Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Vista and Administrative Shares (C$, D$)

Aakk...

So I was trying to access a harddrive using the administrative share on a Vista computer, and I was unable to. Why? Well it seems that microsoft has disabled administrative shares in Vista.

According to Microsoft's "Vista File and Printer Sharing" site....

Sharing the Root of a Drive

Windows XP by default created administrative shares for the root folders of the fixed drives of the computer. For example, for the root of the C: drive on the computer named BobPC, Windows XP automatically shared \\bobpc\c$. The “$” at the end of the share name means that the share name will not appear in the list of shares. For computers running Windows Vista that are members of a workgroup, these administrative shares exist but are blocked for network access for security reasons. You can create your own shares to share your drives from the root of the drive, but Microsoft highly recommends that you share only the folders that you need to, rather than the entire drive.


So, Vista does not allow you to use administrative shares anymore. Unless you hack the registry ;)

From JB's Windows Vista Support FAQ ...

To allow administrators local to a computer to use their administrator powers when accessing the Vista computer remotely, please follow these steps:
  1. Click start
  2. Type: regedit
  3. Press enter
  4. In the left, browse to the following folder: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\system\
  5. Right-click a blank area in the right pane
  6. Click New
  7. Click DWORD Value
  8. Type: LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy
  9. Double-click the item you just created
  10. Type 1 into the box
  11. Click OK
  12. Restart your computer
Now I can access the administrative share from any system!

Monday, April 23, 2007

Going Green: Utilizing S3 Standby Mode

Nice little site that shows you how to setup your system to us S3 standby.

This setup saves money and you don't lose functionality. This is great for servers as well, it will automatically kick up the system from sleep if there is any local network activity.

Great write up!

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Mozilla Thunderbird 2.0 Released

Time to remove outlook from my machine, and upgrade to Thunderbird.

Thunderbird now supports Vista and 64-bit processors.

With the "POP3 password not savings" issue on Outlook, It's time to upgrade!

Thunderbird's available here.

Friday, April 13, 2007

World Of Warcraft - Flintlocke Cancelled

From Gamespy.com...

Farewell Flintlocke:

After several aborted attempts to restart the cool WoW comic with the crusty dwarf and his band of misfits, we have finally decided to call an end to the strip. The lack of an artist and Fargo's move to FilePlanet proved to be too much for the hearty band. Thanks to all the loyal readers. -- Warrior

It looks like Friday the 13th has just struck down a great comic!

Archive is available here.

/salute Flintlocke

TrueCrypt - Free Open-Source Disk Encryption Software

From the website....

TrueCrypt is a software system for establishing and maintaining an on-the-fly-encrypted volume (data storage device). On-the-fly encryption means that data are automatically encrypted or decrypted right before they are loaded or saved, without any user intervention. No data stored on an encrypted volume can be read (decrypted) without using the correct password/keyfile(s) or correct encryption keys. Entire file system is encrypted (e.g.., file names, folder names, contents of every file, free space, meta data, etc).

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Minimo

Mozilla project has released a new browser for mobile devices...

According to the website, Minimo is a small, simple, powerful, innovative, web browser for mobile devices.

Features

- Fast access to your mobile content via Homebase start page
- Best support for modern web standards (Javascript and AJAX).
- Social Bookmarking
- Tab browsing
- RSS Support
- Proven security (TLS, SSL3)
- International support
- Cross platform capability
- Widget and Extension support

More information avaliable here.

Monday, April 09, 2007

Dell Drops Axim's... Hopefully Support Stays!

Ok, as an Axim user, this sucks!

Dell has a great product, and now they are getting out of the market.

Dell has removed the Axim models from their retail site.

More Information Here

Vista Tweaks

I'm going to add a list of sites for tweaking vista here....

HWA - Vista Tweak Guide

Uncrippling Bluetooth In Vista

I've been looking for an answer to this problem for days.

The generic bluetooth support for vista is annoying. Vendors who don't support Vista 64-bit just make life difficult. Yes, it's a new operating system. Yes, it'll take a bit of time to adopt the new technology.

So... How do you get bluetooth to work properly under vista?

Answer: Take a look here.

From the post...

If you’ve found this page, that means that you’re one of the many legitimate Vista RTM users who have a plethora of Bluetooth devices that you were hoping to join up to your new shiny Vista machine and enjoy because as with all Microsoft products, they’re just supposed to work, right? Wrong.
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This guide is an in-depth tutorial on getting complete and enhanced Bluetooth functionality in all version of Windows Vista RTM both 32bit and 64bit editions.


I'll test this, and see what happens!

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

World Of Warcraft Fishing with a Wii Remote

This site shows how to use A Wii Remote and a GlovePIE Script to fish in World of Warcraft.

Now if I just had a Nintendo Wii and a set of bluetooth drivers for Vista 64-bit, I'd be set!

FireFox 2.0.X Tweaking

Firefox 2.0 seems to be a bit more CPU / Memory intensive then it's predecessors.

After searching the web for information on this, I found a nice little link that gives you information on tweaking FireFox to use less memory and perform a bit better.

Top Firefox 2 Config Tweaks

TweakGuides - FireFox Tweak Guide

I'll add more sites, when I find them.

Monday, April 02, 2007

64-bit Software (To Be Updated..)

Paint.NET is free image editing and photo manipulation software designed to be used on computers that run Windows. It supports layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. This looks like an interesting GIMP replacement.

A List of Vista Compatible Software / Games

avast! 4 Home Edition is a full-featured antivirus package designed exclusively for home users and non-commercial use.

Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit and Drivers

So after a hardware failure, I upgraded the hardware on my gaming system. I also decided to upgrade the operating system to Microsoft Vista Ultimate 64-bit.

Most of the hardware was supported without any issues. NVidia, Creative, Asus had fully supported drivers and the hardware worked fine after installation. But, there are problems with other hardware on Vista 64-bit. Vendors seem to be scared to provide 64-bit support on their devices.

Examples:

Kensington 33348 Bluetooth USB 2.0 Dongle - No Vista 64-bit Support Yet.
Diamond XtremeTV PVR660 USB 2.0 - No Vista 64-bit Support Yet.

Other Vendors are slowly catching up with their drivers and software.

Sony Ericsson will be releasing software updates in Q2 2007.

Oh well, I guess these are the "joys" of upgrading to a new Operating System.

Nintendo Wii Update - Official Patch Notes - Sept 14 2009

Nintendo has an update for the Wii, nothing really exciting... The Nintendo Channel was updated with several new features: See other users&...