Coding Day

Finally I moved, but I have a little problem “no internet connection”.

Let’s agree that we are addicted to online world (at least I am). It has been 2 days I haven’t got the connection. I was using my phone to check mails and than realised to use with my laptop. So I set up a GPRS connection over Bluetooth from my laptop using my phone.

I set the browsers not to download images and e-mail clients to download only the headers of the mails to save some bytes.

Thanks to Windows Vista for making the Bluetooth connection that simple. I remember old days for finding the modem drivers for my phone and dial a *#1 combination to connect to the Internet. Now in a single window, I am on the internet.

First add your device to Bluetooth devices, than connect and handshake with your phone using Bluetooth.

Go to Control Panel\Network and Internet\Network Connections; you will see Personal Area Network.

Open its properties and “Connect”.



Done!.

Windows Vista new features has been started to implement by many hardware manufacturers. One of the features that I want to use mostly is Windows Sideshow.

The Windows Sideshow site points that :

Wouldn’t it be great if you could read an e-mail message, confirm a meeting location, or check a flight reservation without turning on your computer?

I really want to do that without switching on my computer. I don’t want to load the operating system just for checking mails. Windows Sideshow is basically a gadget interface. For the moment some interesting products are using  Windows Sideshow technology like motherboards, notebooks, bags. I mostly liked sideshow enabled notebook. I am sure there will be more interesting products in a wide range later this year.

With the adoption of Windows Sideshow, gadgets will be more important which will make Windows Sidebar more important product  among other gadget engines. Gadgets are small programs for many different purposes. Mostly they are programmed in XHTML and javascript. If you have an idea for a gadget programming them is not a big deal. I mostly found the gadgets I needed and hacked some of them to work much better :). Currently there are a few hundred gadgets in the Windows Gadget Gallery and is increasing everyday. I personally like the gadget idea although I prefer to use Yahoo Widget Engine because of the heads up display and the number of widgets. I use gadgets for e-mails, weather, system monitoring, alarms,  TV schedules, and some RSS feeds that I can ignore.  

When you download the PHP installer, it fails to install for Windows Vista. So you have to install it manually. Just download the zip file and extract it somewhere that you can remember.  Then you might want to manual installation instructions, but it won’t be correct for IIS7. Here is the guideline to install PHP to IIS7.

1. Copy the php.ini to windows folder. enable the needed extensions by editing the file. Give rights for the file, to IUSR user, so that IIS can access the file.

2. Run IIS Manager (inetmgr.exe)



3. For the main site, click to ISAPI Filters, right click to add or actions add to php ISAPI handler with the filter name that you want. Just point to php5isapi.dll file which is the isapi filter.



4. Than come back to main site, and click to ISAPI and CGI Restrictions, and click add a restriction. For ISAPI and Cgi path select php5isapi.dll file and give a desired name for description. Also don’t forget to click “Allow extension path to execute”
   
5. Make sure that after adding, php is allowed from the ISAPI and CGI Restrictions window.
   
6. On ISAPI and CGI Restrictions page, right click to php and click to “Edit feature Settings”, from there you need to select both of them to enable php extensions to work, like mysql, mssql or ssl extensions specified in my.ini
   
7. Go to main site again, and click for the “Handler Mappings”. Click to add “Script Map”. For the request path type *.php, executable is php5isapi.dll  Name is Php
   
8. It will ask for the script map to add, just click to yes.
   
9. Our php and extensions should work now, but we might want to add index.php file to look for a folder. From the main window, we click to “Default Document” and add index.php to the end of list.

That’s all for php and extensions to work.

I am a bit surprised when running ASP.NET 1.1 application on IIS7.  You don’t have to install .Net framework 1.1. I also suspected that if .Net 1.1 comes pre-installed, but my GAC (Global Assembly Cache) have only 2.0 libraries.

Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, according to IIS team this is because of the backward compatibility, but it might not be guaranteed. So if you happen to run your application (like me ) it is because of the backward compatibility of ASP.NET. At the end the application runs on ASP.NET 2.0 worker process.

C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\\VC> gacutil /l System.Data
Microsoft (R) .NET Global Assembly Cache Utility.  Version 2.0.50727.42
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

The Global Assembly Cache contains the following assemblies:
  System.Data, Version= 2.0.0.0, Culture= neutral, PublicKeyToken= b77a5c561934e089
, processorArchitecture=x86

Number of items = 1

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC>

Running Web Application

 All the code without change can work on IIS7. You can migrate your code to ASP.NET 2.0 but this is not a necessity. With a little configuration on IIS server you will be able to run your 1.1 compiled applications.

• After you open the IIS Manager (still inetmgr.exe), you either “Add Application” or  ”Convert to Application” to create your web application. With “Add Application” you will be able to choose any directory in your computer, but with “Convert to Application” you will only be able to choose from the virtual directories which is located under inetpub\wwwroot.

• We see “Add Application” dialog box opened. From there we select Application Pool to change DefaultAppPool.

• We select Classic .Net AppPool from the “Select Application Pool” dialog.

• Then we’re ready to go after setting the application pool to Classic .Net AppPool

• When we click browse, or look directly to the virtual directory, our site is up and running

Debugging

One more thing,  to debug your application you need to switch the application to windows authentication mode. This has also been changed in IIS7.

• In IIS Manager select from left, the web application virtual directory, then from right select authentication under IIS section.

• Then enable windows authentication to be able to debug your application.

Vista RTM Update

Apparently Toshiba decided not to support old M30’s for Windows Vista. Now it’s not possible to find common modules for vista. Their new driver so called “Toshiba Value Added Package” seems to work at first; however the hybernate and sleeping functions stops working after installing it. So it’s not worth to install it. Now the only thing specific to Toshiba that works is my display card and I can still get 2.0 aero score. Beside that Fn keys stopped working. Anyway my system is stable and fast, Windows Vista Power management is far better than Toshiba Powersave as well.

I just moved to Windows Vista RC1 last weekend. I installed and configured almost everything. However, there were some hardware issues after installing, and I have had a score of 1.0 which disables aero. 

Graphic Card

The graphic card driver was not installed, I always use the latest Nvidia drivers from the Nvidia site, but M30’s card Geforce FX Go5200 is not supported by the latest Nvidia drivers. You need to download the latest Vista drivers from Nvidia site then mod the nv_disp.inf file in the package. Here is an explanation on how to do that on Windows XP : GeForce FX Go5200 with latest ForceWare drivers | skriker. This still works with a little change. First you need to extract the contents of the driver file.

1. Add two lines to [NVIDIA.Mfg.NTx86.6.0] section
   %NVIDIA_NV34.DEV_0324.1% = nv_NV3x, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0324
   %NVIDIA_NV34.DEV_0324.3% = nv_NV3x, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0324
2. Add two lines to  ; Localizable Strings section
   NVIDIA_NV34.DEV_0324.1 = “NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5200″
   NVIDIA_NV34.DEV_0324.3 = “NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5200 “
3. Install it using the setup.exe

After doing that my score went to 2.0 which is still not high but I can see the visual goodies.

Toshiba Drivers

There is no driver for Toshiba Satellite on the download page. After a little googling I just found that  Toshiba provided some drivers for Tecra series. I just tried and seems to be working for me. Toshiba’s Windows Vista beta drivers page. Here is the list what I have installed

• Toshiba Common Modules version 6.04.00 Beta 1
• Intel Chipset Driver version 8.1.0.1006(Kit9095)
• Hotkey Utility for Display Devices version 2.9.3.0

You can find those drivers from the Vista beta drives site, I used Tecra M4 drivers but all of the models points to the same driver.

I then installed Toshiba Console from the Windows XP drivers.

Others

I tried to install Toshiba Power Saver, but it’s not working. I really liked the power manager of Windows Vista so I don’t need Power Saver at all. Infrared and SD Card drivers are not needed, because Windows Vista automatically install them.

Conclusion 

I have a rating of 2. Aero is working. All Toshiba keyboard Fn keys are working including Esc through F8 except F2, so I can do stand by, monitor, brightness etc. which are everything I want from my keyboard.