Instant File Find: Acceptable, While We Await a Windows 7 Version of AvaFind

I had installed Windows 7.  I was now seeing that AvaFind was not compatible with it.  It was crashing frequently.  It was time to find a replacement.  This post describes my efforts in that regard.

AvaFind was a fast file finder.  It searched only file names.  To search file contents, I used Copernic.  Ava Find had been remarkably stable.  I would call it up by a Shift-Esc hotkey combination, type in the name of a file (with wildcards, if I wished), and see the results.  Very fast.  If I wanted to delete, move, or otherwise work with those files, no problem:  in the paid version, it could do that.  It would give me an option to open up the Windows Explorer right-click context menu, and anything that I could do in Explorer, I could do with these files that I had just found.  So this was essentially what I wanted to replace.

I spent some time looking over alternatives.  There were not many that seemed to provide these features.  After a number of searches, I came up with a few contenders.  One was Everything, which sounded like a fast file finder, but did not seem to have Explorer file handling features.  Another was Locate32, which sounded about the same.  I put in a request for AvaFind-like features there.  The third contender, and the one I decided to try, was Instant File Find (IFF).  Like AvaFind, it offered free and paid versions; and like AvaFind, its paid version included Windows Explorer actions.  It looked like it actually might be better than AvaFind, insofar as it offered an Advanced Search option.  (Honorable mention to Find and Run Robot (FARR), whose purpose was largely to find and run programs very quickly, without having to mouse around in the Start Menu.)  IFF would cost $29.95 (normally $39.95 - Buy Now!) if I decided to get the paid version.

IFF did its file searching fast enough.  I noticed some features right away.  I liked its less cluttered interface.  I had never known what the AvaFind Scout Bot was.  A useful feature:  IFF had a drop-down box where I could quickly recall and re-run previous searches.  It also would apparently let me save searches, but only in the paid version.  Advanced Search was another paid feature, and so was Search Network Drive and those Windows Explorer features.  The Help File said there was a free 21-day trial period where I could use most features, but apparently that was no longer the case.  I sent them an email (no forum on their website) to ask about that, and also to find out whether there was a hotkey, like AvaFind's Shift-Esc, that I could use to start the program.  It turned out that Shift-Esc was the hotkey, but if AvaFind was loaded first, it would commandeer that hotkey.  In other words, that problem disappeared when I disabled AvaFind.

After a week of using IFF, I felt that I would still have preferred to have a version of AvaFind that would work on Win7.  A minor problem, and possibly not the fault of the programmer, was that I could not persuade the AvaFind window to take any shape other than the original, which was too tight to see long pathnames.  Another drawback, not quite as minor, was that, at least sometimes, it would not search while it was refreshing its index.  Yes, I wanted accurate search results, but sometimes I just wanted to know if a file by a certain name existed somewhere on my drive.  I was more bothered by not being able to set how frequently the program would refresh its index.  Sometimes I would be moving some files around, and I would know I had recently seen one that I was now looking for.  AvaFind would have found it, with its index refreshing every hour, but sometimes IFF did not.  (I could manually refresh the cache, but during that process IFF would not find anythin gat all.)  IFF, unlike AvaFind, did not see my network drives.  One feature that I really missed was AvaFind's ability to rename files that I had found.

I had always been amazed that AvaFind had not taken over the world.  It was a great utility, for those who were running pre-Win7 operating systems.  It was too bad that its developer vanished.  I hoped he was OK, wherever he was.  In the meantime, my tentative decision was to buy IFF.  It was a good product, just not as good as AvaFind.  But perhaps its developer would make it as good as AvaFind, or even better.

Windows 7, Vista, and XP: Networking Four Computers

I had installed Windows 7 on two computers.  Here, I'll call them computer A and computer B.  Both were connected in a basic wired network by ethernet cable to a router.  The router I was using was a Belkin Connect N150, model no. F7D5301.  I did not then know of the possibility of turning my computer into a WiFi hotspot, but I probably would have gone with the purchase of a router even if I had known of it.

I wanted to make the computers visible to, and able to share files with, one another.  I also had a laptop running Vista and an old Windows XP desktop.  This post describes the steps I took on the software side, after sorting out prior hardware issues.

I started with just computers A and B connected to the router.  I ran a search, but it seemed like most of the webpages that were coming up had to do with troubleshooting.  I wasn't smart enough to get into trouble yet.  But then, as I started looking at some of those sites, I wondered whether possibly the computers were already visible to one another, merely by being connected to the router and not complaining about any IP address conflicts or anything like that.  In Windows Explorer on computer A, I clicked on Network.  I got an error up by the menu bar:

Network discovery and file sharing are turned off.  Network computers and devices are not visible.  Click to change.

So I clicked and selected "Turn on network discovery and file sharing" and chose only the home network (not public) option.  Within about 30 seconds, Windows Explorer on computer A was showing both computers.  Well, that was easy.  So now I ran the router's setup software on the Vista laptop and on the WinXP machine, and then plugged them into the router.  I changed the WinXP machine's name and rebooted it.

Changing that name left an outdated entry for the WinXP machine's previous name in the displays on several computers.  On the WinXP machine, it produced an error message:  "[Oldname] is not accessible.  You might not have permission to use this network resources."  The outdated entry wouldn't go away when I refreshed (F5) the view.  Note that I was still down in the Network section of the Windows Explorer folders pane.  I was not using the Homegroup option up topside.

At this point, a search led to the advice to go into my router's firmware, via its built-in webpage, and look for a way to configure its list of devices.  Apparently that's where the old name was being stored.  Finding that place in my router required me to go into its installed software.  Doing that required me to reinsert the Belkin CD and try to run the router utility from there, because the link that its installation had added on my Start Menu wasn't working.  It looked like the CD was apparently only for simple installation purposes, either reinstall the software or quit.  Eventually I figured out that Belkin expected me to have auto-play running on my CD drive, else it would not show me the option of going into its advanced features option.  So I went into Control Panel > Autoplay.  But there, I saw that Autoplay was already on by default for all devices.  I had only noticed the advanced features option by accident -- I left the CD in the drive when I rebooted the machine after an update of some other software.  Taking another approach, I downloaded an upgrade of the router's software, installed that, and used its Advanced Settings option to get into the router.  Once there, though, I did not see any entry for the old computer.  By this time, though, a couple of hours had passed -- I had been working on something else -- so maybe the router refreshed itself.  Hitting F5 to refresh the Network entries in Windows Explorer showed that they, too, had forgotten that old machine by now.

At this point, the two computers (A and B) running Win7 were showing Network entries for all four computers, plus administrators on computers A and B, plus the router.  The Vista laptop and the WinXP machine were seeing the Win7 computers, but not each other.  Oddly, the router's DHCP client list was showing the names of three computers, but not the Vista laptop.  The Win7 computers were able to go online; the others were not, even after a reboot.  So far, networking in Win7 was looking a lot easier than it had been in Vista or XP.  I wasn't interested in investing a lot of time in this, and I had been thinking of dismantling the XP machine, so probably that would be the solution to part of this networking problem.

To summarize, networking in Windows 7 appeared to be a matter of plugging computers into a router, maybe fiddling with the router's settings or upgrading its software (neither necessary in this case), and turning on network file sharing when that option came up.  Networking problems with Vista were still an unknown.  I had previously been able to just plug the laptop into the router and go online, and had not tried to share files among other computers.  But then I noticed that someone (I) had set the TCP/IPv4 settings on the laptop to something other than automatic.  That took care of it.  The Vista laptop saw everything.  Its eyes were opened.  That solved the problem for the WinXP machine too.

The remaining question:  was I actually able to do anything among these computers?  On computer A, I double-clicked on the icon for computer B.  It said,

\\Computer B is not accessible.  You might not have permission to use this network resource.

I searched on that and, as recommended, went into Control Panel > Network > Change advanced sharing settings > Home or Work (in the Win7 computers).  There, I made sure everything was on except password-protected sharing.  The only change I actually made was to turn off the requirement for a password.  And that did it.  Computer A was now able to see the contents of computer B.  A similar change on the Vista laptop had the same effect.

Now I could see "Users" or "Users Share" folders.  How to get full access to one computer's contents from another?  The first step seemed to be to right-click on a drive or folder, in Windows Explorer, and choose Share with > Advanced sharing > Sharing tab > Advanced sharing > Share this folder.  I did that with one drive on computer A.  I tried to view it on computer B, but I got an error:

Windows cannot access \\ComputerA\SharedFolder
You do not have permission to access file://computera/SharedFolder.  Contact your network administrator to request access.
For more information about permissions, see Windows Help and Support

I clicked on the Help and Support link.  It said this could be because

You haven't created or joined a homegroup
You're not using a homegroup, and the folder or printer you're trying to access has not been shared
Network discovery is turned off
Password-protected sharing is enabled
The computers aren't in the same workgroup
Your computer doesn't have the latest updates for your router

Of these, it was true that I hadn't joined a homegroup; I wanted to see about doing it without, primarily because I had seen a few notes of people having complaints about homegroups.  The folder had been shared.  I had turned on Network Discovery and password-protected sharing.  I had now installed the latest downloads from Belkin for the router.  I tried to access \\ComputerA\SharedFolder from the laptop.  Same error message -- except that, instead of pointing me toward Windows Help and Support, it said this:

No more connections can be made to this remote computer at this time because there are already as many connections as the computer can accept.

That sounded like old-school networking voodoo.  I didn't want to go there.  I just wanted the computers to link up.  I decided to try the homegroup option, since that seemed to be the only option that might help.  I reasoned that Microsoft had probably created the homegroup thing because the non-homegroup approach to networking was such a cluster.  Ah, but then I discovered a possible reason for that last sentence in the Vista error message.  I had set the Advanced Sharing properties > "Limit the number of simultaneous users" option to 2.  I thought that was probably all I would need.  I tried setting it to 20, where it was before.  While I was there, I clicked on the Permissions button and gave Full Control to Everyone.  I closed out of there and took another look in these other computers.  Now I got more error messages.  On computer B, the attempt to look at \\ComputerA\SharedFolder gave the same error as before.  But on the Vista laptop, it produced this error:

Windows cannot access \\ComputerA\SharedFolder
Check the spelling of the name.  Otherwise, there might be a problem with your network.  To try to identify and resolve network problems, click Diagnose.

I did that.  It came back with this:

\\ComputerA\SharedFolder is available but the user account that you are logged on with was denied access.

Well, it was true -- as I discovered, back in the Advanced Sharing properties dialog -- that if I clicked the Caching button, I got a new option that said this:

All files and programs that users open from the shared folder aer automatically available offline

But I decided that meant that files from computer A would be copied to computer B and stored there somewhere, if I looked at them on computer B.  I didn't want that.  I had enough clutter already.  I set the caching to "No files or programs from the shared folder are available offline."  I tried the reciprocal step of setting up a partition on computer B, to see if it would be available on computer A or on the laptop.  No joy.

I came across a webpage that made me think perhaps I hadn't explored the requirement (above) of making sure the computers were all on the same workgroup.  In Control Panel > System > Computer Name on the XP machine, it was just WORKGROUP.  Same thing on the laptop and the Win7 computers.  So that wasn't the explanation.

So, OK, maybe it was time to try homegroups.  On computer A, in Windows Explorer, I went to the Homegroup link at the top of the folders pane.  That opened up an option to join the homegroup that Windows detected already existing.  I did that.  It told me I needed to get the password from Ray on computer B.  That was odd, because I was Ray, and I didn't have any such password.  I also didn't want the homegroup to have a password.  It was just me here.

Upon seeing a page that showed something different from what I was seeing, I decided to back up here.  Before going on to the homegroup option, I noticed that, when I right-clicked on the drive I wanted to share and selected "Share with," I wasn't seeing a list of groups or people.  But, ah, when I clicked on a folder instead of a drive, I did.  Hmm.  But surely it was possible to make a drive visible to other computers?

I did a search and found a thread where people were having exactly the problems I've described here.  At this point, the last post in that thread suggested starting with Start > Run (or just type) fsmgmt.msc.  I did that, on computer A.  I went into Shares and double-clicked the drive I was trying to share.  This gave me pretty much the same stuff as before, except in its Security tab.  There, I selected Users > Edit > Full Control > Apply.  I clicked back and forth a couple of times to make sure it took.  The first time, it didn't.  I okayed out and tried again to access this drive from computer B.  No luck.  But now I wondered what kind of user this was, this person on another computer.  The answer seemed to be that it was an Everyone.  In other words, the groups or users presently listed in that Security tab were Authenticated Users, SYSTEM, Administrators, and Users; and since those all had full permissions and the person (me) trying to access computer A from computer B *still* couldn't get on, apparently I had to be in the Everyone class.  So, as advised, I clicked Edit to add Everyone, and then gave Full Control to Everyone > Apply > OK.  This would have been just as easy to do back in the drive > right-click > Share with > Advanced dialog, actually.  Now that Everyone was allowed to see everything, surely someone on computer B would now be able to see the contents of the shared drive on computer A.  And it worked.  Woo-hoo!  So the missing part here was that I needed to add Everyone in that special place.

It was getting late, and I'd had too much fun for one evening, so I decided not to press the point and work through it with all of the machines.  I had faith that this was approximately the answer at least for letting other computers see what was on a Win7 machine, and that's all I really wanted to achieve here anyway, as I had nothing interesting on the laptop or the WinXP machine.  There were some other interesting networking possibilities I was eager to get on with, as described in some other posts on this blog that I wrote up about the same time as this one.

Windows 7: IP Address Conflict: Maybe It's the Modem!

I had been wrestling for days with a home networking problem.  The problem was that either of my two computers could go online, by itself, when I would connect it to the DSL modem directly or through a network switch; but when I would plug them both into a network switch or router, neither would go online or connect with each other.  Plugging both in at the same time would quickly produce an error message:

Network Error

Windows has detected an IP address conflict

Another computer on this network has the same IP address as this computer.

Most recently, I had explored the possibility that the problem was with a corrupted Windows 7 installation on computer A.  I had reinstalled Win7 on computer A with a brand-new installation; but as soon as I connected it to the switch, both computers were once again unable to go online.

I didn't want to go through the Win7 setup process again, so I replaced that new installation with one that I had made a day or two after the initial installation.  Eventually, computer A, with this day-old installation, did give me the Network Error message.  Interestingly, though, computer B did not.  It was now able to stay connected, through the switch, while computer A was failing to connect.

I had a laptop, running Vista.  It had been a while since I had tried to connect it to this wired network.  I connected it directly to the modem.  It was able to go online that way.  I connected it to the switch while computer B (but not computer A) was connected.  The laptop reported an IP address conflict.  This suggested that the problem was with computer B.  To test that, I removed computer B from the switch and plugged in computer A and the laptop.  But no, those two had a conflict as well.  Finally, I plugged in the laptop and a Windows XP computer.  Those two had an IP address conflict as well.  So it was not some kind of flaw with Win7.

This brought me back to a problem that I had considered previously.  I had seen, somewhere, an indication that the DSL modem was responsible for assigning IP addresses.  I had followed up on this partway:  I had called AT&T, and they had told me that, as long as a direct connection between the computer and the modem was successful, they could not provide me with any further free assistance.  I had had the option of paying for assistance, and at this point it seemed I should have taken that option, because now I was thinking that the modem was failing to assign IP addresses.  Well, but OK, now that it was diagnosed, I wondered if I could fix it myself.

I had bought this modem from AT&T about two and a half years earlier.  My previous notes on it did not detail the setup process.  I think maybe AT&T took care of that for me.  I had moved to another place; the modem had spent some time on a shelf.  But now it was back.  I looked on the bottom.  Nothing there specified a model number, but I guessed that's what the number 2210-02-1022 was.  It said it was "Style MSTATEA."  Motorola didn't seem to know anything about it.  At first, there didn't seem to be a user's guide, but then I figured out a search that got me somewhere.  The manual that I found said there was a web-based configuration page, which I could find at http://192.168.1.254/.  I went there.  It showed me a basic Connection Information and Modem Information and Local Network screen.  Here, I saw that the modem's model number was 2210-02 and I was using software version 7.7.5r8.

At the left side of that screen, I clicked on Login.  It said, "You are currently connected to the Internet."  I went into Advanced > Connection Configuration.  It asked for the Modem Access Code printed on the bottom of the modem.  Apparently this was secret information, so I decided not to type it in this post.  I entered the code.  Evidently I didn't need the login information I had gotten from the manual.  The manual said the default username was "admin" and the password was something that I created on the spot.  It already had the login information for my AT&T account there.  I remembered that a tech support guy had instructed me to set PPPoE as the protocol; that was still there.  The manual (page 9) said,

Your Modem serves Dynamically-assigned IP addresses by default.  Be sure to configure each computer connected to your Modem to accept a Dynamically-assigned IP address, commonly referred to as DHCP.

The instructions, translated into Win7 terms, essentially had me go into Control Panel > Network and Sharing Center > Change adapter properties > Local Area Connection > Properties > TCP/IPv4 > Properties > Advanced.  There, it looked like DHCP was set already, as the manual said.  Trying something else, I went into the router's Advanced > PPP Location option.  It said, "PPP is on the modem."  I had an alternative:

PPP is on the computer, gateway or router. This should only be used if you need to run a PPPoE client on your PC or you use another device (e.g., gateway or router) to initiate a PPPoE session. This is often referred to as "Bridged" mode.

I tried that.  The router's internal webpage gave me these further instructions:

PPP Location Warning

PRINT OR RECORD THIS INFORMATION NOW

When using Bridged mode, your access to the modem becomes limited. To return to the DSL modem user interface after this change you need to directly connect your PC to the modem without any gateway or router between the modem and the PC, and configure your computer appropriately.

Configure the IP address of your computer to be on the same network as the modem by using an IP address of the form 192.168.1.x (except 192.168.1.254) and a network mask of 255.255.255.0.

You may also return to the DSL modem user interface by resetting the modem back to its initial defaults. All configuration changes and other settings will no longer be available if this is done. To reset the modem press the "Reset" button located on the back of the modem.

Modem Restarting

The modem can be used after the power light has been steady green for at least 15 seconds.

That approach might have worked if I had still been using my router, but I wasn't.  I was using a network switch, and it wasn't playing ball.  Apparently switches weren't capable of doing the bridge thing.  I reset the modem (didn't have to connect directly; a switch was apparently like a straightpipe for that purpose).  Now, in the modem's Connection Information screen, I got back an Internet IP Address and Internet Gateway Address after a few seconds.  Now that I had gotten over my panic and saw that I could rescue the situation, I actually read the instructions and saw that I hadn't tried the part about configuring the computer's IP address to be 192.168.1.x.  So I went back and did it all again, and this time I did that part too, back in the same location as above ( Control Panel > Network and Sharing Center > Change adapter properties > Local Area Connection > Properties > TCP/IPv4 > Properties.  There, I replaced the automatic settings with the numbers shown above.  Still didn't work.  Windows Network Diagnostics started up automatically.  After a minute or two, it said it couldn't identify the problem.  So I guessed that maybe I had it right the first time, that I needed a router instead of a switch.  But that didn't make any sense.  I had used this switch with this modem before.

So, alright, the joke was on me.  I had to pay AT&T to make the same switch work with the same modem, where they had worked without a problem before.  In the meantime, while I was on hold, I tried to set the modem back the way I found it, but now I wasn't able to connect.  So that was good.  AT&T would have to help me with that.  I could get some more free service out of them before I had to pay them.  And I did.  The guy was very helpful at getting me back to where I started.  It took an hour.  Then he passed me on to AT&T's paid service (877-831-2880).  The phone there rang and rang.  Evidently AT&T wasn't so eager to take my money.  No canned voice giving me information on what number I had reached, or anything.  But at least no hold while listening to godawful music specially selected to discourage people from calling AT&T free tech support.  After ringing for several minutes, I hung up and tried that number again.  This time I did get a canned voice.  So apparently he put me through to the wrong number.  This, he said, was ConnectCheck.  It allowed me to choose tech support.  It rang and rang.  So maybe he was right after all.  He said they would be there until, oops, maybe the wrong time zone.  Friday night, too late, probably would have to wait until Monday.  AT&T, I love you!

So let us review.  How did the guy get me back to working order?  I think we mostly just did ordinary things.  He had me reboot into Win7's Safe Mode with Networking and see if I could browse.  I could.  So he thought maybe the problem there was with antivirus software.  We didn't pursue that back in Normal Mode, though.  He had me do hard reset on the modem, and then log into the modem's webpage, but I think we just looked at information there.  He really had no idea what a switch was; it took him a while to wrap his head around the concept.  Ultimately, he and his managers concluded that the IP Address Conflict error had to be coming either from a bad switch or from bad drivers.  Did I need drivers for the switch?  It was a Netgear FS605 v3.  Well, there was an installation guide.  A manual!  RTFM!  Fortunateliy, there was no installation process or software.  Just plug it in, which I had done.  So how about his other theory:  a bad switch?  Anything was possible, but what had happened on my system -- recurrently, it would seem -- that would have wiped out, first, my router, and then my switch?  Was AT&T sending out electromagnetic pulses to drum up customers for its paid support line?  I could get a replacement for $25 including tax at Sears, or a few bucks cheaper online if I didn't need it right away.

While I was talking to the guy, I plugged in my Vista laptop again.  It came up with a different error message than before.  In addition to the one about an IP conflict, it gave me an option to "Automatically get new IP settings for the network adapter "Local Area Connection."  It also advised turning off the modem or router and unplugging its power cord and then replugging after 10 seconds.  I tried the automatic solution first.  That immediately disappeared after I tried it.  It offered an option to "Reset the network adapter "Local Area Connection,'" so I tried that next.  That failed too, so I went on to unplug the modem, and simultaneously did likewise with the switch, and then replugged them sequentially, waiting for the modem to show solid green on four out of five lights before replugging the switch.  Most of these were steps that I had tried many times before at this point.  They didn't make any difference.

At this point in the game, pending paid support from AT&T which wouldn't materialize until Monday (this was Friday night), I decided that the modem was not the problem.  But what was?  That question called for a new post in this continuing saga.

Windows Explorer Fails to Retain Multiple File Selection

I was installing Windows XP SP3.  I had just installed some basic utilities, mostly related to the user interface.  After doing so, I noticed that Windows Explorer would allow me to highlight files and folders, but when I right-clicked and hit Cut (or when I used Ctrl-X), the folder icons would fade for a second, as they would typically do when files were being cut and pasted; but then the fading effect would end.  And if I went to another folder and tried to paste, there was no right-click (context menu) paste option.  I could move them only by dragging them to that other folder.  The choice of view (e.g., Detail view, Icon view) did not seem to make a difference.  The problem occurred in a variety of folders.

I went back to a previous backup of this Windows installation and started over, installing those same programs again.  This time, the fading effect ended as before, but now cutting and pasting did work properly.

I did a search, initially, on the problem of being unable to select multiple files.  That led to a post discussing some solutions.  It looked like Vista users were having this problem too.  But when the problem recurred in the different form just described, I opted to try a different search.  There were no obvious solutions on the first several pages of that.  So I decided to work back through the programs I had recently installed, to see if one of them was responsible.

What I found was that the effect of the offending program was not immediate.  The problem didn't appear until after I had rebooted.  This was why I did not notice it right away, and just kept on installing other stuff.  So I installed them one at a time, rebooting and testing after each one.  This procedure established that the problem was due to the M8 Free Clipboard program.  I proceeded with installing my other programs.  The problem did not recur.

Trendnet TU2-ET100 / ASIX AX88772 USB to 10/100 Mbps Adapter

I was having problems with my laptop's Internet connection.  The wireless worked fine; the cable connection didn't work at all.  After lots of troubleshooting with tech support, a replacement motherboard, and so forth, the problem persisted.  So I decided to try a USB-to-ethernet adapter.  The first one I got, a cheap little item, didn't work, so I bought a more expensive Trendnet TU2-ET100.  This one came with a driver CD.  The drivers installed without a problem from the CD.  When I then plugged the TU2-ET100 into the USB port, Vista Ultimate recognized it immediately.  In Device Manager, it showed up under Network Adapters as an ASIX AX88772 USB2.0 to Fast Ethernet Adapter -- but that turned out to be just the name of the controller chip.  (Oddly, CNET seemed to be offering version 3.4.3.11 of the driver, added Sept. 8, 2004, for current free download, whereas Device Manager was telling me that the version installed from the CD-ROM was 3.8.3.5 (built by WinDDK), dated January 20, 2007.)  A Wikipedia article seemed to indicate that ASIX specialized in these kinds of chips.  It looked like quite a few other adapters used the same chip.

Anyway, once it was plugged into the USB port and had finished installing itself, I connected it to my ethernet cable.  (The cable was known to be good; it was the one I was using to post this blog note.)  The unit's 100Mbps light went on solid, and the Link light was blinking.  Everything seemed good.  But neither Firefox nor Chrome nor Internet Explorer (IE) were able to get to a webpage.  Microsoft Security Essentials was also unable to download updates.  And yet, as before, Windows Network Diagnostics said, "Windows did not find any problems with this computer’s network connection."  But when I closed out of that, I found myself looking at something I hadn't seen before:  a Problem Reports and Solutions window.  I don't know -- maybe the system had updated itself, the last time I went online via the wireless connection, and was now in a position to tell me what had failed with the previous wired connection attempt.  I sorted this list by date and selected just one, the most recent item in this first group.  This was an AntiMalware Service Executable item whose problem was MpTelemetry.  When I clicked on Check for Solutions, it said it was "Checking for solutions" and "Reporting problem 1 of 157."  Then it said, "Unable to check for solutions."

The User's Guide on the CD had only installation information.  Using the CD, I installed the TU2-ET100 adapter on this Windows XP desktop computer that had been connecting to the Internet without any problems.  Again, a hassle-free installation.  After I plugged the ethernet cable into the unit, using the same cable, and got a notice that the new hardware was installed and ready to use, I tried getting to a webpage in Firefox, which I had just been using, but now Firefox said, "Connection Error" -- even though Network Connections reported that the ASIX AX88772 was Connected. IE couldn't connect either.  Very strange!  I left the TU2-ET100 connected to a USB port on this desktop computer, but removed the ethernet cable from the unit and plugged it directly into the computer again, and now the connection problem persisted.  I unplugged the TU2-ET100 entirely and tried again.  IE still said, "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage."  I clicked on IE's "Diagnose Connection Problems" button.  It said, "Consult your computer manufacturer's troubleshooting information."  The diagnostic log had several instances of "Error 12007 connecting to www.microsoft.com:  The server name or address could not be resolved" (and likewise for FTP).  I connected the cable (without the TU2-ET100) to a third computer.  It had been online previously and was able to find new webpages again without any problem.  On the second computer, where I had connected the TU2-ET100, I tried refreshing the network connection, but I still couldn't go online.  I had to reboot that one to get it back to a normal online connection.  I suspected that the problem there was that I had previously installed two separate ethernet adapters on that computer (one on the motherboard, one on a PCI card), while troubleshooting a network connection problem there, and that the addition of the TU2-ET100 had simply confused the system.

I wondered if a reboot would help the laptop too.  I went back to it and plugged in the TU2-ET100 and ethernet cable there.  The lights on the unit were functioning as before.  Before rebooting, I ran Network Diagnostics again -- noticing the red X beneath its Local Area Connection icon in Network Connections.  This time, I got, "A cable is not plugged into the network adapter "Local Area Connection."  Well, OK, the ethernet cable was plugged into the TU2-ET100, not directly into the laptop.  I plugged the ethernet cable directly into the laptop, and now that connection seemed to be recognized.  But now I noticed that, under the Local Area Connection icon in Network Connections, it was referring to a Realtek PCIe controller.  That was the controller on the motherboard, not on the TU2-ET100.  So, hmm, maybe the TU2-ET100 had not even been recognized previously?  I right-clicked on Local Area Connection and disabled it, and then rebooted.  When the system came back up, I saw that Local Area Connection 2 was now listed as having the ASIX AX88772.  But IE, Chrome, and Firefox still couldn't go online, and I still couldn't download updates.  I right-clicked in Network Connections, ran diagnostics, and found no problem.  I tried the Reset option, but no joy. In short, it did not help to disable the onboard ethernet connection (i.e., Local Area Connection), plug the ethernet cable into the Trendnet unit, and enable that unit as Local Area Connection 2:  IE and Firefox were still not able to go online.

It suddenly occurred to me that possibly the brilliant Compaq/HP engineers had constructed the laptop such that it would not go online via wired connection when I had the button for the wireless connection turned off.  I punched that button, the red one next to the power button.  It turned to blue, as the system searched for wireless connections in my area.  But no, that didn't do it either.  I tried plugging the unit into a different USB port; no difference.

I went searching for ideas.  I saw an improbably high number of perfect scores for the device at TigerDirect (and CompUSA, which seemed to have the same reviews), making me wonder whether they were padding their customer feedback to make it look like they were getting more buyers than Newegg.  But maybe they were; I had bought from Newegg, where the price had only recently been dropped $8 from what I paid -- to a dollar less than TigerDirect was now charging.  Anyway, Newegg did get a more mixed batch of scores and comments, but no troubleshooting advice for me.  Ditto Amazon. (Later, I found a Wize webpage that seemed to aggregate these multiple sources of buyer reviews.)

A couple of reviewers did say that they had better luck with the drivers from the Trendnet website than those on the CD, so even though the device was being recognized OK, I went to Trendnet's download page.  There, I saw that there were three versions:  A, B1, and V3.0R.  The pictures made plain that I had the V3.0R.  They offered what seemed to be version 3.2 of the driver (full name:  Driver_TU2-ET100(V3.0R)_CD_ver3.2.zip).  That was below the numbers cited above, but the date (April 3, 2008) was newer.  It didn't seem to matter which operating system I had.  I downloaded it, copied it over to the laptop, unplugged the unit, and installed the driver.  The Trendnet dialog said "Install OK," but it came up really quickly, and I wasn't sure -- especially when Vista popped up a Program Compatibility Assistant note that said, "This program might not have installed correctly."  Well, OK, I plugged in the unit to see.  Vista indicated, "Device driver software installed successfully."  With great hopes, I tried going online again.  Diagnostics still found no problem with the network connection, and yet IE and Firefox were still not getting anywhere.  I unplugged the unit, went back to that Program Compatibility Assistant dialog, and tried "Reinstall using recommended settings."  This time, the Trendnet dialog incorrectly identified the system as running Windows XP rather than Vista.  I said, OK, let's see what happens.  I went ahead with that and got a Confirm File Replace dialog telling me that I was about to overwrite the newer file that was already on the system.  I said Do It.  It finished.  I plugged the unit into a USB port again.  Dead!  No lights.  Ah, but wait.  The lights came up eventually -- not immediately, like before -- but no difference.  Still no connection.

Confusingly, I now found a Trendnet page telling me, "Please wait while we are developing drivers for Windows Vista."  But that seemed to be just a generic notice; it led me to another page where I saw a link to a Vista-compatible driver download; but that turned out to be the driver I had just downloaded, which of course had detected that it was being installed on a Vista system.  In other words, it didn't appear that I could be expecting any new drivers -- especially when all these other happy campers were doing fine with the drivers provided on the CD or the website.

These adventures left me with a couple of possibilities for testing and exploration.  One was to cycle the router and the laptop.  I had tried that before, without success, but maybe it would be different with the Trendnet unit -- though I didn't see why it should, when the desktop computer was working fine with the same router.  Another was to try installing the Trendnet drivers on the desktop computer after removing that extraneous ethernet card.  From the comments, it had seemed that virtually the only problems people had were that a few buyers got units that were DOA, and this one certainly wasn't that; it was being recognized and seemed to be installing correctly, especially in Vista.  A third possibility, which I had also tried before, but not with this Trendnet unit, was to reboot the laptop in Ubuntu and see how things went there, in case it was somehow a Vista- or Windows-specific problem.  A few people had indicated that the unit had worked for them in Linux, so it seemed like it should work for me.

I decided to start with the third option.  Leaving the unit plugged in, I rebooted this dual-boot laptop into Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) (I probably could also have tried with a live CD) and clicked on the network icon on the top panel.  It opened a window that said "Wired Network (ASIX Elec. AX88772) -- Auto eth2" and gave me an option to disconnect.  So apparently Ubuntu believed that I was connected.  I clicked on the Disconnect option and got a little notice that said "Disconnected -- you are now offline."  I went back there and connected, and now it said "Connection established."  So, yeah, I was online.  I opened Firefox and tried to go to CNN.com, but after a while it said, "Firefox can't establish a connection to the server."  I also couldn't download package information using Synaptic.  And still the light was blinking merrily on the TU2-ET100.

It seemed that I had a hardware problem on the laptop.  It wasn't clear whether I also had a nonworking Trendnet unit.  But even as I was writing these words, Synaptic began, ever so slowly, to download updated packages.  Woo hoo!  Something appeared to be happening.  So, another possibility:  for some reason, the hardware was so impaired that it could only operate at a very slow speed -- too slow to keep webpages from timing out.  But no, as I looked at Synaptic's list of individual files, it seemed that its efforts were failing in each case; it was just taking a long time on each file to make sure there was no way.

I located another desktop computer, one where I had not previously tried to install the Trendnet unit.  I went through the original TU2-ET100 installation process, using the CD, and then connected the ethernet cable and plugged the unit into a USB port.  Device Manager considered it to be working properly, but the Trendnet unit did not enable this Windows XP computer to connect.  Baffled, I posted a question on it.  That was as far as I went with this investigation.  I moved to a different apartment shortly after this, and the laptop was able to go online normally there.  I never did find out why it was having such a hard time at the other place.

Ubuntu 10.04 & Windows Dual-Boot: Customize GRUB2 Boot Menu

I had a dual-boot machine with Windows XP and Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) on it.  I wanted to clean up and customize the GRUB menu that came up whenever I booted the system.  There were several parts to this.

I started with The Grub 2 Guide.  The Guide's point 6, "Adding Entries to Grub 2," said that files named 10_linux and 30_os-prober would search for installed Linux kernels and other operating systems.  I typed this:

cd /etc/grub.d
ls

and, sure enough, I had files called 10_linux, 20_memtest86+, 30_os-prober, and 40_custom, along with 00_header and 05_debian_theme files.  There seemed to be useful ways to change several of these items, so I went down the list in numerical order, starting with 10_linux.  I typed "sudo gedit /etc/grub.d/10_linux."  The thing to do here was to stop GRUB from listing Recovery Mode options in the startup menu.  I did a Ctrl-F to see if 10_linux contained this line:

GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_RECOVERY=true

It didn't appear to have that, so I added it near the start of the file, right before the first "if" statement.  That was all for 10_linux, so I saved and closed it.  Now, how about controlling the menu so that it wouldn't list older kernels?  At this point, I thought about going with their "Building a Totally Customized Menu" option.  But the Grub 2 Guide said that a fully customized menu would not be updated with the addition of any new kernels.  The reason seemed to be that I would make 10_linux non-executable, so it would no longer go sniffing around to see what's new.   I didn't want to have to mess with updating the list manually every time a new kernel came along.  For guidance, I looked to the Grub 2 Title Tweaks Thread.  That, and the Grub 2 Guide, led to the following approach:

uname -r
sudo update-grub
ubuntu-tweak

The "uname" command told me what kernel I was now using.  At present, that was 2.6.32-22-generic-pae.  The "sudo update-grub" step told me what else was being listed on the Grub menu.  There was the option of seeking out other kernels in Synaptic, but running ubuntu-tweak (available via Synaptic, if you have the right repository) gave me an easier way of removing older kernels.  In Ubuntu Tweak, I went to Applications > Package Cleaner > Unlock > Clean Kernels.  This showed all installed kernels other than the one currently in use.  They said it was a good idea to keep one previously working kernel, so I skipped the first one on the list and checked the others.  Then I clicked Cleanup.  Ubuntu Tweak did its thing, and then I closed it.  It turned out there was another way to do this, that didn't require the Ubuntu Tweak step:  just tell 10_linux how many kernels to display.  This method required me to type "sudo gedit /etc/grub.d/10_linux" and then search for the place that had these two lines:

list=`echo $list | tr ' ' '\n' | grep -vx $linux | tr '\n' ' '`
done

and change it by inserting another list line between those two:

list=`echo $list | tr ' ' '\n' | grep -vx $linux | tr '\n' ' '`
list=`version_find_latest $list`
done

I found that right at the end of the 10_linux file.  So I made that change and then saved and closed 10_linux.  Next, I didn't want memtest+ to appear in the GRUB menu list, so I typed this:

sudo chmod -x /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+

I looked for a quick way to confirm whether a file was executable, but there didn't appear to be an option for that in chmod, and the first several webpages I tried in response to a Google search didn't tell me.  Moving on, GRUB on my laptop had gotten confused, and it now pointed to two different Vista installations, only one of which was working.  The Grub 2 Title Tweaks Thread said I could hide it, but it seemed like I should also be able to remove it.  It seemed like a bad idea to have it hanging around.  Here's how those lines looked in GRUB:

Windows Vista (loader) (on /dev/sda1)
Windows Vista (loader) (on /dev/sda2)

The first one was not working.  If I hit it, I got "Disk error.  Press any key to restart."  I actually had to power down the laptop to get past that.  I didn't yet have a very well configured Ubuntu setup on the laptop, so I rebooted with a GParted CD (an Ubuntu Live CD would have worked too).  In GParted, I looked at sda1 and, well, no wonder it was showing up.  I had a Windows XP installation on a hidden partition in there!  I'd had some troubles installing Vista on the laptop, and apparently I had decided to keep the WinXP installation just in case.  So, OK, that was interesting.  I could have tried to rejigger the setup so that I'd have a triple boot system, but I didn't plan to be using XP very often on the laptop, and I could use GParted within Ubuntu (once I finished tweaking the laptop) to hide and unhide as needed.  For now, what I needed to do, in the GRUB menu, was to change the entry so that it would report the situation more informatively.  I typed this:

sudo cat /boot/grub/grub.cfg | grep "menuentry" | cut -d '"' -f 2
sudo gedit /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober

The first line gave me the current list of GRUB menu entries from grub.cfg (in case I hadn't already written down the names I wanted to change).  Precisely what I wanted to change was the first of the two "Windows Vista (loader)" entries.  So:  around the middle of 30_os-prober, I found this:

for OS in ${OSPROBED} ; do
  DEVICE="`echo ${OS} | cut -d ':' -f 1`"
  LONGNAME="`echo ${OS} | cut -d ':' -f 2 | tr '^' ' '`"
  LABEL="`echo ${OS} | cut -d ':' -f 3 | tr '^' ' '`"
  BOOT="`echo ${OS} | cut -d ':' -f 4`"
  if [ -z "${LONGNAME}" ] ; then
    LONGNAME="${LABEL}"
  fi

Following their advice, I could have changed those last three lines to five lines that read as follows:

  if [ "${LONGNAME}" = "Windows Vista (loader)" ] ; then

    LONGNAME="Windows XP (hidden)"

  elif [ -z "${LONGNAME}" ] ; then

    LONGNAME="${LABEL}"

  fi

In this case, unfortunately, both of those items were named "Windows Vista (loader)," so I figured they would both change to "Windows XP (hidden)."  What I needed had to be more specific, so instead I left their last three lines unchanged and added this after them:

  if [ "$LONGNAME" = "Windows Vista (loader)" ] && [ "${DEVICE}" = "/dev/sda1" ] ; then

    LONGNAME="Windows XP (hidden)"

  fi

And that worked.  The one other thing I wanted to change was to get GRUB to remember which operating system choice I had used last time, and default to that one again this time unless I selected something else.  In previous Ubuntu installations, the steps I had taken to do that had been to type "sudo gedit /etc/default/grub"; change one line to say GRUB_DEFAULT=saved instead of GRUB_DEFAULT=0; save and close that file; and then type "sudo update-grub."  But now I saw this in the Grub 2 Guide:  "The default OS will not be set merely by an interactive selection of an OS from the menu."  So that was apparently a change from Grub 1.5, or whatever I had been using previously.  So now, one option was to set up a custom menu, except that it wouldn't be updated for the latest kernels.  But then, confusingly, the Grub 2 Basics seemed to say that there was a simple solution after all.  I typed "sudo gedit /etc/default/grub" and made sure it said that "GRUB_DEFAULT=saved" and I also added a line right after that (since there wasn't already a line for this):

GRUB_SAVEDEFAULT=true

So I saved that, typed "sudo update-grub," and watched as it generated its list.  It looked like it was only going to show one Linux image, but I reserved judgment and rebooted.  Sure enough (speaking, here, of the desktop computer on which I had been making most of these changes), GRUB now showed only two items:  the latest Ubuntu kernel and Windows XP.  I chose Windows, the second of the two items.  I hit Enter and immediately hit F8, in the theory that Safe Mode would load faster than Normal Mode.  I guess it did, but it still wasn't in a hell of a hurry.  I clicked "Turn off computer" > Restart and watched to see if GRUB would remember that I had just booted Windows, not Ubuntu.  It did.  Excellent.  That seemed to be working.  I chose Ubuntu instead and rebooted again.  This time it went into Ubuntu.  Likewise, on the laptop, after some tinkering, sudo update-grub eventually produced the desired list, and it remembered the last boot too.

Compaq CQ60-420US Laptop Ethernet Connection Problem

I was having problems going online with my Compaq CQ60-420US laptop.  The wireless connection worked, but for some reason the wired connection didn’t, even when I connected it using a cable that was working fine for another computer.  This problem was occurring in both Microsoft Vista and Ubuntu (both 9.10 and 10.04) on this dual-boot machine.  I had spent a lot of time on the phone with HP tech support, and had even shipped the computer back to Texas for a motherboard replacement.  Maybe they didn’t replace the motherboard, or maybe they replaced it with another defective one; but in any event, it still wasn’t working.  For example, if I tried going to a website in Internet Explorer 8, it would say, “Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage,” and if I tried in Google Chrome, it would say, “This webpage is not available.”

In Vista (classic view), I went to Start > Settings > Network Connections.  With wireless disconnected, I right-clicked on Local Area Connection (Realtek PCIe FE Family Controller) > Diagnose.  Windows Network Diagnostics said,

Windows did not find any problems with this computer’s network connection.

I tried the option that said, “Reset the network adapter ‘Local Area Connection.’”  After a minute, it said, “The problem has been resolved.”  Yet I was still getting the “cannot display” error in Internet Explorer.  Clicking on the “Diagnose Connection Problems” button in Internet Explorer produced the Windows Network Diagnostics “Identifying the problem” message, followed by “Cannot communicate with” the webpage I had been trying to reach. It again offered me the option of resetting the network adapter, but I declined.

Microsoft offered a “Fix it for me” option, but of course I was not able to connect to that webpage on the laptop.  When I looked into that option on another computer, it said that it was intended to fix problems with Internet Explorer itself (e.g., freezes or crashes).  This was not just an Internet Explorer problem.  Choosing the “Let me fix it myself” option, then, I had already gone through methods 1 (try viewing another webpage), 2 (Network Diagnostics tool), and 3 (reset modem or router), and I did not bother trying methods 4 (delete browsing history) and 5 (use Internet Explorer no add-ons mode).  Advanced Troubleshooting Method 1 called for temporarily disabling the Internet security suite or firewall.  I had tried that, but not recently, so I tried it again.  In Control Panel, I went to Windows Security Center and turned off the firewall.  That did not help, so I turned off Windows Defender.  Still no solution.  In the system tray (at the bottom right corner of the screen, I moused over the various icons until I found the one that said, “Computer status – Protected.”  I right-clicked on that, and that opened Microsoft Security Essentials.  I went to its Settings tab and turned off Real-time protection > Save Changes.  Still no joy in either Internet Explorer or Chrome.  Just to be sure, I killed and restarted Internet Explorer and Chrome and tried again, but still no connection.  In Internet Explorer, I went into Tools > Internet Options > Security, unchecked Enable Protected Mode, restarted Internet Explorer, and tried again; but no.  This didn’t seem to be the solution, so I went on to Advanced Troubleshooting Method 2:  check whether Windows assigned you an automatic IP address.  To do this, Microsoft told me to go to Internet Explorer > Diagnose Connection Problems and click on IP Address, but I didn’t see an option like that.  Instead, I clicked on the Reset Network Adapter option again.  This time, the Windows Network Diagnostics dialog said something a little different:

Windows tried a repair but a problem still exists.
Cannot communicate with www.hotmail.com (64.4.20.174).

As advised on a couple of other websites, in Start > Run > CMD, I typed these commands:

ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew

I wasn’t sure how to read the output, so I went back to the Microsoft advice.  I now saw that Advanced Method 2 didn’t apply, since it was just trying to see whether I had a problem related to my Internet Service Provider (ISP).  I didn’t, since the computer on which I was doing this typing was connected to the same line, and it was working just fine.  So:  on to Advanced Method 3:  test Internet Explorer by using a safe mode startup option that enables networking.  To do this, I went to Start > Search for files or folders > msconfig.exe.  The one I wanted was under C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu.  I double-clicked on it and went to Boot tab, clicked Safe boot and Network > Apply.  Then Start > Shut down > Restart.  In Safe Mode, I opened Internet Explorer.  It still could not connect.  The Microsoft advice told me, in that case, to skip to Advanced Method 6:  Start > Run > devmgmt.msc > Network Adapters.  There were no exclamation marks.  Microsoft said, in that case, I should go to Advanced Method 7:  run System Restore.  But this, they said, would make sense only if the problem was a recent one, and in this case it wasn’t.  Advanced Methods 8 and 9 were oriented toward fixing problems with Internet Explorer but, again, it was a Chrome problem too.  I tried to go back to msconfig.exe via Search, but it didn’t find it, so I used Start > Run > CMD and then typed msconfig.exe at the prompt.  I went back to the msconfig.exe Boot tab and unclicked Safe Boot.  I restarted back into Vista and verified that the problem was still there.  I re-enabled my various security programs and settings, and pondered the situation.

It seemed I had a recurrent hardware problem that HP was not going to fix for me.  I noticed that Amazon.com had a number of devices that would plug into a USB port to give me an ethernet connection.  I got one that, according to its sole review, was good only for 32-bit operating systems, which is what I had on the laptop.  It cost me less than $7.  If the problem was just with the motherboard, this would hopefully get around it.  Unfortunately, that one failed.  I did not actually succeed in resolving this problem within the existing situation.  Instead, I moved to a different apartment, and for some reason that solved the problem.

Restoring GRUB on Dual-Boot Vista-Ubuntu (9.10) Machine

I had Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) installed.  I reinstalled Microsoft Vista.  This knocked out the GRUB boot menu.  To restore the boot menu, I followed some Ubuntu community documentation.  The steps I used there, boiled down for my purposes, were simply to reboot from the Ubuntu CD, go into the Ubuntu partition via the Places menu, type "mount | tail -1" to make sure the Ubuntu partition was now mounted (in my case, it said something like "/dev/sda2 on /media/UBUNTU type 3" because I had named the partition using GParted), type "ls /media/UBUNTU/boot" to make sure I had the partition containing GRUB (along with memtest86+ and other files), and then run "sudo grub-install --root-directory=/media/UBUNTU /dev/sda."  That last command did not end in a number (e.g., sda2); it was simply the drive containing the boot partition.  In place of UBUNTU in my example, I would have typed the long UUID if that was what the mount command had given me.

That pretty much fixed it.  When I rebooted, I did have a GRUB menu.  But when I opted to go into Ubuntu, I got an error message:

One or more of the mounts listed in /etc/fstab cannot yet be mounted:

SWAP: waiting for UUID=[UUID number]

Press ESC to enter a recovery shell.

I pressed ESC.  I went to Applications > Accessories > Terminal and typed "sudo gedit /etc/fstab."  This opened fstab.  The lines weren't wide enough to view clearly, so I expanded the box.  Fstab contained an entry for SWAP, which (above) was the partition that didn't boot in my case.  I started another Terminal session and typed "blkid" to see what the UUIDs were.  I saw that the UUIDs and the /dev entries for SWAP didn't match.  I changed the fstab line for SWAP to match what blkid had given me, for both the UUID and the /dev location.  (I had to use the right-click option to copy from the Terminal output for blkid.)  I saved fstab and rebooted.  That seemed to fix it; the boot proceeded normally.

Error While Resizing Vista NTFS Partition with GParted

I was using the GParted 0.5.1 live CD to resize an NTFS partition.  (I had already backed up the data on the partition.)  When I tried to resize in GParted, I got an error:

An error occurred while applying the operations

See the details for more information.

IMPORTANT
if you want support, you need to provide the saved details!
See http://gparted.sourceforge.net/larry/tips/
save_details.htm for more information

I clicked OK.  Unfortunately, the details did not explain what had gone wrong.  I rebooted into Vista and then did a complete shutdown.  (Previously, I had just hibernated the system.)  I allowed a minute or so for the memory to clear, and then rebooted with the GParted live CD.  This time, it worked.  The problem was that I had hibernated instead of completely shutting down Vista before using GParted.

Configuring 64-bit Ubuntu 9.04 with Vista Dual-Boot

I had a Compaq CQ60-420US laptop. It had come with Vista pre-installed. I didn't like that, so I wiped it off. This led to a whole ordeal in trying to get the hard drive to work with WinXP, for which I had developed lots of tricks and tweaks. That effort ultimately failed, and I wound up with Vista back on the thing after all. I had wanted to get away from dual booting, but I still needed some flavor of Windows for the occasional hardware interaction, e.g., updating the BIOS and other firmware. So for now, I was going to leave Vista in place and set up a 64-bit Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) dual-boot with it. This post describes the process of setting up that dual boot. A review of some guides gave me the general impression that installing a Vista-Ubuntu dual boot was much like installing a WinXP-Ubuntu dual boot, unless you used the wubi alternative. The approach I took was as follows:

1. With Vista already installed, insert the Ubuntu program CD, reboot, and go through the ordinary installation sequence. If you do nothing, the CD will pretty much take you right to the Install icon. If your BIOS isn't set to boot from CD before hard drive, hit F2 or Esc or Del or F8 or whatever key it is that gets you into your BIOS setup, promptly after the computer first starts up, and adjust the boot priority there.
2. You may find that the bootable Gparted CD provides a clearer view of hard drive partitions than does the partitioner in the Ubuntu installer. If the partitioning step leaves you dazed and confused, you may want to back up, download Gparted, burn yourself a CD, boot with that first, set up your partitions as you like, and then come back into the Ubuntu installation process. Note: if you're going to run Windows in a virtual machine, you may want to give it an NTFS partition somewhere, so you have a place to store data. Windows can't read Linux (e.g., ext3) partitions.
3. After the initial installation, make sure that Vista starts up OK. No point spending hours refining a system that isn't ready for prime time. Then restart and go into Ubuntu, and make various adjustments, including these: (a) Nautilus > View > Show Hidden Files. (b) Nautilus > Edit > Preferences > Behavior > Always open in browser windows.
4. Go through the steps described in my previous post on configuring Ubuntu 9.04 (including comments). That post updates the first part of an earlier post on how to configure 9.04. After running updates, type "sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst" and put # symbols in front of each line (i.e., older Ubuntu kernels) that you don't want to appear in the GRUB menu.
5. Before continuing with items in that earlier post (as explained in more detail there), I initially thought that the next step would be to install and configure Thunderbird (just plain old thunderbird, not mozilla-thunderbird) and Lightning-extension via Synaptic. But then I decided I would just use web-based e-mail and calendaring (probably via Gmail) on the laptop, and would download and archive my e-mails solely on my desktop, thereby sparing the need to synchronize the two computers.
6. Now refer back to the earlier post, to install programs that came via individual downloads rather than through Synaptic. For me, these included Google Desktop for Linux, Adobe Reader, and VMware Workstation 6.5.3.
7. I installed .deb files by double-clicking on them in Nautilus, and .bin and .bundle files by running "chmod +x [filename]" and then "sudo ./[filename]." I didn't have any .tar.gz and .tar.bz2 files to install this time, but if I had, I would have moved them to my /home/[username] folder, navigated there in Terminal, and then used a tar unpack command (e.g., tar -vxf [or tar xvfz] filename.tar.gz, or tar xvf filename.tar, or tar yxf filename.tar.bz2).
8. To install Google Earth, continuing to follow my previous notes, I typed two lines: "wget http://dl.google.com/earth/client/current/GoogleEarthLinux.bin" and then "sh GoogleEarthLinux.bin." This gave me a Google Earth installation, but with flickering and basically nonfunctioning display. I tried System > Administration > Update Manager, and at first that program assured me that my system was up-to-date; but when I made it check again, it reported errors related to Wine and Opera. I ignored these for now, since they did not seem relevant. People seemed to be experimenting with the flickering video problem in Google Earth. There was a relatively complex tutorial that apparently fixed it in some cases, at the risk of messing up the system. Choosing instead an easy fix that seemed to work for some, I went to System > Preferences > Appearance > Visual Effects and downgraded from Extra to Normal. That didn't help. Following another tip, I downgraded further, from Normal to None (i.e., no visual effects), and also turned off the Atmosphere feature in Google Earth (View > Atmosphere). That fixed it.
9. To configure Firefox, I went to another computer and used the FEBE extension to make a full backup of that machine's Firefox installation. I copied the folder containing the FEBE backup to the target computer (i.e., the one where I've been doing all this installation stuff). I installed FEBE in Firefox on the target machine, restarted Firefox, started to watch the tutorial on restoring with FEBE, turned to the instructions on manually restoring with FEBE, and then took these steps on the target machine: Close Firefox. Go to the FEBE backup directory (i.e., the one where I put the FEBE backup folder that I copied over from the other computer). Copy its .fbu file (in my case, profileFx3{default}.fbu) and rename the copy as a .zip file. I called it FEBErestore.zip. Extract the contents of the .zip file (creating, in my case, a folder called FEBErestore). Move the contents of the FEBE restore folder to the Firefox profile folder, which I found in Nautilus at File System/home/ray/.mozilla/firefox/[random name].default. In my case, for example, I moved the contents of the FEBErestore folder to this .default folder. When it told me that a folder already exists, I said Merge All, and Replace All for the "file already exists" message. During this process, I got an "Error while copying 'febe.jar'" message. The details of the error said "Permission denied." I canceled and tried again as root (type "sudo nautilus" and then do the move in the Nautilus session that opens that way). That worked. Then I closed everything else and started Firefox and, yeah, it looked like all the extensions were there, configured and everything.

This was the extent of my Ubuntu configuration for now. During these processes, I came across some miscellaneous issues:

• I wanted to change login passwords. This, I thought, would be under System > Administration but no, eventually I found it instead under Applications > Accessories. Double-clicking on that did not work; I had to right-click and choose Change Password; but then the password that I changed it to did not work for login. I thought the problem might be that I hit Enter instead of clicking on the button after doing the change; that is, possibly the default was Cancel rather than Change. I could not tell; neither button seemed to be highlighted by default. So then it turned out that I had changed the password to unlock the keyring, rather than the password to log in. It looked like I had changed that properly, second time around; but still no.
• As in other Ubuntu installations, panels did not readily allow me to move icons to the locations I would designate. Sometimes they would not move; sometimes they would not go exactly where I indicated. On the bottom panel, for example, I could not rearrange them in the far right corner. It turned out to be easier to move things *out of* the corner (where the Windows system tray would be) than to move them *into* the corner. It turned out that I had to unlock every item that I wanted to drag another icon past. Tooltips came up, irritatingly enough, when I was trying to move icons, making it difficult to see what I was doing.
• The bottom panel failed to show icons or buttons for my currently running programs. The solution was to right-click on the bottom panel, choose Add to Panel, and choose Window List. But then, on reboot, it did not work again. I fixed it by right-clicking on the end of the Window List item on the bottom panel and checking Lock to Panel.
• When trying to view the contents of some hard drive partitions, such as a partition I called DATA, I got "Cannot mount volume. You are not privileged to mount the volume 'DATA'. Following my previous notes, in Terminal I typed "sudo mkdir /media/DATA," thinking that perhaps I had not yet created the mount point, but this gave me "cannot create directory `/media/DATA': File exists." I typed "sudo nautilus," went to File System > /media/DATA > right-click > Properties, and verified that I (i.e., user "ray", not just root) had full permissions. I typed "sudo fdisk -l" (that's an L, not a one) to get a list of devices. That showed that the DATA partition was being recognized as an NTFS device at /dev/sda4. I typed "sudo gedit /etc/fstab" and saw that there was no line in the fstab file for /dev/sda4. Following some notes from a few months earlier, I typed "sudo ntfs-config." (Note that this was one of the programs I had installed from Synaptic, above.) This detected the VISTA programs partition (i.e., drive C in Windows), but not the DATA partition. I ran ntfs-config again. This time, it didn't mention the VISTA drive, but as before it did give me the option to enable an internal drive. I accepted that. Now I saw that there was indeed a line for the DATA partition as well. While I was here, I used blkid to find the UUIDs for each partition (e.g., "sudo blkid") and replaced that portion of the relevant line in fstab. For example, the line that previously read "/dev/sda1 /media/VISTA ntfs-3g defaults,locale=en_US.UTF-8 0 0" now began with "UUID=19142FAA142F8D35" instead of "dev/sda1." Following the format of other lines in fstab, I preceded this one with a line that said, "# Entry for /dev/sda1 : " and followed a similar procedure for the DATA partition. I rebooted and was now able to view the NTFS-formatted VISTA and DATA partitions. On second thought, I went back into fstab and removed the line for the VISTA partition, since I didn't expect to need it normally in Ubuntu and didn't want to expose it to accidental deletions and such.

This seemed to give me a basic working dual-boot 64-bit system. The next step, for me, was to configure VMware, so that I could run any Windows program within Ubuntu.