T.

Toshiba M200 + Vista Aero = Awesome

By In Technology0 Comments2,273 Views

So I’ve done the pain staking (very worth it) process of installing Vista on my epic Toshiba M200 Tablet but for the longest time I couldn’t use Aero. Now as my last statement suggests, yes I found a way to run Aero… semi stable (see the list of things that I’ve noticed crash Aero).

To do so I needed:

So first up, I uninstalled my current drivers using the Control Panel, restarted and then ran Nasty File Remover (see below for how I had mine setup)

as you can tell, Aero is running... taken after I did this
as you can tell, Aero is running... taken after I did this

After I did that I downloaded and extracted the nVIDIA ForceWare 98.16 drivers from above to my desktop and copied the modded nvgm.inf to the folder (had to overwrite the existing one). Once it was copied I ran the setup.exe in the folder and restarted my computer. Once my computer was back up and running I started the Desktop Window Manager Session Manager in the Windows Services and applied the Aero effect in the Window Color and Appearance option in Personalize.

I decided to run a Windows Experience Index test to see how my stats improved and I was quite pleased, Gaming Graphics went from 1.0 to 2.3 although Graphics stayed at 1.0.

Windows Experience Index

Things I’ve noticed that crash Aero:

  • Opening some programs in full screen
  • Opening Windows Media Player
  • Opening Paint (yes… mspaint)
  • Going to My Pictures (probably due to thumbnails)

I’ve noticed it flickers sometimes on and off when opening some things, but if it ever crashes I can minimize all my windows then go into the Windows Services and restart the Desktop Window Manager Session Manager. To help improve its stability I went to the Performace under Advanced system settings and toggled Adjust for best performance then checked off Use visual styles on windows and buttons. I had to minimize all my windows and restart the Desktop Window Manager Session Manager to get Aero back but it’s now running fairly well.

Here’s a screenshot of Aero Glass running at 1400 x 1050 @ 32bit color on the Toshiba M200

M200 Aero Demo

As a side note, one may ask why I’m not using the latest 179.xx Forceware drivers and well the answer to that is simple: they don’t work (I tried them). What I may try next are the ~100.xx  Forceware drivers to see if they can add more stability, but for now I’m pleasde with what I have at the moment.

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B.

Bulk Add IP Addresses

By In Technology0 Comments13,172 Views

I do a lot of local development with Internet Information Services and either ColdFusion, PHP or ASP.net and for the longest time I would actually run the websites on separate ports on 127.0.0.1.

Unfortunately running multiple websites on various other ports causes some issues like:

  • Port conflicts with other programs
  • Remembering which port is used for what website
  • Causes problems with some websites that look for port 80
  • Doesn’t really work with SSL (port 443)

So what I started doing was running my websites on separate private IP addresses which are local to my machine only, and this worked GREAT! I could load up websitexyz, bind it to IP 1.1.1.10, setup SSL to work on port 443 for 1.1.1.10 and I would go about my business.

The only downside was when I would run out of IP addresses, because I would only add about 5 to 10 IPs at a time to my local loopback adapter. It is a bit of a pain in the butt to add a bunch of IP addresses in Windows, so it would take me a bit of time to do this everytime I needed more IPs.

That was until I ran into a small batch script which can add as many IP addresses as I want in a range.

Here’s the code:

FOR /L %A IN (41,1,100) DO netsh interface ipv4 add address “ColdFusion-IIS” 1.1.1.%A 255.255.255.0

Simply copy that into either a command prompt or a .bat file and run it to add as many IP addresses in a range that you want.

Here’s the break down of the script:

FOR /L %A IN (START,INCREMENT,END) DO netsh interface ipv4 add address “INTERFACE_NAME” IPMASK SUBNET

If we take a look at my script above we see that

  • START = 41
  • INCREMENT = 1
  • END = 100
  • INTERFACE_NAME = ColdFusion-IIS
  • IPMASK = 1.1.1.%A
  • SUBNET = 255.255.255.0

What this basically equates to is adding 1.1.1.41 to 1.1.1.100 to my network adapter called ColdFusion-IIS.
It is a super handy script and saved me a bunch of time, I would recommend it 10/10 for local development.
V.

Vista User Backup Script

By In Technology0 Comments2,052 Views

For those of us who have to re-image computers on a regular basis for people, we know backing up files can sometimes be a slow and painful process. So I decided to make this simple backup script out of VB Script that makes the process a ton easier.

Basically what it does is scans through the folders in the current user directory (ie: you copy the script to C:\Users\Bob) and any directory that is not a junction it starts a Robocopy instance that recursively copies all the files in that folder to a backup folder specified at the beginning of the script. When you first run the script you’ll see probably 10 Robocopy windows to start and they’ll all eventually close once they’re done.

Download

Can it work with XP? Probably, since XP doesn’t have junction points then it would just copy all the folders anyway.