Technology Tales

Consolidation

For a while, the Windows computing side of my life has been spread across far too many versions of the pervasive operating systems with the list including 2000 (desktop and server), XP, 2003 Server, Vista and 7; 9x hasn't been part of my life for what feels like an age. At home, XP has been the mainstay for my Windows computing needs, with Vista Home Premium loaded on my Toshiba laptop. The latter variant came in for more use during that period of home computing "homelessness" and, despite a cacophony of complaints from some, it seemed to work well enough. Since the start of the year, 7 has also been in my sights with beta and release candidate instances in virtual machines, leaving me impressed enough to go popping the final version onto both the laptop and in a VM on my main PC. Microsoft finally has got around to checking product keys over the net, so that meant a licence purchase for each installation using the same downloaded 32-bit ISO image. 7 is still doing well for me, so I am beginning to wonder whether having an XP VM is becoming pointless. The reason for that train of thought is that 7 is becoming the only version that I really need for anything that takes me into the world of Windows.

Work is a different matter, with a recent move away from Windows 2000 to Vista heavily reducing my exposure to the venerable old stager (businesses usually take longer to migrate, and any good IT manager usually delays any migration by a year anyway). 2000 is sufficiently outmoded by now that even my brother was considering a move to 7 for his work because of all the Office 2007 files that have been coming his way. While he may be no technical user, the bad press gained by Vista hasn't passed him by, so a certain wariness is understandable. Saying that, my experiences with Vista haven't been unpleasant, and it always worked well on the laptop, while the same also can be said for its corporate desktop counterpart. Much of the noise centred around issues of hardware and software compatibility, and that certainly is apparent at work with my having some creases left to straighten.

With all of this general forward heaving, you might think that IE6 would be shuffling its mortal coil by now, but a recent check on visitor statistics for this website places it at about 13% share, tantalisingly close to oblivion but still too large to ignore it completely. All in all, it is lingering like that earlier blight of web design, Netscape 4.x. If I was planning a big change to the site design, setting up a Win2K VM would be in order, not to completely put off those labouring with the old curmudgeon. For smaller changes, the temptation is not to bother checking, but that is questionable when XP is set to live on for a while yet. That came with IE6 and there must be users labouring with the old curmudgeon, and that's ironic with IE8 being available for SP2 since its original launch a while back. Where all this is leading me is towards the idea of waiting for IE6 share to decrease further before tackling any major site changes. After all, I can wait with the general downward trend in market share; there has to be a point when its awkwardness makes it no longer viable to support the thing. That would be a happy day.

Never undercutting the reseller...

Quite possibly, THE big technology news of the week has been the launch of Windows 7. Regular readers may be aware that I have been having a play with the beta and release candidate versions of the thing since the start of the year. In summary, I have found to work both well and unobtrusively. While there have been some rough edges when accessing files through VirtualBox's means of accessing the host file system from a VM, that's the only perturbation to be reported and, even then, it only seemed to affect my use of Photoshop Elements.

Therefore, I had it in mind to get my hands on a copy of the final release after it came out. Of course, there was the option of pre-ordering, but that isn't for everyone, so there are others. A trip down to the local branch of PC World will allow you to satisfy your needs with different editions: full, upgrade (if you already have a copy of XP or Vista, it might be worth trying out the Windows Secrets double installation trick to get it loaded on a clean system) and family packs. The last of these is very tempting: three Home Premium licences for around £130. Though wandering around to your local PC components emporium is an alternative, you have to remember that OEM versions of the operating system are locked to the first (self-built) system on which they are installed. Apart from that restriction, the good value compared with retail editions makes them worth considering. The last option that I wish to bring to your attention is buying directly from Microsoft themselves. You would think that this may be cheaper than going to a reseller, but that's not the case with the Family Pack costing around £150 in comparison to PC World's pricing, and it doesn't end there. That they only accept Maestro debit cards along with credit cards from the likes of Visa and Mastercard perhaps is another sign that Microsoft is new to the whole idea of selling online. In contrast, Tesco is no stranger to online selling, yet they also have Windows 7 on offer though they aren't noted for computer sales; PC World may be forgiven for wondering what that means, but who would buy an operating system along with their groceries? I suppose that the answer to that would be that people who are accustomed to delivering one's essentials at a convenient time should be able to do the same with computer goods too. That convenience of timing is another feature of downloading an OS from the web, and many a Linux fan should know what that means. While Microsoft may have discovered this of late, that's better than never.

Because of my positive experience with the pre-release variants of Windows 7, I am very tempted to get my hands on the commercial release. Because I have until early next year with the release candidate and XP works sufficiently well (it ultimately has given Vista something of a soaking), I'll be able to bide my time. When I do make the jump, it'll probably be Home Premium that I'll choose because it seems difficult to justify the extra cost of Professional. It was different in the days of XP, when its Professional edition did have something to offer technically minded home users like me. With 7, XP Mode might be a draw, but with virtualisation packages like VirtualBox available for no cost, it's difficult to justify spending extra. In any case, I have Vista Home Premium loaded on my Toshiba laptop and that seems to work fine, despite all the bad press that Vista has got itself.

Adding msttcorefonts to Fedora

Once you have enabled the appropriate software repository, you can install the msttcorefonts (Microsoft TrueType core fonts like Arial, Times Roman, Verdana, Georgia, etc.) package on Debian and Ubuntu. With Fedora, it surprisingly isn't so straightforward. There is a recipe using the command line that worked for me, and I'm not going to repeat it here, so I'll leave you to go where I found it. In fact, it forms part of a wider unofficial Fedora FAQ that may be of more interest to you than solving this.

Update for Fedora 12 (2009-11-24):

You also need chkfontpath so the following needs doing before the final part of the command sequence, changing the filename as appropriate for your situation:

yum install xfs
rpm -ivh http://dl.atrpms.net/all/chkfontpath-1.10.1-2.fc12.i686.rpm

On keyboards

While there cannot be too many Linux users who go out and partner a Microsoft keyboard with their system, my recent cable-induced mishap has resulted in exactly that outcome. Keyboards are such standard items that it is not so possible to generate any excitement about them, apart from RSI-related concerns. While I wasn't about to go for something cheap and nasty that would do me an injury, going for something too elaborate wasn't part of the plan either, even if examples of that ilk from Microsoft and Logitech were sorely tempting.

Shopping in a bricks and mortar store, like I was, has its pluses and its minuses. The main plus points are that you see and feel what you are buying, with the main drawback being that the selection on offer isn't likely to be as extensive as you'd find on the web, even if I was in a superstore. Despite the latter, there was still a good deal available. Though there were PS/2 keyboards for anyone needing them, USB ones seemed to be the main offer, with wireless examples showcased too. Strangely, the latter were only available as kits with mice included, further adding to the cost of an already none too cheap item. The result was that I wasn't lured away from the wired option.

While I didn't emerge with what would have been my first choice because that was out of stock, that's not to say that what I have doesn't do the job for me. The key action is soft and cushioned, which is a change from that to which I am accustomed; some keyboards feel like they belong on a laptop, but not this one. There are other bells and whistles too, with a surprising number of them working. The calculator and email buttons number among these along with the play/pause, back and forward ones for a media player; I am not so convinced about the volume controls though an on-screen indicator does pop up. You'd expect a Microsoft item to be more Windows specific than others, yet mine works as well as anything else in the Ubuntu world and I have no reason to suspect that other Linux distros would spurn it either. Keyboards tend to be one of those "buy-it-and-forget-it" items, and the new arrival should be no different.

Running Windows 7 within VirtualBox

With all the fanfare that surrounded the public beta release of Windows 7, I suppose that the opportunity to give it a whirl was too good to miss. Admittedly, Microsoft bodged the roll-out by underestimating the level of interest and corralling everyone into a 24-hour time slot, with one exacerbating the other. In the event, they did eventually get their act together and even removed the 2.5 million licence limit. Thus, I suppose that they really needed to get 7 right after the unloved offering that was Vista, so they probably worked out that the more testers that they get, the better. After, it might be observed that the cynical view that the era of making people pay to "test" your products might be behind us and that users just want things to work well if not entirely faultlessly these days.

After several abortive raids, I eventually managed to snag myself a licence and started downloading the behemoth using the supplied download manager. I foresaw it taking a long time and so stuck with the 32-bit variant so as not to leave open the possibility of that part of the process using up any more of my time. As it happened, the download did take quite a few hours to complete, but this part of the process was without any incident or fuss.

Once the DVD image was downloaded, it was onto the familiar process of building myself a VirtualBox VM as a sandbox to explore the forthcoming incarnation of Windows. After setting up the ISO file as a virtual DVD, installation itself was an uneventful process, yet subsequent activities weren't without their blemishes. The biggest hurdle to be overcome was to get the virtual network adapter set up and recognised by Windows 7. The trick is to update the driver using the VirtualBox virtual CD as the source because Windows 7 will not recognise it using its own driver repository. Installing the other VirtualBox tools is a matter of going to Compatibility page in the Properties for the relevant executable, the one with x86 in the file name in my case, and setting XP as the Windows version (though Vista apparently works just as well, I played safe and depended on my own experience). While I was at it, I allowed the file to run under the administrator account, too. Right-clicking on executable files will bring you to the compatibility troubleshooter that achieves much the same ends but by a different route. With the Tools installed, all was workable rather than completely satisfactory. Shared folders have not worked for, but that might need a new version of the VirtualBox software or getting to know any changes to networking that come with Windows 7. I plan to stick with using USB drives for file transfer for the moment. Though stretching the screen to fit the VirtualBox window was another thing that would not happen, that's a much more minor irritation.

With those matters out of the way, I added security software from the list offered by Windows with AVG, Norton and Kaspersky being the options on offer. I initially chose the last of these but changed my mind after seeing the screen becoming so corrupted as to make it unusable. That set me to rebuilding the VM and choosing Norton 360 after the second Windows installation had finished. That is working much better, and I plan to continue my tinkering beyond this. I have noticed the inclusion of PowerShell and an IDE for the same, so that could be something that beckons. All in all, there is a certain solidity about Windows 7, though I am not so convinced of the claim of speedy startups at this stage. Time will tell and, being a beta release, it's bound to be full of debugging code that will not make it into the final version that is unleashed on the wider public.

Error: User does not have appropriate authorization level for library xxxx

In a world where write access to a folder or directory is controlled by permission settings at the operating system level, a ready answer for when you get the above message in your log when creating a SAS data set would be to check your access. However, if you are working on Windows and your access seems fine, then SAS' generation of an access error message seems all the more perplexing.

Unlike the more black-and-white world of UNIX and Linux, Windows has other ways to change access that could throw things off from the straight and narrow. One of them, it would appear, is to right-click on the file listing pane in Windows Explorer and select "Customize this folder..." to change how it appears. The strange upshot of this is that a perpetual read-only flag is set for the folder in question, and that flag triggers SAS authorisation errors. The behaviour is very strange and unexpected when you find it, and the quickest and easiest solution sounds drastic. This involves deleting the folder and creating a new one in its place, saving anything that you want to retain in another temporary location. An alternative approach uses the attrib command and is less invasive.

It begs the question as to why Microsoft is re-appropriating a flag used for access purposes to be used to determine whether the HTML components of a folder display have been changed or not. This is very strange stuff and does not look like good software design at all. With all the other problems Microsoft creates for itself, I am not holding my breath until it's fixed, either. There seem to be other things like this waiting to catch you out when using Windows SAS, and a good place to start is SAS' own description of the problem that I have just shared.

System error codes for Windows

Windows system error codes can be indecipherable, so it's useful to have a list. Microsoft has one on its Microsoft Learn website that may help. However, the decodes may not as explicit as I would like, but they're better than nothing when you don't get anything other than the number.

Running Photoshop Elements 5 on Ubuntu and openSUSE

When you buy a piece of software and get accustomed to its ways of working, it is natural to want to continue using it. That applied to a number of applications when I moved over to Linux in the latter half of last year, and one of these was Adobe's Photoshop Elements 5.0, a purchase made earlier in the year. My way forward was to hang on to Windows by way of VMware. However, Elements fails to edit or save files in the Linux file system accessed through VMware's shared folders feature. I have yet to work out what's happening, but the idea of using a more conventional networking arrangement has come to mind.

Another idea that intrigued me was the idea of using WINE, the Windows API emulator for Linux. You can get it in the Ubuntu and openSUSE software repositories, but the WINE website has more to say on the subject. That's only the first stage, though, as you might see from WINE's Wiki page on Photoshop and its like. However, their advice is a spot incomplete, so I'll make it more explicit here. You need to run Winetricks from its online home as follows:

wget kegel.com/wine/winetricks; sh winetricks fakeie6

wget kegel.com/wine/winetricks; sh winetricks mdac28

wget kegel.com/wine/winetricks; sh winetricks jet40

The first line flicks a switch to fool Microsoft components to install thinking that they are installing into a Windows system with IE on board. Without this, the rest will not happen. The second installs Microsoft's native ODBC drivers; Elements will not function at all without these if my experience is any guide. The last step is to add JET support so that Elements' Organiser can get going. With all of these in place, having a working Photoshop Elements instance under Linux should be a goer. Apart from the odd crash, things seem to be working OK on Ubuntu and openSUSE seems hospitable too. Further experimentation may reveal more.

Update: The WINE Wiki has now been updated (and links back here!). As per dank's comment, the above lines can be condensed into what you see below:

wget kegel.com/wine/winetricks; sh winetricks fakeie6 mdac28 jet40

Desktop.ini on the desktop?

Being an experienced computer, I set Windows Explorer to display hidden files when using a Windows PC. However, on my Vista-empowered laptop, that causes two desktop.ini files to appear on the desktop, one for all users and one for my user account. And displaying hidden files does not seem to be something that you can do on a folder by folder basis. With XP, this did not cause hidden files to appear on your desktop like this, so the behaviour could be seen as a step backwards. A spot of googling exposed me to some trite suggestions regarding re-hiding files again, but deleting them seems to be the only way out. Despite the dire warnings being issued, there didn't seem to be any untoward problems caused by my actions. For now, I'll see if they stay away, yet episodes like this do make me wonder if it is time for Microsoft to stop treating us like idiots and give us things that work the in which we want them to function. Well, I'm glad that Linux is the linchpin of my home computing world...

Onto Norton 360…

ZoneAlarm cut off VMware's access to the internet, so it was time to reinstall it. However, I messed up the reinstallation and now there seems no way to reinstate things like they were without tampering with my Windows XP installation status, and I have no intention of doing that. The thing seems to think that it can start a TrueVector service that does not exist.

Since I have to have some security software on board, I made a return to the Symantec fold with my purchase of Norton 360. That does sound extreme, but I have been curious about the software for a while now. You get the usual firewall, antivirus and antispam functions with PC tuning, anti-phishing and backup features available as well. It is supposed to be unobtrusive, so we'll see how it goes from here.

Update:

PC Pro rates the software highly, while Tech.co.uk accuses it of being bloatware. Nevertheless, the only issue that I am having with it is its insistence on having Microsoft Update turned on. For now, I am sticking with Shavlik's NetChk Protect, especially seeing what Microsoft has been doing with its update service. Have a look at Windows Secrets.com to see what I mean. Other than that, it seems to working away in the background without intruding at all.