Running Windows Vista on a MacBook


I’m probably the pickiest laptop user in the world.  There’s never been a laptop that I have used that I haven’t complained about.  I’ve used many different brands, Sony, Gateway, Asus, Toshiba, Dell and IBM.  Up to now my favorite has been Sony.  My sony has been getting warm on the keyboard and I just couldn’t tollerate it any longer.  So I hunted around and finally purchased a MacBook.  Now, before you pick your jaw up off the floor, I’m not using Mac OS X (most who know me know I’m a Microsoft fan boy!).  I’ve installed Windows Vista on it.  I’ve used OS X long enough to install a few apps and then run Boot Camp to install Windows.

The MacBook runs Windows Vista beautifully and the laptop is well designed.  There are a few Window’s things you have to work around, but overall it’s great.  Here are a few tips and tricks.

  • Right click – put 2 fingers on the trackpad and hit the mouse button.
  • Delete button – Sounds weird because there is a delete button on the keyboard, but it acts as a backspace.  Hold down the FN button while hitting delete and it will actually delete.
  • Home and End buttons – hold the FN button while hitting left arrow for Home and right arrow for end.
  • Insert button – hold the FN and hit Enter
  • Scrolling on the trackpad – use 2 fingers anywhere on the touchpad and you can scroll up and down.
  • Print screen button – FN-Shift-F11

One thing I haven’t figured out that’s bugging me is being able to tap click on the touch pad.  I’m betting Apple will fix this in Boot camp shortly.

Realtek HD Audio and Windows Service Pack 3 issue

sp3
realtek
I have an unattended installation of Windows XP that I slip-streamed Service Pack 3 into.
On an EVGA motherboard I was recently loading with Windows I could get everything working except the audio.

In the device manager I had 1 unkown pci device item listed.  Had to be the audio right?
Well I used the cd that came with the motheboard, no luck.
I went to Realtek’s support page and downloaded the latest driver, still no luck.

No matter what I did the PCI device would not update to the audio.
Finally on some sort of flash I googled “XP SP3 HD Audio“.

One of the results returned this page which talked about the exact problem and had a download to fix it.
I’m making the download available from here in case their site goes away.
I do not vouch for the file, all I can tell you is it fixed my problem.  Download from here or there at your own risk.
So, apparently the PCI device isn’t actually the audio card itself, but a UAA bus driver for high definition audio.

I found on Microsoft’s site, mention of this, and had downloads for SP1 and SP2.  Their site said it wasn’t needed for SP3.
Wrong!  Once I pointed the PCI device at the update and it installed itself, the Realtek HD Audio device was detected and it proceeded to install the drivers I had installed earlier.

Strange and irritating, but I’ve got audio now!

Service Pack 3 Remote Desktop doesn’t connect to Console

remote
Service Pack 3 for Windows XP included an update to the remote desktop client which appears to have broken the old command for connecting to the console session of another computer. For some of my users I will setup their remote desktop settings and save those to a rdp file that can then be used to jump into a remote desktop session. The rdp file that the remote desktop creates is just a text file with settings in it. You used to be able to edit the text file and add a line that read:

connect to console:i:1

This would cause the session to connect to the console instead of a standard terminal services session allowing the user to interact with the same session as if you were sitting in front of the computer. For some reason this week these rdp sessions quit connecting to the console session on my servers.

After some investigation I found that this setting no longer works and you have to use:

administrative session:i:1.

Just a minor change but with large consequences!

Related to this is the fact that running mstsc.exe /console no longer works.
I’ve read that mstsc.exe /admin achieves the same thing, but I haven’t tested it yet. The reason for this change is that running remote desktop and connecting to the console connects you to session 0 which runs with elevated privileges and therefore is a security risk.

Redirect new computer accounts in Windows Server 2003 domain to a different location

2003server.jpg
While studying for the MCSE 70-294 test on active directory I ran across this little command that I was previously not aware of. redircmp.exe

So, you can type:  redircmp ou=mycomputers,DC=corp,dc=com

Replace the mycomputers with the ou (organizational unit) that you want all new computer accounts to go to.  Replace the corp with your domain name and the com with

Pretty cool!  I made a new OU where I store my computer accounts in and I always forget that new computer accounts go to the computers ou and it generally takes me a minute or two before I remember.  This way new computer accounts will automatically go to the ou of my choice.

Go here to Microsoft’s website for more info on these commands.

You can also use: redirusr ou=myusers,DC=corp,dc=com

This will redirect the location that new user accounts are made in.  I don’t use this one, but it is good to know.

Vista Tip – Trouble installing Vista on SATA drive


I was working on one of my computers at home and decided to load Windows Vista on it.  I grabbed a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate and thought I’d throw that on it.  So, I put in the DVD, boot it up, pick my language, enter the product key and I get the following message: “Windows cannot be installed to this HD space. The partition contains one or more dynamic volumes that are not supported for installation”

Ok, let’s delete the partitions and install on a fresh partition.  That’s wierd the delete and format options are greyed out.   

Ok, well, I’m thinking this must be a driver issue.  The setup must not be able to see the drive properly.  But, in the window above that it correctly was showing my drive with the existing partition and the correct size and everything.  This was not a brand new drive, it was one I had used in another machine.

So, I’m thinking, well, the drive is making a very whiny noise anyways.  I don’t really want to use this drive because it’s liable to die.  So I grab another drive from a different machine and I get the same results.  Again, not a new drive but one that had been in use.

I do some poking around on the internet and find a lot of explanations and possible fixes, but none of them work.  I grab the motherboard driver CD and try loading drivers for the SATA controller, but no luck.  (On a side note, the ability to load drivers from a USB drive or CD/DVD as opposed to by floppy like XP does is a very cool feature).

My next move is to find a bootable disk that I can use to nuke the partitions on the drive and see if that helps.  Bingo!  I downloaded Ultimate Boot CD from here.  Amongst the many useful tools on the Ultimate Boot CD are a number of Partition tools and I managed to use one to delete all partitions on the drive.  After doing so, the Vista installation took off and worked without a problem.

I thought this issue was really strange because the 2 drives that I was trying to use had come from Windows XP installations and had been formatted NTFS.  Oh well, it works now and that’s what counts!

Super simple free cd/dvd burning

burnaware_free.jpg
I’ve been a long time Nero user, but lately it seems even my favorite burning software has become so bloated and overfilled with extras that it’s a hassle to just install the beast.
So, when I reloaded my laptop recently I started poking around for an alternative and I found this little free gem called BurnAware Free.

The software is made by GloryLogic.  They also have a paid version that has more features like UDF data discs, bootable discs, writing files larger than 4 gig and more.  The free version does your typical audio discs, data disks, burn and create iso images and more.  Here is a list of differences in the versions.

I like to make my own bootable XP install cd’s and dvd’s so I’ll likely purchase the Home version but for now I’ve been using the Free version and  love the less is more approach to the interface.  That’s me, less is more.  Keep it simple stupid.

Vista Tip – Turn off hibernation

vista
Unlike Windows XP, Vista doesn’t have a handy checkbox for turning off hibernation.
I recently installed TrueCrypt 5 (which is working beautifully) and used it to encrypt my whole C: drive. Since it’s encrypted hibernation does not work.
Well, I kept forgetting that and tried to put my laptop into hibernation.

I found instructions on this site for disabling hibernation which removes the choice from the start menu.

To disable hibernation:

  • Click Start followed by All Programs and then Accessories
  • On the Accessories menu Right Click on the Command Prompt
  • From the drop down menu, Click on the Run Administrator option
  • The Command Prompt window will now open
  • At the command prompt type: powercfg -H off

To enable hibernation:

  • Click Start followed by All Programs and then Accessories
  • On the Accessories menu Right Click on the Command Prompt
  • From the drop down menu, Click on the Run Administrator option
  • The Command Prompt window will now open
  • At the command prompt type: powercfg -H on

Symantec Liveupdate fails with a LU1863 error – There is not enough free disk space

Liveupdate

I use Symantec Backup Exec 12 and Symantec Endpoint Protection Anti-virus and Anti-Spyware products. Recently Liveupdate quit working and it wasn’t downloading virus definition updates. This was normally an automatic process that I didn’t have to mess with, but once I saw the dates on our virus definitions looked old I jumped in to investigate. Running Liveupdate manually I would get an error message that said “LU1863: There is not enough free disk space…”. That’s odd, my server’s C drive has 35gb free, D drive has 130gb and E drive has 1.2 terrabytes free. I’d say that’s plenty of free disk space.

I uninstalled Liveupdate to no avail. I found the Liveupdate config program and emptied the cache again to no avail. After some investigating I found that the LU1863 error could actually be a communications problem, not a hard drive space problem. So, what’s changed lately? Well last week I installed GFI Webmonitor on my network to do some monitoring. Well, that ended up being the culprit. I went to the Whitelist and added *.symantecliveupdate.com and away the Liveupdate went!

Vista Tip – View thumbnails of Nikon Raw images

VistaNIkon

I was surprised when I clicked on a folder of raw images I’d taken with my Nikon D70 in Windows Vista and there were no thumbnails. I thought I had that ability in Windows XP but couldn’t remember if I did something extra to do it. I guess I just expected it to work in Vista. No worries though, after some clicking around I found this page on Nikon’s site with a raw codec for Windows Vista and now I’ve got thumbnails for all those .nef files!

Configure Firefox to allow linking to a file or folder

FirefoxOne thing about Firefox that’s always bugged me is the inability to access links to files and folders using file://.
After some research it appears that this ability is disabled for security reasons. Fair enough, but I want to use it at work.
I have a page on my Intranet with links to installations and folders but they are all located on network shares, not hosted by

So, to enable this you have to add a file to your Firefox profile called user.js
To do it just make a new empty text file and name it user.js
If you already have a user.js file you can edit it and add the following lines:

user_pref(“capability.policy.policynames”, “offlineok”);
user_pref(“capability.policy.offlineok.sites”, “http://YourDomain.com”);
user_pref(“capability.policy.offlineok.sites”, “http://YourOtherDomain.com”);
user_pref(“capability.policy.offlineok.checkloaduri.enabled”, “allAccess”);

Now when you click on a “File://” link from one of the specified domains it will allow it to be accessed.
One think to keep in mind when making links to use this way, Firefox wants the “File://” link to look like this: “File://///” when linking to a file or folder on a network share. When linking to a local file or folder you can just use the “File://”
Note: Sometimes when copying code like the above the quotation marks can get changed by different browsers and text editors, so if it’s not working when you put it into the user.js file check that the quotation marks are normal.