Snowulf - Windows

Lose your wireless adapter? Check the BIOS

nospam@example.com (John) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 10:00:00 -0800

As you may or may not know, Windows 7 RC is coming to an end. This isn't unexpected (presuming you remembered to read this at some point), but it is a problem. So with that in mind, I decided it was time to install the actual version of Windows 7.

Since Jon was up and harassing me, I handed it to him while I was working on other things. He delivered it back a little while later and I started Windows Update (one of the Optional Items I selected was Atheros 5007EG Wireless Network Adapter). Things were going fine until the screen went black.
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Today In: Initializing a new hard drive

nospam@example.com (John) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:00:00 -0700

So, I haven't done this in freaking forever. The last clear memory I have of setting up a brand new drive is sometime in the late 90s and doing everything in DOS (fdisk anyone?). Because of this, I had forgotten all about the joys of doing this.

But first, a little background info. Earlier this month, I got a Newegg combo deal for a 1 TB Western Digital Caviar Green drive plus dock for $84.99 Shipped

That deal is no longer available, but a similar deal now available for $79.99. Though it uses a Seagate Barracuda rather than WD Caviar.

The dock arrived before the drive, so I tested it out with a spare SATA drive Jon had on his desk. Plugged it in and worked great, no problems.
The next day the drive arrives, I plug it in and then nothing happened (other then the standard windows installation for new devices being plugged in). I try it on another computer before harassing Jon about it and then realize "Oh yeah, have to format it!"

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Optimizing Windows 7 for Netbooks

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 10:00:00 -0700

A while back I got an Eee PC 1000, which I've talked about a number of times. At first I installed Ubuntu 9.04 on it, but after a while I got bored and decided to give Windows 7 a try. While I prefer Linux servers, my desktop machines tend to run Windows, mainly because it can run the software I need for desktop machines - like Photoshop & games. Granted a Netbook isn't going to be a machine for Photoshopping, but you get the point. After a while of playing with my netbook, John got jealous and decided he had to have one for himself. He got his Eee PC 900A and installed Windows 7, which he just covered in the previous blog entry (something I probably should have done, but never got around to doing). If you're playing along at home, you've got Windows 7 installed on your netbook, but it isn't necessarily running as well as it could be. There are a few easy things you can do to "optimize" Windows 7 for the netbook experience.

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Eee: Installing Windows 7

nospam@example.com (John) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:00:00 -0700

Since Microsoft has been generous enough to share the Windows 7 RC with everyone, and because Jon has enjoyed it so much, I decided my Eee should be running Win7. Getting Windows 7 is fairly easy, download site and key available from Microsoft and Microsoft TechNet. Both have the same information, the former looks prettier, while the latter offers a more utilitarian experience. Either one will get you what you need. Oh yeah, the ISO is about 2.5 GB, so make sure you have a bit more than that available on the machine that is downloading it.

Next up is getting the image somewhere useful. You have two choices:
1. Burn a DVD and then hook up an external DVD drive to your Eee...
2. Bootable Thumb Drive

Not wanting to deal with #1, I chose option #2, as I believed it would be much faster (no DVD to burn) and less hassle (no external DVD drive to acquire). Now, how do you make a Thumb Drive bootable? An excellent question, for which I turned to google.

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Thanks for failing CNBC!

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 21:00:00 -0700

Words can't even begin to describe the amazing stupidity of CNBC in their recent segment on "Money trend: Mac vs PC". Gizmodo has an excellent article (with embedded video) about the segment, titled "CNBC Is Ridiculous: Macs Come With Photoshop, PCs Need $600 Extra to 'Perform As Well As a Mac'". Basically CNBC decided that the price premium that comes with your Mac is "worth it" because you get all sorts of included software and extras, like Photoshop. That's right, you get Photoshop for free on a Mac. Own a Mac? Didn't get Photoshop for Free? That's ok... no one does, except in magical CNBC land. Oh, and in this same magical land filled with ponies and stoners you can also buy Photoshop for $140. That is, of course, the 3 finger discount price because Adobe.com lists it for $699. Yes, Mac's are more expensive, no one disputes this, not even Apple. Is the machine nicer/better/etc because Apple does everything? In some cases, yes. You don't have to worry about hardware compatibility, that's for sure. Is the OS inherently better? Not really. Apples and oranges and all that.

So let's take a quick look at the 'true cost' of owning a Mac vs a PC. CNBC had a purdy little chart in their video which I'll replicate with REAL costs for each side.

Item	PC Price	Mac Price	Comment
Anti-Virus	Free - $50/yr	Free - $50/yr	You can get free virus scanners for both operating systems. Granted Mac's have less viruses, but that is only because they are less numerous and thus less targeted. If you have half a brain, you've got an A/V. Even my LINUX computers have A/V on them.
Photoshop	$699	$699	No price difference and it certainly doesn't come for free with Mac's. You want it? You gotta buy it.
Basic Image Manager	Free	Free	Both Windows and Mac have simple image offloading & manipulation software built in. If that doesn't suit your taste you can always download Picasa
Video Editing	Free	Free	Windows Movie Maker & Apple iMovie. Nuff said.
Audio Player	Free	Free	I've yet to see an OS that can't play music out of the box in the last decade. Plus there are literally dozens if not hundreds of free players for every OS.
Audio Editing	Free	Free	Audacity and your done.
Repair Cost	Free	Free	CNBC made a big deal about the costs of Geek Squad. But guess what? You fuck up your Mac and you've gotta pay to get it fixed. I listed both as free because you can get a friend to help fix your machine. Hell, you're more likely to get a friend to fix your machine for free on Windows because more people use it.
Web Browser	Free	Free	FIREFOX

Let's be realistic. If Apple has included the software on a Mac, Microsoft has included something similar under Windows. They have to in order to stay competitive. Generally anything you can get for free for one OS you can get for the other for free. If you have to pay on one, you're gonna be paying on the other. That is of course if the software you want even runs on Mac. Yes there is some software that is Mac-only, but it definitely in the minority compared to that which doesn't run on Mac (see also: 99% of all video games). Is a Mac bad? Not necessarily, they're definitely very shiny machines and generally very polished (literally in some cases with the brushed steel looks). Do I want one? Yes. Am I willing to pay a 500$+ premium on a computer when I don't have to... No.

It's gonna be running Linux at the end of the day anyways.

Installing Windows XP under VMware GSX Server

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 12:00:00 -0800

If you try to install Windows XP under VMWare GSX Server, it will not work by default. The Windows install kicks back saying it is unable to detect any hard drives. This is because VMWare emulates SCSI drives which XP doesn't have drivers for by default. Luckily it is very easy to get around this problem.

While the Virtual Machine is off, download the "SCSI Disk Drivers" from VMWare (Direct link). Upload those to the GSX Server. Edit the VM's settings. Under floppy drive select "Use existing floppy image..." and browse to the image that you just downloaded. Make sure to also check "Connect at power on". Then, power on the VM; just after the XP install starts, stab F6 (when it says so). Once it finishes loading up, Hit "S". It should highlight an option for "VMWare SCSI Controller", hit enter and then enter again.

After this you should be able to install just like normal. It is somewhat annoying that VMWare doesn't have a setup that works by default in XP, but I also blame XP for having an old and crappy setup. Also, to be fair, GSX is generally used for hosting server OS's, not clients like XP.

Windows 7 - Subtitles not working in CCCP/MPC

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 22:30:00 -0800

If you happen to be involved in the downloading of videos off the net, you probably have CCCP. If you don't have it, get it, you'll thank me later (not technically true, but perhaps you will remember me telling you to get it). The problem at hand today was that while I have a rather extensive collection of (legally) downloaded anime, none of the subtitles seemed to work under Windows 7. I had just downloaded the latest CCCP version (2008-09-21), so that wasn't the issue. I googled up some people complaining about subtitle issues in WMP (Windows Media Player) but that wasn't my issue either, as I always use MPC (Media Player Classic). As it turned out, the sub issue was limited to my MKV files (always the MKV's that have issues, see also: ubuntu). After some digging around on the CCCP forum I found the answer.

Launch MPC > Click "View" > Click "Options" > Select "External Filters" > Click the "Add Filter" button > Select "DirectVobSub (Auto-loading version)" > Click "Ok" > On the right hand side, click the radio button for "Prefer" > Click "Ok" > Exit MPC and Restart MPC.

After that, I had no problems with subtitles in any anime. I tried a few including some 720p's and I had no play issues. In fact, while playing those high quality MKVs I checked the CPU burn and it was negligible, maybe 30% tops. For an MKV that is really good, I've seen them burn in excess of 80% CPU power. Maybe Windows 7 is an improvement after all.

Update: More than few of the comments left below include other options that may work for getting subtitles to work, or how to get them to work in Windows Media Player. If you know of any other options, leave em as a comment. Thanks!

Outlook 2007 "Cannot save the attachment"

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 16:00:00 -0800

I run Outlook 2007 on multiple machines, and one of them (my laptop) has been giving me shit about attachments. Every time I try to save one, it pop's the message "Cannot save the attachment" or "The operation failed" or a similarly useless message. I've read a lot of different suggestions including turning off your Anti Virus, Clearing Outlook Cache and running in Safe Mode. While running in Safe Mode did work for me, it would not continue to work AFTER I was back in normal mode (and running constantly in Safe Mode is not my idea of a "Good" solution). Anyways, I found a fix for my problem (finally).

Turn my anti-virus back on.

Yes, you read that correctly. I've got Symantec Endpoint Protection 11, and I have a tendency to have it turned off (I'm the IT Manager, I can run without an A/V if I want. I'm smart enough to NOT click "Yes" to those video's that 'require a missing codec'). As it happens, Symantec puts a "hook" in Outlook & if Symantec is disabled the hook fails and gums up the works. This of course is either really shitty programming, or something is up with my machine.

OpenType Font not installing

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 22:00:00 -0800

Strangest thing ever, I downloaded and tried to install an OpenType Font (.otf) and when I double clicked to preview the font I got the message "The requested file XXX.otf was not a valid font file". When I tried to install it, I got "Unable to install the XXX (OpenType) font. The font file may be damaged. Check with your font vendor about obtaining a new file." This was frustrating as all hell because the fonts should have worked, to double check I sent them to another machine where they opened fine.

After some googling around I found that a number of people were having this same issue on machines running Nvidia cards. As I'm on a Dell Prevision M6300 with an Nvidia Quadro FX 1600M, I guessed that this Nvidia issue was probably the culprit. Everyone suggested upgrading to the latest drivers, which is always a smart move. I tried that with the drivers from Dell and unfortunately it did not help (as the drivers hadn't been updated in 7 months). I popped over to LaptopVideo2Go (which I knew of from my Vista graphics driver issue days) and grabbed a copy of the Nvidia Forceware 180.70 which was from November. While not the latest, luckily for me, it was good enough. Another install and reboot later... and I had working OpenType Fonts.

Now not to be mean or anything, but why the hell does the graphics card "corrupt" fonts? And how did this get past QA? Almost all the "new" fonts (like the ones you'd have coming from Adobe) are in OTF. Since I'm sure more than a few graphic artists use Nvidia cards... you'd think they'd check these kind of things... Oh well.

Embassy Security Center does NOT play nicely with OpenVPN

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:40:31 -0700

So I was just re-installing a machine (Windows XP SP3 x32) in the office and I got to the point of setting up the OpenVPN connection (so I was almost done). Problem was that when I installed OpenVPN 2.0.9 and executed the EXE, it crashed with "The application failed to initialize properly (0xc000007b).". I tried uninstalling and re-installing OpenVPN. When that didn't work, I then tried upgrading to OpenVPN 2.1 RC_7. Again, that didn't work. I tried other stupid things like trying to copy the files from another machine. Different reboots/installs/etc. Nothing worked and nothing helpful on Google. I even stopped by #openvpn in a vain hope that they knew something. While they were helpful - no joy.

Eventually I made the random guess that it could be a piece of software called "Embassy Security Center" that was installed for TPM (Trusted Platform Module) and Biometric use. So I uninstalled it. What do you know... OpenVPN works. Thank gawd!

Windows Server 2008

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 16:54:22 -0800

For those that follow the techy ways, you've probably heard that Windows Server 2008 (aka Longhorn) was released to manufacturers. This also means it hit MSDN and in my grubby paws a few hours later. I find the best way to learn an OS is to install it on the laptop I use every day. So that is just what I've done. I've got few initial impressions of the OS, and I'll probably have a few others posts about it down the line. Note: This is not the first time I've used 2k8 - I used one of the previous beta's.

#1 - It takes up 12 GB of hard drive space on install, but only 430 MB of RAM. This is actually something I'm pleased about (the amount of RAM usage) since Vista started at 800+ MB of RAM usage on install.

#2 - Basically nothing is installed by default with the Server - and I like it. No crap to remove.

#3 - Synergy DOES NOT work when installed as a service under 2008 (as a client). The reason for this is that (the best I can tell) 2008 allows services to interact with their own virtual desktop, instead of your desktop. So when you start the client service on 2008 - the synergy control falls into that virtual desktop you can't see.

#4 - World Of Warcraft does run properly under Windows 2008. The only minor issue is a pop complaining about being unable to load "gameux.dll" - but the game still runs.

How To Get OpenVPN to Work Under Vista

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:01:00 -0700

Getting OpenVPN to run under Windows Vista is actually relatively easy. There are just a few tricks to keep in mind.

Get the latest version of OpenVPN. 2.0.9 works for me, 2.0.7 did not
If you still have UAC enabled (It is those "Accept/Deny" dialog boxes), you must right click on the installer and "Run As Administrator". (How to disable UAC)
During the install, you must remember to "Continue Anyways" when prompted about unsigned drivers.
Add the line "route-method exe" to your OpenVPN config file. OpenVPN is supposed to auto detect which method to use, but it doesn't work properly on any Vista machine I've setup.

Other than those 4 items, OpenVPN installs and runs just about the same on Vista as it does on any other OS. Keep in mind of course that the first time you connect with OpenVPN, you will get that annoying pop-up asking what kind of network you are connected to (The "network discoverability" thing)

PlanetSide & Vista

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 00:01:00 -0800

I installed PlanetSide, the game ran fine. Well, it was fine till I got into the world then it "Stopped Responding" strangeness. I found a thread on the forums with the answer. For those of you that are clicking impared. How to get PlanetSide running on Vista in a few easy steps.

Change the compatibility options to match for the following files (Find the exe > right click > properties > Compatibility )
-LaunchPad.EXE = Run under Windows 95.
-Planetside.EXE = Run under NT 4 w/ SP5, Check Disable visual themes, Disable desktop composition, disable display scaling on high DPI settings)

I'm not really sure why it works, but it seems to work. So far I haven't had any issues and the game has run great. The one odd thing I noticed is that when the game starts, Vista seems to shunt EVERYTHING it doesn't need to free up RAM. I only noticed this because after the game quits, the RAM drops down to as low as 200mb of usage. Cool!

How To Make Vista Useful!

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 00:01:00 -0800

I reinstalled Vista yesterday, this should prove to be interesting. The graphics drivers crashed and mucked up (but Vista recovered rather quickly) within a few minutes of my initial boot. To be fair, they were the "default" drivers, and I have a complex setup (laptop, external display, etc). Regardless of which, I found that a few changes need to be made to make Vista useful:
- Turn off UAC (Control Panel > User Accounts > Turn UAC On or Off)
- Turn Off Windows Firewall (Control Panel > Windows Firewall > Turn Windows Firewall On or Off)
- Turn off Windows Defender (Control Panel > Windows Defender > Tools > Options - Turn off real time & Scheduled)

If you have a decent graphics card you can probably run Areo without a problem. I can, but if you are like me, you want all the speed you can. First thing to do is to go and set the theme to Windows Classic (Control Panel > Personalization > Theme). The other thing to do is turn off the extra performance options (Control Panel > System > Advanced system settings > Performance > Settings > Adjust for best performance).

I'll also be running down compatibility issues as I find them in the next few days or a week. I'll probably have alot more posts due to this, but they are all Vista related. Well, until I get to installing XP & Debian on this machine - yes... Yes I am insane enough to try and triple boot. We'll see how it goes.

Office 2007 & PDF's

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 11:53:19 -0800

I was doing a little investigation last night, and I found there was a plugin for Office 2007 that allowed you to save as PDF and XPS. Finally Microsoft is getting off their ass and catching up with OpenOffice. If you are interested, you can download the plugin here.

Also, an interesting bit I found. Microsoft has developed a WGA plugin for firefox that actually works for once. Previously every time I've tried to download something from Microsoft using firefox, I had to use some strange external program. What can I say, MS finally has realize that its browser isn't so popular.