Posts Tagged ‘Windows’

Posts I haven’t written

I haven’t been updating this blog too much recently. I never meant for this blog to run on a schedule, but I did intend to post more frequently than this. My original idea was that the blog would serve two major purposes. First, it is a place for me to announce new projects or updates to software and websites I’ve already released. It’s done that quite well, though I haven’t had much to announce recently. My job has been taking the majority of my development time, and most of the projects I’ve been working on at home are either private or haven’t been released in the form I’d like to because my employer hasn’t approved them for release yet.

The second major purpose for my blog is as a place for me to record the solution to problems I run across while developing software, so that others won’t have to spend hours Googling or using trial and error to come to the same conclusion. I didn’t intend to rehash things that were easily found or that had already been discussed – only to post when I felt it was something that added value to the internet that hadn’t been there before. So a lot of the blog posts are not really a narrative or running commentary – they’re not meant to be subscribed to, but found individually. It’s for this reason that my most popular posts tend to include the exact text of error messages. This type of post has suffered both because I haven’t been doing as much development, because I can’t discuss a lot of what I’ve learned due to the nature of the projects I’m working on, and because I’ve been learning new stuff (like Ruby on Rails) and haven’t done enough to have solved problems others haven’t already posted solutions for.

The third reason I have this blog is to occasionally talk about my thoughts on different technical topics, from web development to video games. Again, I don’t like to make a post unless I think I’m adding something new, and most of the topics I’ve wanted to talk about have already been covered. I had a lot of draft posts sitting around about web development, web standards, and the evolution of browsers, but then I discovered Alex Russell’s blog and it turns out he’s already said most of what I wanted to say, and better than I could. Other stuff, like my impressions of Windows Vista, critique of stackoverflow.com and suggestions for the Xbox Live Arcade lineup, have been covered to my satisfaction in plenty of places. Maybe some of them will end up posted, but probably not.

Another part of the reason I haven’t posted much is the sheer weight of unfinished posts I have. Right now I have 64 drafts and only 52 real posts! So I’m going to attempt to clear things out by writing a little about what I haven’t posted. A lot of this stuff wasn’t posted because it fell under that third point above, but some of it I was just too lazy to flesh out into real posts. Some of it’s just random stuff. So here’s what’s been happening in the last year:

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Supplying alternate credentials for a network printer

Another crazy little Windows tip — I can’t remember if this was a Windows XP problem or whether I’d also seen it in Vista, but I’m cleaning out my blog drafts and wanted to flesh this out.

Basically I had a network printer set up that would work until I rebooted my machine, then it would fail. I couldn’t figure out for the life of me what was going on (I think it said something about me not having permission, though — I should have written down the error message). If I removed and readded the printer it’d work again.

Anyway, the problem turned out to be that my user account name was different on my other machine, and the printer wasn’t shared for just anyone to print on. Because of that, I’d had to present alternate credentials when I added the printer, and each time the computer reset, the credentials would get lost and it’d get confused. I don’t know why it didn’t just ask again, but it didn’t.

The solution is convoluted. I browsed to a shared folder on the other machine, and added it as a mapped drive. There’s an option in there to connect with alternate credentials. Since Windows shares the saved credentials between all shares and printers on a remote machine, and it’ll reconnect the mapped drive at startup using the alternate credentials, the printer will start working again.

Remote Desktop 6.0 for Windows XP cannot use Network Level Authentication

A few months ago Microsoft released an update to the Remote Desktop client that, among other things, added compatibility with Vista. I’ve just recently had the chance to try this out, and it’s pretty neat – it looks better, and seems to perform better too. I did hit one snag though. When I enabled Remote Desktop on my Vista machine, I checked the box that said only clients using Network Level Authentication (NLA) could connect. I thought this would work, since the release notes for the new Remote Desktop client said that it supported NLA. However, upon connecting from my XP laptop, I got this:

Remote Desktop does not support NLA on XP (thumbnail)

“The remote computer requires Network Level Authentication, which your computer does not support. For assistance, contact your system administrator or technical support.”

I did a little research, and here’s the deal. NLA simply isn’t available on XP (or at least, isn’t installed as a part of the new Remote Desktop). So to connect to Vista from your XP machines, you’ll need to uncheck the “requires NLA” box in Vista. After that it’s smooth sailing.

Windows Vista leads me to the Mac

I’ve been meaning to write about my impressions of the various Windows Vista previews since I first tried it out in January. My thoughts (and my feedback to Microsoft’s beta site) have been piling up since then, but I never got around to putting virtual pen to even more virtual paper. However, Paul Thurrott’s recent article on where Vista fails really sums up a lot of my feelings here. Thurrott’s always been the type who’ll try his hardest to find the positive in even the worst Microsoft releases, but as a long time reader, I can tell that he’s very, very frustrated with Vista, and as a Windows journalist it really pains him to see something that promised so much deliver so little. He’s not alone. I’ve tried my hardest to like what I’ve seen of Vista so far, but it’s nearly impossible, especially when Mac OS X is out right now, and in many respects better than Microsoft’s late update to XP.

This is going to be a pretty long rant, so if you want more you’ll have to click inside.

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Apple Finally Speaks to Me with BootCamp

The big news out of Cupertino this morning is BootCamp. It’s Apple’s beta bootloader for Windows on their previously-closed Mac platform. Now you can dual-boot Mac OSX and Windows XP, complete with drivers for the important bits of the system.

Win Mini

Putting aside why this is a great move for Apple, this really puts the company in a new light for me. I’ve never liked Apple’s marketing – they’ve always seemed more like a cold white plastic monolith than a warm fuzzy people company to me. To me the Mac, and Apple, is about lack of choice. They give you something, and that’s what you get. It’s good, but things are going to be their way or no way at all. I tend to think a lot of their growing success lies with the fact that their defaults (a stock OSX install and standard Mac hardware) are fantastic, while the default install of Windows or Linux (and the standard OEM boxes) are rather dismal. While this makes a Mac great for most people, I’ve never really cared. I can make Windows do what I want, and aside from my Thinkpad I’ve never bought a computer that was pre-assembled in a factory.

The first thing Apple did that made Macs interesting to me was embracing UNIX with OSX. That was not the sort of decision I expected from a company that had made previously shipped operating systems that show you frowny-faces on error. The fact that the Mac now had a command line suggested that it wasn’t just for playing that sliding-puzzle game anymore. Since then I’ve had a little bit of interest in the Mac, and I even have a rescued-from-the-garbage 350Mhz iMac that I test Safari on. The OS is interesting, but the hardware lockin has always stayed my had mere moments from the “Place Order” button at the Apple Store. Recently I’ve become enamoured of the Mac Mini, whose diminuative size makes it seem more like buying a toy than a computer. Coupled with the fact that it’s the cheapest Mac that comes without a built in display, it seems like the best choice for my tinkering, though the price hike for the new Intel models makes me wish for some additional customization options – do I really need to pay for Airport Express when it’ll be sitting 5 inches away from an ethernet switch?

Today’s introduction of BootCamp really got me though. All of a sudden the guys at Apple HQ are speaking directly to me – they’re letting me make a choice! Not just any choice, but the choice to run software from their sworn enemy, Microsoft, on their pristine white hardware. This from the iTunes company! It’s not really a choice, of course. I wouldn’t dream of putting XP on a Mac Mini when I could build a cheap PC for half the price. It’ll be nice for people who want a great laptop but can’t give up Windows. But for me it’s the fact that they’re opening up and letting me do something as radical as replace the operating system. I feel now that if I were to buy a Mini, I’d be getting it from Apple, a company full of cool engineers with good design sense, not Apple, a company full of snobby elitists who know what’s best for me.