Internet Explorer Beta 1 is now available for download. For the first time ever, Microsoft’s IE passes the Acid Test, a test designed to check web standards compliance in browsers.
I noticed several days ago when I had downloaded a file that it didn’t show up on my desktop where I had saved it. I thought I maybe inadvertently saved it somewhere else, so I proceeded to download again, selected the Desktop as the save to location, and clicked Save.
“Do you want to overwrite the file?” I thought that was weird. It’s there, but I can’t see it. I went back to my desktop, hit F5 and … BAM! It appeared.
So, I did a little searching and found that there is a Vista update for this. Knowledge Base Article 932406 “The Windows desktop may stop updating correctly after a Windows Vista-based computer has been running for an extended period of time” appeared.
Sure, I run my computer for extended periods of time, and my icons are AWOL. It seems to fit my scenario. So I downloaded it and installed. We’ll see how things go after the reboot.
Here’s the link to the knowledge base article.
While writing this, I was listening to “Don’t Dream It’s Over” by Sixpence None the Richer
I first introduced this issue in a previous post. It turns out that this problem occurs if a network hardware device, such as a router, does not support TCP Window Scaling. TCP Window Scaling is a new Windows Vista feature.
The TCP window scale option is an option to increase the TCP congestion window size above its maximum value of 65,536 bytes.
I also have found that this can resolve problems like slow file copy operations in Vista as well as momentary loss of Internet connectivity.
Here are a couple of knowledge base articles from Microsoft:
I have one Windows Server 2003 box in my environment that connects fine through RDP, but once I start clicking around in the RDP session, the response time is extremely slow even though the processor and memory usage is very low.
I’m not sure why one particular server would cause this problem, but I did some searching today and found in one of the forums which appears to be my solution.
From a command prompt, type:
netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled
This disables the autotuning parameter, which by the way, I have no idea what it does. More research on that to come.
I was in Seattle this past week, and I got to thinking about the advancements in speech recognition. As I was thinking, I started wondering if the speech recognition functionality was any good in Windows Vista. So I decided to give it a try myself.
Setting up is very easy. The process is completely wizard driven. You select the type of microphone that you’re going to use, and follow the directions that are given as you walk through the training process.
The setup and the training take about 15 minutes. Then you can start using speech recognition to do anything from dictating an email, creating a blog post, or controlling Windows. It is actually pretty cool!
So, I used Windows Vista speech recognition to create this blog post. It took me about 10 minutes to do so, but it’s kind of fun to not have to type and just be able to kick back in your chair and relax.
What has been your experience with Windows Vista speech recognition or your favorite speech recognition software?
Tonight I was catching up on a few things and decided that I would try to update my Rhapsody client. The good news is that there was actually an update, but it still didn’t fix any of my problems.
Since upgrading to Windows Vista, starting Rhapsody became painful. Every time I would start the application, I would get this dialog box:
Now I have no idea what this means, all I know is it pops up every time I run the application. How annoying!
If anyone knows how to fix this, let me know.
You?ve probably noticed by now that Microsoft has integrated another security mechanism into the Remote Desktop client.
This authentication mechanism is designed to authenticate against the intended computer before making the RDP connection. By authenticating with the system prior to the actual RDP connection, it can verify that the system that you intended to connect to is actually the system that will be accepting the connection.
This is a great measure to prevent the interception of the connection and reroute to a different potential destination.
It has taken me a little bit to get used to, and although I think it is a great idea I found that a lot of folks in the technology community find it rather annoying. What if I want to connect to my destination right away?
You can modify this behavior. Although it is not recommended, I have found sources (and verified myself) that if you edit your default.rdp file in Notepad, you can add a line that will initiate the connection with the authentication and initial verification taking you straight to your destination.
Adding ‘EnableCredSSPSupport:i:0′ to your default.rdp will restore the behavior that most folks are used to from the RDP client.
Use this at your own risk. It is always better to let these security features do their job instead of disabling them. After all, they are there for a reason.
One of the key pieces of functionality that I think is missing from Windows Vista is the ability to mount an ISO image. Being able to write that image back to media would be useful too.
In the past, I have used VCD Control, a tool that is available to MSDN Subscribers as a mean to be able to mount an ISO image to a virtual drive without having to burn it to a CD.
Recently, especially after my upgrade to Windows Vista I discovered that VCD Control has become less than stable. The virtual CD driver loads, but I can’t always add a drive letter, let alone mount an image.
Given the situation I did a little search and came across a tool from SlySoft called “Virtual CloneDrive“. The best part is it is a free app. That’s the beauty of this; it’s a functional application and the price is right. I wished it worked out like that more.
Virtual CloneDrive works and behaves just like a physical CD/DVD drive, however it exists only virtually. Image files generated with CloneDVD or CloneCD can be mounted onto a virtual drive from your hard-disk or from a network drive and used in the same manner as inserting them into a normal CD/DVD drive.
The virtual drive shows up as a drive letter represented with a sheep as it’s icon. You right click on the drive, and the context menu gives you the option to mount, unmount, or select a recently mounted ISO file.
Virtual CloneDrive supports up to 8 virtual drives at the same time. In addition to ISO files, It also has support for BIN and CCD files.
You can download SlySoft Virtual CloneDrive here.
I use several different types of removable media since both of my digital cameras each use a different type. I decided to get rid of my several different card readers and buy the SanDisk ImageMate 12-in-1 USB 2.0 Card Reader at my local Best Buy. This thing is cool, cause like the product name says, it supports 12 different types of media.
It was confusing enough for me to having all these drives listed as “Removable Drive (n)” in My Computer, so I did a little search online and came across just what I was looking for over at Chris Pirillo’s Blog. I was looking for a way to change the drive icon as well as the default volume label. Chris has a link to a zip that he created which includes the cool icon images as well as a registry file that you can import after a little editing.
I liked the initial icons, but searched some more and since I recently upgraded to Vista, I had to find something a little more fancy. I found some cool removable drive icons designed by nukeypearce over at deviantART.
Here is the final result:
Ever noticed that on a default installation of Internet Explorer that you can only have two concurrent downloads?
According to the Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 183110, this is to maintain compliance with HTTP specifications.
WinInet limits the number of simultaneous connections that it makes to a single HTTP server. If you exceed this limit, the requests block until one of the current connections has completed. This is by design and is in agreement with the HTTP specification and industry standards.
The KB gives you steps you can take to increase the number of concurrent downloads (connections). This involves editing the registry, so be cautious.