File Sharing With Wireless Prompting For A Log In

So I have a Windows 7 desktop.  A Windows XP laptop and another Windows Vista laptop.  Getting the three of them to play nice together can be a bit tricky at times.

I remember, when I had all XP devices file-sharing was a simple process...you allowed something to be shared out, then from another computer you accessed it.  With Windows 7 it's a little more involved.

So, for anyone out there that cannot access shared folders remotely, try this.

In Windows 7, when you share out, let's say your F drive - you right click it, select "Share With" > "Advanced Sharing".  Down at the bottom of that window is a section entitled "Password Protection" with a link to the Network and Sharing Center.

Click that link and scroll down a bit to the section called "Password protected sharing".

Make sure to turn it off like the picture above.

Of course, this is all dependent upon you actually wanting to simply share out your stuff without having to log in all the time.  I personally think it's redundant, but a nice security feature none-the-less.  I'm already behind a firewalled router, with WPA2 encryption and Zone Alarm locked up tighter than a nun's corset.  It's a tiny, itty-bitty layer of security I'm comfortable with leaving open especially considering the following:

On top of all that, Windows 7 uses another layer of packet encryption on top of everything I just mentioned.  That is configured in the dialog directly above the one I just showed you.

 See, that's another 128 bits of encryption across your share pipe.

Anyway, I hope this might help someone out there googling for the answer to why they can't share files on their home network.

One For The Record Books

My colleague, the Network Administrator for our branch of the company, has spent the last week banging his head over a server in our Malaysia branch.

It's a nicely set up machine with a RAID array for obvious purposes.

The person, not pictured to the left there, "in charge" of simply watching the server to see if any of the drives are failing so that he can be instructed to hotswap the drive.  This person shal henceforth be referred to as "The Malaysian".

Our young Malaysian go-getter noticed 2 blinking amber lights.  Decided that wasn't enough to notify anyone.  But when the third amber light appeared, he picked up the phone, snapped on his artificial opposable thumbs and dialed into our offices here to tell my poor colleague that there "might be a problem".

Now...in a RAID 5 environment, with one amber light, one would be motivated to action..yeah, there's still some redundancy, but hey...let's not waste time...maybe there's some important stuff on these drives.  Perhaps, one might think, man-hours upon man-hours have been used up to populate those drives with stuff called "hard work".  But hey, maybe he was busy...and trusted his skills to deal with it before anything got out of control.

Moving on...two amber lights blinking and it's go time.  Redundancy no longer exists and there is zero room for error.  If, God forbid, another drive were to fail at this point it would be what's called a "data disaster".

At this point, the netadmin still hasn't been notified, emailed, called, no flares were shot off, no smoke signals, no Bat-Signal to our netadmin when the second amber light was blinking.

Obviously, a third drive failed.

This lead to the technical term those in the business refer to as "Holy Fucking Mother-fucking Data Loss" (HFMFDL).  At that point...there is so much shit splattered all over the fan it's already started to dry up and fall off.

The option then, is to slap the person on the wrist and instruct our netadmin to "build another server and ship it out to them, mmmmk?"

Skip ahead a week, the server arrives in Malaysia.  Our go-getter out there says, "Hmm, I gotta email our netadmin".  (I know, right?)  So he does...and he asks the netadmin for the root password to the server because he can't logon.  After our netadmin wiped the coffee off his monitor from laughing at and swiftly denying this request, he got another email saying that the reason our Malaysian needs the root password is because he can't log into the server.

Uh-oh, did the netadmin fuck this server up?  Did he build a piece of crap and send it out there?  Did he screw up the install?

No.

The Malaysian forgot to plug the server in.

Vista Machine - Won't Connect To Wireless Network

So my wife's computer is running Vista. And apparently there's an issue with Vista and wireless networks.

I spent two days struggling with this one. The only action I could get was an IP address, but no internet. I would get a message about "Local only".

So I did all the obvious things...like reinstalling drivers, disabling/enabling devices, uninstalling devices, reinstalling devices etc.

Here's the deal:

For some reason beyond my wildest imagination Vista turns your wireless adapter off after a certain period of inactivity.

Go to Device Manager, right click on your WiFi adapter and select properties. From there, click along the tabs (who knows if it's universal) until you see something referring to "Power Management".

Uncheck "Allow Windows To Turn This Device Off".

Morons.

Ok, if you want to turn it off...be a smart enough operating system to turn it the hell back on when you sense activity.

Maddening.

Let's Skip Over Everything

Yeah.

We moved into our new home, and believe me doing so throws your entire schedule off kilter.

So...needless to say I didn't have time to document everything. I needed to get the computer up and running.

This this is amazing. It's the fastest machine I've ever built and it runs everything perfectly.

So...end of project.

Now I need to concentrate on the next 8 weeks of waiting for my first child to arrive!

My Project: Part X

Well, other than my new Power Supply having an X in the name - I have no witty banter or movie tie-in to do with this one.

My mind is pretty wasted from thinking about the Lost finale last night night, which I thought was great. Most co-workers that watch Lost (1) didn't like it. I guess he didn't get everything answered and wrapped up in a pretty bow. But honestly, if you were a fan of Lost, I don't think you're of the mindset that needs thinks handed to you on a platter...the show made you think, it's no surprise that the ending did so as well.

Anyway, here it is. I make this post 8 minutes before I leave work...and once I get home it shall be installed.

And I plan on doing some serious wire hiding, learned a few tricks and I'll show ya what they are.

My Project: Part IX

Yes, there's been a sudden stoppage of posts about my progress.

The machine was built and turned on, I had taken pictures along the way to post each step.

However, when I finished the machine and tried to boot it. It was dead. I checked the power supply with a multimeter and it was DOA.

So I'm waiting on Newegg's RMA procedure to finish, and while I was logged in I looked around for different PSUs and with a little help from the awesome people over at the AMD forums, decided to purchase the Corsair 650Tx.

Maybe add a little extra power to the thing...there's some heavy-duty stuff in there, and if my research is any kind of indicator, there's reports of people getting this Deneb up to 3.5 and steady. I'm pretty sure 400W wouldn't handle that.

My Project: Part VIII

They're coming to get to Baaahhhbra...Braaaains....

Yes. The brains of my new toy. An AMD (my first by the way) Phenom II Quad-Core 6MB L3 Cache AM3 processor.



This beauty came in a box that...maybe it was how excited I was...had a nice, roughish texture to it. I carefully opened the package and pulled, ever-so-lovingly, its small yet powerful contents.

The heatsink and fan were assembled already, no worries...and there it was. Sitting on a bed of greyish-black foam (do I use too many "-"'s?) was my gift...I flashed back to my Commodore 64 and thought about it's processing power and wondered at how far we have come. I then realized I never took a picture of the motherboard with nothing in it...so we'll skip that part and pretend it never happened.

Moving on, I had purchased some thermal compound, picture included for my non-existant readers:



But I didn't need it. There was compound already applied on the bottom of the heatsink and once I secured the processor into it's slot (it's very easy...it won't go in unless you have it the correct way - completely fool proof).

So onto the board the units went.



Happy, I was. No zombies crashed through my window and I placed the parts aside to continue, and survive, another day.

My Project: Part VII

We come to it, at last. The great battle of our time.

Hail Ripjaws, son of Gskill, Lord and Steward of Jarvis! (that's what I'm going to name my machine...awesome huh? You know, Jarvis. The Avengers...? Tony Stark's butler? You know...the machine Tony talks to when he's flying around shooting baddies?...never mind...on with it)

Yeah, I mixed two movies...so what?

So here we have some nice 1600mhz memory to sit comfortable in perfect little slots on the motherboard.

Now's a good time to strap on that ESD wrist strap. I purchased a nice Rosewill from newegg before I began my journey up into Mordor...I suggest you get one if you're going to be doing any work on a PC.

ESD is no joke and it will fry a brand new motherboard faster than you can say "No RMA for stupidity".

I almost didn't want to take this stuff out of it's packaging. You know how getting there is half the fun? That it's the journey, not the destination? This stuff just looked too damn cool to use. But oh wait, I bought a case with a nice big window in it - so I can still see it. Don't worry, I'm fine.

So with a satisfying, endorphin releasing snap the RAM was seated and ready to do its job.



Stay tuned, more to come!

My Project: Part VI

So here we are...6 "steps" into building a new computer and I've turned the first screw.

Today, my Corsair 400W Core i7 power supply arrived. Excitedly, I grabbed my case and, my extra-favorite Victorinox Swiss Army Spirit Multitool, my ESD bracelet and the PSU.

(All pics are links to bigger pictures)

Here she lies, naked...wooing the Corsair:



Then, the Corsair made his move and they are mated, joined if you will, for life.

My Project: Part V

In honor of Tony Stark's complete rebuild, I'll use this post to note that all parts have been ordered for my machine, and knowing how much ass newegg kicks, the stuff should be here today or tomorrow.

So for those that might be just jumping on board here (Hey look, another parallel Invincible Iron Man #25 is a great point to jump into the series, as the above reviewer states), now would be a great point to jump on and follow along with my building the new machine from the ground up. Here are the bits and pieces:

• AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Quad Core Processor


• ASUS M4A77TD AM3 AMD ATX Motherboard


• 4GB G.SKILL Ripjaws Series DDR3 - 1600mhz (PC3 12800)


• CORSAIR CMPSU-400CX 400W Core i7 Power Supply


• Cooler Master Elite 310 ATX, MATX Mid Tower Case


• Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 1GB GDDR3 625 MHz PCI-E Video Card

All to be run by Windows 7 64 bit.

As I said, I'll be documenting the process throughout...from opening the boxes to opening the first Firefox window when the machine fires up.

My Project: Part IV

Well, not 24 hours later and Amazon shipped out my replacement.

I unpackaged it very, very carefully taking note they actually put packaging materials on top of the box inside the bigger box. Impressive, most impressive.

So I open the box, take out the case and notice a large hole in the side of the cardboard. That was not most impressive.

Then I carefully cut the tape off and slowly slid the case out and...viola...the case was in perfect condition.

Once I get home today, I'll post some pictures of the broken case and the "good" case.

My Project: Part III

I pull into my driveway after work today and see a nice, big amazon box on my porch. I knew instantly what it was...my new black and orange Mid-Size Cooler Master Elite 310 ATX case:



It's also comic book day, so double-yay!

I get inside, noticing that the packaging is a little beat up. The box holding the case was inside another, larger box. The didn't put any packaging material on top, so the larger box was nearly wide open, I could basically see inside the box.

Oh well, I carefully opened the box and lifted the actual case's box out and heard the sound of rattling...I figured it was the sound of screws or something.

Once I opened the box and pulled the case out I was not happy. The plastic...whatever they're called...anchors?...that hold the face to the case were all broken and the face was hanging off, held together only by the fact that they end of the wire tips weren't small enough to fall through the holes in the case.

I thought it might just be one that was broken, and I could find one, or there'd be an extra but no such luck. As I looked closer there was pieces of plastic everywhere inside the case and in the plastic bag the case came in.

I mean, how hard do you have to throw this box around to do this type of damage? I'm absolutely furious. Amazon has burned me a few times in the past...I've bought collectible comic books and they arrived loose in boxes with no protection and all folded up and bumped edges etc.

This makes the 5th time I've had to return something to Amazon. Of course, they are providing me with a replacement...but I've even had to ship back replacements before!

Is it me or has Amazon's service declined lately?

My Project: Part II

Today, my motherboard arrived.

I'm basically going to document every step of this procedure. Just to see exactly how many individual steps it takes to get this done. Then maybe I'll write up a little guide...who knows.

I've already got a Sapphire 4850HD that I purchased about a year ago...and it actually fits! Hoo-rah! I'm amazed because when I spent a bucketload of money on that video card it didn't fit in my current motherboard.

I Want This So Bad I Would Kill

Call me materialistic, call me a sucker, call me a brainless consumer...I don't care.

I...Want...This.

My Project: Part I

This project is motivated by the exorbitant amount of money Comcast charges for television.

At best, my wife and I watch 7-10 hours of television a week. Hardly worth the nearly $200.00/month bill we receive for phone, internet and cable.

I've been given to the go-ahead (wife's approval) to go ahead and give this a shot. The machine I'm going to be using to use as the media center television is:

• Windows XP Media Center Edition Service Pack
• 2.80 gigahertz Intel Pentium D
• Intel Corporation D945GBI AAC99325-202 motherboard
• 4GB of RAM
• NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT
• Soundblaster Audigy

This machine has served me very, very well for a long time. I've modded the case with a nice big window on the side and have taken loving care of it. I hope that in it's new endeavor, it serves me just as well as it has in the past.

Now, the new machine I'll be building to take it's place will be built with some nice, new components. But to keep it interesting, I'll only link to those pieces of hardware I've already purchased.

• My new case.
• My new ASUS M4A77TD AM3 AMD 770 ATX AMD Motherboard
• My video card: Sapphire HD 4850 512MB GDDR3
  

That's what I've purchased so far. I know what CPU I will be buying and I know what ram I'll be buying...but you'll have to stay tuned to see what they are as I purchase them.

Caveat To My Last Post

So...upon further review my tip still works. But as soon as the user logs off they disappear upon logging back in.

Anyone know a way to make them permanent? Would be a heck of a lot easier!

Stumbled Upon A Really Neat Trick

So a user was upgraded to a new laptop today.

As part of her migration process I had gotten everything over to her new computer except I had forgotten her mapped network drives.

Not really a problem.

I sneakernet back to my repair lab and fire up her old laptop. I drag and drop her mapped drives onto the USB stick thinking I would simply use the letters and names to recreate them on her new computer.

However...that last step wasn't needed.

Oh, you think I just dragged and dropped them? No.

With the USB stick in, simply right click on each mapped drive and select properties. Then take a look at the "My Computer" window. Those drive are mapped automatically. Really...that easy.

I love finding things by mistake!

Sapphire HD 4850, Awesome Card! Won't Fit!

I purchased this video card with much fragging in mind.

However, when it arrived the card wouldn't fit in my motherboard. There's a capacitor in the way. If you've ever seen this card, the heat-sink and fan are huge.

Does anyone have any ideas on what to do? From what I can gather these cards run pretty hot, so I'm reluctant to run it without the fan.

I have a smaller fan lying around, no heat-sink on it though, that I could hack onto the board...maybe see if that would work.

Other than that...what could I possibly do? With all the brain power here, someone's got to be able to think of something!

Add 'Copy to' & Move To' Into Your Context Menu

Too many times to count I've had to move files from one directory to another. Either move them entirely or simply copy them.

I use a Windows Explorer replacement called Directory Opus (which I highly recommend, worth every cent) so it makes moving files a bit easier - because it has tabs and dual vertical or horizontal windows for dragging and dropping.

As I've stated, I'm very lazy when it comes to administration tasks, so if I can automate it or, at the very least, cut down on some mouse clicks I'm all for it.

So I discovered this neat little trick. You can add commands to copy or move files around your computer until you're drunk with power.

See for yourself, non-believers: experiencing



Of course you can click the image for a larger view, silly.

How do you do this?

Open your new favorite text editor: NoteTab Light, enter the following code:
Copy To --

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AllFilesystemObjects\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AllFilesystemObjects\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\{C2FBB630-2971-11D1-A18C-00C04FD75D13}]

Move To --

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AllFilesystemObjects\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AllFilesystemObjects\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\{C2FBB631-2971-11D1-A18C-00C04FD75D13}]

Save the first one as "copy-to.reg" and the second one as, yep you guessed it, "move-to.reg". Double click the files and you'll be all set to copy and move all day long!

VMWare Settings

I use VMWare because, well, it rocks. And virtualization is the unchallenged future of computing.

The one thing I disliked about VMWare was the little title-bar that was always at the top of the screen when I was running it in full-screen mode.

To take care of this, if you want to navigate to

C:\Documents and Settings\name\Application Data\VMware

and edit preferences.ini.

Add to the file the following entry:

pref.vmplayer.fullscreen.nobar = "TRUE"

And Wahlahh.