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Showing posts from 2007

Custom Display Resolutions in XP

Having purchased a snazzy new 22" wide screen flat panel monitor and finding everything hunky dory in Windows Vista I tried the same monitor with a Windows XP machine only to find disappointment kicking down my door. When I went to Display Settings in Control Panel and dragged the Resolution slider up, the native resolution of the monitor was not there. Now every flat panel monitor should be run at its native resolution in order to look its best - every "virtual" pixel maps to a real one (or actually a real triad of red, green, and blue) on the screen. The monitor wanted to run at 1680x1050 but my only options were along the lines of 1280x1024, 1600x1200, 1920x1080 and so on. This was disappointing because the text and images looked either squashed or stretched. So what to do then? Well, the fix involved a little bit of registry hacking. The registry is essentially Windows' own internal database in which it keeps all its various settings. It's not usually suppose

Problems with Vista and NAS boxes

HISTORY In the old days Microsoft used to used to encrypt user name and password challenges and responses between clients and servers using LM (LAN Manager). This was then updated to NTLM (NT LAN Manager) which offered greater resistance to hacking. SAMBA, the SMB client/server system used by Linux and, consequently, most NAS boxes generally supports both of these protocols when you try and login from a Windows client machine. PROBLEM However, the more recent and secure NTLMv2 is not generally supported by most NAS boxes. Consequently, a client attempting to login using NTLMv2 will not be able to access the NAS since it's responses will not be understood by the NAS. Window 2000 (SP4) and XP support NTLMv2 but do not make it mandatory. Unfortunately, good old Windows Vista now defaults to send "NTLMv2 Response Only" which means that many NAS boxes will not be able to authenticate the Windows Vista client. SOLUTION The way to fix this is to configure Vista so that it ca

Vista driver for ATi Mobility Radeon 7500

I've been getting to grips with Vista lately and one thing that can be rather annoying is how so many manufacturers are not bringing out updated drivers for their hardware products. This is really not Microsoft's fault but it certainly dampen the "Wow" factor. A case in point: I recently upgraded a pretty decent laptop (1.6GHz, 1GB of RAM) from XP Pro to Vista Business. Most devices were, to Microsoft's credit, picked up almost straight away. However, the (still very serviceable) ATi Mobility Radeon 7500 graphics chipset would only come up as a "Standard VGA" device. Not a delightful situation. A quick check on AMD/ATi's website revealed that there was no Vista driver for this products (nor for many other decent products either). Having Googled away for a while I eventually stumbled upon a fix at the following forum: http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PageIndex=2&SiteID=17&PostID=1563655 What you need to do is install the built

Post2Blog

Found a superb blogging tool recently called Post2Blog. It’s freeware and can be downloaded from: http://bytescout.com After installation you configure it with your blog site’s details, login information, etc. Once you’re up and running all you need to do is create a new post and click the "Publish" button. Apparently it also provides Microsoft Office integration, although I haven’t tried that out yet. You can also manage all of you blog posts - edit, delete, move up/down, etc. This is the kind of software that gives freeware a good name!

Evolution MK-249C MIDI Keyboard Mac OS X Problem

Mac OS X generally seems capable of dealing with just about anything you can throw at it. However upon connecting my trusty Evolution MK-249C MIDI keyboard up to my 2nd generation MacBook it steadfastly refused to play ball. This keyboard has always been instantly recognised by Windows XP and so it was surprising to encounter this. The M-Audio website (M-Audio took over Evolution it appears) offered no real assistance. There was no driver available for Mac OS X 10.4.9 as the keyboard is supposed to be "Class Compliant" which apparently means it doesn't need one... strange. Eventually after consulting some forums I found the fix. The problem seems to be related to Mac OS on the Intel MacBooks. There is a patch on the M-Audio site but only for MacOS 10.1.5. This must be downloaded and installed. Here is the link: http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=support.drivers&f=596 Upon restarting the OS the keyboard was recognised by Mac OS and GarageBand had no trouble tal

WPA2 in Windows XP

Having recently upgraded my encryption settings on my just about barely-trusty Linksys WRT54GC to use WPA2 I was able to reconfigure my super little MacBook to use this standard with no hassle at all. However, upon booting into Windows XP (using BootCamp) a couple of days later my wireless steadfastly refused to show any signs of life. After mucking about for a while a eventually remembered I had changed the access point to use WPA2. Unfortunately, Windows XP (even with SP2) doesn't support WPA2 until you download a hotfix from the Microsoft website. The URL for this is: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=662BB74D-E7C1-48D6-95EE-1459234F4483&displaylang=en It's small download (about 1.5MB), it's very easy to apply, and it even takes a System Restore point before installing. But why isn't it a Windows update?

Santa Rosa Laptops

It would appear that any laptop manufacturer worth their salt is preparing to release a system based on Intel's new Santa Rosa chipset. Santa Rosa, also known as "Centrino Pro" promises to bring us: Second generation Intel Core 2 Duo (code-named Merom) mobile processor. The processor is similar to and still carries the codename Merom in common with that used on the NAPA platform although the new processors connect to the motherboard with Socket P. 800 MT/s front side bus with Dynamic Front Side Bus Switching to save power during low utilization Intel Mobile 965 Express chipset (code named Crestline) with Intel's GMA X3000 graphics technology and ICH8M southbridge Intel PRO/Wireless 4965AGN IEEE 802.11 a/b/g/n mini-PCIe Wi-Fi adapter (code named Kedron) NAND flash-memory caching branded as Turbo Memory (code-named Robson) EFI, a successor to BIOS Intel Dynamic Acceleration (IDA), better Windows Vista Aero support Man, just when you thought it was safe to go out and buy