You see I don’t have a spare mouse and keyboard. When I’m working on another computer I simply use the mouse and keys I have tethered to my laptop. But after I set up the new computer now snug across the room out of the family’s way I found myself very much wanting a normal mouse and keys for my laptop.

After some searching I came across Synergy an open source, multi-platform, network keyboard and mouse sharing program. Unfortunately it has been out of active development for a couple of years now. That didn’t stop it from working like a charm once I had RTFM’d.

To save you some trouble I’ll let you in on the gotcha’s. Basically what you do is download the Synergy program to each of the computers your going to share. In my case this new desktop had the keys and mouse connected to it so it was the host computer. On the host computer you need to configure screens and links. It’s a little confusing but once you know the trick it’s easy. Synergy identifies computers by their computer names. So in my case I’ve got a computer named desktop and one named laptop. If your not sure of your computers name just right click on My Computer and choose properties. You’ll need to add a screen for each computer. Now once your screens are in place you need to add links. For my purposes I have a link set up that looks like ‘desktop is to the left of laptop’ and another set up that says ‘laptop is to the right of desktop’.

Now if all goes well hit start on the host computer and it should fire up. Next on the client computer, in this case my laptop load up Synergy and just connect to the host. You can apparently use the computers name to connect but if that doesn’t work you can use the local ip address of the host computer. To easily get this information on the host computer go to a command prompt and type ipconfig.

Hopefully if all went well you should now be able to zonk the mouse all the way to the right and presto. Your keys and mouse should now work fine on the client computer. If you have any problems check out this longer tutorial at LifeHacker.

So now I have two computers side by side, sharing internet, mouse and keys. Pure geek.

Except I must have hammered through the cable when I was securing the rug back to the floor. Because it isn’t working.

So every time I work on a computer I’m left with the guts strewn across the floor with a barely reaching cable stretched across the middle of the room. It’s not a very pretty site and with a toddler about it just doesn’t work.

This weekend the answer came to me though. My laptop has internet just fine via wireless. In addition it has a standard Ethernet port which isn’t being used. Perhaps there was a way to utilize this?

The whole thing turned out to be really simple. You need a crossover Ethernet cable. You should be able to buy one at the store or do as the true geek does and make your own. The tools to make a decent cable may cost as little as a store bought cable so it’s an investment that pays off very quickly. You can’t use a straight cable because you intend on hooking two Ethernet cards together instead of into a shared router.

The next part confused me for a second. At first I thought I’d have to turn on Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) and jump through some hoops. But it turns out ICS is only used if your providing routing for the entire network. To share the connection between our two computers all you have to do is highlight the working wireless connection and the working Ethernet adapter with your crossover cable connecting them. Then choose Bridge Connections. After a bit everything should authenticate and both computer will have Internet connectivity.

I recently did a reinstall of Vista for a friend. I didn’t know about this trick at the time but stumbled across it shortly afterwards. I had to awkwardly guess at answers and set up some basic accounts before installing a slew of updates.

Instead I should have just used Audit mode. From the article:

Audit mode enables OEMs and corporations to customize a Windows installation before shipping the computer to an end-user. In audit mode, you can install applications, add device drivers, run scripts, and test the validity of a Windows installation. Audit mode is a networked-enabled environment that does not require settings in Windows Welcome to be applied.

<snip/>

For attended installations, from Windows Welcome screen, press SHIFT+CTRL+F3.

<snip/>

After you have completed your customizations and have verified that the computer is ready to ship to a customer, configure the system to boot to Windows Welcome by running sysprep/oobe. The next time the system starts, Windows Welcome starts.

But I did have a clue and a problem. Chkdsk reported some errors on the drive along with gparted. Chkdsk also refused to fix them and all my typing yes to a scan next reboot was worthless. Finally I turned to the internet where I found the fsutil solution.

You see apparently chkdsk doesn’t set the dirty bit on the drive but rather sets the dirty bit in the windows registry. This computer was mucked up fierce, so windows wasn’t able to do anything with the bit. However if the bit is set on the drive Windows catches it much earlier and can finally scan.

Fsutil comes default with Vista and I know it is present on Windows XP 64. I’m not sure what other operating systems include this utility. For my purposes I just needed to type ‘fsutil dirty set c:’ and I was set.

It still didn’t fix my problem, a new install of Vista took care of that.

Turn off filenames in thumbnail view

Open the folder, or switch to thumbnail view, while holding down the Shift key.

Change thumbnail size

By default, thumbnails are 96×96 pixels in size. You can change this value for the current user or all users. Current user: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer

All users: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer

Go to either key, select Explorer, then create a DWORD value called ThumbnailSize. Double-click it, select Decimal in

the Base section, and enter a value between 32 and 256. Restart Windows Explorer.

Disable thumbnail caching (thumbs.db)

When you switch to thumbnail view, Windows creates hidden thumbs.db files (thumbnail cache) to speed up access to the thumbnails. This is nice but these files also contain the thumbnails of deleted pictures. You can delete the files, but Windows will recreate them as soon as you go back into the folders. You can, however, tell Windows not to cache thumbnails. Control Panel > Folder Options On the View tab, check Do not cache thumbnails. You will have to delete the thumbs.db files that already exist (Use the Search feature).

mms://server.ip/stream?WMContentBitrate=300000

The WMContentBitrate modifier sets the maximum bit rate that can be streamed from a source, in bits per second. So you can simply set the number to be a bit higher then the stream your targeting and direct users where you want them.

There are many more modifiers that can be used with Windows Media Player. For a brief overview check out this article from Microsoft on additional query strings. For a more in depth discussion try Using URL Modifiers.

It doesn’t matter if your using Windows 95 or the latest offering. If your computer should happen to crash, or your monitor changes resolution or sometimes it seems if you sneeze the wrong way your desktop icons end up all messed up.

Is it that hard to program around these things? You’d think this would be an area they would have actually improved on in vista.

I guess all that value packed DRM code they implemented was more important.

Then I tried one of the other computers in the house and had no issues whatsoever.

I’m still not sure what the problem was, but it has something to do with Vista and WMP11 I think. I did however come upon the solution.

regsvr32 C:\WINDOWS\system32\wmnetmgr.dll

If you run this via Start->Run or a command prompt it will again register the Windows Media Net Manager DLL. Apparently now and then there is some registry corruption which could cause problems and this little piece of code re-adds all the information and reloads the needed DLL.

I’m not sure on the specifics honestly but I did find this article on re-registering DLLs.

I feel bad that I spent money towards this crap, but unfortunately in the laptop realm I really had no choice. If it were a desktop I could have built one for the same price or cheaper then any retail offering. Laptops are a different breed. If I were to build one it would cost me twice as much due to the fact that white box laptops are so rare even today.

I think it’s important to note many of these frustrations come directly from Acer. In fact I’m going to hold off blaming Microsoft and Vista until I get a clean install of it and can rid myself of the Acer nightmare.

Onwards to the rant…

The new laptop:

For Christmas my gift was a new laptop. I’ve never owned one before and I’m hoping I can get more done without being tethered.

After a bit of shopping we decided on an Acer Aspire 4720. It was available at Circuit City for $479 after a mail-in rebate. My time there was not as bad as I thought it would be but a sales associate could have come seen me earlier then the 15 minutes it took.

Soon I was unpacking it and getting it ready. I checked to make sure there weren’t any special instructions. There actually wasn’t much in the way of instructions. With this laptop I received only a quick start card. No CD or DVD restore disks. To begin it turns out it just needs to be plugged in. I fired it up.

It took a minute or two to get running. Windows did it’s thing and finally asked me some default questions. Next, next, next, yup and next. Something like that.

Windows started…

and started…

This computer is so loaded down with crap that it honestly takes several minutes to load completely into windows vista home. Not only is there a handy dandy program for every piece of hardware that comes with the computer but there are nice things like the yahoo toolbar, a ninety day free trial of norton internet security, and easy access to the internet to buy more stuff.

Did you know you can upgrade your vista experience straight from the computer. I’m sure at some point a major credit card is required.

It’s ridiculous the amount of crap that comes pre-installed. So ridiculous I’m trying to come up with ideas to get around the horror.

Idea 1) Install Ubuntu

And the geeks rejoice. I’ve already tried a live CD of Ubuntu 7.11. Unfortunately there is no love with the wireless or the sound. There are methods out there to get these to work apparently but these are not integrated with this version of Ubuntu.

I didn’t really get to check out the other devices. Looks like Linux might wait on the sideburner.

Idea 2) Restore system, hoping crap will be gone.

Sigh.. if only. A restore of the system using Alt-F10 only restores to it’s original crap filled state. A similar restore using the handy dandy restore disks I wasn’t provided and had to burn for myself yielded the same exact results. There went three hours of my life.

Idea 3) Try to uninstall crap programs and bring windows vista to an operating condition.

It’s what I’m currently working on. Let’s see what we should delete.

Acer Arcade Deluxe (I’ll stick with my WolfET thank you)
Acer Assist (Apparently an application which will install updates for your acer product. I’ll hunt them down myself. Kudos for using Nullsoft Install System. This uninstalled in seconds.)
Acer eDataSecurity Management (Apparently a program that will encrypt data for you on your laptop. Umm.. it’s my laptop… maybe I’ll just set a password.)
Acer eLock Management (Apparently a program that allows you to password/lock drives on the computer)
Acer eAudio Management (a program that allows you to turn false surround sound filters on and off and apply some different EQ filters. Buh bye)
Acer Registration (I’ve already registered when I first got the computer. Don’t need that software again. Another that uses Nullsoft. It’s important to note this program doesn’t seem to remember you’ve registered and continues to nag you.)
Acer GridVista? (Apparently it gives you some extra options in setting and orginizing your windows?)

At this point I rebooted. Gridvista asked for it and Windows Vista wanted me to anyway because of 14 critical updates that it had automatically downloaded.

This started at 10:46, at 10:50 I was up and running again.

I then uninstalled:

Adobe Reader 8.10 (I’ll install Fox-It later. Adobe wants a restart but I told it later.)
Orion (An instant messanger software package, I’ll install Miranda32 later)
Yahoo! Toolbar (Give me a break already)
Acer Screen Saver (This isn’t the only one, but certaintly the most boring. Apparently also needs a restart)
Big Kahuna Reef 2 (Apparently a game/screen saver.)
Treasures of the Deep (same)
It’s important to note neither of these removed the icons from the Acer Games Menu. I’ve also noticed after a while that neither one of the screensavers removed the entry from the screen saver menu. While the former was fairly easy to get rid of, the later will need to be hunted down and manually uninstalled. Already on a base install there are programs with a glitch leaving behind garbage.

I continued to uninstall the other games. Each was a 60 minute demo of a game which I could buy the full version. No thanks.

These included. Dynasty, Bricks of Egypt, Galapago, Jewel Quest Solitare, Luxor 2, Mystery Case Files – Prime Suspects, Myster Case Files Ravenhearst, and Zuma Deluxe.

Norton Internet Security was next, 90 day free trial ends on day 1.

While I’m uninstalling I’ve been experiementing with tweaking windows. I tried to go back to the classic start menu. Not sure if I like that. (The new one looked like they got the orginization right)

I restarted again. Maybe it’ll get up a bit quicker.

Though I’ve uninstalled all the games and Norton, links still appear in my welcome center offering me games and security. I investigate the games link which leads to a game website.

I unclick the button that says run at startup. I don’t want to be welcomed by advertisements.

Next round of uninstalls:

Launch Manager (A program that runs in the background and apparently loads up nifty programs with those pointless buttons on the top of the laptop.)
Acer eNet Management (Does my internet work without it? Seems so.)
Acer Power Management (Might install this later, I’ll see what Windows has to offer in the area)
Acer ePresentation Management (Easy breezy buttons to configure multiple Display devices. I don’t have multiple displays.)

I took some time to clean up my start menu. I deleted that empty games folder. It’s important to note in the interest of safety in order to do ANY *^&*(#% THING on vista you have to click OK 2-9 times.

Deleting the icons that should have been deleted on uninstall took me.. ohh wait.

I apparently need permission to delete the icons. Try Again. I need permission to delete the icons. Cancel. Try to delete again. You need to confirm this operation. Continue. Windows needs your permission to continue. Continue. You need permission to perform this action. Try Again. You need permission to perform this action.

There is no getting rid of these icons it seems :( I did find that I can delete each one. I haven’t yet deleted each one to see if I can rid of the folders.

This madness has to stop.

Apparently what’s making me hit OK, or Continue 2000 times every action is what’s called the User Account Control. We saw some of this with XP SP2. It’s gotten about 40 times worse. Off that goes, maybe It’ll be better.

You have to restart to make it happen. About 20 programs told me to do so already. Lets see.. it’s 11:56 now. It comes back up at 11:58. Wheww I’ve trimmed a minute off the bootup. And…. I’m able to delete stuff.

I get rid of the GameZone icons that were leftover from a crappy uninstall. I also notice one on the desktop which is now gone. I also get rid of the Empowerment icons. Thanks for leaving those behind after uninstall.

Just for fun I use the Acer Tour.

Nice music. Nice slideshow. I quickly exit and uninstall.

At this point I’m about out of things to uninstall. I’m not sure what this Acer Mobility thing is.. but it’s gone as well.

I start digging through menu’s. Figuring out that Microsoft has done what they do with all their operating systems. Which is hide the menus you need to really tweak out the system in different places. I change it for best performance. I also turn off a few services. Now that the damn User Account Control is off I can actually use my computer somewhat. The welcome center still tries to sell me stuff. So does my Start Menu.

Everything is getting clean though. I use IE for the first time (ohh wait everything that tried to install more crap/sell me crap/even the extra buttons on my computer launched it.) I mean I actually loaded up IE to surf the net. Most notably to mozilla.com to get firefox. I close down the two acer related buy more crap tabs and set google.com as my home page.

With the install of Firefox I decide to install some more fun. WolfET comes next along with the patches and 7-zip. I also install VLC, and Foobar2000.

When I started on this journey Windows was using around 74% of available memory (1 gig with this model) Now it’s using around 51%.

So I’ve managed to cut out about 250 megs of crap loaded into the background. Now if only I can get rid of 250 more….

I’ve been using Vista for a few days now. I’ve got to admit there are a few things I like about it. Explorer is clean for once, the new location bar is pretty sweet how it groups directories, but you can still just type up a path in the bar like always.

Still 512 megs just to run an OS? And this is after trimming as much fat as I could find. There seems to be so much stuff that has to do with licensing and DRM related services. Also thumbnails for pictures seems to be missing. (Just wasn’t turned on.. although I have found a bug with thumbnails. More later.)

The fact is I bought this laptop as an update to my 1.4ghz 712mb system. This has dual core 1.4ghz, plus 1 gig memory. It should run a little better then my old computer. Yet it runs worse. Thank you Vista.

After much surfing I’ve found that I can buy a clean version of Vista from Microsoft for just shipping and handling. Before I really blame Microsoft I’m going to try again from scratch. There should be more rambles and rants about this later.

So here is the first. Prices for OEM versions of many of the various Microsoft Windows versions. All of these prices were found a few hours ago on newegg .