Microsoft has entered the business of AntiVirus software by simplifying and repackaging their Corporate Security suite for home users. The new program is called Microsoft Security Essentials. When this is released, it will be free for use by non-commercial users and will run on Windows XP, Vista and Version 7.

Currently the Beta is closed, but the program will be available later this year. Based on all the reviews I’ve seen – Security Now for example – this is a light weight, but very robust anti-virus.

When this comes out I will be installing it with an eye toward eliminating my use of Free AVG.

More news when it appears,

- windy

Fails in Firefox 3.0.12 and 3.5.2. Website reported as a failed site.

Using Max 2009 on Vista x86, SP1, I created and exported a simple scene with a knot, 3 lights and a camera.

Here is the scene on this website.

The model does not play in Firefox 3.0.13, either from the file system or from this website.

It does play in MS IE 8 both from the file system or from the website.

The samples on the hypercosm website play in both MSIE 8 and Firefox 3.

This is what the model should look like.

I’ve rebooted the system at least once after installing HyperCosm. It seems very odd that the plugin does not work in Firefox for my model, when it works perfectly well on the samples and works in MSIE 8.

- windy

Podcasts

I’m using Twonky Media’s media server to serve up mp3 podcasts, music and photos to my PS3. This works great, and Twonky version 5 is a great media server for a reasonable price. I used this a while ago and I got some errors on my PS3, but the latest version is great: Fewer errors and an easier install and setup.

However, Fast Forward in an MP3 is pretty messed up. As you can see from the following video, when you hold down fast foward, it skips and jumps and it keep stuttering and stopping so you can’t forward very fast. So, if for example, you play the first 40 minutes of of a 1:45 [one hour and 45 minute] podcast, then trying to get back to the place you were is a real pain. This feature probably works fine for a 4 minute song, but it’s not useful for a very long podcast.

Not sure if this is a problem with the PS3, or with the Twonky or the DLNA protocol.

I’ll try to contact the PS3 and Twonky support folks.

Video On Demand from Netflix

I’ve just discovered Play On which allows you to play videos from Netflix, YouTube and other places on your TV by using a PS3 or other DLNA Media Client. I’ve set up Play On on the same system where I installed Twonky and connected it to my NetFlix account. So now I can watch Instant movies from Netflix directly on my large screen TV and using my hi-fi system. My Media Server is a Win XP system running on a Compaq SR2020NX Athlon 64 3500+, 2.2GHz with 2GB memory. This is a $500 system that’s about 3 years old.

PlayOn is very easy to set up, although I had a glitch with the Media Player V11 that PlayOn required. The WMP11 installer kept reporting an error, but it turned out that it did install correctly. Once you install PlayOn, you configure it with your Netflix account, and then use a web browser to load up your Instant Queue in Netflix. To start with I loaded up a few movies, and TV series including Sanctuary, Ghost in the Shell, and a couple of other things. When you check the videos in the PS3 menu, you find the PlayOn server and the list of videos that are in the Netflix Instant list.

I’ve watched a couple of movies and the quality is very good with no noticeable sound or video artifacts. The video quality is not as good as a DVD, but it is at least as good as a SD quality Dishnet satellite broadcast. The PS3 display function reports about 4 mbps. The PlayOn software requires about 180MB of memory in two processes and takes about 50% of the CPU when the video is on pause. I’m guessing that the video is being downloaded and re-coded for the PS3.

BTW, the fast forward situation is much better with video than with music. Using PlayOn and the PS3 with Netflix, fast forward gives 10, 30, 120x fast forward and it works just fine to go back to a point deep into a movie. The PlayOn server did get stuck about 45 minutes into a movie, but turning off the PS3 and then reopening the movie fixed it up. The PS3 was reporting network errors. Not sure why. The server was working fine and the network was not having any problems that I could detect.

I’m catching up on Sanctuary and watched “In the Electric Mist” with Tommy Lee Jones this evening. When I added Sancuary, it added a folder with all the episodes.

I’m not clear on why the PS3 doesn’t support Netflix and other video sources directly, but since it doesn’t at least an inexpensive software addon, which runs on any modern computer, will allow a true video on-demand experience. PlayOn costs about $40. Since Netflix doesn’t charge for “Watching Instantly” beyond my normal subscription, I’ve got a fixed cost subscription to video on demand.

- Windy

Starting with an Open Office 3.0 spreadsheet Import failed. Then after converting the sheet to XLS it failed. Finally converting to CSV worked.

Google_Spreadsheet_test

Notice that the Frozen Row 1 of the above sheet is not frozen.

I’ll try this again for publishing complex data to my websites. Since I can add formulae, it should be interesting.

- windy

Goldwave doesn’t cost much the first time, but it hasn’t really moved much over the past many years and the major updates cost.

Adobe Audition is very functional, but very expensive. and updates are costly as well.

My friend is converting some of her cassette tapes to CDs and MP3s and I’ve taught her to use  Goldwave. But with Goldwave you have to pre-create your audio file to record to. How long should you create your file? With Audacity you can just start recording. While the interface is different from Goldwave, she should have little problems in doing the transition to Audacity. I’ll see how she likes it.

Audacity also looks like it has some cool features for amateur musicians:

1. Lay down multiple tracks.
2. Label the parts of the tracks.
3. Slide the tracks in time to align with each other.
4. Set mono tracks to left or right channel.

If I knew more about the requirements of a home studio I would be more helpful in looking at these features. More later as we try it out.

- windy

Wakoopa is a free software service that keeps track of what software you have been using. I heard about it on the Windows Weekly podcast from back in January. I’m just now catching up on missed episodes.

To use Wakoopa, just sign up for a free account and install the little program on your system[s]. The little applet [ 3MB ] uploads the info to the website so you can review and share the statistics.

There’s even a way to publish the data to your blog or social networking site.

Here are recent programs that I’ve used:

I’m not sure how useful this will be, but Leo and Paul like it.

BTW, there are ways to eliminate programs from the list, either for privacy reasons, which is where you find the feature, or because “Presentation Settings” is not a very interesting to keep track of.

Wakoopa keeps track of both programs you run and websites you visit, at least some websites that are built in.

- windy

There are several devices on the market to allow backing up photos on a trip. Here is a partial list of devices. After reviewing the devices and checking prices, I found Digital Foci was selling a refurbished an 80GB unit for about $50 off. As you can see from the following pictures, the device is pretty hefty. It’s not a contender for an IPOD replacement, although it does almost all the functions of an IPOD. But it has CF and SD card slots built in and it has backup and compare [verify] functions built in. It backs up 233x CF cards at 4.88 MB/sec.

This device has all the functions of a modern multi-media kitchen sink. It also has a 12 hour battery life when playing MP3s. It remains to be seen how long it will last when backing up photos cards.

Features I liked

• The photo display and review features are very nice. The rotate and zoom features are well designed and even for large, 12MP, JPG images, the display time is very short. It takes 2 – 5 sec to display 16MB 12MP RAW images however. The photo album display features are best utilized if you reduce the images to 1.5MP or so [1280x1024 for example].
• Photo card backup is great. Inserting a card brings a popup to the screen asking how you would like to do the backup. Beware of the glitch though where the card is found but the hard drive is not found. Make sure you see the hard drive in the menu before inserting the card in the device. The work around is simple once you know the secret.
• The computer connection works quite well. The transfer is also very fast. I did have some intermittent connection problems with the USB cable, but seating the cable more firmly in the device fixed that.
• I have been using this device for hours and hours to listen to podcasts. The Photo Elite has a little speaker, which isn’t much good for music but is just fine for podcasts. No constraining earbuds to wear and you can carry it around with you while you work around the house. The only problem is that it doesn’t remember your place in the podcast when you shut the system down. But you can pause it for many minutes without noticeable drain on the battery.

What the device is not.

• This device is not a replacement for my Sansa MP3 player. The Sansa has longer battery life and is shirt pocket size. This device is large and cumbersome for an MP3 player.
• It’s not a game console, although it has a game built in called MATRIX which is suspiciously like Tetris. But the screen is larger than a PSP and there are card slots, so while your PSP or DS may have most of this device’s media features, the game consoles don’t provide the convenient photo backup feature and I’m not sure that any of them have 80 or 160GB of on-board storage.
• The Photo Elite has no WiFi capability. But you won’t miss that drain on your battery.

I’ll bet this device:

1. has a laptop drive hiding inside.
2. is based on some form of embedded Linux – good for them.
3. contains software written by software engineers living in California. The interface is well designed and performance is snappy.
4. will have future follow-on devices with more storage and more functions. These guys are on a roll.

Good luck to Digital Foci. This device gets my vote for coolest thing to solve my photo card backup problem at a very reasonable price. And listening to dozens of hours of podcasts is a real bonus. You go, Leo…

- windy

This tool records a number of kernel mode activities and then allows analysis in detail, esp of interrupts and Deferred Procedure Calls.

Using XPerf on the ailing laptop has shown that the culprit is acpi.sys.

The laptop is going back to the factory to figure it out.

- windy

Dynamic reports fail with the data not matching the column headers. Static reports work.

Update: This is a known problem. The problem is that the name TITLE doesn’t work as a report column. This means that no column of a database table can be named TITLE if dynamic tables are used.

Here is the table. This is an OO native database. The database is provide below.

Use the Report Wizard to generate a Dynamic Report with the following columns.

Note that the report is wrong. The AUTHOR appears under the title. It doesn’t matter whether we sort on the title, as intended or not. The bug still appears if the report is dynamic.

The data is correct if a static report is generated with the same fields.

This is a ZIP archive of the native database. 609KB.

windybooks_native ZIP

- windy

When building a database of my DVD collection which includes BLOB images of png images of the covers, the database can be backed up, but it cannot be restored. This of course makes the backups useless. The images are 475×475 pixel PNG images.

UPDATE: Problem solved. Parameter max_allowed_packet is the packet size for requests. This defaults to 1M and needs to be larger to allow this restore to work. Setting the max_allowed_packet parameter to 10M allowed the restore to complete successfully.

I’m using MySQL administrator 1.2.12, MySQL 5.0.51b-Community-nt, MySQL client version 5.1.11 running on Windows Vista Ultimate x86 SP1.

The database was built using OpenOffice 2.4.

Using the default backup settings, the error on restore was:

Error while executing this query:INSERT INTO `dvd-collection` (`dvd_ID`,`MovieTitle`,`Director`,`Producer`,`Actor`,`Genre`,
`Notes`,`Rating`,`Review`,`Subject`,`Writer`,`Format`,
`Source`,`DateAcquired`,`ReleaseYear`,`MPAARating`,
`Length`,`disk_image`) VALUES
(1,’Step Into Liquid.’,'Dana Brown’,NULL,’Robert August,
Rochelle Ballard, Shawn Barron, Dave Kalama, Gerry Lopez,
Robert \”Wingnut\” Weaver’,'Documentary’,
‘No stuntmen. No stereotypes. No other feeling comes close’,
5,NULL,’Surfing’,'Dana Brown’,'DVD’,'DishNetwork’,2006,2003,
‘PG’,88,0×89504E…44AE426082);
The server has returned this error message:MySQL server has gone away
MySQL Error.

Using these additional settings:

• InnoDB Online Backup
• No EXTENDED INSERTS
• Add DROP Statements
• Complete INSERTS
• Comment
• Compatibility Mode
• Disable Keys

The error was:

Unknown object in backup file

Download excerpts of the SQL files that fail to restore:

mysql_restore_bug 1.4MB

DVD_Backup_2_40_Rows 14MB

These excerpts fail as well. The complete SQL backup file is 270MB, so not only is it large but I don’t really want to share the entire file. By the way, “Analyze Backup File Content” works fine for all the files.

The mysql command fails as well:
C:\Darrell\Video_Database\backups>mysql --user=root --password=mysecret dvd_video < DVD_Backup_2_40_Rows.sql
ERROR 2006 (HY000) at line 89: MySQL server has gone away
C:\Darrell\Video_Database\backups>mysql --user=root --password=mysecret dvd_video < DVD_Video_Two_Rows_Second_Try.sql
C:\Darrell\Video_Database\backups>

It works for 2 rows, but not for the 40 row file.

Thanks,

Windy

I just got a new Alienware m15x. Great machine. Very nice design. But I’m running into a couple of problems.

Update: 8 June 2008 9pm- I spoke too soon. The problem is back in spades. See section later in this post regarding use of SysInternals Process Explorer with more data on the problem.

Update: 8 June 2008 - The CPU Busy problem is not occurring for about the past 2 hours. The system was idle – but with the CPU busy for several hours today. There appears to be no reason for this change. It bears watching.

Update: 7 June 2008 – New information added on CPU Busy.

The CPU becomes very busy almost all the time. The CPU is a dual core T9300. Alienware has lots of extra gizmos on this model. I have not yet installed any new drivers on the system. The Task Manager does not show any process on the system that is responsible for the CPU time. The Alienware Stealth Mode, Wireless, Bluetooth enabled or disabled are not effective in reducing the CPU busy state.

In the CPU busy state, one of the processor cores is maxed out and the other looks normal. Whatever is running runs exclusively in the left hand CPU – in task manager display – which tells me that whatever is running has affinity.

Example of CPU Busy

Notice the left CPU panel shows that the CPU has become 100% busy. During this time the Hard Drive is not busy and there are not Processes in the process list that show the required CPU time. Removing the Logitech wireless mouse does not affect the state. No new drivers were installed for the mouse, only the standard Vista drivers are used with the mouse.

CPU Busy State Returned to Normal

After some time the CPU busy state returned to normal.

CPU Returned to Busy

A little while later the CPU returned to Busy. This occurs every few minutes.

Diagnosis Steps Taken

1. Disable Alienware functions from the keyboard controls, as mentioned above. These include Blue-Tooth, Wireless, and Stealth Mode.
2. Diabled the Intel TurboBoost device to determine whether Vista Ready Boost was causing the problem. This made no change in the CPU activity.
3. Uninstalled and re-installed many layered products. Among these Virtual CD 9; Skype 3.5;
4. Run QuickSlice – a performanence analysis tool from Microsoft - to determine where CPU time is being spent. More on that later.
5. Disable almost every device possible to eliminate device interrupts as a possibility.

None of these steps has changed the problem.

QuickSlice

While I don’t have a detailed description of QuickSlice, it appears to be a program which ties into a high priority clock interrupt and then takes data about which processes are active when the clock interrupt occurs. For each process in the system it displays the process name, and a bar of Kernel Mode and User Mode time spent.

This shows QSlice with a busy process with mostly user mode and very little kernel mode using one processor. The bar only goes 1/2 way across the qslice panel which indicates that 1 out of 2 cores are active.

The following shows the CPU when it is not busy: Click for a larger view.

Note that the only active process is “System Process” and it is only running in Kernel Mode. This is the Idle Process. Note that it goes all the way across the panel indicating that both processors are Idle.

The following shows QSlice when the CPU is busy – the pathogical condition I’m trying to fix.

Note in this case, when one of the Cores is maxed out, that the Idle Process is only taking about 1 Core, and that there is another process showing some activity. This is System, so it’s not possible to figure out what is really active. Also note that nothing else is active, and that the total does not add up to 100%, or both Cores fully active. So there is missing time. Now let’s compare these two states in Task Manager.

When System running normally, Task Manager Looks like this:

Note that the bar at the top left shows very little CPU usage.

And here are some examples of the Task Manager when the CPU is very busy:

And here is the Task Manager process list when the CPU is busy, for all processes, sorted by CPU time utilized:

Click for the larger view.

Note the very strange conclusion. The System Idle process shows 74%. So the performance panel is showing that the CPU us busy, but the Process List shows that the CPU is idle. Very strange.

Disabling Devices to Find the Problem

Using Device Manager, almost all the unnecesary devices were disabled to attempt to identify the device driver that was causing interrupts. None of these made any change in the problem:

Note the very small indications on the icons that the devices have been disabled. This did not cause any change in the CPU activity.

I also Disabled the Windows Search service, and this made no difference. This posting in the Microsoft Tech Forum indicated that this has been the source of CPU Busy problems in the past.

Process Explorer from SysInternals – 8 June

Using Process Explorer from SysInternals, it shows that the time is being used in DPC [Deferred Procedure Calls] and Hardware Interrupts. This indicates to me that the problem must be an out of control hardware or hardware device driver. It seems odd that sometimes the interrupts stop for a while, perhaps many hours in the case of this afternoon. Here are some pictures with comparisons with my Area-51 7500 Desktop.

Area-51 7500 Desktop which never shows this problem.

A skype call was active at the time, but notice that the DPCs and HIs were very small percentage of the CPU.

Alienware m15x Notebook that is showing the problem.

Notice that the middle histogram across the top shows the history of CPU usage and that Red shows Kernel mode usage. Also note that the DPC time is 25% of the CPU and Hardware Interrupts are showing 12% of the CPU. Clearly pathological.

Conclusions So Far

At this point I conclude from these tests that:

1. The problem is occurring in kernel mode and is not measured by qslice, the Microsoft Tool designed to find these kinds of problems.
2. In order to avoid qslice, the problem is likely to be an interrupt or device related problem.
3. Disabling all the unnecessary devices has not found the problem, so if the problem is a device, the list of remaining devices is very short.
4. Since the problem comes and goes on a minute to minute basis, it’s not a broken piece of hardware, but more likely an unforeseen interaction between hardware and a driver.
5. but I’m just guessing. The Process Explorer data rules out a problem with Vista itself. It seems clear that this is something peculiar to the m15x.

While the system can be used with this problem, it needs to be fixed:

1. The CPU activity puts more load on the battery, and causes more heat than necessary. This is especially troublesome for a laptop.
2. This problem does not occur on an Alienware Area-51 Desktop system running VIsta x64, so there would seem to be no reason to put up with the problem on this Alienware m15x running Vista x86.

COM Surrogate Crashes

I don’t know if this is related or not, but occasionally the COM Surrogate crashes.

Update: This is apparently not related. This is no longer occurring. I don’t know what I was using that contributed to this problem.

The crash details are as follows:

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: DllHost.exe
Application Version: 6.0.6000.16386
Application Timestamp: 4549b14e
Fault Module Name: StackHash_1703
Fault Module Version: 0.0.0.0
Fault Module Timestamp: 00000000
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 0153b5ed
OS Version: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Information 1: 1703
Additional Information 2: 2264db07e74365624c50317d7b856ae9
Additional Information 3: 1344
Additional Information 4: 875fa2ef9d2bdca96466e8af55d1ae6e
Read our privacy statement:

Summary

1. The CPU occasionally gets very busy for no apparent reason.
2. The COM Surrogate – whatever that is – occasionally crashes.

- windy

After an hour or so of searching, I found 1And1.com and LunarPages. Both have

1. affordable plans
2. trial periods of at least 30 days.
3. Very reasonable Terms of Use and Terms of Service agreements. You should read these very carefully since I found that some hosting services, such as BlueHost.com, based in Utah, does not permit adult content of any kind. My artistic photos violate their terms of use.

I got a new domain and uploaded my site to 1AND1, however, 1And1.com had two problems:

1. I was not easily able to upload the 34MB Coppermine database. The site is 182K records, and 170K of those are hit statistics which may not seem very important, but looking ahead, it seemed unreasonable to have to break the SQL of the database into chunks smaller than 3MB to get it to upload. The limit was stated as 8MB, but 7MB files and even 4MB files usually failed to restore to the database even tho phpMyAdmin reported success.
2. The MySQL databases have a limit of 100MB, and while my databases do not exceed this presently, it seems more reasonable to limit the MySQL databases on the total space provided rather than a fixed limit.

Lunar Pages provides:

1. SSH [shell account] access so that I could upload the entire SQL for the Coppermine database and do a mysql command in the shell to restore the database. This process completed in a couple of minutes.
2. The MySQL databases come from the total quota for the site, which is a whopping 1.5 TB. My total site size is now a little over 3GB.
3. Blazing speed. Using Pingdom.com and Site24×7.com to time my site showed that Lunar Pages was about 30% faster than 1AND1.com.

I recommend Pingdom.com for testing website speeds. Pingdom provides a detailed breakdown of times for each file of the web page and stores the results from one day to the next so that you can compare speeds of various trials.

A New Wordpress Theme

A couple of years ago I created my wordpress theme from a theme I found and a graphic I found on another site. As I was looking through the wordpress theme site this evening, I found a very nice theme that really grabbed my attention. As you can see it is similar to the one that we had here before.

Old WindyWeather Theme

The windyweather theme has the links on the left and calendar on the right. The articles are down the center.

Nebula Theme

A very striking theme by Gx3. I made some minor changes to the sidebars to change the order of items on the left side and remove the Google search and widget panel from the right side. It now has items in the same place as the Windy theme. I also added the page statistics to the bottom of the page.

Time for a face lift.

enjoy,

windy

Disclaimer: I have no financial interest in Microsoft or any of these other companies. I have been a software engineer for 35 years in many areas and have used PCs, Macs and Linux. I may not be an expert in everything, but as you can see from the list of products below, my experience is broad.

Here is the system that I have: Alienware Area-51 7500.

In alphabetical order (x86) programs first:

• Absolute FTP – an old GUI FTP program. Works just fine after all these years.
• Acclaim 2Moons RPG – needs a compatibility setting.
• Adobe Audition 1.0
• adobe Photoshop 6.0
• Adobe Lightroom 1.3
• Adobe Reader 8.1.x – except that document is not resized if the window is resized.
• Alias Motion Builder PLE7
• APC Powerchute Business Edition – to support my Smart UPS 1500 – power can be flakey in Coos Bay, OR.
• Apple Quicktime.
• Autodesk 3ds max 9 – 32bit version. 64bit version must run in admin or with account control turned off which I’m not willing to do. Max reverts to basic behaviour of the Vista GUI.
• AVS Media Video Tools
• Deneba Canvas 9 drawing tool
• DocuDesk DeskPDF converter
• eFrontier Poser 7
• Electronic Arts Crysis SP Demo
• Goldwave Sound Editor V 5.14
• Grisoft AVG Virus Free Edition
• Irfan View image editor
• KeePass Password Safe – Opensource and free
• Macromedia Dreamweaver MX
• Mozilla Firefox – my preferred browser of course.
• MySQL database and tools 5.0
• Nero 8 Ultra – 7 is just fine too. Including Nero burner and movie editing.
• Open Office 2.2
• Pamela Skype plugin for recording
• PTGui panorama stitcher 5.8.4
• RipCast 1.9 – audio stream ripper
• Second Life and Second Life Windlight – These programs are the only programs that crash the system frequently. A Second Life issue and not NVidia or Vista issue I’m sure.
• Skype
• SQLyog Community version
• Virtual CD V9
• WinAmp with Shoutcast plugin
• XenoDream 16 Fractal generator

And now for the 64 bit native programs:

• Autodesk Max 9 – but only in admin mode or with Account Control disabled. This is because the license control code requires it, not because Max requires it. They need a new x64 license control manager.
• Casper 4.0 drive backup
• MySQL Server 5.0

It may be too strong to say I’m a big Vista ultimate x64 Fan – is there anything but Ultimate with x64? – but almost all the things I need work fine and the system is very stable.

- windy

1. Vista is the currently shipping OS and x64 is the “Ultimate” expression of that OS.
2. Vista x64 is the second generation of x64 OSs, so it is hardly brand-new and the requirements for supporting the system are well known
3. Most medium to high end systems are x64 capable.
4. Most high end system support as much as 4GB of memory.
5. One can only make use of 4GB of memory with an x64 edition OS. With an x86 edition one only can address 2.7 or 3.5GB of memory depending on the hardware available. See this Alienware Support post.

Disclaimer: I do not have any financial interest in any of these products or Microsoft. I have an Vista x64 system, so I do have an interest in products supporting that platform. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Note: I find the Vista x64 system to be very reliable and usable. While I agree that it is not a large upgrade from Win-XP, I have no interest in going back, and I’m not annoyed by “Account Control” popups, but prefer running with Account Control Enabled.

No support for the Fingerprint Reader on Vista x64

How hard could this be? Recompile the code. Vista is touted as the end all and be all for modern security in operating systems but they don’t support their own biometric security device on Vista x64? How lame is that??

OEM Licenses Don’t Include Media or X64 Editions.
When you purchase Windows Vista Ultimate with a system:

1. You don’t get certified media from Microsoft. But instead you get a lame backup disk, or the ability to backup your own system disk to your own media. How lame is that?
2. You don’t get the x64 edition. If you want x64 you have to pay an additional $300 for a brand new license. Are they really trying to make more money with x64 for bleeding edge desktops?

Why isn’t Microsoft trying to encourage adoption of x64 edition for high end systems?. After all, isn’t Max OSX running in x64 on every system that supports it? Linux does automatically doesn’t it? Hey, I’d run Linux if most of the dozens of applications that I use would run on it. Why is Microsoft holding back with x64? Don’t they have it working yet? Seems perfectly stable to me… Time to pony up and support it, Microsoft.

Alienware appears because they are suppliers of the bleeding edge of computing. Where do they get off not supporting the bleeding edge of Windows OSs. There are several problems with their attitude:

1. They silently let you buy a 4GB system with no warning that not all the memory will be supported by the OS they ship. You order 4GB and you get to use 2.7GB because they only support Vista x86 edition.
2. They refuse to support the x64 edition on their systems even though the vast majority of the systems are x64 capable. And by the way they act in all other ways like a bleeding edge system provider.
3. They provide the lame OEM licensed version of the software so you don’t get x64 media or indeed any media for the OS from Microsoft.
4. Their hardware editions, like AlienFX lighting, does not have Vista x64 drivers. Glad I set up my lighting before I installed x64…

The trial for Corel Photo Album 6 installs a driver which is not signed. It’s a codec from Sonic I think. So there is a warning about the driver not being signed. But the install continues anyway and you are lead to believe that the system has taken care of the problem. Only the driver is in fact installed anyway.
Now you are hosed…. The system refused to boot because Vista refuses to boot with any unsigned drivers.

How lame is that?? What I mean is that both Vista was willing to install an unsigned driver, causing a boot failure, and that Corel didn’t test on x64 and so didn’t find the problem.

BTW, to recover, you have to boot your original CD media and then “Recover the system”. At least when you have done that, you don’t lose anything.

Adobe Reader 8.1 Breaks

Adobe reader 8.1.x cannot resize the window. Actually the window resizes, but the window content does not resize either. Not sure whether this is Vista – how could it be?? – or Vista x64? Releases since I first ran this on x64 back in May 2007 have had this problem.

Several Adobe products that I wanted to upgrade, like Adobe Premier, do not run on x64.

These are the notable products that do not run on Vista x64. I will do another post with a compact list of all the products that I’m using on Vista x64.

- windy

In general the program is very functional and solved my problem nicely. However, there are some problems that are of interest.

1. I thought I was getting a solution that was as foolproof as a point of sales device. After all, the scanner apparently was designed for point of sales terminal applications. However, this is not integrated like that. The device kept failing, going offline or tossing bad scans. Not something that I would want to use in a store if I was trying to make money selling things.
2. The ISBN scanner support for my LaserChamp-BT scanner was a bit dodgey. More about that later in detail.
3. Sure would be nice if I could do a Replace on the Source field to update the source to say it was from Me. The replace and item editing would not function for that field. I’d like to say that the source was me since I manually entered quite a few items that were so old that they did not have an ISBN.
4. The biggest failing is the inability to export a View as SQL. I’m going to have to go to quite some effort to export a CSV and then find a converter to get to SQL. While lots of programs say they do that conversion, most do not work correctly. I’m still try to get a solution working.

LaserChamp-BT Support Questions
I’ve had some trouble getting the scanner to work. This scanner can be found at Serial IO LaserChamp-BT.

The following is the method I used to set up my scanner to work with Readerware.

Setting up BlueTooth in the Windows OS
Here’s the process that I used to set up the BlueTooth scanner and what I’ve achieved so far. At the end of this discussion I’ll list my questions and problems.

First I installed Serial Magic Pro that I purchased with my scanner.
When I plugged in the dongle and finally found the BT dialog I got an options screen like this from Windows:

You can get this dialog from the BlueTooth Network Connections if you lose it. Then click through to “Blue-Tooth Devices”

Now you can find the Options tab.

Turns out that you need to have this set up correctly for Serial Magic to work, but there is no wizard that I found to set it up. You are on your own. I didn’t know much about BlueTooth so I was stumbling around for a while. Be sure and check the box to get the Bluetooth icon in your task bar. Otherwise it’s a pain to find this dialog.

COM ports

Now you need to set up a COM port for the device. SerialMagic doesn’t do that for you. You need an Outgoing port. An incoming port does not work.

Configure Serial Magic Pro
Now you need to configure Serial Magic from this dialog when you run it. This is the Settings dialog.

At one point I checked ISBN Conversion, but have since decided not to use that option.

Create a Connection

First you need to create a connection. The COM port is the one that you created in the BT device settings. Type a reasonable name in the Connection Name field. Choose LaserChamp and then think about the Connection Type.
I’m at a loss here. I tried several and a couple of them worked. BlueSnap RS-232 is my latest setting, but all seem to have various problems. I’m not sure what is right. There is no auto-discovery of the settings or a wizard, which I expected. The Device Wizard button just walks you through the fields. It does not help you with discovering what you need to put into the fields.

Here are the application settings:

I set the PIN to the same value as the PassKey at some point in the setup. I’m not sure if BlueSnap Address Change is useful. I’ve used it both ways with no apparent effect.

I’m not sure if changing the action fields will help with the problem to follow with ReaderWare, but here are the settings:

ReaderWare Issues

To enter books with the scanner I used the AutoCatalog wizard.

But I found that I could not use the scanner directly into the field. At this point I expected that each item I scanned would go directly into the list and be validated. But it didn’t work. I found that each scan caused two lines to be entered with a ENTER function between them. This was a surprise.

Then I tried the Upload dialog:

Each scan caused two lines to appear, one long line and one short line. These match the raw UPC code from the book. But you can’t enter these directly since Readerware will be confused. First you must combine the lines into a single line as follows by editing the lines directly in the dialog.

What a pain. Certainly not a Point of Sale solution for entering books. But once you do this, then the wizard is happy, converts the names to ISBN form and then they can be processed:

If any errors are encountered they are not that easy to deal with. If the Manufacturer is not found, the dialog is not helpful in resolving the issue. It gives you something like a choice between 0671 and 07023 and you have to make a choice. Good luck with that.

Questions for Support

BlueTooth Setup and Use Questions:

1. Do I have Windows BT and Serial Magic Pro set up correctly for my scanner to work with ReaderWare? Don’t give me the nonsense about that being a SerialIO support question. You folks have used this product with this scanner since you recommend it. You know how to set it up correctly. I didn’t see any steps to set it up on your site or in the help file. Did I miss that?
2. Is there some setup I needed to do in Readerware that I missed?
3. Shouldn’t I expect the scanner entries to work directly without any editing? Shouldn’t I be able to use the AutoCatalog rather than the Upload dialogs?

General Comments and Questions

1. I need to export my ReaderWare database to get to a SQL database on a website. But all I have is CSV export. Sure would be nice to have, or necessary to have, a SQL export of the current view. I am still looking for a realiabe way to get from CSV to SQL [or MySQL] to import my data to the website database.
2. It’s a pain like I said to not to be able to replace all fields of the database. Not sure why that was done. Can you clarify. I would like to update the blank entries of the Source field to allow me to indicate that this data was manually entered by me.

Thanks much,
dj duffy