Computers

If you are experiencing error "WindowsUpdate_80096004 WindowsUpdate_dt000" when running Windows Update on Windows 7 64bit Ultimate, Vista 64bit Ultimate or other 64bit versions - please try the following:

Just discovered a "feature" of recent versions of windows that can lead to loss of your data. In fact, this is something that has happened to me, but luckily I've had backups!

If you try to MOVE any of your personal folder within your profile (such as "My Documents", "My Pictures", etc) they will be moved to a new location, but you will still have "My Documents" or "My Pictures" which will point to the new location. Windows does this automatically, so you never loose track of your files. However, later you may discover that it appears that you have files in two locations - the old one on drive C C:\Users\username and in the new one (where ever you've moved the files). If you delete to clean up your computer and delete files from that "OTHER" location - you will erase all of your personal files. You don't actually have files in two locations - Windows makes a link in your "C:\Users\username\ to the new location.

I thought i had files in two places and deleted one of them - well, they were gone from both.

If you've done this - restore from backup. If you don't have a backup - stop using your computer immediately and use a data recovery software before you overwrite those files. They are still probably on your computer, but are marked as "free space" by windows.

Good luck and be careful!

I'm evaluating Windows 7 to see if it can be recommended to our clients as the new desktop platform. So far it works great with a few small exceptions. Most of the negative points that came up have to do with the changed interface and not the speed or reliability of the system. Microsoft have done away with several very useful and familiar tools, buttons and features. One of them is the "Show Desktop" button present in the Windows XP/Vista quick launch toolbar (right next to the start button). It was one of the best additions to the toolbar since Windows 2000. But the icon is not present in the Windows 7. At first I thought it was completely gone, but then a quick search with Google gave me good news - it has changed it's look and was moved, but it is still present. Now it is located at the very right of the toolbar (just right of the clock - yes, see the little vertical rectangle?)

Let me tell you a story of a simple task that turned into anything but such. I needed to setup a small and very basic site with a few pictures and about four pages with various information. Since at the time MacBook Pro was next to me, I've opened up iWeb and shortly had the site ready. Everything looked great in the iWeb, I've exported the pages and looked at them in Firefox and surprise - the colors of all the pictures are way off! It happens that iWeb embeds color space information into pictures when it creates pages, even though pictures have the right profile/space specified. Color space that it assigns doesn't match he one used to create the pictures though. Not a big deal, right? Just a small bug, this can be fixed manually by reassigning the color space.

Analyzing logs for this site I've noticed quite a few people looking for information about Dlink DIR-615 features and operation. To help all those people I will review portions of the configuration that majority look for.

All of the important options are in the "Advanced" tab of the router configuration. Let's take a look at them one by one (you can find the configuration sections on the right of the router's administration page).

Virtual Servers: this is a useful but improperly named feature. It should have been called "port address translation" or PAT. Do not confuse it with "port forwarding" which is very close in function, but works a bit differently. Here you would specify a port on the firewall, that needs to be mapped to a different port on one of the computers on the network.

Example: You have several (two in our case) web or ftp servers on the network, but you have one IP address and can't share one port 80 or 21 for connections to all of these servers. The solution is to use port translation! If your first ftp server is at 192.168.1.10 on port 21 you create a rule by filling out the information on the page. The entry for FTP server one would have the same public and private ports since you are trying to make a streight through connection. However, for the second server you would change the public port ( TCP 31 in our case) but set the private port to still be 21.  So when you need to connect to the Server 2 via FTP from outside your network, you would use ftp://*your public IP*:31. When your ftp client connect to the router on port 31, it will know that this connection needs to be redirected to the port 21 on the FTP server 2 at 192.168.1.20

I'm one of those people who thinks that learning to program is hard. But it is hard not because it is hard to memorize functions or calls, but because the documentation is geek encrypted.

Let's take something simple to use as an example - a need to generate a range of numbers from 0 to 10 in Python (which is often touted as one of the easier scripting languages to learn).

An AirLink AR680W Wireless N router that I had for about a year was dropping all of the connections from time to time, which really annoyed me.  Since I really didn't want pay too much money for a replacement D-Link DIR-615 for $40 seemed right. The old router disconnected and the new one in place. I wish I could say that the setup was painless, but it wasn't. In fact, I was trying to get it running for about an hour. Considering that my job requires me to be able to configure any kind of network equipment. And even though I knew that all the settings were right, the unit would not obtain DHCP information from the cable modem/ISP. There was something that was preventing the system from working correctly. Note, the configuration was done all in manual mode without using any "wizards" (scripted step-by-step setup assistants).  The settings were very basic - just the internal IP, lan DHCP server, and that's all. Yet, it would not get an IP. Even after connecting laptop, obtaining DHCP information from ISP and then putting it into router manually it wouldn't work. There is some type of setting in the router configuration that is not shown to the user. As a measure of last resort, I went through the wizard - and it worked! I've looked at the settings...Yes, everything was same as when I have configured it manually.  The only difference was that during the wizard setup - it prompted me to select ISP. Whatever, that selection means during the setup - it has some system setting associated with it.