The Hippo Techo Blog

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Whether it is a real problem or just a quirk of my particular install of XP there is a problem with applying a share to a printer.

I check the "Share this printer" radio button and the Share name text box populates with a suggested name of 8 chrs in length. Changing this usually gets mixed results but if I accept the suggestion and APPLY or OK the applet goes into a "Not Responding" state. I need to close the window and after a few flash of the desktop graphics the system recovers. On viewing the printer in the Printers and Faxes part of the Control Panel the printer appears shared however if I go the the Sharing tab I see an erroneous name such as EpsonSty.2 and viewing the registry confirms that the share hasn't been fully applied.

Particular registry entries I check are -

HKLM/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Control/Print/Printers/Epson Stylus
COLOR 740 ESC/P 2

Share Name REG_SZ EpsonSty

HKLM/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Control/Print/Printers/Epson Stylus
COLOR 740 ESC/P 2/DsSpooler

printShareName REG_SZ EpsonSty (this is missing usually)

If the sharing is disabled and re-enabled then the same happens but the suggested name just increments - eg:

EpsonSty becomes EpsonSty.2 then EpsonSty.3, etc

It seems a bit hit and miss but to resolve the issue I did the following which appears to work.

Unplug USB printer

Disable the share

Delete the printer

Use Regedit -

Clear out entries such as EpsonSty, EpsonSty.2, etc from various keys as below.

HKCU/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Explorer/
WorkgroupCrawler/Printers/

HKLM/SYSTEM/ControlSet001/Services/lanmanserver/Shares/

Close Regedit and restart PC. The only stuff left should be the old driver installs which are OK.

Plug in USB printer and XP should soon pick it up and then acknowledge it has been installed because the drivers are still in place.

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XP client using Belkin F5D7000:

Had problems with wireless link dropping out. Got to a stage that the wireless link would not connect at all and it was the same with two different hard disks running XP SP1 in the same P4.

Resolution: Quite a bit of horsing about on this which is par for the course with CrapOS, etc but relocated the WAG54G to a position c. 8cm from the client aerial and still no connection (I had doubts about the integrity of the Linksys signal). I think the problem stems back to the fact that the Belkin F5D7000 card was sourced in NZ (designated F5D7000au) and the original setup CD is an Oz/NZ distro. I had applied later UK upgrade updates on top of this driver since the UK driver updates require the base CD to be installed whereas the updates for Aus/NZ are standalone and don't necessarily require the original CD. So lesson learn't that I will continue using the Oz/NZ driver updates for my card and all seems solid enough at the moment. I managed to install the driver without the full wireless monitor utility which may also make a difference as the utilities appear to affect the card operations very intermittently ( this may however only be the case when the drivers are horribly mixed as they were before re-installation correctly).

During all the hassle of course I found that there are updates to XP for wireless -

KB815485 - Overview of the WPA Wireless Security Update in Windows XP

WindowsXP-KB826942-x86-ENU.exe

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Setup:

Use PC connected via ethernet & run Setup CD

Select "Connect to Internet" (Infrastructure) Note: Head to Head is Adhoc setting

Set gateway to 192.168.1.1 (WAG54G router G/W)

Initially the Xbox needs the dashboard to be updated by running the Xbox Live CD.

Re-power the Xbox without the CD and Dashboard should give the Xbox Live option.

If DHCP is used on the G/W router then the Xbox will find the Xbox Live server and download the updates.

If DHCP is not used then the IP address,mask,G/W, DNS details will have to be specified in the Xbox.

Using DHCP Rainbow Six(3) loses connection.

When Xbox started after WGA54 was on got "No Connection".

Needed to go to Dashboard, select Settings & Troubleshooting. The Xbox then did scan and picked up the IP, DNS etc.

Preferable to run Xbox on static settings?


Port Fwding recommendations

88 UDP

3074 UDP

3074 TCP

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F/W 1.01.7

Required standard UK setting of -

RFC2364 PPPoA, VPI=0, VCI=38 & VC multiplexing for the DSL interface.

Configuration can be done via web interface (default http:// is 192.168.1.1).

Using iBook - MS Explorer 5.1 for Mac NBG (No Bloody Good)
- Netscape 7 for Mac OK

Using PC both IE & Mozilla are fine (see below: use IE for firmware upgrading)

Issue: "wireless clients connected" button in STATUS>WIRELESS screen fails to show the networked clients unless they are using DHCP addresses. Using the Refresh button is NBG. It only appears to work if clients are DHCP.

Issue: ADSL link appears to go west occasionally but status indicates that DSL is OK. I found that unchecking the "Connect on Demand" and checking the "Keep Alive: Redial Period = 30 sec" seemed to do the trick.

Issue: Upgrading the firmware from 1.00.7 to 1.01.7 using Mozilla Firefox failed. I ran the upgrade process via the web interface and all was well with the progress bars appearing however when the progress bar was "complete" nothing happened for c. 15 seconds and then it started again, & again, etc. This happened about 10 x so I closed the browser after the completion of a progress bar and luckily the old firmware load was still OK (I didn't have a cabbage!). I then tried it again with IE6 and everything was OK - I got a completion acknowledgement page and when I next logged onto the router the firmware had indeed been updated. (incidentally I used a hard ethernet connection rather than wireless to do the upgrade.)

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In case it is of interest this is my experience of setting up a wireless LAN using the following components -

Linksys WAG54G wireless ADSL/router/gateway

Linksys WGA54G-UK wireless game adaptor (Xbox)

Linksys WMP54G PCI nic

Belkin F5D7000 PCI nic

Apple Airport Extreme nic

I got all the Linksys stuff from www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk which provided good service and delivery. All the devices conform to the Broadcom 54G chipset so I didn't have any real issues regarding compatibility.

Overall setup:

Basic setup is WAG54G on the ADSL connection using BT Openworld. The only problem with BT Openworld as I can see is that the IP allocation is dynamic (that is usual and no problem) but the DNS allocation and Gateway IP also changes dynamically which I think may be upsetting the Xbox when I try to fix the DNS in the Xbox settings (still working on this).

The wireless LAN has two XP clients (one has the WMP54 PCI card and the other a Belkin F5D7000 PCI card), a MacOS X client (Airport Extreme card) and an Xbox using the WGA54G-UK unit

Each client is running a static IP and the DNS server specified are BT's ( I cheat and use the BTI (Nband) ones - 194.73.73.94 & 95)

128 bit WEP is implemented

At this stage I need to keep the DHCP running on the gateway for the Xbox. This allows the DNS for the XboxLive to still work. The Xbox and the WGA54G unit both have a static IP allocated which is also in the DHCP range. The static IP will allow ports to be forwarded to the Xbox without using a DMZ or compromising the other clients.

UPDATE:

Quite a few changes on the network ....

A Netgear DG834G ADSL wireless router has replaced the WAG unit.

Latterly the XBox games adaptor doesn't get used so it is no longer a client.

A Thinkpad client running XP with SP2 has been added using an Intel PRO wireless 2200BG card. The ISP has also changed to V21 running 512K ADSL.

The Netgear router is a lot more stable on the wireless side of things and static IP allocation works just fine with the clients. Regarding security the 128 bit WEP is sufficient for a residential situation along with the use of MAC access tables (anyone sitting outside in a car with a laptop soon gets noticed!).

DNS is taken from the ISP with no real problems.

The only real hassle with V21 as an ISP was an issue, that took a week or two to resolve, that blocked access to a major UK bank - it is not clear but BT had their fingers in the pot somewhere!!!! Other than that the service outages have been un-noticeable.

UPDATE II:

The Netgear appeared to go flakey on the wireless LAN so a quick and dirty fix was to go out and get a Belkin G+ MIMO unit.

Tried using the WEP on the Belkin but the G4 Powerbook didn't like the 128 bit WEP (unsecure no WEP was OK) so set the LAN up for WPA with TKIP and worked OK. The Linksys WMP54G card in the P3 worked fine. The old Belkin F5D7000 wireless PCI card in the P4 wouldn't work (when connecting the PC would freeze) so I replaced it with a Belkin USB unit which installed OK but had marginal performance (this is 6 metres from the router via 2 walls and a staircase).

Enough I said and proceeded to spend the afternoon running in an ethernet cat 5e cable - needless to say the P4 now runs at a full 100MHz reliably, nothing like good ol' copper!

However it soon became apparent that the G4 Powerbook would not connect via wireless until the Thinkpad was connected and turned on so this was a problem.

No firmware updates were currently available for the Belkin so up a gum tree.

Shame about the Netgear but I need things to work and there is no way of testing these units satisfactorily to see if they are genuinely faulty.

It always seems to be the wireless portion of the routers which give doubt as the ethernet ports work fine all the time. In my mind wireless does a lot of sucking!

Sometimes I wonder if problems with the ADSL line connectivity actually impact on the wireless LAN although with good design it shouldn't.

UPDATE III:

The biggest hassle just occurred recently. Disconnection of my internet service occurred 15th November as a result of a financial disagreement between V21 (my ISP) and its sub-provider Netservices. The upshot of it all was that Netservices arranged for the ADSL service cease order to be placed as at 24th November and disconnection occurred on 1st December. So I am now with BT Broadband and have a shiny new (free) BT HomeHub to replace the dodgy Belkin G+ MIMO.

So far so good - on ADSL MAX (8 Meg) the BT HomeHub ( a Thomson unit) appears solid but a bit difficult to manage since it is set up for the mass market and pre-configured (getting about 5.6 Meg over 2.3 miles so far).

All the clients work OK on WEP128 (tried WPA but no go).

More on the BT HomeHub experience further up the page.

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The following error (using JS console) was encountered when using a mouseover function (NAV panel on the wanderinghippo web page) from a Mac.

Error: uncaught exception: [Exception... "Not enough arguments [nsIDOMWindowInternal.scroll]" nsresult: "0x80570001 (NS_ERROR_XPC_NOT_ENOUGH_ARGS)" location: "JS frame :: <unknown filename> :: onmouseover :: line 1" data: no]

Silly error really - the .js file that drives the NAV scrolling wasn't on the server.

This can also be caused with files that are in another subfolder and don't have a correct path (eg: javascript/whscroll.js specified rather than ../javascript/whscroll.js ).

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With Firefox 1.0 and a few versions prior I had a problem with hyperlinks that would not open. This involved any link with using the "javascript:open_window("wombat.html")" function. I also found that FF intermittently wouldn't launch and this was due to the firefox.exe still running as a process despite the fact the app wasn't in use.

The source of the problem turned out to be a buggy extension (Open Java Console) - when this was disabled and the browser restarted the links worked fine. On closing the browser the firefox.exe closed down as it should also.

Although the Open Java Console extension was 0.6 I downloaded a 0.6.1 version and this worked fine (interestingly the "about" still shows 0.6 for the version)
Incidentally, quite a good site to test this is HERE (defunct)

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Not a usual occurrence but I had a situation where a faulty appliance (an iron actually) managed to kill the PC's, etc.

Naturally as XP booted up again it went into the ol' "check disks for inconsistencies" routine. A number of partitions required checking and all went OK but the I: drive had a problem where the three normal checks (Files,Indexes & Security Descriptors) completed OK but then the system would just hang.

The Event Viewer showed an entry -

Type: Error Event ID: 55 Source: ntfs Category: Disk

Description: The file system structure on the disk is corrupt and unusable. Please run chkdsk utility on volume I:

Symbolic Name: IO_FILE_SYSTEM_CORRUPT_WITH_NAME

Checking the Disk Management applet showed the partition to be healthy.

Since chkdsk on boot up wasn't working I thought I'd use Partition Magic 8.0 to test the partition - a few errors were found and fixed.

Tried to boot XP and still faulty.

I reformatted the I: partition with PM (luckily this was a spare partition).

Tried to boot XP and still faulty.

Back to chkdsk from command line - from RUN>CMD I did chkntfs I: and got "Disk is dirty" so then used chkdsk /x and then /R to no avail.

Tried SeaTools diagnostics and the partition wasn't a recognised type so couldn't test it.

My final shot was to try the format from the XP Disk Management applet and remarkably it did the trick.

The PC booted without a hitch.

Unfortunately this just confirms my fear that there are two ways of formatting an XP NTFS partition - Microsoft's and everybody elses's

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The card was installed into the P3 OK (to use with iPod/iTunes combo) but when the PC was shut down it would just restart again.

Mobo: Gigabyte GA-6VXE+ Award BIOS 4.51PG

Card: Belkin F5U508ea 3x FW/ 3x USB 2.0 PCI

The problem appeared to be with the PME setting in the BIOS.

I set -

PME Event Wake Up - Disabled

and the issue was resolved.

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Card purchased with 1.00.0.20 BIOS

Overall setup:

System config:
Abit IS7 with 2 x 512M DRAM
PowerColor 9100 Radeon 128M video
2940 PCI SCSI with Canon FS4000US scanner, Microtek E6 scanner & 100M Zip drive
HP9100 R/W CDROM
1x 40M IDE Master disk
1x 120M IDE Slave disk
2x 80M IDE Slave disks on Promise card

Installed card and XP detected card OK. The drivers installed fine however during system reboot got -
Detecting ... then
No Device is Found
BIOS is not installed!

Had an issue with the Radeon 9100 card failing with -
This device cannot find enough free resources that it can use (code 12). If you want to use this device, you will need to disable one of the other devices on this system.

Also noticed that the 2940 SCSI card (and associated scanner devices) had dropped out of the Device Manager.
Seems that the Promise card being added messed up the other SCSI card and the Radeon.

PCI Slot 2 Promise TX2Plus card
PCI Slot 3 2940 SCSI card

Decided to upgrade TX2Plus BIOS.
Followed readme.txt -

pflashb8 /f 375BIOS.BIN and got -
EMM386: unrecoverable privileged operation error #1 press enter to reboot.

Needed to rem out the EMM references in config.sys of boot disk and then BIOS upgrade worked OK. (1.00.0.24) This allowed the IDE drives on the TX2Plus to be detected and setup OK (they are set for SLAVE working).
I have also moved the 2940 card to PCI Slot 4

At the moment Radeon seems OK and the 2940 is good.