring Windows 8 to this machine. After installation, you can restore the SSD to be your first boot device and turn fast boot back on. Leave the Secure Boot and CSM options alone.

Enjoy!

Sometimes pop culture grabs on to something that I just find so annoying or ridiculous that I can’t help but point them out. Why? Because people often get suckered into doing things that make them look rather foolish, all the while thinking they’re cool, or not having a clue how to fix it.

Case in point: the automatic advertisement posted at the end of all your emails that says:
“Sent from my Apple iPhone”
“Sent from my Apple iPad”
“Sent from my Asus Pad”
“Sent from my Android Phone”
“Sent from my 4G LTE HTC Incredible Smartphone with Google Android and Haptic Feedback technology enhanced by Verizon’s Next Generation network”
“Sent from my TRSDOS-80″

Now I know that you may want all your friends to think you’re cool because you have an iPhone, but that email signature does not accomplish such a goal. When your email program shamelessly broadcasts that fact to every family member, friend, acquaintance, business contact, or stranger you email, it screams “PRETENTIOUS JERK.” We don’t care that you have the same smartphone as half the rest of the world. You announcing that to me does not inspire respect, or awe, but rather scorn. In case you missed this lesson in preschool, announcing your accomplishments or possessions to the world in order to make people think you’re awesome is called bragging, and it really just makes people see you as shallow (and definitely not awesome). They may be jealous of your iPhone, but they’re certainly not jealous of your personality.

The other alternative is that you don’t know how to get rid of that message, since every smartphone, tablet, and pc manufacturer in the world sets it as a default these days (don’t get me started!). If this is the case, Google it. There are instructions out there that are easy to follow and take next to no time to find and implement. Quit being a sheep, offering blatant, unpaid advertising free to the manufacturer who overcharged you for your device in the first place. If this is still too hard, ask a neighbor kid to get it off your phone and they’ll have it done before you can say “Jack Robinson.”

I don’t care what phone, tablet, laptop, mainframe, or cerebral implant you’re sending your email from. So quit telling me every time you send an email. It makes you look bad.

Once again, I’m here not so much to post some grand new thing I thought up, but to simplify what it took me a week’s googling, experimenting, and the like to figure out. How the heck do you encode an HD H.264 file so it plays back smoothly on your Transformer and looks good at the same time? (No, not the prime, the old-skool Tegra 2 version)

Step 1: Download Handbrake and install it.
Step 2: Select your source. This can be a decrypted Blu-Ray rip, an EyeTV recording, or just about any video file.
Step 3: Give it a name, and select a MP4 File using H.264 (x264) with a Constant Quality RF setting of 21. You can choose 20 if you like for a higher-quality encode, but that might push you over 4GB on some movies, which will break your files on Android.

Step 4: Make sure your audio file is set to AAC (Core Audio). Setting this to MP3 royally screws up playback, I have no idea why.

Step 5: Copy the advanced settings in the picture below.

Step 6: Click the “Picture Settings” button and use “Custom” to crop your video if necessary (eg. if recorded off TV it may have bars/jagged margins). Crop and resize down to 720P (1280×720). You can leave Detelecine and Decomb on their default settings.

That’s it! Your screen can’t display full HD content, and your hardware won’t handle it anyways, so don’t go any higher than 720p. If you have Honeycomb (3.1 or later) installed on your Transformer, Gallery should play these well. Otherwise, DicePlayer is a great Hardware-accelerated player, which as of now you can’t buy since their checkout account has been suspended (not sure why).

So Mr. MG Seigler over at TechCrunch thinks he’s avant-garde for deciding to quit emailing for a month. His reasoning has something to do with it being a waste of time. And the idea came from…wait for it…some Tweeting. Yes, Twitter, that endless fount of useless information.

I’m not here to rail on Mr. Seigler though, other than to point out that Facebook and Twitter will either a) destroy our society, or b) die, just like MySpace. Why’s this? Because both Facebook and Twitter are founded on the premise that you can easily make your thoughts, opinions, and (private?) pictures instantly available to a whole host of people who don’t really care about you.

I tried Twitter, and it was a complete waste of time, and endless roll of pointless drivel (“enjoying some jameson on the couch, sit up unable to follow along with my own timeline”) and links to articles I don’t care to read (and don’t have time to read). Mr. Seigler is annoyed at the time spent sifting through and reading endless emails, and yet he’s thrilled at the usefulness of Twitter because the President used it once? Sanity, please. (The link tries to make a point about how you, too, can be heard, by mentioning that the Pres answered a handful out of 169,395 Tweeted questions?)

Let me break it down for you: life is not about spewing your opinions to the unwashed masses (yet, how hypocritical it is for me to blog this…). It’s about relationships–with God and mankind. You don’t maintain any sort of real relationship facebook stalking someone. You don’t know others and be known by them in 140 characters or less. All you do is waste time, wishing you lived someone else’s life or trying to re-write yours by hooking up with old flames. In the process, you work less, live less, and get fatter sitting in front of your computer.

To be fair, we could say the same thing about many other popular things such as Netflix instant streaming, except Netflix lacks the narcissism of Twitter and Facebook. If you’re constantly updating your status, let me just tell it to you straight: NOBODY CARES. If they DO care at all, it’s because of how well they already know you offline, in the real world, or because your dietary habits are really the most important thing in their life (which is either really sad or really scary). Log off and pick up the phone (txting doesn’t count). Better yet, go grab a coffee with someone. Even better yet, have them over for dinner.

So here’s your choices, America: become so self-involved that society self-destructs, or realize what’s important in life and go build yourself into a self-strengthening community.

Quit wasting your life and start sharing it. Spend some time with God. Spend some time with the people He’s put in your life.

Thankfully, many of you already figured this out.