Tag: vista

How-To: Share your Internet connection between multiple computers (Ad-Hoc)

If you’ve ever been in a situation similar to mine where you have multiple computers, one Ethernet cable and no wireless router then don’t sweat it. You’re still in luck!

If one of your computers has at least two network cards, for example an Ethernet port and wireless capabilities, then you can connect one computer via the Ethernet connection and broadcast that same connection over that computer’s wireless card so that other computers can connect. I’ll show you how below.

I will be walking through the steps in Windows Vista, but the steps should be the same across all platforms. If you’re using a different platform then just try to find the same dialogs and options on that system and everything should work fine.

  1. Open the Control Panel. To do this, go to Start->Control Panel
    If you’re in Windows Vista and your Control Panel window looks like this:

    You will need to click on the option labeled “Classic View” in the upper left corner of the window. This will change the layout of the Control Panel so that I don’t have to rewrite this How-To in multiple different directions. After changing the layout, your Control Panel should look like this:
  2. In the image above, the icon for “Network and Sharing Center” is selected. Double click on this option. When the window changes you should see a list of tasks in the left column. Click on the item from the list labeled “Manage network connections“. This will open a new window that should show the network cards available on your computer.
  3. Make sure that your Ethernet cable is plugged into your computer and your Internet source and that the Internet connection is working fine on that computer. Now right click on the option labeled “Local Area Connection” and select “Properties” from the menu (User Account Control will most likely ask you if you wish to continue and just agree and click continue if it does).
  4. The Properties window will open on a tab labeled “Networking” with a list of items that the connection uses. Just ignore all of that and switch to the tab labeled “Sharing.” The options on the “Sharing” tab should be selected as follows. Enable the option labeled “Allow other network users to connect through this computer’s Internet connection.” Disable the option labeled “Allow other network users to control or disable the shared Internet connection.” After matching these settings, click “OK” to save the changes.
  5. You can now close the window for “Network Connections” and reopen the window for “Network and Sharing Center.” If you have already closed this window by accident then you can follow steps 1 and 2 again, except this time instead of clicking on the option to “Manage network connections” you want to select the option to “Setup a connection or network.”
  6. When the “Setup a connection or network“ window opens, it will have a list of networks that you can setup. The one that you want to setup is selected in the image above and is labeled “Setup a wireless ad hoc (computer-to-computer) network. Setup a temporary network for sharing files or an Internet connection.“

  7. When the “Setup a wireless ad hoc (computer-to-computer) network” window is open, it will explain a little bit about the network. Just click “Next” until you get to a form that is empty and looks like the form below:

    You need to give the network that you are creating a name that you will be able to recognize and it can be anything that you want!

    You also have the option to add security to your network. I highly advise this as you have more control over your network, so just select the option for “WEP” and below it enter some form of a password.

    You can click the option to “Display characters” while you are entering the key/passphrase. This will make it easier to make a new key for your network.

    Don’t forget to also enable the option to “Save this network” if you plan on using it later!

    If you hover the text box for the key/passphrase, you will see a notification tooltip that explains how the passwords work. You should follow those instructions to create your password and make sure it is the correct length as specified in the tooltip.

  8. Click “Next” to complete the setup and close any open windows. Your Ad-Hoc network is now setup and you should now be able to see a wireless signal on your other computers. Connecting to your network will require the users to know the key/passphrase that you entered, but once connected..all of the other computers should be able to browse the web and connect to instant messengers…anything you need!

If you have any questions then please ask them in the comments! Just remember to follow the steps closely before asking. Enjoy!

Windows Vista: Wishlist

As I slowly tweak my installation of Vista Ultimate (64-bit) I’m beginning to realize that I really like the Ubuntu Linux desktop environment.

I keep finding myself tweaking things that are basically already there in Linux. For example, I have dual screens (multiple monitors) on my desktop computer and I hate the fact that Vista will only allow my to have one task bar and in only one monitor.

My solution was to install UltraMon, which allows me to have a task bar on the second monitor that even holds it’s own window list. So now my windows that are open on monitor #2 don’t show up in the task bar of the other monitor. It’s much more organized! This can very easily be accomplished in Linux without the need to install extra software.

On top of that, UltraMon adds some cool little buttons to the top of each window near the minimize, maximize and close buttons. The two buttons that are added allow me to do the following:

  1. Stretch the window across both monitors for a double full screen effect. This can be handy at times!
  2. Move this window to the other monitor. This is very handy indeed. It just switches screens and even holds the same place on the other screen as it did on the first one. This works back and forth.

I would also have them install more gadgets by default in the Windows Sidebar. I had to go and download several that I thought were very useful.

  • System Monitor, which allows me to keep track of several things including: CPU, RAM, Wireless connection with a progress bar for strength, IP Address and External IP Address and even Battery Monitor (which I obviously don’t use on my desktop, but it would be great for my laptop…if it would even hold a charge, lol).
  • Wireless Network, which just shows a better signal meter and percentage as well as the network connecting name. It just looks better than the one you can use with System Monitor.
  • Volume Control, just a meter that looks similar to the wireless signal meter, but you can scroll through the meter to increase or decrease the volume very easily. I love it cause I hate clicking on the tray icon to change the volume setting (you can scroll on the tray icon as well, but there is one cool thing you can’t do with the tray icon..). You can even middle click on the volume gadget meter and it will toggle mute on and off! Very handy and quick!
  • DriveInfo, shows you a hard drive with a progress bar below it indicating the percentage of the drive used. It also shows the amount used in MB/GB/TB what ever you may be using, the drive letter and a number percentage. Just pretty cool for keeping a close eye on your drive…but not wasting any time at all.
  • The last one that I added to the list was the GMail Counter gadget. I love this one. It just gives me a count of the unread messages I have in my inbox and there are others that give you previews (GMail Checker), but I don’t need the previews really. I really like the fact that when it finds new mail, I get any kind of notification sound I want and currently it’s the classic “You’ve Got Mail” alert! I love it!

After adding those gadgets to the list of available ones and adding them to the Windows Sidebar, I had to add a couple weather gadgets. One for home and one for school. That just topped it off!

One thing that also irritates me is the fact that when I’m downloading updates I can’t tell which update it’s currently downloading and how much of it is downloaded other than a rough estimate in the form of a percentage. I loved how in Ubuntu I could drop down a list of the files that are being downloaded and see in real time how much was downloaded for each file as well as over all. Sure they want to keep it simple in Windows, but a drop down arrow with more details wouldn’t be all that hard to add on and would be out of the way.

I also wish that Windows would come with a couple other browsers installed by default. I’d like to see Firefox, Opera, Flock and Safari installed along side Internet Explorer by default. I know Flock is just a derivative of Firefox, but the difference in uses of the browser are enough to make it worth adding.

This would clearly add to the needed space for installations, but I ‘ve got to tell you that Microsoft has never been good at using hard drive space. I’ve currently split an 80GB drive into a partition of 50GB for Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit and 28GB for Ubuntu 8.04 64-bit and ~2GB for Linux Swap space. Of those, Ubuntu is currently fresh installed with about 10 extra installed applications and it’s only using ~6GB of the 28GB available to it. Windows Vista is a fresh install with about 10 installed applications (most of which are the same as the ones I added in Ubuntu) and it’s using ~30GB.

Okay, so I just finished installing Windows Vista SP1 and had to do a couple reboots in the middle of posting this and apparently SP1 actually clears some junk from your computer, because now I’m using ~28GB! That’s almost 2GB less than what I was using before and that’s even after an update with a service pack! It would be really cool to see the installation size continually shrink as the other service packs are released! Maybe to something under 10GB would be great! The fact that Vista is still using ~28-30GB on a fresh install with the exception of ~10 applications (UltrMon, flash, browsers and messengers) is just crazy when you compare the graphically updates to Vista vs. XP and then compare Vista to Ubuntu and the installation size of Ubuntu.

Now that is just sad. Ubuntu supported my wireless card straight from the first time I logged in. In Vista I had to logout, login to Ubuntu, download the drivers and save them on the NTFS partition, reboot into Vista and install them. How sad is that? With all that hard drive space used there wasn’t a single supported driver found! The driver that I had to manually download works perfect, but the fact that it wasn’t already installed with Vista makes me wonder what the ~28-30GB of space is used for!

I’d also like to see a repository similar to the “Add/Remove Applications” feature in Ubuntu and several other Linux distros. This would be a great way to provide alternative applications without wasting installation space by installing them all initially. In Ubuntu, the list is broken down into categories such as Internet, Accessories, etc. and makes the task of finding and searching for new applications very simple. This would probably never reach a Windows system (integrated with the operating system by default), but it would be a major improvement!

In a quick recap, here are the things I’d wish for Vista to be a little better:

  1. Microsoft should either buy UltraMon and work it straight into the operating system or implement their own support for handling multiple taskbars and making workspace functionality better. In Ubuntu I use four workspaces on a daily basis and I find it hard to work without them. Since Windows doesn’t even have spaces it should at least make the best possible use of the limited space available.
  2. The gadgets are a little lame, but they are definitely promising. They can be very handy and I listed a few gadgets that are actually useful and serve a purpose. They speed-up my activities in Vista a little and they should help anyone really. I think Microsoft should be including a larger selection of gadgets by default. Only the best of the best, but a wide range of default ones would be great!
  3. Windows Updates should be a little more helpful and informative. Sometimes I want to know the exact update that is being downloaded while it is being downloaded and even watch the download progress. I want to be able to see what my operating system is doing and not just be told about what it is doing.
  4. I think a wider selection of applications should be installed by default. I listed several of the major web browsers, but I’m not just mentioning this to boost the web browsing industry. I’d like to also see alternative messengers such as Pidgin, Miranda, Trillian, Digsby, etc available for the users to choose from. Maybe even Yahoo Messenger and Google Talk.
  5. Installation size is becoming less and less of a problem or issue these days, but don’t we all like to see that the applications that we are using are optimized as much as they possibly can be? I know I have three other hard drives and almost 2TB of storage space on my desktop, but that doesn’t mean that I want my operating system wasting space when it could be using it much more efficiently.
  6. Microsoft should handle a repository list similar to how Linux does so that we can look through a list of applications that we can install that are very popular. This would mean that we have fast access to installing a wealth of applications and at the same time are not wasting space by having them pre-installed. I know this will probably never happen with Windows since it has survived so long without this feature, but it would dramatically improve the end-users experience with finding and using new software that they may have never heard of before.

That’s about all I care to write about right now, but Vista could use plenty of other improvements such as workspaces and wobbly windows. These can most likely be added on with third party applications, but they should simply be available by default like they are in Ubuntu!

Windows Vista has a major security problem..

Go figure, as soon as I get off my lazy butt and install my copy of Microsoft Vista Ultimate one of my friends sends me a link to some (as he calls it) disheartening news.

Apparently two researchers,  Mark Dowd of IBM Internet Security Systems (ISS) and Alexander Sotirov, of VMware Inc., have found a hole in the way Vista’s security system works. The hole in general is that they took advantage of Vista’s framework and architecture and are now able to do basically anything they want with a Vista system.

“The genius of this is that it’s completely reusable,” said Dino Dai Zovi, a well-known security researcher and author. “They have attacks that let them load chosen content to a chosen location with chosen permissions. That’s completely game over.

Source: SearchSecurity.TechTarget.com

The sad thing is that Microsoft has a very large paid staff who should be able to code better and smarter than this, but it simply doesn’t happen that way. I think they should just open up their source and let the public pick at it until it’s bullet proof like it should be.

Thank’s Phred/fearphage for the link. It’s a very weird coincidence that I hadn’t thought about installing Vista for the longest time and then the day after a major security discovery I install it, lol. Sounds like I’m asking for my data and information to be stolen, haha.

Windows Vista Ultimate: The last Microsoft “Ultimate” I’ll buy

This is the last thing that I will be buying from Microsoft that is supposed to be the best possible package. Honestly, I don’t even use the BitLocker feature. I bought Ultimate because I thought that there were going to be a lot of “Extras”…but I was clearly wrong.

I bought Vista pretty much right after it came out and I really enjoyed using it at first just because I thought to myself, “Man…this is the new Windows…how awesome!”, but now that I got tired of it crashing and I switched to Ubuntu for about a year and a half….well, I’m just not impressed anymore.

There really weren’t any “Extras” available when I installed Ultimate the first time, but I expected to find a list of available “Extras” when I installed it last night (over a year later).

What a freakin’ scam! Microsoft should be sued for this! Seriously! There’s basically nothing better with ultimate, nothing! I am glad to be able to run the “Best” version of Windows along side what is in my opinion one of the best operating systems ever…Ubuntu. It’s interesting to see how I work differently in each operating system and how the system can in some cases control you rather than you controlling the system.

I find myself being controlled more when I’m in Windows than I do in Linux, which is weird to me because I used to assume that you couldn’t do much in Linux other than hack and code things. Linux has really evolved these days though! Linux can honestly be as easy to use as Windows XP/Vista or Mac OS X.

In fact, you can even make your installation of Linux look and feel exactly like Windows or Mac if you want. It’s actually very easy and the familiar feel alone will increase the ease of use with not just Linux…but you and your computer.

I find myself coding more efficiently and faster in Ubuntu than I can in Windows. I think the biggest thing that helps me and makes me faster is the fact that I can have so many workspaces and easily switch between them instead of clicking and hunting windows and tabs all the time.

I really like the visual upgrade that comes with Vista (compared to XP), but honestly it’s nothing more than XP with a new theme and optimized a little (or say they say it’s better??). I’ve actually heard buzz around the Internet for a long time now that XP runs games better and faster than Vista.

Well, one thing is for sure. Ubuntu and several other Linux distros use Compiz Fusion for the eye candy and I think they found the sweet spot when they decided to add them into the operating system the way they did. It’s amazing how an open source project like Ubuntu can be leaps and hurdles a head of Microsoft Windows, but at the same time it’s kind of expected that Microsoft isn’t going to ever use their money and power to just “Wow” us when they can just do enough to try to hold us.

It’s cheaper for them to just hold us than it is to run out of the “Wow” material too quickly and try to find something new and honestly most Windows users don’t even realize that the operating system *should be* so much better than it currently is.

Oh well, what are we going to do? Does Microsoft really listen anyway? I know Apple listens. It seems to me that Apple is really good at feeling around to see what users really want and not always just what they know of either. Apple is very innovative and they are good at making something new work very well. The key, I believe, to their success is the fact that they let their products mature before releasing them and they also push for reasonable release dates.

Microsoft had an unreasonably long delay between Windows XP and Windows Vista. Call it what you will, but I call it laziness. I think they just wanted to sit back and see how long the world would buy copies of Windows XP before we realized that everyone else was still progressing (Mac, Linux, etc.).

Microsoft definitely rushed Vista and even had to cut out several features or upgrades that were planned. One upgrade that I was really looking forward to was the new file system that Vista was supposed to have. The new file system, dubbed “Win FS”, was supposed to be worked into Vista, but was cancelled do to problems and delays on releasing Vista.

Why release a product that isn’t finished? Actually, bad question…no software is ever finished, only abandoned. Rather, why release a product for a release date and not for a maturity stage in the developmental process? Wouldn’t you want your products when they have reached a certain level instead of just reaching a certain age?

Sure it sucks waiting for updates and upgrades, but if Microsoft can’t get their employees to work faster then we should still just wait for a proper update. I don’t like downloading a browser or messenger that crashes all the time when they could have spent a little more time to iron out the kinks.

Vista is still using the file system NTFS that we probably all remember from XP. The thing you might not know is that NTFS was released along side Windows NT when I was 7 years old. Windows NT was more of a networking configuration anyways and never really hit the public much.

The point is that NTFS was released in 1993 and is now a little over 15 years old (to the public). Most Linux or UNIX platforms use ext3 which was released in 1999. That’s still 6 years newer than Microsoft’s! Apple has been looking into upgrading from HFS Plus, which was released in 1998, to a 2004 file system called ZFS.

If you want to look into these file systems and compare them then Wikipedia has a great page for that! I’m actually looking forward to ext4 which has some very good strengths, but it’s not exactly stable yet.

So for now I guess I must be content with Vista (it’s the best it will ever be I suppose) and just log back into Ubuntu when I need to. I seriously hope that Microsoft speeds up and releases something good soon so I can use my NC State privileges to get the latest operating system for free. Hope this very opinionated post was at least fun to read. 😉

Vista: Repair with boot disk

vistaIf you ever experience problems with your Vista installation and it fails to boot, you’ll quickly learn that “fixmbr” is no longer used the same way (fixmbr is to be valid for Windows XP and several previous Windows platforms).

If you need to fix your then you may have trouble finding the remedy as I did. I searched for a little while not finding anything helpful. However, not that I’ve found it and had to use it a few times I am going to share it with you (and all just post it so I can reference it later more easily).

The recover steps are as follows:

  1. Power-on your system and immediately insert your installation disk.
  2. Press any key to boot your PC from the installion disk.
  3. Once booting has completed click “Next” after making sure that options such as language are appropriate for you.
  4. From the list of options provided, select repair. (This may take several minutes while the installation disk tries to find supported bootable partitions. Just be patient. 😉 )
  5. If the automatic scan does not detect your windows installation then you may have a lot of trouble regaining any information stored on your drive. If this is not the case for you then move on tot he next step. Otherwise, if this is the case then I suggest the following:
    • Obtain another hard drive, by purchase or borrow from a friend and install Windows on thenew hard drive.
    • Now install some freeware undelete software to recover your important files to the borrowed hard drive so you can use it later to move the files back to your system.
    • After recovering the files that you need to keep, format and reinstall Windows on your old hard drive.
    • Now you are ready to copy and paste the recovered files over.
  6. Now that the install disk has detected your old installation click next to continue.
  7. The next screen offers several things. Go a head and click to repair startup, but don’t count on this fixing anything (it has never fixed anything for me in the past, but it never hurts to try).
  8. Now click on the option to manually repair via the console.
  9. Once in the terminal/console, you will be using “bootrec“. Go a head and type “bootrec” without the quotes into the terminal and press enter to get an idea from the description that it provides for what it does. Now the commands that will fix your system are as follows (without quotes):
    • “bootrec -FixMbr” – this command will rewrite the contents of your master boot record since it is most likely corrupt, otherwise you probably wouldn’t be here.
    • “bootrec -FixBoot” – this command may not be necessary, but I use it just incase.
  10. Now that you have enter both of those commands to repair your boot process you just need to restart and see if everything is working again!

I’m not sure how you got into this situation in the first place, but if you have not been trying to install another operating system to dual boot along side Vista then you might want to look into the issue further. You can always use your best friend Google.com to find where other people have had similar problems and found solutions. I would suggest looking into this immediately to ensure that your data is not lost in future incidents. It might be that you have corruption in your hard drive and need to run checkdisk to repair any bad places. I hope this has been helpful to someone. If it has helped you at all, please let me know! Post a comment!

Mac OS X86 and Vista in perfect harmony

So I’ve been looking up some information trying to figure out how to install Mac OS X on my AMD machine which already has Vista Ultimate installed. I came across several helpful sites in my search and although I don’t have it setup successfully just yet..I thought I’d share the information that I found.

mac vista

First off, to install Mac OS X on a regular pc you have to get a *patched* version of the install disk. Please don’t ask me where you can get a hold of a copy of this. 😉

I used a prepatched version called “Mac OS X JaS 10.4.8 Intel/AMD Install DVD”. The steps are pretty easy.

  • Get a pre-patched install disk and burn it with your favorite program.
  • Create a partition on your hard drive at least 6GB..leave it unallocated.
  • Insert your install disk and restart.
  • Make sure that during installation you select all of the appropriate settings to install for your computer’s hardware.
  • After installation completes successfully you will need to restart your computer.

You can play around in OSX for a while if you wish, but you need to configure your boot loader to dual boot Vista and OSX. You can find a guide for this here. There are also plenty of other guides out there that you can use.

It would also be wise to take a look at a compatibility list to make sure that your hardware is supported. You can check that here.

Updates will come soon when I successfully get Mac OS X installed. I’ve heard that a version of 10.4.9 by uphuck is pretty reliable, so I’m in the process of installing it.