Ariffin’s Blog

I haven’t been writing in this blog for quite sometime. I am no prolific writer.. actually.

Anyway, last time I decided to install Windows 7 64-bit enterprise edition on my machine ( HP DC 7800 c, dual core, 8Gb RAM, NVIDIA 285). I managed to copy and install all setting from my previous Vista 64 bit using easy migration tool in windows. Windows 7 detected all the hardware correctly even my bluetooth device that was not detected in windows vista. I install all my office and work related apps  without a hitch.

However, after a while  my windows 7 machine would occasionally freeze or lock-up and the only way to restore is to do a hard reset; pushing the on/off button on my machine. Looking around for assistance I turned to the internet for possible solution.

Among the key suspects were the NVidia driver and the power saving plan. I also suspected the setting in bios which enabled the hardware assisted virtualisation. so what I did was to install latest nvidia driver… well it didn’t help. So was changing the power saving options….. I even reset the setting I did in bios… all to no avail. It was frustrating to me.

Then, I got a new workstation from a project. It’s Dell workstation T5500, Intel Xeon Quad Core, 12 GB RAM, 2 TB HD and dual NVidia FX580 with 512Mb memory. I thought all is fine. It came with windows vista 64 bit. I let it run for a 2-3 days with out problem. Then I upgraded it to Windows 7, and it was fine for a couple of days. Then I install all the software that I need. It sure seems to em that everything was OK.

Unfortunately  it wasn’t so. My new PC show the same strange behavior. It would randomly lock up and I had to do a hard reset. There wasn’t any particular reason. Sometimes it just stop when I was doing Word, at other times when I was browsing. Yet it also stop dead in the water even when I was not running any apps ( except those that run in the background). I was at lost.

 So I tried all find the root cause. The event viewer does not offer much help. Nor does logging. and doing performance logging. I downloaded the new Nvidia driver.. still it hangs. I reset the power saving plan.. same result. I undo any settings in the bios by resetting to default factory setting… and still same problem occurs. Thinking that the CPU was heating up, I downloaded Core Temp to monitor its temperature. All the cores are functioning within normal parameter (.. refering to Lt. Cmdr Data in ST:TNG ). So what was the problem…..

Finally I read somewhere that some anti-virus program were causing strange behaviour in 64-bit OS. SO I uninstall AVG Free version (v. 9.0)… and my PC is working fine.. it has been 30 hours of operation without any hiccup….. Go Figure.

It seems to me that somehow AVG 32 bit causes my OS to stop responding. However, I also installed a 64bit windows 7 on my old HP pc, but without the Nvidia graphics board.. just using the onboard Intel Chip, and the PC does not display any symptom of freezes or lock-up.

So I  guess that 9.0 free edition + NVIDIA Graphics + 64Bit WIndows 7 = frequent lock-up expected. Hopefully this is true. I shall see for the next week if my machine would still function normally.  Any input from readers will be appreciated.

added: I have to conclude that my Av program is the cause for this misery since I have had no problem with my machine now, even when the system is running continuosly for 5 days. Right now I am testing my machine with Avast! pro (trial version).

Last time I mentioned that I cannot connect to IIUM Aruba Networks Wireless services from the test Dell Latitude D600 notebook, equipped with Intel WLAN 2100 card.

I decided to renew testing last Friday. I ran the system restore to the point where the system is freshly configured for all its devices. I installed the PEAP supplicant from Cisco. Still not connecting.

Then I tried to connect my USB Wireless device. It is detected by Windows 7. Set-up the setting for IIUM Networks and I got connected. Yeehaa… I was wondering is it that only my USB card  can work? maybe.

I left it  for the weekend and it seems that the connection is pretty much stable. When I tried to connect using the built-in wireless, I got an error saying that windows cannot connect to the wireless network. I tried it again this morning, getting the same result.

Out of curiosity, I checked with the one of the officers in charge of wireless, Br Syazwan, if the built-in wireless device has been registered. It turned that that the device was not registered; eventhough I was told otherwise. So a quick registration, when back to my test machine and voila! I am connected. Thank you Br Syazwan…

So it does seems to work using Cisco Peap solution. I welcomed other tester from IIUM to test their wireless network connectivity. I am also waiting for Aruba solution in the mean time.

Oh I  might be away for a while, due to the fact that my wife is expected to  deliver a baby girl ( our 4th child) today. Hopefully everything will be fine.

I read this blog about Windows 7 multi touch ( not Multi-Touch, as it is patented by Apple ) support. It is the extension of borrowed feature from Microsoft Surface Computing include in Microsoft Surface. Microsoft Surace is a table like computer with its screen acts as tabletop; where user is able to use their fingers to navigate. Users are able to use multi fingers, hence multi touch, to make gestures which the computer interprets into action. For example moving one’s finger across the surface to move a window from one side of the screen to another, or spreading one’s fingers to  zoom in on a picture. Surface computing is also made popular in CSI:Miami tv series as well as in lates James Bond’s ‘Quantum of Solace’.

Microsoft has announced that Windows 7 will support multi touch. Good feature to be included as the concept is being adopted by some manufacturers such as HP and Dell. Although there are still not many  computers supporting it, I believe that with the release of Win7, many companies would start to produce one. Perhaps as early as 1st quarter next year we might even have a netbook with multi touch screen produced. I wonder if with the next generation e-Book program in Terengganu would sport this feature also?

Now, if ITD can sponsor 1 Dell Studio with Multi Touch capability…. that would be great!

The last post I mentioned that I have installed Windows 7 on a Dell latitude D600 notebook. While the installation was successful, it failed to install driver for the network cards, audio and cardbus.

Luckily I have saved the XP drivers for D600 on my thumbdrive. Firts I installed the driver for wired network which is Broadcom. Installation was successful. With that I connect to the internet and update Win7. Finally all the problematic drive was fixed.

Next i installed Aruba’s PEAP supplicant for Vista. Installation went through fine. However somehow I couldnot select the EAP-Token option required by IIUM wireless. I got this error

PEAP error

Err cannot really decipher what the problem was or how to solve it.

So I tried with Cisco’s solution, hoping to get the same luck I have with it in my VMWare environment. I tried the 32-bit cllient, but it just says I need to reboot the system everytime I tried to install it, even after I tried changing its compatibilty to Vista or XP. But The installation using its 64-bits went through smoothly, eventhough the OS is a 32-bit Windows 7. However I stll was not able to connect to wireless….urghhhh. Maybe it only works with the USB wireless that I have …I’ll test that later..

So to summarize, back to square 1.

I got 1 Dell Notebook D600 from ITD yesterday. I’m going to use it for testing Windows 7 on laptop. It has Pentium M 1.6GHz,with 2 GB of RAM, with built-in wireless (Intel Pro/Wireless LAN 2100).  It has windows XP Installed.

Upon inserting the CD, it pop up a windows 7 installation dialog, which allow the user to check for compatibility online or install. I tried to click install now which led me to another dialog with 2 options, to check lates updates or not. I choose not to. Then the standard EULA.

I just accept the term. It then pop up another dialog asking wheteher I want to upgrade or choose custom. First I tried upgrad.. and Windows 7 says “You cannot upgrade from this Operating System..” and exit. Well have to try again from the beginning.

I choose custom, since I had been given the green light to reformat the laptop. It seems that it need about 12 GB of free space to install. Unfortunately none of the partition have enough space… so I have to install using the installation disc.

I opted to remove all partitions and create 1 partition since it it only have 40 GB storage. The installation took about 45 mins. It cannot detect the network card, multimedia card and the cardbus. Perhaps the drivers are not included. These needs to be resolve first.

Since I have to pick up my kids.. I have to stop. I ‘ll continue to resolve the issues tomorrow, InsyaAllah.

When I was testing the beta version of Windows 7, I had problem setting up the wireless network. Albeit detecting the card, which is USB, I had problem making it work In IIUM.

IIUM uses Aruba Networks for its wireless infrastructure.  Users are required to register their MAC address to use the wireless service. Furthermore, Aruba uses PEAP-GTC ( Protected Extensible Authentication Protocol-Generic Token Card) for its authentication. Altough PEAP is supported in WIndows 7, it only support windows PEAP implementation

I tried installing the PEAP-GTC Supplicant for Vista. In WIndows 7 Beta, I think its install ok; but when I tried to select the methods it produces an error. Unfortunately I forgot what the error was. At  any rate I was unable to connect. I tried other plugins from other vendors but still the same error occured.

With Windows 7 RC, I also tried installing the PEAP-GTC supplicant from Aruba. Installation was fine, but somehow I couldn’t select the eap-token needed by Aruba. After several tries I give up, for a while, since I had to finish up some proposals.

Then I tried the Cisco Aironet Client program. It support PEAP, LEAP and EAP. The program installed without a hitch. Once installed, it Allows me to select Cisco PEAP for authentication in the wireless setting. After selecting the required entry, I tried to connect to IIUM network. To my surprise it works. Alhamdullillah, altough just a small victory, but it is a real satisfaction for me.

I let it run for a day, to check connection stability, which many Vista users complained. They said that the connection sometime died and they had to re-register/login to get connected. Again, to my surprise the connection remain strong even when I test the network for various chores such as download large file, internet access and such.

My only concern is that this might only work my a particular network card. So I  am going to test this setup on a wireless enabled laptop next week. Hopefully I’ll be able to connect, too.

Last time I wrote about setting up Windows 7 RC in a virtual environment, namely VMWare. The testing is stil on-going. Now I want to concentrate on the built-in applications and tools within Windows 7.

First of all the Desktop Gadget. A gadget is like a mini apps that placed on the desktop, each programed for a particular task or job. For example a clock gadget; its task is to display the current time. Windows 7  includes several desktop gadget built-in.  Mostly these are the same as those in Vista, but now it is not required to run sidebar to use the gadget.

To put a gadget on the dektop just right click on the dektop and select gadgets. You will get a windows with list of available gadget. The default includes clock, calendar, CPU meter, slide show and a few others. Select the gadget you wish to use and drop it on to the desktop. You can always download more gadgets online. There are a variety of gadget available, system tools, e-mail helper, monitoring gadget etc.

There are several mini tools included in Windows 7. One of them is sticky notes. It is the electronic version of your Post-It-Note. You can change the colors and resize it. To change the color right click on the note and select the color you want. To add sticky note just click on the + icon placed on top-left.

Another tools is math input panel. This tool allows you to write mathematical expression on a writing pad much like a tablet input and convert the handwriting into proper math expression.

 Wordpad is also included in Windows 7, with upgraded interface like in Office 2007. Nice improvement . All other features remain the same. It will work well as a basic word processor.

Windows 7 included a new  tool called snipping tool. It allows you to capture the screen output. You can select from the whole screen, just the selected window, a rectangular area or free-form. Great tool to do documentation. Once you capture the contet, you can edit it by highlighting, send via e-mail, save it or put it into clipboard.

The calculator has been upgraded. It has additional views programmer and statistic; in addition to standard and scientific. Paint has got upgraded interface, with additional features throws in such as brushes and shapes. Pretty decent for a basic drawing program.

With Windows 7 Microsoft has included support for Powershell. As the name imply it is a spruce up shell scripting program. Think of it as an upgraded Windows Shell Script joined with the command line. With Powershell you are able to lots of cool scripting within the command line which otherwise you couldn’t do with the normal command line (CMD). For example, you could select objects such as files or directory, of certain size or type,  sort the display  according to your specified format. With Powershell you could actually automate your routine administrative tasks. But with Windows 7 Microsoft also included Powershell ISE (Integrated Shell Editor). Much like an IDE, it is a GUI program that allows you to program Powershell. Cool.

Many other standard programs sucah as task manager, resource monitor and task scheduler also got upgraded. Most of the upgraded interface are Windows 2008 inspired.

Overall I am satisfied with the improvements in the basic apps included with Windows 7.

Recently I downloaded Windows 7 Release Candidate.  I tested it in VMWare. The host machine is a dual-core machine (Intel Core2Duo, 2.33GHz, 8GB RAM) running Windows Vista 64-Bit with  Service Pack 1. I  am using VMWare Workstation 6.5.

The guest machine is setup, initially, as 1-cpu machine, 1GB RAM and 24 GB Harddisk. I am using iso image as the cd-rom. The RC is 64-bit. When booting  up for the 1st time it complaint that could run under the guest machine, but I forgot to capture the message. VMWare also highlight that the machine is VT-capable but the functionality is not enabled.

So, shut down the machine. Boot up and enter the BIOS. Took me some time to figure out where the setting for VT is at the BIOS. Enabled the VT and restart the PC. Run VMWare and tried the Windows 7 and voila it works like a charm. Not sure what the VT setting had to do with that ….but if it works just let it be.

The installation went on very smooth. All the virtual hardware were detected, graphic, network, sound etc. without a hitch. The proses may be a bit longer due to the ISO image being stored in a server in IIUM ’s data centre.

At the end of installation, the system used up about 12 GB of storage.  That’s quite large, but should not be an issue nowadays. The system is very responsive, although I cannot test the aero effect since the ssytem is in  a virtual machine.

Looking at  RC operating I have to agree with many writers out there, Windows 7 is definitely much leaner than Vista, and  performs much faster than Vista but may not be as  fast as XP. I like the Desktop Gadgets, which now does not require sidebar. My experience with sidebar suggest that it is rather resource intensive.

Windows 7 is installed with IE 8.  Looks leaner than IE 7 and have some new feature such as web-slices, and  suggested site, and other tools. IE8 is definitely something to test on its own.

The desktop interface got facelifted. The start menu is still there, more refined. Recently used document are placed next to the applications that invoke it. For example the addresses of previous Remote Desktop  session are pinned next to remote desktop connection icon. Sticky notes is there to so we can reduce the paper usage.

The taskbar also had a few modifications. Open items are grouped together, and you can close the windows from the task pop-up menu. Inactive icon are grouped and hidden; accessible by clicking a small triagle icon on the taskbar. Neat feature.

When I tested the beta of Windows 7, I had problem with the wireless network. IIUM is using Aruba Network for its wireless network infra-structure. Clients are required to register their MAC address. The OS must support WPA-Enterprise and Protected Entensible Authenticate Protocol (PEAP). Aruba had provided software to allow PEAP in OS, but it doesn’t work for Windows 7. I shall test on that.

Overall, I am happy with Windows 7 performance. It looks solid, lean and faster. I shall test the OS physical desktop and laptop later.