Adobe Acrobat Becomes Excessively Disability-Aware

I was using Adobe Acrobat 9 in Windows 7.  Suddenly it developed a sensitivity to diversity issues, particularly in the area of disability.  That is, it started offering accessibility services that I didn't want or need.  One message come up when I printed a .PNG image file to PDF.  As soon as Acrobat opened the PDF, it said this:

This page contains only an image of a scanned page.  There are no text characters.  Would you like to run character analysis to try to make the text on this page accessible?

I clicked the "Do Not Show Again" box and then OK.  The only alternative was Cancel, and I was afraid that would be construed as "please ignore what I just said."  Wrong guess:  it ran OCR on the page, which in this case meant it completely screwed it up.  I printed it again.  This time it didn't ask.  Fortunately, it seemed to be ignoring what I had just instructed it to do (i.e., run OCR without asking):  it didn't run OCR.  Another thing it did, when I printed an HTML page to PDF, was to flash a screen that said this:

Content Preparation Progress

Please wait while document is being prepared for.

At least I think that's what it said.  It flashed by pretty quickly.  It didn't say what the document was being prepared for.  But the result was a crappy-looking PDF.

I guessed that I must have hit a funky key combination that turned on some kind of accessibility feature.  I hadn't started this post when the problem first arose, but something had caused Acrobat's Accessibility Setup Assistant to spring into action.  There didn't seem to be any option to shut it off, at least not on the dialog that popped up.  I ran a search.  In one thread, someone commented that this sort of thing happened only when they had Speech Recognition turned on.  In Acrobat, I went into Edit > Preferences > Accessibility.  I unchecked everything and then printed that HTML page again.  No improvement.  Another person in that thread suggested going to C:\Program files\Adobe\Acrobat 8.0\Acrobat\plug_ins and renaming Accessibility.api to be Accessibility.old.  I tried that.  Now I got a new message:

No Screen Reader Support

This version of the Adobe Reader does not support screen readers.  Information about downloading a version with screen reader support is available at http://www.adobe.com/go/reader_download

Apparently the step of making the Accessibility.api file unavailable was to persuade the system that Acrobat was not available for this purpose, and it should use Adobe Reader instead.  In that case, it sounded like the instructions to use accessibility settings might be coming from Windows, not from Acrobat.  I clicked the "Do not show this message again" box and tried printing the HTML page again.  No, it still displayed the page in Acrobat, not Reader -- which, when I checked in Control Panel > Programs and Features, wasn't even installed on my system.  I decided that renaming Accessibility.api to be Accessibility.old had not solved the problem, so I changed it back.  I did take a look, nonetheless, at Control Panel > Ease of Access Center (formerly Accessibility).  I went into the "Make the computer easier to see" option.  The only thing turned on there was the first option, "Turn on or off High Contrast when ALT + left SHIFT + PRINT SCREEN is pressed."  I turned that off, clicked Apply, and tried printing the HTML page again.  No, still got lousy output.

I couldn't see anything else obviously wrong in the Ease of Access center, so I went back to that discussion thread for more ideas.  But there weren't any.  A How-To Geek webpage gave me the idea that maybe the full message (above) was, "Please wait while the document is being prepared for reading."  This page said that renaming or removing Accessibility.api would kill that "Please wait" message.  And that might have been true; I hadn't looked specifically at that part.  But that wasn't my main objection. My main objection was that I was getting crappy PDFs.  And when I put it that way, I realized that it might be a problem with the PDF printer.  I was using Bullzip.  Was there an option that had gotten set wrong somehow?  In Bullzip's Options > Image tab, the resolution was set to only 150.  Was that 150 dots per inch?  If so, that could explain part of the problem.  I set it to 300 and tried again.  No change.

Participants in another thread, describing similar problems, seemed to say that the problem arose, for them, when they used Acrobat's speech tools.  I wasn't familiar with them, but thought I might take a look.  I went into Acrobat with no document open.  In Advanced > Accessibility, the only option that wasn't grayed out was Setup Assistant.  I went in there and selected "Set all accessibility options" > Next.  This seemed to be taking me through the same options that I could have gotten via Edit > Preferences.  I noticed that "Disable text smoothing" was checked, so I unchecked it; text smoothing sounded good.  In the next screen, I left it as I found it, with only one thing selected, "Infer reading order from document."  In the screen after that, the only thing selected was, again, the default, "For large documents, only read the currently visible pages."  In the screen after that, "Disable document auto-save" had somehow gotten checked.  I wanted auto-save, so I unchecked it.  Evidently the funky key that I had accidentally hit, whatever it was, had told Acrobat that I had some kind of disability, and therefore it launched into a whole menu of disability assumptions.  Anyway, the only thing I left checked on that page was "Reopen documents to the last viewed page."  By this point, I was seeing that, yes, I could have achieved these same changes by going into Edit > Preferences, but the one-size-fits-all disability assumption seemed to cherry-pick options from a variety of different Preferences submenus.  This seemed to be a better way of detecting what it had messed up.

Anyway, that was the last screen.  I clicked Done, and tried printing my HTML document again.  This time it was better.  The font looked good.  So part of the solution was to go through the Accessibility Setup Assistant and reverse some of its settings.  I was still getting that message, "Please wait while document is being prepared for."  I renamed Accessibility.api to be Accessibility.old again and reprinted the HTML document.  No more "prepared for" message.  So the other part of the solution was to kill Accessibility.api.  Ah, but now I had a new problem.  When I tried to go into Edit > Preferences, I got an error:  "Failed to load an application resource (internal error)."  I restarted Acrobat and tried again.  Same error.  Apparently it couldn't go on living without its Accessibility.api.  I renamed Accessibility.old back to Accessibility.api and tried again.  Yes, now I could go into Preferences.  So it seemed I might have to cope with that "document is being prepared for" message.

One poster in that thread seemed to say that, if Microsoft Magnify was turned on when Acrobat started, Acrobat would detect it and would assume that the user had a disability.  This was an interesting possibility.  Was Acrobat detecting some running program and inferring disability from that?  I went into Start > Run > taskmgr.exe > Applications tab and took a look.  Nothing obvious.  Well, the Ease of Access Center was open.  I closed that and tried printing my HTML page.  Nope, that wasn't the answer; I still had the problem.  I right-clicked on an empty spot on the Taskbar and went into Taskbar tab > Customize.  I looked at the System Tray utilities shown there.  A couple of possibilities but, again, nothing obvious.  There was a troublesome utility that I'd had a hard time deleting, DropCommand, but I was able to delete it now.  I doubted it was the problem.

I rebooted into Safe Mode, thinking this would tend to simplify the picture somewhat:  fewer programs would be loaded and running.  Instead, Safe Mode gave me a new cluster.  No PDF printers installed.  I didn't know that about Safe Mode.  I tried installing Bullzip, but got an error when I got to the part of installing the Ghostscript part:  "Unable to register the DLL/OCX:  RegSvr32 failed with exit code 0x5."  I started Acrobat, but within a few seconds I got an error message there too:

Licensing for this product has stopped working

You cannot use this product at this time.  You must repair the problem by uninstalling and then reinstalling the product or contacting your IT administrator or Adobe customer support for help.

So, OK, at least this gave me an opportunity to reboot.  Back in Normal Mode, thankfully, I did not get a licensing error message.  So then, to return to the question:  what programs might be running that would trigger a belief, in Acrobat, that I needed a bunch of disability options to be installed without asking me?

I wasn't sure how to get an answer to that, short of a potentially very time-consuming process of eliminating programs, one by one, and rebooting, and seeing what happened.  This was problematic now because, for some reason, when I tried to print my HTML page, I didn't have any problems.  So it seemed that I might have fixed the symptoms, at least.

Instead, a day or two later, there were new developments.  Now Acrobat's toolbars were no longer functioning properly.  They had been erratic in Acrobat 8; less so in Acrobat 9; but now the Crop option was gone, and other toolbar settings would be disregarded.  I tried a repair:  Control Panel > Progams and Features > select Adobe Acrobat > Uninstall/Change > Repair.  This repair called for a reboot.  I'm not sure how that turned out; my notes are weak at this point.

I also had another problem.  When I opened a newly downloaded PDF, I got this message:

Reading Untagged Document

This 133-page document is untagged and must be prepared for reading.  While the document is being analyzed, your assistive technology will not be able to interact wiht this application.

I canceled out of that and went through the steps I had figured out so far:  change things back the way I wanted them in Advanced > Accessibility > Setup Assistant.  Then I reopened the PDF.  Still got that same "Reading Untagged Document" dialog.  I had that DropCommand program installed on that machine too, so I deleted it.  There wasn't an uninstall option that I could see.  As on the other machine, I had to move the executable to the Recycle Bin folder and then delete it after a reboot.  A couple of days passed before I did that reboot.  The problem was still there.

This problem was one of several, along with some major hardware changes, that prompted me to give up and reinstall Windows 7.  My best guess was that this problem was related to a sticky Shift key problem, and that several such issues ultimately stemmed from a failing KVM switch.

Windows 7: Shift and Control (not Caps Lock) Key Stuck On - Slow Keyboard Response

I had a problem, in Windows 7, that apparently afflicted Windows XP users as far back as 2005.  For some reason, on a system that did not previously have this problem, I would be typing along and suddenly thE DAMN THING WOuld start and then maybe stop typing in all caps, like that.  A search indicated that a fair number of people were having this problem.

There was the usual assortment of suggested solutions.  One was hardware, notably the keyboard.  I had replaced keyboards and found that didn't solve the problem for me -- not to mention that I was having the same problem, arising at about the same time, on two different computers.  Some observed that rebooting would fix the problem, at least temporarily.  If that was working for me, I would have to emphasize the "temporarily" part.  Some noted that Control Panel > Ease of Access Center > Make the Keyboard Easier to Use might be set to turn on Sticky Keys.

These were not solutions fo rme.  I did a virus scan and found no problem.  It seemed that some rogue program may have screwed things up.  I might eventually figure out which one.  If not, one solution would be to roll back to an earlier System Restore.  But System Restore was not functioning well; I had only a few recent restore points, not predating the problem.  I could do an image restore from some weeks earlier, but I was hoping for something less drastic.

There were some other, funkier suggestions.  One involved a sort of phantom limb theory, like when a person has a bad itch on his/her right arm but cannot scratch it because the arm has been amputated.  The concept here seemed to be that Caps Lock was on when an external or alternate keyboard was removed, so now the computer was still feeling the pain of that setting, and the solution was to plug in that other keyboard and turn off the Caps Lock.  That seemed possible; I had recently plugged in a USB keyboard because my PS/2 keyboard was not responding during a reboot with a certain kind of boot disk.  But trying again with the USB keyboard, with or without the PS/2 keyboard, after reboots, did not seem to fix the problem.

Two other suggestions offered simple solutions.  One suggestion was just to use the other shift key once.  That is, I always used the left-side Shift key, so now I used the right-shift key one time.  The other suggestion was to bring up the On-Screen Keyboard and click once on each of its two Shift keys.  Together, these two suggestions seemed to say that the solution was to use each Shift key on a keyboard, whether physical or onscreen.  (The onscreen keyboard was at Control Panel > Ease of Access Center > Use the Computer without a Mouse or keyboard.)  I found that the physical keyboard solution seemed to work, but only temporarily.

As this problem went on, I learned more about it. It wasn't only the Shift key. It was also the Control key. It seemed to be a problem of slowness. The computer was processing Shift and Control keypresses belatedly. For instance, I would select several files in Windows Explorer, using the Control Key; and then, when I would try to select another one, if I didn't allow time for the system to process the Control keypress, clicking on an additional item would deselect all the others.

A search led to the suggestion that I should see if I had the same problem when using the onscreen keyboard. This seemed impractical, since (as I confirmed in a brief trial) I would not have the same feel through the Onscreen Keyboard (Start > Run > osk.exe). It was also suggested that I see whether the situation persisted in Safe Mode. If there was no problem in Safe Mode, then the prescription would be to perform a clean boot.

It seemed the problem might be due to my KVM (keyboard-video-mouse) switch.  That is, I had one keyboard for two computers.  I switched back and forth by using a hotkey.  It was an IOGear PS/2 KVM.  Right around this time, I did variations on having the KVM connected to only one computer.  My notes are imperfect, but it seemed that this may have made a difference.  I did replace the KVM around that time as well because it was defective, so maybe this stemmed from that.

I also reinstalled Windows 7 around this time.  Maybe that was part of the solution too.  Not sure.

Windows 7: KVM in a Multimonitor Setup

I was using two monitors with two computers.  After reflecting on multiple monitor possibilities, I installed an ASUS EN210 video card in each computer.  This allowed me to connect dual displays.  I decided that monitor A would be available to both computers, and monitor B would be available only to computer B.  To make this happen, I connected monitor A to a keyboard-video-mouse (KVM) switch.  So computer A was visible only on monitor A, whereas computer B was visible across the two monitors (assuming that's where I had the KVM set).

Problem:  every time I switched back to computer B on the KVM, monitor A would go blank.  This was not a problem when I was using the KVM only to switch the mouse and keyboard, leaving each monitor dedicated to one computer.  It arose only in the dual-monitor setup.  It seemed that the computer was not remembering the dual-monitor settings for monitor A on computer B.  Each time, I had to go back into Control Panel > Display > Change Display Settings > Detect.  (This KVM problem also seemed responsible for screwing up Adobe Acrobat 9. It was no longer remembering my toolbar settings the way I had previously set them. This seemed to be fixed by going into Acrobat's Help > Repair Acrobat installation.)

A search led to the suggestion that the problem I was having with monitor A was with the KVM:

It is a problem found with those KVM switches which did not pass the console display's EDID and DDC information to all the systems connected to the KVM switch. ...
Windows 7 checks display and display card constantly different from what XP and other operating systems did.
To solve this issue, just replace the KVM switch with those KVM switches supporting FULL TIME Active DDC function.
Please check ConnectPRO new UR or PR serial KVM switches which support Active DDC function to all the ports.

That post pointed me toward a Microsoft webpage with more technical information.  I did another search and saw references to ConnectPRO there too.  A different search suggested that lots of users were running into this problem.  Newegg's Power Search didn't offer an operating system selection, and they didn't seem to carry ConnectPRO KVMs.  A Google Shopping search led to two ConnectPRO KVMs, each costing at least $130.  I ran across a workaround suggestion to hit Win-D before and after switching with the KVM, but apparently that worked only with XBOXes, or anyway it didn't work for me.  There was another workaround, too technical for my blood.  Another thread prompted me to check for the most current driver for my ASUS EN210 graphics card.  As I recalled, the usual advice was to look for the latest drivers on the chipset manufacturer's webpage, so after consulting the details on the EN210, I went to the NVIDIA website and searched for GeForce 210 drivers.  I went with the most recent WHQL-certified driver.  After reboot, I saw that this did not solve the problem.  Note:  the machine had all current Windows updates at this point.

It seemed I had a choice.  I could go back to using one monitor per computer, or I could look for a hardware multimonitor solution.  Going back would mean waiting for Microsoft to fix this problem with Win7.  There was no guarantee that that would ever happen.  Basically, if I wanted multimonitor support for KVM-type functionality for two computers running Win7 (as distinct from one Win7 and one WinXP), it seemed I would either have to buy an expensive KVM or maybe come up with some other kind of funky plugging and switching.  For instance, I wondered whether I could make a go of it with two keyboards, two mice, and a switch just to flip monitor A from one computer to the other.  But this wouldn't circumvent the problem that Windows 7 was constantly polling the monitor, and that was the only thing that counted.  I found a device called the Geffen DVI Detective, which for $80 would remember the EDID and therefore defeat the problem (but only for monitors using DVI connectors).

Then I saw that Amazon carried a bunch of ConnectPRO KVMs, and some were far less expensive.  They did not carry the PR-12, which was the one PS/2 (as distinct from USB) KVM that ConnectPRO offered for my humble purposes:  two computers, one keyboard, one monitor, one mouse.  USB did not work reliably for both keyboard and mouse when Win7 was not running -- when, for instance, I was booting from a CD, or was adjusting the BIOS settings before the operating system booted.  But then I remembered that my new motherboards had only one PS/2 port, and the PR-12 would definitely require two (one each for keyboard and mouse).  I did have the option of using USB mice, one dedicated to each computer, and in fact had been doing that for a while, partly for the reason of pre-boot capability just mentioned and partly to reduce the strain on either wrist.  Another option was to use an adapter or some other gizmo to give me a second PS/2 port.

From ConnectPRO's product comparison page, it seemed there were several options to consider.  One was the choice between VGA and DVI.  DVI provided superior video, but VGA (using D-Sub connectors) was functioning well for me at the moment.  (DVI achieved using DVI-VGA adapters had, in my impression, the same risk of video problems as plain old VGA.)  It seemed that a couple of inexpensive video cards had eliminated problems of ghosting that I was getting when I had the monitors connected directly to the motherboards.  There was also the choice of two- or four-computer KVMs.  I needed only two.  Switching via hotkey was preferable to having to reach up and punch a button on the KVM in order to switch between computers.  All of the relevant ConnectPRO KVMs had All-time Full DDC, which was evidently the core need behind this KVM search.  ConnectPRO's Pro line of KVMs apparently did not have the Dynamic Device Mapping (DDM) technology that would remember attached USB peripherals (e.g., speakers, mice) and would thus eliminate lag time required for the switched computer to re-detect the devices.  It was confusing, shopping among these devices on Amazon, because there were various "kit" options that were described as "new" and yet did not appear on ConnectPRO's website, and also because now it started to look like some of these products did not have Full DDC and/or DDM.  What I came up with was a choice, for me, between the UR-12 PRO, with VGA and DDC but not DDM and no hotkey option ($102 with shipping from ConnectPRO through Amazon); the UR-12 PLUS, with VGA, DDC, DDM, and a hotkey option ($176); and the UD-12 PLUS, which was the same as the UR-12 PLUS but with DVI (and therefore with VGA as an option, via adapter) ($191 from a couple of sellers).

Since I was having no video issues at the moment, and might not have any again for some time, I decided to go with VGA rather than DVI, all other things being equal.  If I did get video problems, I could sell one KVM and upgrade to another later.  So then it was a question of whether I was willing to pay an extra $74 for DDM and a hotkey option.  DDM was nice -- I had noticed the lag in responsiveness at some point, hard to recall at the moment but apparently when I had upgraded from Windows XP to Windows 7 -- but that was not really bothering me much at present.  Those delays, and the hotkey, were especially important when I was doing a lot of switching between computers, which happened primarily when I was testing or tinkering with hardware or software on one machine and logging the developments on the other.  I was not presently doing much of that, and didn't plan to be doing much of it anytime soon.  It occurred to me that, if the DDM lags did bother me at such times, I could always dedicate one mouse, one monitor, and one keyboard to each computer at those times.  I could arrange that on my desk, and then the only lag would be the time needed to reorient my hands on the other keyboard.  Indeed, for purposes of working with the BIOS and such, I could simply keep a PS/2 keyboard always plugged in and standing off to the side of each computer, in addition to the USB keyboard connected to the KVM.  (PS/2 was not hot-swappable; it would be necessary to reboot to have the keyboard be recognized if it were not plugged in at time of bootup.)  Looking at the choice again, I reconsidered that the price difference between the UR-12 PLUS and the UD-12-PLUS was only $15.  From that perspective, I would choose the latter over the former, so as to wrap up the best product at not much additional cost; and in that case, the price difference between the solution with or without DDM, hotkey, and DVI was substantial:  the UD was almost twice the price of the UR.

As long as I was sure I did want to use dual monitors on computer B, sometimes swapping monitor A between computers A and B, I would need Full DDC, and it seemed the choice was then to spend $102 on a ConnectPRO UR-12 PRO KVM.  If I hadn't gotten the video cards for only $18 each, the decision to add dual monitor capability (with KVM and video cards) would then have cost me more than $150.  It was worth it -- dual monitor capability added a lot to a workspace -- but it was turning into more hassle and expense than it should have been.  I belatedly realized that perhaps I should have looked for a motherboard with dual monitor capability and with enough video memory so that the computer would not struggle to switch between windows on the same monitor, as computer A had been doing before I added the video card.  Desk space permitting, that kind of expense also raised the question of perhaps having three dedicated monitors -- one for computer A and two for computer B, and recabling one of the latter to computer A if a multimonitor need arose there -- thereby reducing the KVM need to a simple $20-30 device that would swap keyboards and mice, assuming those were not likewise dedicated to single machines.  The temptation to just get a third monitor and forget about the Full DDC KVM would be even stronger if I were looking at the nearly $200 price tag for a ConnectPRO UD-12 PLUS KVM.  But even without that, as I considered the time I had devoted to screwing around with KVMs, on this and on previous occasions, I did think that possibly the best approach would be to go with the third monitor, wait for someone to compete with ConnectPRO and/or for Microsoft to get its act together -- to buy a third monitor as an interim solution, in other words, and to sell it when and if a superior KVM alternative emerged.

Adding a PS/2 Port

I had always used PS/2 rather than USB mice and keyboards.  USB had the drawback of not being functional in some circumstances (e.g., when I was booting from some kinds of CDs, or was adjusting the BIOS settings before the operating system loaded).  This seemed to be true even when USB devices were enabled in BIOS.  Unfortunately, my new motherboard had only one PS/2 port.  I would now have to go with at least one USB device.  Between the two, USB mice seemed to function better than USB keyboards in the environments just mentioned, so I could live with a PS/2 keyboard and a USB mouse.

Problem:  I had two computers, and was using a keyboard-video-mouse (KVM) switch to share my mouse, keyboard, and monitor between the two computers.  Now I needed two PS/2 connectors unless I wanted to get a USB KVM, mouse, and keyboard.  I didn't want to spend the money, and I liked the PS/2 KVM better than what I was seeing in the USB KVMs.  So there was a question:  could I add a second PS/2 port to a computer with just one PS/2 port?

I tried using Y-splitter cables, which were physically able to connect two PS/2 devices to one PS/2 port.  But they didn't work:  only one device or the other (i.e., mouse or keyboard) would operate.  I ran a search and saw some references to adapters that would convert the computer's serial port to PS/2, though apparently that could have its complications.  The pictures looked familiar.  I dug around and found that I already had something like that.  I didn't want to reboot the computer right then to try it out, so I searched a bit more.  There seemed to be some USB to PS/2 adapters; presumably those wouldn't have the serial port problems.  I also found a PS/2 adapter backplate, which would have required an unused PS/2 header on the motherboard.  I wasn't sure if my mobo had one of those, but I could scope it out when I did shut down.

I wasn't sure which of these solutions I would ultimately wind up using, or even if I would definitely try to stick with PS/2 rather than USB.  This is as far as I took the question at this moment.

Windows 7: Multiple Monitors, Multiple Computers: Possibilities

I planned to be using Windows 7 on two computers.  At the start, I had two monitors, each dedicated to its own computer.  I wondered if I could set up the system so that I could use both monitors for computer A, and could also use both monitors for computer B.  I also wondered if I could use monitor A to see what was happening on both computers A and B at the same instant.

My first search led to ads for KVM switches, but that wasn't what I wanted.  I did look into KVM switches at Newegg, just in case someone had invented a switch that would do everything.  But then realized I wasn't going to read through all those product descriptions to see if any of them had the possibilities I wanted.  A different search got closer to what I wanted.  Actually, it went well beyond it.  There were possibilities I hadn't even imagined.

One possibility was that of Synergy, which had originally been Synergy and then became Synergy-Plus and was now back to being Synergy.  It looked like the Synergy concept ws that I could have two or more computers, each having its own monitor, and I could have just one keyboard and one mouse, and would move among these computers simply by moving the mouse to the left or right, until it left one monitor and then appeared on the next.  No KVM switch; just move the mouse to switch computers.  The connection was by ethernet -- just get all computers on the same network.  They said you could also copy and paste between the computers.  But apparently Synergy wasn't entirely stable yet; that was their stated goal for 2012. For that reason, I decided I would prefer a KVM for now, if necessary.  Presumably a problem with the network would render all computers other than the server (i.e., the one to which the keyboard and mouse were connected) unavailable.  Bruce Tyson pointed out that there would also be a problem if the user wanted to access the BIOS of a slave or client computer during bootup.  It seemed like it might be a good idea to have a spare keyboard and mouse handy.  Another possibility:  Input Director.  This Windows-specific freeware application seemed to have the same concept as Synergy.  These sorts of programs seemed to have the same idea as a KVM switch that would allow one keyboard (e.g., that on a laptop) to take control of another computer even if it did have its own keyboard and mouse.

Bruce Tyson also pointed me toward web-based sharing services, Virtual Network Computing (VNC), and remote desktop software.  These apparently all were, or could be, variations of "headless" computing, where the keyboard, video, and mouse (KVM) are all connected to just one computer, which is then linked to others whose contents may display on that monitor.  He also noted that some monitors have dual inputs, which could be plugged into separate computers, but that the user would have to switch between them using buttons on the monitor.  That would prevent simultaneous viewing of two computers and would also be klunky in daily use.

It seemed that GoToMyPC.com was one of the leading web-based services.  But when I looked into it, these appeared to be simply ways of accessing the computer remotely.  At $10/month or more, it was pricey.  LogMeIn and others seemed to offer good free alternatives.  I decided I didn't want a web-based service, even if it did exactly what I wanted, because it would be relatively slow and it would be vulnerable to anything that might go wrong with the modem, the network connection, etc.

According to Wikipedia, VNC was both platform-independent and remote-capable, and some versions were "optimised for Microsoft Windows."  A list of versions indicated that UltraVNC (free) was the most advanced mainstream version and was the basis for several others.  Current alternatives for connecting a few Windows PCs included EchoVNC (free), RealVNC (free+), SmartCode VNC Manager ($129+), SupportAnyPC ($149), TeamViewer (free), and TightVNC (free).  Among these, a RealVNC feature comparison page indicated that its free version was not compatible with Windows 7.  Wikipedia pages for the free versions indicated that RealVNC was similar to UltraVNC, but the latter had more features; EchoVNC differed from UltraVNC in being more firewall-friendly; Teamviewer was mostly for remote control of computers; and TightVNC likewise had spun off a firewall-friendly variant, RemoteVNC ($25 per computer), among others.  A Wikipedia comparison page, only in it formative stages at this point, named Skype, TigerVNC, and xpra as other free Windows-compatible remote desktop programs.  The Wikipedia pages just linked for those additions indicated that TigerVNC was a fork of RealVNC; that Skype was (of course) primarily for VoIP; and that xpra (currently a beta product) used an approach that differed from that of VNC; but it later looked like xpra was not for Windows.  For my purposes, the survivors of this discussion were EchoVNC, TigerVNC, TightVNC, and UltraVNC.

I looked at a Wikipedia page showing a comparison of Java remote desktop projects. I was not sure what this was about. The project that seemed most feature-rich at this point was WallCooler VPN, so I looked into that. This actually led to a page for Vedivi, which seemed to be in the business of giving people access to remote computers at a low monthly price.

Eventually I figured out that there are many remote desktop protocols.  VNC was one; Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) was a Windows-specific alternative.  There were others.  I eventually found a chart that, although officially for Mac, pulled together some of this.  Revisting the Synergy and Input Director webpages (above), I saw that Synergy was not a VNC project; I was not clear what type it was, and likewise for Input Director.  Supposedly Microsoft's own version of RDP was currently called Remote Desktop Services, previously Terminal Services; but when I went looking for it, I wound up in Remote Desktop Connection (RDC).  A search led me to a description that sounded like what I was looking for.  I wondered why someone would have bothered creating Input Director, with its Windows orientation, if this feature already existed in RDC.  I decided to start by trying to use RDC, to see what would happen.  That would be the subject of another post.

Two Computers: Dividing the Workload

In this post, as part of my New Year's housecleaning, I introduce several investigations, involving various ways of setting up two computers in a workspace.

*  *  *  *  *

KVMs and Monitor-Sharing Options

I had developed the habit of working with two computers, using a KVM switch so I needed only one mouse and keyboard.  A KVM switch would let me use just one monitor with two computers:  it would be showing me what was happening on the computer that the mouse and keyboard were then connected to.

I had two monitors.  I didn't have them connected to the KVM.  Instead, I connected them directly to the two computers, one for each.  So the KVM switch would have me working on computer A or computer B, but monitor A would continue to show what was happening on computer A, and monitor B would continue to display the state of things on computer B.

Actually, one KVM had started malfunctioning, and I had replaced it with another.  In the process, I decided to disconnect the mouse from the KVM too.  So now the KVM just controlled the keyboard.  It made sense:  the keyboard was big.  I couldn't fit two keyboards on my desktop.  But I could fit two mice.  Mouse A, on the left side, was controlled by my left hand, and was controlling computer A, while mouse B was preoccupied with computer B on my right.  I wasn't sure if I liked this arrangement.  It had its advantages.  It gave my hands a more equal workout.  I could glance over at the other computer and click something, to make some process move ahead, without having to hit ScrollLock twice, which was how the KVM switched the keyboard back and forth.  The main problem was that it was hard to tell which computer the keyboard was controlling at any given time.  I was still occasionally hitting the Del key and deleting things on computer A and wondering why they weren't disappearing from monitor B.  It was a bit nutty.  But I was adapting and, like I say, it had its advantages, at least until I worked out something better.

The monitor situation was OK, too.  I had widescreen monitors, so I was able to accommodate a couple of different open windows at the same time on each of them.  But there were times when it would have been helpful to have both monitors attuned to just one computer.  I had previously used an arrangement where monitor A was dedicated to computer A, but monitor B was connected to a second KVM switch, so I could reach up and punch the button and switch monitor B back and forth between computer A and computer B.  This would let me use a multiple monitor approach on computer A, so as to spread out my work.  The problem with this was that, when there was no monitor turned on to computer B, I tended not to use it.  That was a problem because the purpose of having two computers was to let me continue to work when one of them would crash or need maintenance or get involved in some process, like scanning or rendering, that would make it virtually unavailable for other purposes.  I also used this arrangement to write these blog posts, tinkering with one machine and recording the steps in the other.  I found that, if I got too fixated on one computer, the other one tended not to be organized and capable enough to take over when I needed it.

There didn't seem to be a way to share one monitor between two computers simultaneously, with computer B running in a little window in the corner -- a real "monitor" as distinct from a big display.  There was the option of buying a little display, connecting it to the second DVI connector on computer B, and putting it off to the side, so I would always have that information about what was happening on computer B.  But that little monitor would cost more than $100.  I could probably go down to Goodwill and pick up an old CRT for less than $10, but the other problem was that it would still be more clutter, more heat, more power consumption.  And the desk didn't have room for it, so it would have to go onto a side table or shelf or something.  I would also need a video card, since my motherboard only supported one monitor.

A decision on that question of how to use multiple monitors would await the outcome of an investigation of various non-KVM strategies.

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Dual-Booting and Virtual Machines

Over the past couple of years, my two computers had different missions.  Computer A was running Windows XP in a VMware virtual machine on Ubuntu.  Computer B was running WinXP natively.  Now I was moving away from Ubuntu and back to Windows.  I had planned to just install Windows 7 on both.  I'd been having problems with my WinXP installation on computer B, even when I restored from an image, so it seemed like a good time to upgrade rather than continue to fight it.

I liked the idea of dual-booting WinXP and Win7.  Actually, though, I rarely used my dual-boot setups.  I pretty much always went with one or the other.  Right now, for instance, I already had a dual-boot Ubuntu and WinXP setup on computer B, but I couldn't remember the last time I had gone into Ubuntu there.

Meanwhile, on computer A, it seemed like I should consider just replacing Ubuntu with Win7:  continue to run WinXP in a virtual machine (VM), that is, but run it on Windows 7 instead of Ubuntu.  This would give me access to the familiar way of doing things in WinXP, while easing the transition to Win7.  I looked into the VM option in more detail.  It looked like I would be able to use the Windows version of VMware Workstation as long as I wasn't using my Workstation license in Ubuntu.  So the tentative plan was to have WinXP running in VMware on Win7 on one machine, while just running Windows (either XP or 7) natively (i.e., without a VM) on the other.

Although I was moving away from Ubuntu, it occurred to me that this strategy would leave a door open for a possible return to Ubuntu.  Ubuntu had been far more stable than WinXP.  Assuming the virtualization setup worked, I could install Ubuntu as a VM on Win7, essentially reversing what I had tried to do previously, and I could thus continue to identify projects and programs that Ubuntu could handle just as well as Windows for my purposes.

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Differences Between Machines

The decisions described above meant that, contrary to my assumptions, I probably should not set up identical hardware on both computers.  Computer A was probably going to need more muscle to handle the VMs.  WinXP on computer B had been struggling to run video editing software, though that may have been due to a flawed installation.

Part of the tradeoff here was simplicity versus options.  The more operating systems and hardware arrangements I had in play, the more different ways I had of configuring things, and the more time it would take.  I had always viewed the computer hobbying as a means to an end of being more productive, while having its own intrinsic interest too, and for that reason I had tended to think, in recent years, in terms of getting myself set up for the next six months or a year.  During that kind of timeframe, the problems of a setup would tend to emerge and sometimes become overwhelming.  The current Windows XP installation was a case in point.  I had been able to nurse it along despite its obvious dysfunctionality, occasionally replacing its current state with an Acronis image backup, but it was now crashing one or more times per day.  So, oddly, in this case it was the simpler installation that had become the more problematic.

The switch from Windows XP to Windows 7 probably meant that I would be spending quite a bit of time getting up to speed on the best way to configure the latter.  I was probably going to install it in a RAID array, for purposes of performance, with an external backup option.  There would be some things to figure out and play with.  Most likely, some hardware would be getting shuffled around.  So, contrary to my first thoughts during this particular housecleaning, it did not appear likely that the two computers would take on any clear definition:  they would not be mirror images of one another, in hardware terms, so as to simplify maintenance, and they would also not feature one being considerably more powerful than the other.  The plan for the coming six months to a year was just to make them both capable and to explore options without investing more time than I wanted to spare for this kind of project.

Since I was now in a period of computer housecleaning, it seemed likely that my posts over the next few weeks would explore these considerations in more detail.