My Tech & Me

Yesterday I finally got round to installing the Windows 7 Beta… I have to admit that after I finally got all my hardware working I really do prefer it to Vista and XP. Don’t get me wrong, I liked both Vista and XP however I feel that Windows 7 is much more efficient and easier to use than both of them.

I must say that Windows 7 took two attempts to install properly on my system. It may be that im running a 64-bit version or just that 7 is still in beta.

First time round I decided that I would backup my files, wipe the drive and make a fresh install of Windows 7… The install went relatively smoothly other than some small video card glitches. I got onto my desktop and found that my wireless adapter (a wg111v3 Netgear USB adapter) was not recognised so I used another computer to download the latest Vista x64 drivers. I ran and installed this in Vista compatibility mode but still found that I had to go into the device managerand tell 7 what it was. After that I was able to connect to my wireless network but about 10 seconds after I did every time I would get a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death). After trying a number of different things I decided that the best thing to do would be to cut my losses and go back to my copy of Vista.

After reinstalling Vista I remembered the option to upgrade to 7. So I figured I would give Windows 7 one last try, after installing the latest drivers for all of my hardware (even my BIOS, to help ensure compatibility) I reloaded the install disk and run setup. The upgrade process took around half an hour longer than the clean install but it got there in the end. The best bit was that my wireless adapter was now working and the other “unrecognised” pieces of hardware had been picked up and were working.

I only have a few issues with 7 which are that, when you are selecting text in ie8 it doesn’t select it all. Instead it selects sporadic sections and leaves bit out, however I am sure that this will be patched. Another issue lies with Firefox 3, mabey was doing too much and should have given it another try but the install froze on “installing Firefox” and did not respond. The last issue, which i am almost positive is more of an issue with my DVDs than with Windows 7 but when restoring my library into iTunes 8 it hangs half way through and just stops. I’m going to try again though and hope I am able to restore all of my music.

EDIT: I managed to sort out iTunes… I had an issue with my DVDs, a few of them were marked but they worked fine after cleaning.

I feel that the Windows 7 Beta is a very good operating system. It will take a little getting used to but in my opinion it is much better than both XP and Vista. As well as this I feel that the current (and only) beta release of 7 is almost surely a release candidate and what we can expect to see in the final release of the new Windows OS.

Remember that if you want to try the Windows 7 Beta it is available here, but only for a limited time as Microsoft have said that after January 24th it will no longer be available for download. That is of course not including the hundreds of illegal bit-torrent versions which I am sure will be in circulation by then. I must recommend however that you do not use these and instead get it legally as this way you will receive important updates which will improve your Beta experience.

Matt Uncategorized Apple, Beta, iTunes, Windows, Wireless

There was such a huge demand to trial Windows 7 Beta that Microsoft have now decided to remove the 2.5 million download limit they had originally put in place for the Windows 7 Public Beta.

On The Windows Blog Brandon LeBlanc stated ‘we have decided remove the initial 2.5 million limit on the public beta for the next two weeks (thru January 24th)’. Early downloaders of the Windows 7 Beta experienced extremely slow download speeds which were a result of ’an enormous surge in demand’ on the Microsoft download servers. This has however been fixed and the download speeds have greatly improved.

Microsoft may have removed their initial download limit for the Beta but it is still unclear whether you will not be able to download the beta after January 24th or if 2.5 million people will be able to download the beta after the 24th… Either way I still reccomend you download it now before its too late.

Matt Blogs, Tech Beta, Windows

Here’s a couple of Windows 7 tricks for the new Beta which was released yesterday. But make sure that you get it as soon as possible because there only releasing 2.5million copies worldwide (not counting any BitTorrent versions ).

Tip 1:-

Ok, so the biggest new feature in Windows 7 is the new task bar… Weather you like it or not it is here to stay as the Win 7 Beta is feature complete, this means there not changing anything big (they say).

To use this new taskbar you will first need to forget everything you thought you knew about the taskbar or the quick launch bar. No longer does the taskbar only represent open programs, it can represent docked programs (programs which may or may not be running kind of like quick launch), running programs and running programs with multiple instances. However, if after a while you decide this new task bar is not for you then there is a way that you can change it so that it is much more like the taskbar from the older versions of windows.

So, to change the taskbar so that it has more of a likeness to the taskbar of yesteryear you first need to right-click on an empty space on the task bar and click on properties. Once you have done this it will open a window with a number of options relating to how the taskbar works.

Firstly under “group similar windows” you will want to change this from “always group similar windows” to “never group similar windows”. This will stop windows from showing just one icon for applications which are running in multiple windows.

This has made your taskbar much more like the older task bar, however you may now have a large number of icons but no way of telling what they are. So to fix this, under “Hide textual labels” change this from “always hide textual labels” to “never hide textual labels”. This way the task bar will now show the title if the window open such as “Dan - Conversation” for a Windows Live Messenger window.

Tip 2:-

As a second tip this involves an update which you need to make sure that you get if you plan on listening to any .MP3 files. As a 0-Day bug found in the pre-beta, it has been found that when u listen to MP3 files Windows 7 destroys the first 0.75 seconds of the MP3 file. Windows has already released a hot-fix for this which is, at the moment, available at the MSDN website ( http://www.msdn.com/ ). At the time it is however unsure whether this fix will be put on Windows Update for people who have installed the Beta however this would make sense and I am sure this will happen.

Tip 3:-

This one is more of a heads up for people who are going to download the Beta or those who just have. One of the things which Windows 7 does not come pre-installed with is Windows Essentials, this is the package which comes with Windows Live Messenger, Windows Mail and Windows Movie Maker… Among others. This is however available for free from the Windows 7 website:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows7/

Tip 4:-

A known issue with the Windows 7 Beta is the bug which was discovered as 0-day with Windows Live Mesh, which is a relatively new technology from Windows Live and is rumored to be the replacement for Windows Live Hotmail. The bug is that when you install Windows Live Mesh onto Windows 7 Beta it turns your the “glass” in your windows black and you are unable to change it. The only way in which you fix this bug is by uninstallng Mesh and restarting your system. Once you have done this you should be able to change the colour of your windows again.

This bug should however be fixed fairly quickly as Mesh is one of Microsoft’s newest products.

I hope you have found these tips helpful and make sure you keep checkibg back for more tips and tricks with Windows 7.

Matt Educational, Tech Tips & Tricks, Windows

Ok, so today I got a phone call from my friend Dan who had just today got round to installing sp3 for his XP machine.

So there was no problem installing the service pack, admittedly it took about half an hour to do it but it all went ok… Or so he thought, he went to shut down his PC later that day to find that it was stuck on the “Saving Your Personal Settings Screen”. He decided that the best fix for this problem was for him to hold down the power button on the front of his pc until it turned off which, of course it did. So Dan went out to the pub and completely forgot this problem had ever happened.

After returning later and starting up his PC again he went to turn it off yet again only to find that the problem which he thought he had fixed was back again. His system had completely frozen on the “Saving your settings” screen. Dan decided his best bet would be to phone me.

After hearing this problem being mentioned on a previous “Security Now!” podcast I recommended Dan restarted his PC and ran anti-virus and anti-spyware programs just to see if a malicious program could be causing the problem. After running for a couple of hour the anti-virus & anti-spyware software found nothing other than a couple of cookies.

Remembering the advice from the “Security Now!” podcast I has listened to I recommended him visiting the Gibson Research Corporation website ( http://www.grc.com/ ) and got him to download and install a copy of “Wizmo” which is a free utility created by Steve Gibson.

I then instructed him to use the “Shutdown Dangit!” command which would tell XP to not only shut down but also force any open programs to shut down as well… To Dan’s amazement his computer went straight through the shutdown procedure with absolutely no problems.

He even booted his PC back up again and shut it down again (this time without using Wizmo) and found that it shutdown fine, Wizmo has appeared to have completely solved the problem.

I hope that mine and Dan’s experience has helped you guys so that if such a thing happens to you then you will know to use Wizmo

———-
After looking into this problem further I have also found another way to fix this problem. As part of the windows command line there is a “shutdown” command which will shut down your pc.

I also found that if you put “/f” after it as a switch it will force all open applications to close in the same way that Wizmo does when you use the “Shutdown Dangit!” command.

The way in which you would use this is by creating a batch file which, when run, would force the computer to shut down.

The way in which you would do this is by, first opening Notepad from the accessories menu on the PC and then typing in the following line into it:

shutdown /f

Once you have copied the above line into notepad go to file>save and save it as “shutdown.bat” on your desktop (in the dropdown box below the file name change the selection from “Text Documents (*.txt)” to “All Files (*.*)”).

Now if you go to your desktop shutdown.bat should be there and when you run it, it will shut down your PC and force any open applications to close in the same way as Wizmo does just without the need to install anything.

I hope you have found this interesting and that it will help you in the future.

If you want a complete version of the shutdown.bat file you can download it from here.

Matt Educational, Tech, Tutorials Batch Files, Programming, Windows

 Ok, so I bought the Veho VB-2881 “Vista Ready” Bluetooth dongle for my pc to find that lone behold it’s not “Vista Ready”… Let’s just say that Veho’s driver disk is a pile of

Knowing that I was going to have no luck from the driver disk and after finding out that Veho’s website was equally as useless I decided to fix the problem for myself, and succeeded

So here’s how I done it:

Veho’s Bluetooth dongle works on a chipset from Broadcom… The generic Bluetooth guys, unfortunately the vista preinstalled drivers don’t include this particular version. So here’s how to hack the VB-2881 and other alike Bluetooth devices into your system.

Step 1:-

 Ok so firstly you will need to plug in your device and you should see a screen like this…

Notice the device is called BCM2045A, this is the chipset type that my Bluetooth drive is running, it does not matter if yours isn’t exactly that… This should still work (I cannot be held liable for any damage this does to your system or device)

Step 2:-

 Next go into your control panel and then into the device manager, in which under “Other Devices” you should find the name of your chipset, in this case BCM2045A.

Step 3:-

 Right click on your device and click onto properties which should show a screen just like the one below.

Step 4:-

 Click onto the details tab and then select “Hardware Ids” from this drop down box. You should then see one or two things starting with “USB\” What you will need to do is make a note of the one with “&REV_” in it as this is the exact chipset of your device. Don’t worry if your options don’t show an option with &REV_ in it, just make a note of whatever is there.

Step 5:-

Not that you have made a note of the hardware ID of your device you will need to go into the “Windows” folder on the hard drive which Windows was installed on (usually the “C:\” drive). Once you in the Windows folder you will need to go into the folder called “inf”. The full pathname of this folder, in my case, is “C:\Windows\inf\”. Once you are in this folder locate the file named “bth.inf”.

Once you have found this file copy it onto your desktop.

Step 6:-

 Now open the bth.inf file in notepad and scroll down until you see the line which says “Device Section – Start” in it. Then scroll at little further down until you see the text starting:

“[Broadcom.”

We will be editing the line which starts with:

“BCM2033 Bluetooth 2.4GHz”

Step 7:-

This is where we use the Hardware ID we copied from the device manager earlier. At the end of the “BCM2033 Bluetooth 2.4GHz” line in the “bth.inf” file there is a section which starts “USB\”, the same as the hardware ID you copied from earlier. You will need to remove this section and replace it with the Hardware ID you copied earlier, in my case I only have to change from “&PID_” but you may have to rewrite the entire section.

 Once you have done this you will need to return to the “inf” folder within the “Windows” folder on your computer. Once you have done this you will need to delete the “bth.inf” file there and replace it with the one you edited on your desktop.

Step 8:-

You have now hacked your Bluetooth devices chipset onto your computer. Now all that is left is to install the drivers for your device. You will need to return to the device manager are right click on your Bluetooth device again, but this time instead of selecting properties you should select “Update/Install Driver Software”. Once you have done this a screen much like the one below should show up.

Step 9:-

Click on “Browse my computer for driver software” and this will bring a screen up like this one:

Step 10:-

Click on the “Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer” button. This will bring up a window like this:

Select “Bluetooth Radios” from the list and then click the next button.

Step 11:-

This will open another window with two selection boxes, you will need to select “Broadcom” from the left selection boxes which should give you the option to select the device starting with “BCM2033 Bluetooth 2.4GHz”… Select this from the list and click on the button to install drivers. This will prompt you with a dialog box saying the drivers aren’t for the device but we have hacked the system in such a way that this will not matter. The device drivers will then install and away you go!

I hope this tutorial has helped solve your Bluetooth woes

Please Note: I take no liability for any damage caused to your system or devices by any of the information given in this blog post / tutorial. I do not recommend you edit any of the files found in the windows directory or any sub directories.

Matt Educational, Tech, Tutorials Bluetooth, Educational, Hacking, Tutorials, Veho

Ive finally found time to actually sit down and set up my blog

All be it a very basic 1 using a theme template from word press, hopefully that will change pretty soon and ill start getting some of my latest news tech and personal.

Matt General