Blasphemy vs. Social Ban - Controversy Pt. 4 - The Conclusion

This is my final reply... and the final conclusion... I wish to blog this, as I wish that people understand the density of these three questions and their answers and make a improvement in their lives for better good. 

Conclusion / Bottom Line

JazakAllah for the detailed reply and for answering my root questions. You have basically helped me make more clear what our point is. 

Here is what we have narrowed it down to.

About Television, I too find it completely useless but in fact believe that it does more harm in every aspect than anything good. I don't watch TV and I can't seem to find a single good usage of TV.

About Facebook, you are 100% correct of this type of usage of Facebook and all the things like it for the users of young age. However, in business or mature adults the usage is slightly different and rather beneficial up to a great extent.

About Use of Technology, We on collective scale are indeed exposed to more damage than benefit by using the technology. The technology itself is just a tool, we need to learn to make better use of it.

About Speaking up, we have indeed spoken up when most of the world is acting as a silent observer. But we need to think, educate and make better decisions to make sure we don't harm ourselves and people around us by making hasty or emotional decisions. 

Finally, we should spread these three questions and answers to as much people as possible and try to make them realize the right thing to do. I personally find it the best way to deal with things. This should be the starting point - that is; from the core of every individual himself.

Q1. What is the punishment for blasphemy? Death right? So is the owner of the event Molly Norris dead yet? Secondly, on the 10 Muharram event, they took out individual faces who lit the fire and prosecuted them... So is anyone who made the artwork dead or Islamically prosecuted yet?

A1. yes they all are alive but you have to see before asking this question that SHRIAT Law is not applied anywhere not even in Saudi Arab properly so until the Law of SHARIAT is not implemented we can not give this punishment and it's a failure of you me and every muslim not only of the government.

Q2. Have you tried to erase or destroy any insulting imagery from the internet yourself with your own hands?

A2. Why should I, its like you are increasing your own blood pressure and getting balackmailed emotionally. I say why you go to the page, what is the result if you go an erase the image????? Instead of this why don't you say ok from now and onwards I will practice every SUNNAT of Muhammad (PBUH) and I will show my enemies that SABAR is the greatest tool of Muslim.

Q3. If the question 1 and 2 has the answer "NO" then what they hell are we "Muslims" doing?

A3. This is the right question for all of us. What are we doing, but before asking this from all make yourself punctual in NAMAZ 5 times a day, follow all SUNNAT and at least once in your life read the Urdu translation of QURAN. Islam starts with making your own self right according to Islam first.

May Allah have mercy on all of us.

Regards

Nadir

Blasphemy vs. Social Ban - Controversy Pt. 3 - The Root Level Questions

In reply to my email the friend of mine write me the following email and answered my questions. The three questions and their answers are the best way to "handle" things in this situation as - if nothing, it does portray a Moderate Muslim's image.

Hello Nadir

 

First of all thanks for the reply and I hope that you are doing good in your career and I wish you all the best.

 

Nadir I clearly stated in my email "FACEBOOK or anything like it". So I will take this point to answer some of your questions and then will conclude in as less text as possible. In my office form the day one I have blocked FACEBOOK, ORKUT, TWITTER and all things like this because what I saw was 80% of the youngsters were involved only in chatting finding new girls/boys, girls expressing their ideal, boys chatting with girls and flirting and many people uploading pictures of their sisters, mother and family without making them private which were viewable to many strangers. I am not counting you or anyone in this email in the 80% I mentioned but everyone knows better about their own self. So I am against these social sites since the start when they did not say a single word good or bad to Islam or anything related to Islam.

 

I agree with all points you mentioned and yes it is true that our enemies use us for promoting material which is against us, but there is a difference in all of us. Just like you received a message about this event I received it too, you went to check the page but I did not because I love Muhammad (PBUH) after Allah and more than any other human being I am related or not related too and I know that things like this can not do a single bit of bad to Muhammad (PBUH) and Islam, what my point was, is and always will be is that where are our developers and website engineers going???? Did we every make any site for Islamic gathering and learning???? How much of us goes to IRF's web site or any other "authentic" web site of Islam??? We don't go because we don't have any physical benefit from it. I saw TV programs who were saying that blocking FACEBOOK is not the solution, I ask them and you to "give a solution"

 

Please take my email in positive and see that I am not speaking against FACEBOOK, I am speaking against all things like this, you have to see and understand that it has become a status symbol that your kid is working on computer all night and very good at using computer but non of the parents are looking that what their kids are looking at.

 

Let me give you an example. Many Ulma says that TV is HARAM, and almost everyone make fun of them. I accept that TV is a tool and its bad use is HARAM. Please tell me and give me any good and solid example of "TV's GOOD USE" now a days. Don't tell me that you don't use it bad, give me an example which is practiced by a large number of people. You know STAR Plus dramas starts at 7pm which is basically the MAGHRIB time and they continue till midnight covering ISHA and at the time of AZAN in many homes sound of HINDU bells and BAJHANS are ringing. So actually the Ulma who said TV HARAM were right because they had more knowledge than us and they knew that what ever we do we cant stay away from the bad things TV is showing.

 

Many people are dishearten on blocking of FACEBOOK because of financial loss, and only Allah knows what is inside your, mine and everyone's heart.

 

Please try to grab my point that we on the whole are going towards destroying our own self by the use of technology and media because we are not teaching ourselves we are just blindly following west.

 

Answer to your questions

 

 

Final Part: My Question.

I will end this debate by asking myself and everyone around me two ROOT LEVEL questions.

1. What is the punishment for blasphemy? Death right? So is the owner of the event Molly Norris dead yet? Secondly, on the 10 Muharram event, they took out individual faces who lit the fire and prosecuted them... So is anyone who made the artwork dead or Islamically prosecuted yet?

-> yes they all are alive but you have to see before asking this question that SHRIAT Law is not applied anywhere not even in Saudi Arab properly so until the Law of SHARIAT is not implemented we can not give this punishment and it's a failure of you me and every muslim not only of the government.

2. Have you tried to erase or destroy any insulting imagery from the internet yourself with your own hands?

-> Why should I, its like you are increasing your own blood pressure and getting balackmailed emotionally. I say why you go to the page, what is the result if you go an erase the image????? Instead of this why don't you say ok from now and onwards I will practice every SUNNAT of Muhammad (PBUH) and I will show my enemies that SABAR is the greatest tool of Muslim.

3. If the question 1 and 2 has the answer "NO" then what they hell are we "Muslims" doing?

-> This is the right question for all of us. What are we doing, but before asking this from all make yourself punctual in NAMAZ 5 times a day, follow all SUNNAT and at least once in your life read the Urdu translation of QURAN. Islam starts with making your own self right according to Islam first.

Secondly if we Muslims of Pakistan protest against this event then we are showing the world that even if no country speaks against it, even if Saudi Arab is also quite on this but we will always speak against events like this because in Pakistan there are some Muslims who really love Islam.

Blasphemy vs. Social Ban - Controversy Pt. 2 - The Big Picture

After receiving his email I replied by trying to make the big picture more clearer. 

Email from me:

I agree with you 95% of what you have written about hubb-e-rusool (saw) and fighting back or reacting. What I can't seem to register in my mind is this question that "how" we have reacted is the right way or not.

Now most of the people who will listen to me may think that I am defending Facebook or anyone who has insulted. But in fact I want you to try to understand and grab the bigger picture by reading till the end.

First of all let us remind ourselves what is the issue. This is an important paragraph so please read it carefully. 

First Part: Initiation
A lady named "Molly Norris" initiated the event called "Draw Mohammad Day". She made a website and put all the details on it ... including a ridiculous so-called "disclaimer" type thing that says "The purpose of this website is not to promote or hurt the feelings of Muslims but to express that we are not afraid to depict Muhammad". This is just like saying "I don't want to insult you and your mother" and then starting to abusing your mother in front of you.

Second Part: Marketing
Once the website was done the owner of the website created a Facebook page and started inviting her friends and started marketing the event globally. On facebook around 40,000 people joined the page and around 5000 liked the page. Counter pages and events were created by Muslims which were joined by opposing 50,000 Muslims. Then as Muslims started to hear about it one facebook they started to protest by saying "Stop this page" and provided a link to the "Draw Muhammad Day" page. I too came to know about this page when one of my "Mulsim" friend shared the page saying "Stop this". So basically if you see, in the part of Marketing, a). the facebook is used as a tool because of its networking capabilities and userbase b). 50K aniti-Muslims joining the drawing contents and c). 50K Muslims throwing the issue where the wind blows.

Third Part: The Reaction
As stated above, the website of Molly Norris didn't work well, but facebook helped market the event to a world wide coverage. TV, Media, blogs and newspapers around the world are talking about it. Now we expected Facebook to remove this page promoting "hate speech", but facebook didn't remove it saying that we "support freedom of speech". While in the past facebook has deactivated and issued warranty notices WITHIN HOURS to Pakistani group owners who were doing a "peaceful" protest against the Military Dictatorship in Pakistan. And for draw Muhammad event, they say we will "think" about it, and we will remove it if it is a direct threat to someone. Now at this stage the Facebook becomes the target, and we said we can't use facebook anymore. Which is partially right because of the hypocrisy of facebook "policies". Then sudden orders from LHC asked PTA to block the Facebook because if they didn't, the people will come out of their comes and conduct yet another 10 Moharram. It was a quick and reasonable move by the Govt. to save the country from massive and violent protest against its "own people". 

People demand boycott of facebook and all the blasphemy content hosted all over the internet to be blocked. Hence our government is on the high alert to block, block, block and re block everything. I saw an unofficial list of blocked sites from PTA and it contains a number of proxy sites as well. Which has practically nothing to do with blasphemy other than people can access facebook if they want to. I wonder why proxy servers and sites are being blocked? I give you my example, just three days ago, my cousin from USA wrote something on my wall which I hadn't disclosed to everyone around me. I had to remove that post from my wall urgently as I didn't want 250 friends on facebook from different circles and importance around the world to know about that specific event that she wrote about on my wall. I HAD to use a proxy server but whatever I tried found it blocked. Now can anyone tell me that did I intend to view the content that they made? did i try to do something against the Government Policy or UNISLAMIC? I mean, my profile is still there still active as posts are automatically being made through twitter intigration. People don't know I am not there, but I don't even have the access to close or disable my account. Is this what it is all about?

Anyway, so the drama of blocking websites continues, first Facebook, then wikipedia, then youtube, then for a short time Google... some ISPs have blocked only Facebook and some have block all the sites mentioned above. Most probably the artists who drew pictures will also email it right? So are we going to block Gmail, Hotmail and yahoo as well?

Fourth Part: Loosing Track
At this stage, it is all about Facebook, blocking and boycotting. People sending emails and messages about how we can hit their "economy" by doing a massive "boycott". People forwarding sms's about taking action, not watching indian TV or movies, not using facebook, not visiting youtube. All the things mentioned in the above section is all about "blocking" and "boycotting" internet? 

Fifth Part: Outcome
The outcome of all this we are seeing is that a number of MOST popular websites are being blocked. Take facebook, as mentioned above, I know facebook isn't totally innocent, but is it REALLY the right way to protest by blocking facebook? Okay fine, it didn't remove the page? what what happened to the owner and creator of the page? Have we forgot about her - the master mind behind all this mayhem? What happened to all the artwork she made people to make? we forgot that too? Lets take the affects of facebook in the light of practicality and facts. 

Fact 1: The event got the marketing it got because of both the anti-muslims and the reaction of muslims noth contributing equally 50=50% to publicize this event. 

Fact 2: A lot of businesses are affected due to these bans both positively and negatively. ISP's report 10-15% drop in bandwidth usage (+ve). I know a person who was selling her artwork solely on facebook, by taking orders online through facebook, but now she has lost her source of income (-ve). A number of businesses who are working on Facebook applications (including my office) is suffering loss (-ve). Rozee.pk has observed 25% INCREASE in daily traffic (reported by its OWNER) (+ve for the owner) but if you think about it, people are coming there to look for JOBS! means that those 25% people are jobless (-ve or +ve you decide). People are starting to market their own duplicate websites such as paki.com which is a copy facebook by local people and utube which is also a copy by the pakistanis, and this boycot have let them market and make profit. Let me put it this way, the insult on Prophet SAW and its outcome is now being "cashed". They also claim in messages that we have given facebook a loss... but in fact, the figures suggest that FB have 300 Mil users and the ban and boycott is only in two countries, Pakistan and Saudia (I think).. which makes a total of slightly above 2.5 Million users. So facebook now has 297.5 Mil out of 300 Mil users.... WOW what a big damage we have done to FB.

Fact 3: The owner of the website is satisfied with the amount of attention she got and now the news are reporting that she has "apologized". She has her name all over the internet and news. She has achieved her only purpose which is NOT to blasphemy but to PROVOKE MUSLIMS and ignite a fire and a violent reaction in them. Muslims have once again came out as "extremists". The content and artwork is still on the internet. Our prophet SAW, is still in insulting imagery all over the internet.  A lot of people in Pakistan Muslims are jobless. Businesses are at loss. Our own economy is at stake. And it is talked about blocking and boycotting even more things. So in the foreseeable future, the whole internet is going to be blocked. When I say "whole internet" I mean all the things that are useful like emails, search engines, blogs, encyclopaedias, informatory videos, and social networking - One of the best way to represent your self globally in practically ZERO cost... we will still be having porn.. as you can see the list of blocked sites does not have a single porn site. So yes, basically, we will have internet with desimama dot com as our homepage why? because other sites have insulting content.

Final Part: My Question.

I will end this debate by asking myself and everyone around me two ROOT LEVEL questions.

1. What is the punishment for blasphemy? Death right? So is the owner of the event Molly Norris dead yet? Secondly, on the 10 Muharram event, they took out individual faces who lit the fire and prosecuted them... So is anyone who made the artwork dead or Islamically prosecuted yet?

2. Have you tried to erase or destroy any insulting imagery from the internet yourself with your own hands?

3. If the question 1 and 2 has the answer "NO" then what they hell are we "Muslims" doing?

May Allah forgive me if I have said anything wrong in ignorance, arrogance or because of my very limited knowledge. And May Allah teach us how to be smart enough. And May Allah protect the dignity and existence of the ummat of Hazrat Muhammad S.A.W

Blasphemy vs. Social Ban - Controversy Pt. 1 - The Perception

I recently received an email from an acquaintance of mine which is basically a summary of the perception of the majority of individuals in Pakistan related to 20th May 2010 - The Draw Muhammad (SAW) day and the way it should be dealt with. 

I am reproducing the email here and I will be making a few more posts covering our entire discussion and the bottom line that we reached on.

Being a computer science professional I understand that there are people in the world Muslim or Non Muslim who are busy in cracking licensed software, finding ways to open blocked web sites and most of the times they are successful and the day FACEBOOK was blocked it was in mind that sooner there will be a link using which people in Pakistan can open FACEBOOK and today when I came to office one of my associates told me about a link.

Suppose you go to a relative's home with your mother to meet and in their home during any discussion  a dispute occurs and all of a sudden those people start abusing your mother and start saying bad about her. What will be your reaction?????? Its very clear that you will immediately start defending your mother and you will come out from their home and will tell your mother that you and she will and must never come to see these relatives again. After some time these relatives realize that they have done wrong and they will come and apologize for their actions and words and hopefully you and your mother will accept their apology but a scratch will remain in your heart for ever because this is a place where your mother was disgraced and mother's love is a thing that can never be explained it is special.

 

To be a true Muslim we have to love Allah above all and Allah has said that the strength of his love with us is more than the strength of 70 mothers combined, and Muhammad (PBUH) is the most beloved personality of Allah and Muhammad (PBUH) should be loved by us truly and honestly after Allah and after Muhammad (PBUH) the number is of our parents.

 

Now tell me the reason of the appplogy of FACEBOOK team, its money and fame and nothing else, they don't love us and they don't love our loved ones all they care is for the money and fame they are loosing.

 

Does this apology clears that they respect Muhammad (PBUH) and Islam and they will never do this again????????

 

Think about it……..

 

You will not die if you will not use FACEBOOK or anything like this.

 

If you think that I am wrong and FACEBOOK or sites like this should be used then give me one good solid reason which must explain, clarify and justify your words in logical, scientific and ethical manner, because if you want to share pictures and events with your reletives all arround the world then you can do it easily by emails.

Warid MMS / WAP and Internet Settings for Google Nexus One

I've been calling and calling to Warid Telecom for providing me the multimedia settings for my Nexus One but without luck. So I tried duplicating the MMS / WAP and Internet Settings from my older phone but it also didn't work. I finally got the settings and here they are.

On your N1 (nexus one):

Go to Settings-> Wireless & Networks

Scroll Down and Select "Mobile Networks" 

Select Access Point Names (APN) 

Press Menu Button at the Bottom and Select "New APN" 

For Internet use following settings: 

Name: Warid Internet 
APN: warid

...leave everything default and untouched and scroll at the bottom. 
APN Type: default,supl (<-THIS IS IMPORTANT OTHERWISE YOUR MMS NOT WORK)

For MMS 

Create new APN and use following Settings:

Name: Warid MMS 
APN: mms.warid 
MMSC: http://10.4.0.132/servlets/mms 
MMSC Proxy: 10.4.2.1 
MMS port: 8080 (They told me on Warid helpline that the port is 9201, but don't use it, it is useless!)
APN Type: mms

Go back and reboot your phone. 

Enjoy MMSing :)

Music and Satanism

I recently received this article and thought this is worth sharing. There is nothing that is forbidden without reason. Reasons that are way above our knowledge and capabilities to understand.

"I figured the only thing to do was to swipe the kids. I still think it is 
the only thing to do. By saying that, I am not talking about kidnapping. I 
am just talking about changing their value systems," says rock star David 
Crosby. 

One may wonder how is it possible for someone to change all the value 
systems of someone else. To change everything that a person grew up 
believing in. Values that were instilled in them throughout their lifetime. 
Well, you will soon understand how this is possible. 

The root behind all this is back-masking and back-tracking. However, to 
really understand these concepts one has to first understand how the brain 
functions. 

The Brain! 

The brain is the master control centre of the body. The brain is constantly 
receiving information from the senses. The brain also stores information 
from past experiences, which makes learning and remembering possible. 

The brain is divided into two main hemispheres - the left and right. The 
left hemisphere largely controls our ability to use language, mathematics 
and logic. The right hemisphere is the main centre for musical ability, the 
recognition of complicated visual patterns and the expression of emotion. In 
between these two hemispheres there is a screen. 

Any information that is sent to the brain enters through the left hemisphere 
of the brain. The left hemisphere of the brain then evaluates it. It is 
evaluated according to one's beliefs, education, faith, and so on. If it is 
against one's values, the brain will not allow it to pass through the screen 
and it will be rejected. However, if the information is not against one's 
values, it will pass through the screen. It will enter the right hemisphere 
of the brain, where all the information is stored and accepted. 


Back-Masking and Back-Tracking 

There are two types of back-masking and back-tracking. One is direct and 
the other is the clouded version. 

If music is played foreword, you hear it in a certain way. But, there is a 
way of turning a record upside-down. When one plays it upside-down there 
are messages hidden in the record. Upside-down messages. In other words, 
when you hear it forwards you don't hear the messages. Your ear does not 
pick it up but your mind picks it up. 

How does your mind pick it up? When the left hemisphere picks up the 
message it is something that it cannot understand. The message sounds like 
garble sometimes. The left hemisphere gets confused and does not know what 
to do with it. It therefore lets it pass through the screen into the right 
hemisphere where all the information is accepted. The brain therefore 
accepts it as a fact. It will take its place there and it will emerge 
sometime in the future. 

What messages are accepted by our brains? Well, here are a few examples: 
a) Black Oak Arkansas, in one of thier songs, they sing "natas, natas, 
natas". In the backtraking of the song it tells you "Satan. Satan. He is 
God. He is God". This is direct back-tracking, where the word in the 
forward track has something to do with the message in the back-track. 

b) Eagle, in one of their songs sing "This far down the line". In the 
back-track it says "Have a mind of Satan". This is the clouded version of 
back-tracking. 

c) Similiary, Pink Floyd - in their back-tracking - says, "Is God still 
alive. He was here before, so was Satan. Lord - he was crucified." 

d) In the jumbled sounds of Led Zeppilin's song "Stairway to Heaven", are 
the words, "And here's to my sweet Satan and I live for Satan." 

Could you imagine all these words coming into your brain and your brain 
accepting it. 

Satanists often listen to rock and heavy metal music. This is the worst 
type of music that anyone could listen to since they contain all these 
hidden messages. There are various types of heavy metal: 
a) Glamour metal 
b) Black metal 
c) Death metal 
d) Punk metal 
e) Occult punk 
f) Shock rock. 

And we're surrounded by music all the time. Insupermarkets almost any 
kind of store u go to has music. Even the loos in some places have music! 

I don't know if you've heard about back tracking (hidden messages in music 
where if you play the song backwards you hear the hidden message.)Although 
the message is backwards it still has a powerful effect on your brain 
without your knowledge of ever having heard it .Back masking is different is 
like for example if they sing the words 'natas' backwards it means satan. 

An example 
the song hotel california. Played backwards it says the words 'hey satan he 
organised his own religion' I have heard these words for myself. In another 
song of the same group the song is 'this far down the line' the backtrack 
message is 'have a mind of satan' in another the message is 'satan satan he 
is god' On the Michael jacksons 'Dangerous' album cover there is a picture 
of a man. His name is Anton and he is the man who compiled the satanic bible 
and it is used in the satanic church.Alistair Crowley who founded the 
satanic church said in his book Magic 'learn to speak backwards learn to 
write backwards, learn to play records backwards..' His own parents regarded 
him as a beast.His picture also appears on the cover of a beatles album. 
There is a crowd of people on the album and his photo is in the middle.A few 
examples of backtrack messages are 'o satan use me as your musician' 'satan 
i am seeking to follow you' 'o satan move in our voices' 
Allah ta'ala has said that the voice of shaitaan is music. 

Indecent Obsessionwas almost banned in Australia because proffessors from a 
psychology department said that their music encourages suicide. The clearer 
the sound the longer it stays in your mind. 

Rasulullah said dajjal will come with his music with which he will 
influence the minds of men, the majority will be illegitimate. Music, 
psychologically speaking is hypnotising us. Dajjal will use it to draw us 
away. There will be people who read namaaz who read quraan , but in the kabr 
when the angels ask them to read the kalimah they won't be able to because 
music will be in their minds and their blood. Music goes into the blood, 
thats why when we listen we start tapping our feet or our fingers. You've 
probably heard of people taking raw eggs to a concert and leaving it at the 
foot of the stage. At the end of the concert the egg is hardboiled! If the 
sound of music does this to an egg what is it doing to our brains? 

We can only make duaa to Allah ta'ala to protect us from these evils and 
make us more aware of these methods that Shaitaan uses to lead us astray, so 
that we can avoid it.May Allah give us all the strength to reject these evil 
influences. It is all around us. Music is just one of the methods we know of 
that shaitaan uses. 

By Muhammed Kolim UK 

The semi-agonizing process of installing Windows 7 :)

Okay so now is the time when the Windows 7 was already out, I was running Vista 32 and XP on my system. Windows XP was old and the new internet connection didn't work on it and Vista was too damn slow for me to actually do something other than browsing! One of the major disadvantages of Vista is the extremely slow I/O. Being a designer I spend most of the time on photoshop and dreamweaver, but on vista, the simple task of pressing the spacebar (hand cursor) and then click and dragging could not be done properly. It always detected the mouse click first and the key press afterwords despite of the fact that I pressed the key first and then clicked. Anyway, every time I wanted to move the canvas, vista made any one of the design elements to go to the north pole and stick there!

Anyway, I got a little frustrated to having two OSt, so I thought I should install the new Windows 7 64-bit. The reviews of windows 7 were quite good. People said it is much lighter than the Vista and much much more visually better than XP. So... I thought I should give it a try. Now I should mention my lifelong dislike with Microsoft so I already had in mind that something - at least one thing would go wrong. So here is the installation process with timestamp as I tried my luck.

10:28 PM
I put in the Windows 7 64-bit bootable DVD in my DVD drive and the setup started. It showed me something like "loading setup"... I thought to myself... Hmmm good start.

10:30 PM
It then loaded a graphical screen with a bluish background and some curves. It was much better than the dos-type installation of XP! What I noticed was a leafy artwork in the background and a bird in white. I thought what's with the nature Windows 7!? Still don't know what's the concept behind that leaf and a bird illustration in the Windows 7 background! Maybe going green or something! :)

10:32 PM
It then asked me to select my language. I selected my own Country and was quite amazed to see my own language in the list "IN" the setup. Urdu is an Asian language and we had to install it separately. Anyway, good thing to have Asian language support from the beginning of the setup, but I selected English and pressed "next"...

10:35 PM
It then showed me a "two" step installation screen. The first was I think "Checking System" and the other was "Installing Windows" or something like that. Anyway, 5 second later during checking system I got an ERROR: "The CD/DVD ROM Drive Driver not found..." It gave me two buttons "Cancel" and "Browse", I tried everything, tried searching for the driver, tried canceling it, but there was NO WAY I could skip pass that error message and continue with the installation. The interesting part is that the DVD was already in the drive, the system booted up with the same DVD drive, the setup loaded its "necessary" files from that DVD ROM drive and now it is refusing that there is no driver for it so can not continue. So here is what I did, I restarted my system, went back into Vista, and started Googleing.

12:20 PM - ERROR: "The CD/DVD ROM Drive Driver not found..." While installing Windows 7 64-bit
As you can see I have spent almost 2 hours in searching for any fix for this error but didn't find any. What I found from the internet was a guy who was able to get it through by buying a new DVD ROM drive! I mean that is just simply stupid! Some said look for the jumper settings, some said fix the cables, some said download a new torrent and verify the disk after burning. Anyway, none of it made sense to me, so a friend of mine dropped by and he mentioned something about disabling "SATA Native" support. Well that was something that I could try! So I went into my BIOS and looked for the specific settings. I have ASUS M2N-E motherboard with AMD Athlon X2 Dual Core processor, 3GB of RAM, 250GB SATA drive and a standard SONY DVD-RW ROM Drive. The thing was that I didn't find the "SATA Native Support" option in my BIOS settings. However I did see something like "Serial ATA Support" and "RAID" settings under in Advance > Onboard Devices in BIOS Menu. I was able to resolve this CD/DVD Drive Driver not found error during installation of windows 7 by enabling "RAID". I only had two options, RAID -> Enable / Disable. A few people said that it should have been AHCI and some said that enabling RAID is not recommended and the windows might not work after that. But it worked for me for now.

12:30 PM
So after 2 hours of searching and trials and rebooting I was finally able to get pass this error message. And by the grace of God the setup was finally running. It was a breath of fresh air. It then listed around 5-6 steps, and took almost 10 to 15 minutes in "Expanding files".

12:40 PM
At this time the setup completed expanding files and it rebooted. When the system came back on again, the most weird thing I noticed that the background of the setup was now flipped horizontally! Still didn't get the logic behind that!

12:45 PM
Now as usual - "Completing Installation"

12:47 PM
Again the system rebooted, now I see the great "Preparing windows to load for the first time"! Now it was sort of a good feeling to be able to get to this point without loosing anything else. Then finally it asked me to create an account, I supplied the password and again the the famous "Finalizing Settings" screen :)

12:50 PM
Finalizing Settings

12:52 PM
Preparing Desktop - Then again restart

01:00 PM
FINALLY! I was finished with the installation and the "enter password" screen was in front of me. I entered the password and was expecting a LOT of drivers that I still have to install. In earlier versions of windows I had to install the drivers from the ASUS Motherboard CD, the sound drivers and the Radeon X550 graphic card drivers. But interestingly enough windows 7 had all the drivers pre-installed. When the windows was ready and I had my profile in front of me I amazingly didn't need to install all the third party drivers. It was indeed the best surprise up till now :)

However, I did go to windows update and downloaded whatever Microsoft had for me to "update", most of them were security updates a few driver updates etc. The windows was ready to use and I started to install the other softwares such as Office Suite and messengers and stuff. The windows indeed is quite better than older versions. A major first glance change I saw was the way they merged the taskbar buttons and the quick launch buttons. It is a good addition to the new windows usability. Other than that some of the good features includes - what I call windows-gestures. For instance, if you click and drag the window and touch it at the top of the screen, it would maximize itself, dragging it back would restore it's original size. Touching it on the left or right would tile it vertically on the left or the right, shaking it would minimize all the other windows but the one clicked on. Anyway, the overall feel is quite right IMO!

My final thoughts about the installation would be, Good but not that great, I'd rate it 7 out of 10. I did face some technical / hardware related issues later on which I will be writing about quite soon. But one thing I should mention, as I wrote earlier that I had two installations of windows, one was XP and the other was vista. I installed windows 7 over XP after formatting the partition, but left vista as a backup. BUT, windows 7 did not add itself to the OS selection menu, rather it deleted the vista selection menu so there is no way for me to run vista now. I had to format that partition as well.

Anyway, no regrets in deleting both the operating system and have Windows 7!