VmWare Player disable beep

Did you try to install something like CentOS onto VmWare player and noticed that every time you are pressing a key in the wrong time you got a really annoying "beep" ? For example you start writing a file name and press TAB key to autocomplete it, but if no file is found you get a beep. I often work during the night on my pc and I really don't want to disturb everybody with all these beeps, so I want to disable it! Luckly I found this is very simple to obtain, you just need to: 1. turn off every VmWare Player virtual machine already running 2. go to "%programdata%\VMware\VMware Player" folder , on Windows7 %programdata% is "C:\ProgramData" so the full path is C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware Player"" 3. edit (notepad) the file "config.ini" 4. find and change, or add, the line: mks.noBeep = "TRUE" 5. save the file and start the VmWare Player virtual machine, it should be silent now bye Digger

Windows 8.1 update doesn't appear in the store

I lost a lot of time trying to understand why on some windows 8 installation the 8.1 updtate didn't appear. There are multiple reasons why this could happen. But I find I nice and automatic way to detect what the issue is, there a tool from microsoft called "Windows 8.1 Update troubleshooter" that analyze the pc and tell you why it is not appearing. Here the link : http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=395014 Download it and run it, then follow the instructions, at the end it should say you WHY you don't see the update. Digger

ASUS Memo Pad 8 USB Drivers (Android development , ADB)

Hi all,
if you are trying to develop using a Windows pc connected to a ASUS Memo Pad 8 and like me have problems because ADB doesn't see the device (adb devices return empty list), try to go to device manager and check how many devices you see related to the tablet.
I had 2 :

1.KOOL (microsoft drivers)
2.Another one (I don't remember the name, could be KOOL again) with an exclamation point

The first (kool) it seems it doesn't matter, I had the driver running but ADB was not working.
The problem is the second one.

After many tries I discovered that the correct drivers are (incredibly) automatically loaded by windows online !
Exactly, right click, update software driver, search online and you are done.

I lost a lot of time because it was not working, simply because my Windows update service was disabled :(
Once enabled I solved the issue.

In case the online update is not working for you, I copied the driver folder downloaded by windows for you, please take note it's for windows 7 64bits (maybe it also works for other 64bit W version, Vista and 8 but I dind't tested so at your own risk)

Uncompress it somewhere, then go in device manager, right click on the device with the exclamation point, update drivers, search the driver in the computer, browse to the folder where you uncompressed the file and you should be ok

http://webcoding.altervista.org/files/AsusMemoPad8_W764.zip

Windows 2012 CORE add minimal GUI (management interface)

Hi all,
Windows 2012 permits us to switch between GUI and CORE version of the operating system.
Core is good due to lower resource usage, GUI is good because you don't need to remember a lot of powershell commands to administer the server.

There is also another configuration in the middle, the minimal graphical interface, I mean , server manager for example, but without "explorer" and Internet Explorer...

So in this post we will se how to start from a W2012 CORE installation and add the minimal GUI.

1. insert the W2012 installation CD, let's say in the D: drive
2. check wich index to use from the install.wim file from the cdrom:

dism /get-wiminfo /wimfile:d:\sources\install.wim

this will return a list of w2012 images version available in the wim file, ordered by "index".
We need to find the gui versions (the one without the core label) :

In this case for example I can use the index=2, server standard

3. we need to mount the image from index 2 just found to local disk, let's say to a new folder called c:\mount

md c:\mount
dism /mount-wim /wimfile:d:\source\install.wim /index:2 /mountdir:c:\mount /readonly

4. now we have in c:\mount the windows 2012 installation files available, we can go on adding the gui

powershell

Install-WindowsFeature Server-Gui-Mgmt-Infra –Source c:\mountdir\windows\winsxs

in the end you'll be required to reboot the machine (you could add -restart to the command above if you are ok with an automatic restart )

After the reboot and the login what you'll find will be a command prompt and server manager automatically opened and ready to be used:

Windows 7 8 hotspot

Hi,
if you want to create on your Windows 7/8 an hotspot for your mobile device read below:

1. check wifi
check that the pc wireless is running (did you switched on the wireless switch?, did you move to "on" the software switch in windows?)

2. check the drivers
open a CMD prompt AS ADMINISTRATOR, run this command to verify the wifi driver support hotspot :

netsh wlan show drivers

you'll see a lot of information, but you are interested in this line:

Hosted network supported  : Yes

if you have a "no" maybe you are using microsoft drivers from the OS, or an old driver from the manufacturer, so try to download the latest driver you can find for your wifi network card, install it, reboot and then check again if it turned to "yes". If you still see "no" maybe your network card simply DOESN'T SUPPORT creating hotspost, sorry, job finished.

3.create the hotspost network:
netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=forandroid key=12345678

if you go in control panel , device manager, from menu view show hidden device, under network adapters section you should see something like

Microsoft Virtual WiFi Miniport Adapter
or
Microsoft Hosted Network Virtual Adapter

4. start it:
netsh wlan start hostednetwork

and if you open the "Control Panel\Network and Internet\Network Connections" from the control panel you should see the new virtual network card created, rename it something like "HotSpot" to better identify it

5. share the connection
now edit the properties for the network card that is connecting to internet on your pc (maybe the ethernet card, or a internet key etc), go to the sharing tab and select the "Allow other network users to connect through this computer internet connection"
from the dropdown menu select the hostednetwork adapter created before (the one renamed in point 4)

from now on you would be able to connect to the "forandroid" network using password "12345678".

From the next reboot the network should be still there, you would just need to start it with the last command

note:
in case in step 4 you see someting like
"The hosted network couldn't be started.."
double check the initial steps in this guide, probably you don't have the wifi turned on, or the driver is not supporting the hostednetwork

in internet there are other cases/soultion about this type of error, about power saving and other, give it a try

bye
Digger

VB.NET ESC button to close Form

It happened today that I was trying to close a form in a VB.NET application using the ESC key.
Usually if you have a Cancel button on the form or similar you can simply set the CancelButton property of the form to that button, but in my case I didn't have that button on the form nor I want to add one.

I tried using the KeyDown event, but, strange, pressing ESC or every other key didn't fire the event routine.

As I didn't have time to investigate and find out why it happened I preferred to search in internet for some easy and fast solution, I find one post from Adam Butler that worked,
it was in C# so I had to simply translate in VB.NET

here's the code to put in your form code to be closed:

Protected Overrides Function ProcessCmdKey(ByRef msg As Message, ByVal keyData As Keys) As Boolean

        If (keyData = Keys.Escape) Then

            Me.Close()

            Return True

        End If

        Return MyBase.ProcessCmdKey(msg, keyData)

    End Function

BCDBOOT failure when attempting to copy boot files (and an operating system wasn't found

If you, like me, tried to deploy Windows8 (maybe for 7 is the same) using a wim image and then used the command

bcdboot c:\windows

and you got the message "failure when attempting to copy boot files" probably you are in the situation I was.
I tried to solve using this command:

bcdboot c:\windows /s s:

(where S: is the small system partition) and apparently with success, but after rebooting the machine you got:

An operating system wasn't found. Try disconnecting any drives that don't contain any operating system.

after many unsuccesful test and many investigation, I arrived to the conclusion the issue is related to the UEFI support of the machine (also if when starting, it appears to be a normal BIOS)

so I solved the issue with the command :

bcdboot c:\windows /s s: /f ALL

that ALL means copy both the BIOS and UEFI files to the disk

Remember S is the system partition, not the partition containing windows files

Origin login window not showing

Today I was trying to run Battlefield 3 but the only thing obtained was the small Origin icon in the bar and in the hidden icons area.

So I went to the log path to see what was going on :

C:\ProgramData\Origin\Logs\Client_Log.txt

In there all was looking fine until the last few lines:

  29     mar 5 12:16:15.851  Event     Origin::Client::LoginViewController::loadLoginPage                          6720      loadLoginPage[https://accounts.ea.com/connect/auth]

  30     mar 5 12:16:15.855  Event     Origin::Client::LoginViewController::validateOfflineWebApplicationCache     6720      Web application cache path: C:/Users/XXXXXX/AppData/Local/Origin/Origin

  31     mar 5 12:16:15.861  Event     Origin::Client::LoginViewController::show                                   6720      Show login window

  32     mar 5 12:16:17.103  Event     Origin::Client::LoginViewController::onUrlChanged                           6720      onUrlChanged: url = [https://signin.ea.com/p/pc/login]

It seems to say something like "I'm showing the login window" ... unfortunately the login window is not visible so what's going on? Then an idea came in my mind... maybe some issue with the video card? with the drivers? with the screen resolution or something like that? Well, some investigation and I found the problem:

The desktop screen COLOR DEPTH! incredible uh?

SOLUTION:

first close origin from the icon, right click, close, then :

1. right click on the desktop, Screen resolution

2. click link "advanced settings"

3. click the button "list all modes" (don't know exactly the text, I'm translating from my language)

4. be sure to select a resolution with 16.8 million colors (32bit), click OK, APPLY, OK

Try to start battlefield (or Origin alone) again and see if solved.

Remeber this is only one of the possible issue Origin has to start, there are a lot , including firewall issues, antivirus issues and others.

bye

Disable Skype integration in Outlook.com (web mail)

*** Sorry, This is not working anymore ***

Hi,
do you hate the new Skype integration in Outlook.com like me?

For me Skype and the mails are two different things, I don't want to mix them up, if I want to chat or talk I open Skype, if I open outlook.com is because I need to write or read some mail end of the story.

If you think like me, then this is what I did :

open the file

%systemroot%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

go to the end and insert this line:


127.0.0.1 skypewebexperience.live.com

That line simply means, when sombody on this pc will search for the ip address of "skypewebexperience.live.com" return the dummy ip address 127.0.0.1 instead, and as for sure the skype service is not on that IP address nobody will answer and skype integration will not work.

Save the file, the effect is immediate.

The effect of this is that when outlook.com try to connect to that address (for skype integration) it will fail and no integration will be available, voilà problem solved

To be honest I'm just testing this now, so not sure if there is some coutereffect, but until now it seems good.
I also tried to start Skype client and it seems everything is working fine there.

If you want to get back to the original situation just open the file again and remove that line or comment it putting a # in front of the line and save the file.

(or, if it's not an issue for you, you can disconnect microsoft account from skype account and then login to skype using the skype account, this way in outlook.com you'll not see skype automatically connected anymore)

bye
Digger

Vmware ESX 3.5 Virtual Center 2.5 client on 64bit OS

Hi,
I know this is a little bit old topic, but there is still people around using Vmware ESX 3.5 version with Virtual Center 2.5 and it happens to change the management desktop to windows 7 64bit and discover that the client installed from the Virtual Center server is not supported on 64bit OS

Around in internet there are some articles with a workaround, but they are old and outdated, the solution is really simple, download the latest version of Virtual Center 2.5 (I found Update 6c) like a .ZIP file,
unzip it, you'll find in there the client setup, that one is working on 64bit clients :)

Here the link where I downloaded it (you need to be logged on the site to open it) :
https://my.vmware.com/group/vmware/details?productId=20&downloadGroup=VC250U6C

WSUS computer not reporting status : Error 0x800b0001

WARNING: Digital Signatures on file C:\WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution\SelfUpdate\Default\wuident.cab are not trusted: Error 0x800b0001

This is the error I had in my c:\windows\WindowsUpdate.log while I was trying to get my XP computer updated by the WSUS Server I just installed.

After many time spent trying to fix the error in many way I discovered the problem was simply my WSUS server an old version while the XP machine was serching for a most recent WSUS.

So the solution was simply:

1. install WSUS 3.0 SP2 Over the previous WSUS 3.0 installation
2. install the WSUS patch: KB2720211
2. reboot the server

once the server was up and running:

3. on the client run this script (found in internet) :

net stop wuauserv /y
net stop bits /y
net stop cryptsvc /y

RMDIR /S /Q %systemroot%\SoftwareDistribution_Old
ren %systemroot%\SoftwareDistribution SoftwareDistribution_Old

regsvr32.exe c:\windows\system32\wuapi.dll /s
regsvr32.exe c:\windows\system32\wups.dll /s
regsvr32.exe c:\windows\system32\wuaueng.dll /s
regsvr32.exe c:\windows\system32\wucltui.dll /s
regsvr32.exe c:\windows\system32\msxml3.dll /s
regsvr32.exe c:\windows\system32\wuaueng1.dll /s
regsvr32.exe c:\windows\system32\wups2.dll /s
regsvr32.exe c:\windows\system32\wuweb.dll /s
regsvr32.exe c:\windows\system32\atl.dll /s

net start wuauserv /y
net start bits /y
net start cryptsvc /y

wuauclt.exe /resetauthorization
wuauclt.exe /detectnow
wuauclt.exe /reportnow


And after few minutes I seen my client asking me to install new updates, and on the WSUS server the pc appeared with its status. Problem solved :)