The structure I use is similar to this:

C:\
  - Backup
    - PCBackups
      - T510
      - T60
      - Server
    - Photos
    - Video
- Data
    - Photos
    - Video

Each bold entry is a mount point – an empty directory on my C: drive to which I “mount” an external drive (using Windows Disk Management). So every bold entry above corresponds to a separate hard drive (indeed, it could relate to a specific partition on a drive with multiple partitions). Yes, I have a lot of hard drives in my server.

This means that, rather than accessing an additional drive in my server using a new drive letter, I can instead access it through a path such as C:\Data\Photos.

This gives incredible flexibility to add and remove drives – since you can easily change mount points, or use a new drive at a mount point if you run out of space. Any empty folder can be used as a mount point.

An example of this flexibility is from my PCBackups folder, where I store backup archives from my various laptops and computers. I created the C:\Backup\PCBackups folder on my system drive, then mounted a large hard drive at this point to give me plenty of space to store my backups. However, over time I eventually filled this drive and needed to expand the capacity. My laptop backups were taking the most space, so I renamed my laptop backup directory temporarily (C:\Backup\PCBackups\_T510), created a new empty folder (C:\Backup\PCBackups\T510) and then mounted another new drive at this point, greatly increasing the capacity of my PCBackups folder. I moved all the old T510 backups into the new folder, which moved them to the new drive, also freeing up space on the existing drive for other backups at the same time.

One of the nice things about this structure is that Windows remembers the mount points, so if you remove a drive temporarily – it will automatically remount the drive when it is reconnected.

The downside of this is that if your drive dies, or you remove it and use it else-where, the folder where the drive was mounted is not available for mounting of a new drive because Windows is still looking for the old drive to mount there.

Unfortunately, Windows Disk Management doesn’t give you any way of dealing with this – I had a drive die, but could not mount a replacement drive in its place because Windows was reserving that mount point for the old drive. I couldn’t connect the old drive to remove the mount point, because Windows no longer recognised the dead drive.

A bit of Googling found a simple solution – there is a command line tool (at least in Windows 7 – not sure about earlier versions), called “mountvol”, which allows you to manage volume mount points.

Using a command prompt running as Administrator (Start > All Programs > Accessories > right-click on Command Prompt and select “Run as administrator”), I was able to use the “/d” switch to remove a volume mount point from the folder where the dead drive was previously mounted, and then re-create the mount point for the replacement drive using Windows Disk Management. Easy as.

There are instructions on how to use Mountvol on the Microsoft TechNet site.

After discovering that I needed to explicitly choose to install MySQL and phpMyAdmin (simply fixed by running the installer again and modifying the installation), I found that the PEAR libraries some of my existing code relied on, was missing.

After a bit of research, I learned that I needed to run the PEAR installer:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Zend\ZendServer\bin\go-pear.bat

… however, this resulted in some very confusing error messages:

phar "C:\Program Files (x86)\Zend\ZendServer\bin\PEAR\go-pear.phar" does not have a signature
PHP Warning:  require_once(phar://go-pear.phar/index.php): failed to open stream: phar error: 
invalid url or non-existent phar "phar://go-pear.phar/index.php" in
C:\Program Files (x86)\Zend\ZendServer\bin\PEAR\go-pear.phar on line 1236

After a bit more Googling, I finally came across a suggestion on the PEAR blog: PHP 5.3 Windows and PEAR (go-pear.phar) | PEAR Blog

I ran the following command from the PEAR directory, which worked:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Zend\ZendServer\bin\PEAR>php -d phar.require_hash=0 go-pear.phar

… all that was then required was to follow the instructions (I needed to enter the path to the CLI php.exe, which is C:\Program Files (x86)\Zend\ZendServer\bin), and it worked.

I wanted to recreate these scheduled tasks on the new Windows 7 install, but discovered that Microsoft had changed the format for scheduled tasks in Win7 and provided no mechanism for importing the old .job files from Windows XP / Windows 2003. Windows 7 now uses XML files for import and exporting task definitions – but no conversion tool from the old .job format.

I really didn’t want to be spending the time manually recreating all of these tasks, but a bit of Google research found a possible solution involving remote invocation of the schtasks command line tool. Here’s what I did.

The first issue was that I had already decommissioned the WHS install, although I did save the C & D partitions on the system drive so I could have theoretically booted it up again. However, I had already changed some of the machine’s hardware (new MoBo, new SATA controller, etc), so that was always going to be a last resort and fraught with potential boot-up issues.

Fortunately I still had an old laptop running Windows XP, so I was able to copy the .job files I had backed up from the WHS box over to the XP machine and have them recognised by Task Scheduler there.

Next, I ran the following command on my Windows 7 laptop from an “elevated” command prompt (Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> right mouse click on “Command Prompt” and select “Run as administrator”):

schtasks /Query /S remote_computer_name /U remote_username /P remote_password /XML > output_file.xml

… where the “remote_computer_name” was the name of my Windows XP machine, and “remote_username” and “remote_password” were for a valid administration user on that machine.

This command tells the remote machine to dump a list of all parameters for all scheduled tasks and send it to my console and the /XML flag tells the Windows 7 box to convert that information to the new XML format, and then I piped the output to a new file, “output_file.xml”.

The output was a concatenated list of all XML task data (which itself is not a valid file to import into Windows 7 task scheduler), so I used a text editor to copy and paste the individual tasks that I wanted to recreate and then used the “import” feature in Windows 7 task scheduler to import the new task. I believe there is a flag you can set to have the combined output XML for all the tasks  be valid to import directly, but I didn’t try that, preferring to manually select which of the tasks to import and doing them one at a time so I could then check the settings each time.

There are a plethora of new features and settings in Windows 7 task scheduler, so it does pay to verify and tweak any settings after importing them. I really am quite impressed with the new functionality in Windows 7 task scheduler!

I attached my ThinkPad USB Keyboard with TrackPoint to the machine (love these keyboards – the feel and usability of a ThinkPad keyboard on a desktop!!), but after setup, I found that I was having difficulty logging in with the username and password I had specified.

I did also notice at one point that I was getting strange characters when I typed, which I quickly realised was the NumLock on the keyboard being activated. Unfortunately, there is no NumLock indicator light on the keyboard (designed to be used with a ThinkPad, which displays NumLock status on the screen), so I couldn’t tell whether it was active or not.

A bit of experimentation at login and I found that the NumLock was being enabled by default on my new box – and a search of the BIOS settings didn’t turn up any options there for disabling it.

A quick Google search found some discussions about the issue, which identified a registry setting you can set to adjust this.

Steps to adjust:

A) run regedit

B) navigate to: HKEY_USERS\.Default\Control Panel\Keyboard

C) Adjust the value of InitialKeyboardIndicators to one of the following values:

0 – Turn all indicators Off (NumLock, CapsLock, ScrollLock)
1 – Turn CapsLock On
2 – Turn NumLock On
3 – Turn CapsLock and NumLock On
4 – Turn ScrollLock On
5 – Turn CapsLock and ScrollLock On
6 – Turn NumLock and ScrollLock On
7 – Turn all indicators On (NumLock, CapsLock, ScrollLock)

D) reboot

In my case, the registry entry was set to some high value, which seems to have triggered NumLock on. I reset it to 0 and it now works as expected – no NumLock at bootup.

Note that this entry can also be set on a per-user basis.

References:

• Want to set ‘num lock’ to be on and active at Windows 7 Log-in screen on new HP G60-530US laptop
• How do I enable the NUM LOCK key for the logon screen?

I’ve seen this error before, sometimes the USB port gets a bit confused and unplugging and re-plugging the device, or moving it to a new USB port. I have also occasionally had to reboot the machine to get it working.

This time it just wouldn’t work – I rebooted several times, tried a few different things, but could not make it recognise the device.

I Googled the error message and came up with a blog from China: Huawei E169G the device has been disconnected or is unavailable error … which gave me some other ideas to try – specifically, reloading the drivers.

I found the drivers for my device in C:\Program Files\Wireless Broadband\Driver … I ran the DriverSetup.exe program and then tried again and it worked.

Hopefully this post helps someone else if they have problems with their Huawei E169 stick too!

I have a Topfield TF5000PVRtMPB (5000 Masterpiece) digital set top box and PVR, and apparently this model has a known problem where the power supply sometimes puts out a much higher voltage than it is supposed to (not sure why). This will on occasions cause some components on the motherboard to be damaged - in my case, it fried the digital tuners. The symptoms were that when I went to upgrade the firmware I could no longer scan for new channels – it simply didn’t find anything because the tuners no longer worked.

I called Topfield, they suggested I bring it in so they could check for me what the problem was and give me a quote on repairing it. They are only over in Lidcome, so I drove over that afternoon.

They confirmed the fault and offered to replace the motherboard and the powersupply – which they did in about 15 minutes and charged me $220 for including labour. Given that it would cost me around $500 to buy a replacement for it – I thought it was worth spending the money to repair it.

The only problem now I have is that there is a known bug with the version of the firmware I’m using where it sometimes fails to fire the timers for recording shows. I’ve already had problems with this once (very annoying – I missed the final of Scrapheap Challenge on ABC2) – so I’ve uploaded a hacked version of the firmware which may (or may not) help with this bug – I’ll have to keep a close eye on things to make sure all the timers are working.

I have a couple of Thecus N2100 NAS boxes (Network Attached Storage), which I use for bulk data storage and backup purposes. They are basically just hard drive enclosures with a built in computer to handle file serving requirements – not much larger than two 3.5″ hard drives. They have two drives so you can either run them as one large drive (or just a bunch of drives), or you can run them in RAID mode which mirrors the two drives – if one drive fails, you have a duplicate of the data and can recover (naturally, if both drives fail at the same time, you still lose everything – which is why backups are still important). They also have gigabit ethernet, so it’s very fast to transfer large files around – but only if you have a gigabit switch to connect all your devices!

I have two of these drives – and one of them (my backup drive) has now been running for over 450 days non-stop.

I only mention this because I plan on shutting them down while we’re away – no point running automated backups when there’s nothing to back up. I would normally leave the drives and my backup server running (the backup server also controls my digital set top box PVR), but I figure it’s a bit too long to leave them unattended – and I don’t want to risk electrical problems causing a fire (not that would I expect this to happen).

The fact that I’m also taking my backup server with me when we go away isn’t actually all that relevant … in reality my backup server is a “virtual” server. I have my T41 ThinkPad running VMware Server – with the VMware image stored on network backup drive. I could easily install the VMware Server software on one of my other machines and then just fire up the VMware image across the network and my backup server would be running again … but I don’t want to leave any of my other machines running either – so I’ll just shut them all down.

It’s a pity I won’t get to see how long I can leave the drive running without requiring a reboot!

I’m currently sitting in the car park of McDonalds in Cremorne using their Telstra WiFi hotspot – but only because Gloria Jeans in Crows Nest only has free WiFi until 7pm. I might have to go in there tomorrow and use it for a while.

It was supposed to be a busy week getting things finished before Christmas – but I can’t get any work done without a phone line or internet connection!! I would buy a wireless broadband card, but it’s way too expensive to justify for the rare occasions I would use it.

Telstra have promised the line will be fixed by midnight Thurday at the latest … aarrrgghh … 3+ days without connectivity – how am I supposed to run a business like that ?????

The only thing I haven’t got working yet is to get IBM’s Presentation Director to recognise the new resolutions available on the external monitor – although I did work around this by configuring the screens directly using ATI’s Catalyst Control Center and then using the “Capture” facility in Presentation Director to set that as “My Normal Display Settings” (which unfortunately you cannot duplicate to generate multiple configurations).

A bit of background:

My parents are staying with us at the moment, and Dad brought his IBM ThinkPad R50 with him. He decided to buy a new external monitor so we went to the local computer store and he chose a new Samsung 20″ widescreen LCD monitor (1680×1050 resolution).

Unfortunately, when we went to connect it to his R50, the laptop wouldn’t recognise the new widescreen resolution. I tried loading the monitor drivers that came with the screen, but that didn’t help. I tried updating all the other laptop drivers (especially video) from IBM, but that didn’t help either … the laptop simply didn’t recognise what resolutions the screen could do.

After some searching on Google, I came across the DriverHeaven website and their DH Mobility Modder.net tool.

Apparently ATI deliberately prevent OEM machines (eg laptops with ATI chips embedded like the ATI MOBILITY RADEON 7500 in the ThinkPad R50) from downloading and installing drivers directly from ATI – they expect you to get them from the PC manufacturer (which is normally good enough) … however, when the laptop manufacturer fails to include support for new monitor resolutions running on the external VGA display – it becomes an issue.

Fortunately DriverHeaven’s tool will trick the installer into thinking it’s just a regular PC and not an OEM model, and so will allow the drivers (which generally work very well) to be installed, with all the support for the new screen resolutions available in modern monitors.

Once installed, I was able to use the Catalyst Control Center to configure the external screen – and it worked a treat.

So, I decided to try a Google search to see if I could work out how to turn off this system beep … there didn’t seem to be any options in the ThinkPad Configuration application.

I quickly found the reason for the problem and the solution (Google to the rescue again !).

It turns out that for some very strange reason, there are certain keys on the ThinkPad keyboard that when you press three of them at once, the system beeps. I have no idea why they would do that.

It seems that I (like some other people who have reported the same problem), type so quickly, that the laptop considers that we are actually hitting three keys at once (or it may be that we are hitting two at once, with the third being a key hit accidentally at the same time).

According to Greg Hughes, if at least two of the keys “4567rtyufghjvbnm” are pressed, along with any third key in the same row at the two that were pressed, the system will beep. Hmmm – why would they do that (only thing I can think of is some undocumented system diagnostic tool ?)

Anyway, Greg linked to Elliot Lee who provides the surprisingly simple solution – there happens to be a “Beep” driver that can be disabled. The trick is that it is hidden from the normal list of drivers.

The solution (for Windows XP … unsure about other versions):

1. Go to Device Manager … Start -> Control Panel -> System -> Hardware -> Device Manager

2. (the trick !!) Show Hidden Devices. (Look in the menu … View -> Show hidden devices).

3. In the “Non-Plug and Play Drivers” section, you will find a “Beep” driver … double click on it to open the properties – then click on the “Driver” tab in the properties dialog.

4. Click on the “Stop” button to turn it off now, and set the Startup Type to “Disabled” to prevent it starting again.

Simple huh ? Thanks to Greg and Elliot for the answer (and to Google for letting me find them easily !).