Windows

Unbelieveable – they did it again… Microsoft really seems to have massive problems when it comes down to “what users need” and “how to implement it”.

Latest example I just learned of – the .net click-once thingy bitty extension that is installed AUTOMATICALLY and WITHOUT any knowledge of the user for Firefox.

In a MSDN blog entry, MS explains how to remove it. I have not yet tried it – but the extension clearly sits there, also on my box. I disabled it for the time being…. and again, this was a “bye, bye, Microsoft!” nail in the coffin designed for Windows….

For a long time, I was encountering problems with Firefox on Windows. Especially on Ajax-sites, but also on various other sites, Firefox all of a sudden seemed to load and load and load forever – without even doing anything… The only possibility was then to shut down Firefox and kill the task in the Taskmanager.

After having read loads of stuff, I suspected that the problem was caused by a combination of my Virus scanner and my firewall.

The Virus scanner I use is AVG – as previously listed. I found a website that helped on uninstalling the problematic AVG linkscanner (it is listed as a problematic extension in Mozilla’s Knowledge Base), I did so.

Also, I got rid of the Ashampo firewall in use and switched to Comodo Firewall.

Now, after 1 or 2 months of surfing and browsing, I never encountered the problems any more – the only problem persisting is that Firefox sometimes does not end the task correctly, but this is only AFTER I exit the program – so I sometimes still need to end the task, but my browsing experience is unaffected. Phew…

I installed XP Service Pack 3 today. Two things happened:

First of all, XPize, the nice little program that tweaked the look and feel of XP to something a bit more…. modern, does not work with SP3. This is confirmed; and after the XPize project apparently has been death for a while, signs look good that a new version will come out in fall 2008.

Second, the MLDonkey GUI Sancho did not start any more. Double click on the icon – nothing happens; even on the command prompt, just nothing (well – I am so used to Linux now, that I tend to start stuff at the command prompt in the hope to see some debug messages – but hey, it’s WINDOWS….)

But then, I found this – and as per my miserable french, I could understand that I have to run Sancho in Win2000 compatibility mode. TADA – everything works as wished!

I have some strange issues recently with my windows media player – it does not play all video files any more (I have no problems on KDE with kmplayer, though). Turns out that this seems to be quite a common error….

The web-help of Microsoft points to this page, and it says something about iD3 tags and things (the reported error number is C00D11B1) – seems not really applicable. Some google-ing revealed a lot of pages; this one in particular has a lot of tipps.

First thing I did is delete all files in the the folder c:\documents and settings\all users\drm; this did not help. Then, I downloaded the XP codec pack from free-codecs.com. This did the trick – apparently, some codec was missing (however, Gspot did not report anything, as this was my first enquiry…… strange.)

My server is up and running for quite some time now – but still, I have no way of printing when my client is running Windows. It is time to integrate CUPS and Samba.

So, we start off with the official Gentoo Samba documentation; here are the sections out of /etc/samba/smb.conf:

# This is the print drivers information section
[print$]
comment = Printer Drivers
path = /etc/samba/printer
guest ok = no
browseable = yes
read only = yes
# Print admins
write list = thomas,root

# a "printer share"
[Deskjet970]
comment = HP Deskjet 970Cxi printer
printable = yes
path = /var/spool/samba
public = yes
guest ok = no
# Printer admins
printer admin = thomas,root

# printers share
[printers]
comment = All printers
path = /var/spool/samba
browseable = no
guest ok = no
public = yes
writable = no
printable = yes
create mode = 0700
# who can admin the printer?
printer admin = thomas,root
print command = lpr-cups -P %p -o raw %s -r

Then, I created the directory /etc/samba/printer and altered /etc/nsswitch.conf as given in the howto.

Also, /etc/cups/cupsd.conf was lacking a “ServerName” entry. I set it to

ServerName server

So, it’s in line with the general naming convention.

Next step is to emerge cups-windows for the CUPS windows printer driver. Also, we need the files ps5ui.dll, pscript.hlp, pscript.ntf and pscript5.dll from a Windows install (I had to do a lot of search on this, and finally found it in the Gentoo forums).

Then, we restart cups, and use cupsaddsmb as follows:

cupsaddsmb -U root -v Deskjet970

(note: It took me a long time, but for this to work, the following lines have to be commented out in /etc/samba/smb.conf):

disable spoolss = yes
show add printer wizard = no
use client driver = yes
invalid users = root

Note that with the exception of the last one, these all need to remain commented out.

Now, for the test on the windows client – when connecting to the printer, the driver installs automatically and – everything works! Horray!

For completeness’ sake, I have put my full /etc/cups/cupsd.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf on the “techie” page.