In that article, James Hutchinson mentioned that the ATO was suggesting that those users not working with a supported (ie Microsoft Windows) operating system but wishing to use the e-Tax system should install Windows on either a virtual machine, or use a utility like Boot Camp, and run Windows within that environment.

Of course, in order to do that, and regardless of whether they’re using a VM or Boot Camp, each user would need to go out and purchase a license for that Windows installation. Further, if a Mac user was to use VMWare’s Fusion, a further license cost would need to be incurred in the purchase of that software too.

Which raises the question: if that is your only need for those pieces of software, shouldn’t your purchase cost, for those licenses, be tax deductible?

My enquiries with the ATO basically confirmed this position. If your only use of the Windows license is to enable you to run Windows in order for you to complete your e-Tax return, then the cost of your license may be fully deductible.

If you were going to to use your Windows license for other purposes, then the cost would need to be apportioned.

Please note that this is not tax advice. You are advised to seek the help of a professional tax consultant in order to determine your own personal situation.

Until now.

The basic concept is that from Windows Explorer, you want to map a networked drive, and retain that mapped network drive so that it is persistent through multiple reboots and logins to that system. The problem is that the default installation of Windows 7 appears to support this feature (as happens quite seamlessly in XP), but in fact it doesn’t.

When you log on to a network volume and assign it as a mapped drive, there is a “Remember my credentials” checkbox on the login dialog. One would expect that this should add the login credentials to the Credentials Manager, so that the details are retained and you can automatically log in to that mapped drive the next (and every subsequent) time that you restart the Windows 7 system.

Entering credentials

Why else would you want to check the “Remember my credentials” checkbox, right?

Unfortunately, that isn’t how it happened for me, and every time I rebooted the system, I would see a message balloon pop up in the taskbar, and the mapped drive would contain a red X through it, indicating that the drive mapping could not be re-established.

Mapped drive is not connected

When I mapped the drive, this process had created a record in the Windows 7 Credential Manager, but this showed that the persistence of the login to the networked drive was just for the current session. This did not seem to me to be correct. Manually creating a record in the Credentials Manager also failed to rectify the problem.

After quite a good deal of research, I discovered that the actual source of the problem has nothing to do with the Credentials Manager, but instead relates to how the default group policies for SMB shares are set up when Windows 7 is installed. The default value is that the relevant policy is left unset, and that creates this problem when you wish to automatically log in to some SMB shares. This of course is how OS X drives are seen by Windows when they are set as mapped drives within your system, and that is why this problem seems to occur.

Fixing the problem requires editing the group policies. Not a difficult task, but it does entail changing some registry settings. If you are not comfortable with doing getting your hands dirty in the registry, stop now, or find someone who can do this. And be sure that you back up your registry before you start. If you screw up your registry, you might not be able to restart and use your system, so consider yourself warned.

To edit the Group Policies, we need to run the Group Policy Editor program. Press the Windows and R keys together to bring up the Run Program dialog, and then, in the Run dialog, enter gpedit.msc and press the OK button.

After a few moments the Group Policies Editor will open.

In the Group Policies Editor, open each of the following items in turn:

Computer Configuration
Windows Settings
Security Settings
Local Policies
Security Options

Now, right-click on the “Network security: LAN Manager authentication level” policy item, and then, from the context (pop-up) menu, select “Properties”.

Now select the “Local Security Settings” tab, and then, in the dropdown box, locate and select “Send LM & NTLM – user NTLMv2 session security if negotiated”.

Now click the OK button, and then finally, you may close the Group Policies Editor window.

The problem should now be fixed, and your mapped drive logins should now be persistent through multiple reboots of the system.

In starting to teach her how to use the computer, I noticed that the concept of double-clicking was not something that she was comfortable with, and so I looked for alternative solutions, the obvious one being that of just single-clicking on desktop icons.

While this was very easy to enable in XP, and it is also very easy to enable in Windows 7, the means for doing this is not immediately obvious. So, here is how you do it.

Start by opening Windows Explorer.  If the traditional menu bar (File, Edit, etc) is not visible, press the Alt key on your keyboard.

From the menu bar, select Tools, and then Folder options.

Windows Explorer Tools Menu

You should now be looking at the General tab on the Folder Options Dialog. In the second group, “Click items as follows”, you need to now select the first option, “Single click to select”.

Press the OK button to dismiss the dialog, and you’re done.

As an aside, for those with touch enabled system, you may wish to consider enabling this option on your systems. In my opinion, this greatly enhances the touch experience, eliminating the need for a double-touch, which I don’t believe works as well as a double click. Just touch momentarily – a bit longer than a click – and your applications open up for your pleasure.

For applications such as Skype and Adobe Audition, or just about any other application where real-time, live sound is a requirement, this made Windows 7 totally unusable. Seriously.

You simply could not talk and listen within that environment, without those delays affecting your input and output, and consequently, anything that I needed to that invloved live sound required me to reboot my system back into Windows XP in order to be able to perform these functions.

I am pleased to report that within the last week or so, Realtek have released a new set of drivers for their hardware, and these seem to mostly address these issues.

You do need to disable the “Listen to” feature, as that creates an even worse situation, but otherwise, I think I can now use Audition and Skype on Windows 7 without my work being reduced to a babbling piece of gibberish.

Well, no moreso than is normally the case.

Go to the Realtek website for the fix.

And of course, we felt a need to upgrade at least a couple of these to the all new, bright and shiny Windows 7, and so this has now been accomplished… but not without a little bit of pain.

Both of the systems that we wanted to upgrade are based upon Intel P35 chipsets running on Gigabyte motherboards, and my personal desktop system – a GA-P35-DS3R – proved to be a particularly troublesome install.

This was quite puzzling, as I’d experienced no issues when installing any of the Win7 betas that had been on offer, nor had I experienced any issues in running those betas.

By way of contrast, the Windows 7 RTM installation was particularly ugly: it would simply die mid-process, often (on repeated attempts) at what appeared to be a set of consistent points. While I would be able to struggle through and get what appeared to be completed installation – with, I think, four restarts after crashes along the way – the resulting system was anything but stable. Like the installation process, it too would just die. No blue screen, just a loss of video, along with a constant series of attempts to access one of the optical drives in the system.

Alternatively, the system might start issuing a high-ish pitch buzzing sound, which we couldn’t really track to any particular component.

Removing and swapping out memory sticks yielded no result, nor did removing and swapping out different HHDs. Changing the video card fared no better, and no matter what I Googled, no answer was forthcoming.

Turning to the Microsoft Upgrade Adviser, it suggested that I needed an upgrade to the drivers for the controller chips on the board, and while it seemed to offer a link to a source for those upgraded drivers, that was effectively just a circular link back to the same page. After some further Googling, I found what seemed to be the drivers I needed, but alas, they proved no more effective than any other solution I’d tried.

By now I was becoming quite frustrated: this should not be so hard, and surely this is just some sort of basic issue that is easily solved?

As it transpired, it is a very easy issue to resolve, once I’d found the solution, but of course that’s always the case.

Bottom line is that if you’re getting stuck with problems trying to install Windows 7 on a Gigabyte P35 motherboard, go into your BIOS settings and check your values for ‘C1E’ and ‘EIST’. These both need to be disabled, thus locking your CPU core speed, and this seems to address the problems I experienced. The solution was buried in a 6 page thread on sevenforums.com, and I thank that source for its resources.

Hopefully this post will be a little easier, or at least provide another reference to this problem, and most importantly, its resolution.

And yes, I’ve been using this new Windows 7 installation all day, just installing and setting up things, and I can honestly say that it truly is quite a pleasure to use.

Much of that is supposed to be good, but of course any such goodness is probably for each of us to decide. One thing that I found frustrating was the apparent absence of the old folder treeview in the left hand pane that you would see when you started Explorer using the Windows-E keyboard shortcut.

This became especially frustrating when I needed to copy files to a folder nested one level above the folder I was currently viewing using drag and drop. In the default Windows 7 Explorer view, the method for doing this is simply not immediately apparent. Or at least, it wasn’t to me.

I think the problem stems from the way that the icons and graphics in the left hand pane are now displayed: some of them fade in and out as you hover your mouse over the treeview, which may not be what you’re likely to be doing when you’re trying to figure out how to move a file or folder from where your Explorer view is currently located.

Ok, so we’ve identified the problem, and I think we now understand why it occurs. How do we address it?

Pretty simple, really, and the answer is, I’m afraid to say, painfully obvious, once understand what you’re now seeing. As you hover your mouse over the treeview, note the icons that now magically appear: these are your old open/close icons (the plus and minus symbols from Windows 2000 and XP) that you are probably accustomed to seeing.

Windows Explorer Default View

Hovering over the treeview in Windows Explorer

An unfilled right arrowhead icon is used to indicate an unopened folder, while a filled arrowhead, pointing down and to the right, indicates a folder that is open. Clicking on these icons toggles the folder view open and closed.

Treeview visible in Windows Explorer

And thus you now have your old treeview back.

Ok, yes, it’s Linux. Don’t be put off by that: it’s very easy to set up and use, and no specific Linux knowledge is needed to get going.

What is needed is a reasonable broadband connection however, as in order to get started, you need to download it. There are several different versions available from www.64studio.com: if you have a spare system with a 64 bit motherboard/CPU, get the full 64 bit installation ISO. There’s a similar version for those with 32 but CPUs, and for those who don’t have a spare system, there are equivalent Live CD images that you can grab. Whichever version you get, keep your coffee machine replenished, or have a good movie close at hand: the download sizes are all in the realm of 700MB or more. Plan your day accordingly.

The site contains full documentation instructing you in how to build the files into either an installation disk or a Live CD, so there’s no need for me to go over that here. There is one caveat that I do need to mention …

If you have a nVidia graphics card installed in your system, you might encounter some driver issues. This didn’t cause me any issues as my system was using an ATI graphics card, but please consider yourself warned.

Ok, the caveat’s done, so let’s get down to it. I’m going to discuss how you can start playing with 64 Studio’s Live CD and thus start using its tools, without needing to install anything on your existing system, and also without having to destroy anything on your system either. As noted above, there are instructions on 64 Studio’s website for building your Live CD. After downloading the correct image file, burn it to  blank CD.

Once that’s been done, running 64Studio is as easy as turning on your machine, placing the live CD into the CD drive, making sure that your system is set to boot from the CD, and let it go.

You should first of all see a simple Linux boot menu prompt, and then the Linux boot process will start.

Give it a minute or so, and you will be presented with your Linux Desktop. While this may look different from the current system that you might be using, rest assured that the differences, in a practical sense, are little more than cosmetic: you have a desktop, a task bar, and a menu button. In fact, you have four desktops – this is standard Linux stuff – but that is not important right now.

In the bottom left corner of the task bar you should see a footprint: that’s your “Start” button. Click it now to get the main system menu to appear, and then select “Sound & Video”. This will give you access to the sound and video applications’ menu, and as you can see, there’s quite a comprehensive array of applications available, ranging from configuring your sound devices, through to sound editors, instrument tuning tools, MIDI controllers, CD burning tools, and movie & video making tools.

As I said, comprehensive.

From here, it’s up to you: hook up a microphone, start Audacity, and start recording. Save your work and listen to yourself as the new, shining star! Do take note however that as you’re running from a live CD, everything that you save might only be saved into a ramdisk, meaning that if you turn the system off,  unless you take specific steps to move your output to permanent storage, then all of your work may be lost forever. That is probably the only disadvantage of running from a Live CD.

Play with different audio interfaces. Connect up your MIDI keyboard and try some of the tools that come with the distro.

Or …. (gasp!) … have a play with the Debian Linux distro that it’s rolled out on, and learn a little bit about Linux.

64 Studio is a simple to use suite of tools that is easy to get up and running, but gives you a lot of scope to explore and experiment, both in and well beyond the realm of your home recording studio.

And price is just right too!

In order to perform this evaluation, I took a couple of existing Word documents that I had, and I let Microsoft Word save them as docx, and then loaded them into Windows 7.

In fact, I actually took a couple of files that had been saved in Word’s doc format on my Mac, moved them to a PC and loaded them in Word 2007, checked the formatting, and then I saved that version of the document in docx format.

In saving as docx, Word presents you as with an option to save the file and preserve all formatting; this option was selected.

I then went to a Windows 7 Beta system, used Windows Explorer to navigate to the file in question, and then double-clicked on the filename, whereupon Windows 7 loaded the file.

While it satisfactorily loaded and read the file’s contents, I was disappointed to see that not all of the formatting had been preserved: line breaks and tabs had been misplaced, leading to a document that only somewhat resembled what I had started with.

Document as seen in MS Word

Document as seen in Windows 7

I accept and understand that this is just a beta version of the software, but even so, one has an expectation that when one nominates to retain existing formatting, that request is expected.

So this would seem to me to be one small area where the Microsoft development team needs to focus a little more attention.

Using the Snipping Tool couldn’t be easier. Start by clicking on the “Snipping Tool” item in your Start Menu.

The Snipping Tool Applet will be loaded.

To begin snipping (capturing a portion of the screen) press the “New” button. This will cause the screen to become dimmed, and permits you to select the section of the screen that you wish to capture.

Move your mouse to one corner of where you want to start your capture from, and then press your mouse’s primary button. This is usually the left button. With this button held down, drag the mouse to the diagonally opposite corner of the area that you wish to capture, and release the button.

The Snipping Tool Applet will reload itself, with a copy of the area that you’ve just selected.

You may now save a copy of this image using the Save button from the toolbar. Please take note of where you’re saving the image, so that you can, at a later time, retrieve the image when you need to use it.

Advanced users may want to know how to capture an image of transient screen elements, such as a menu, a pop-up menu, or a tool tip. Normally, these items disappear once they lose focus, which means that they’re not available for capture because, upon pressing the “new” button in the Snipping Tool, they’ve disappeared from view.

To circumvent that problem, load the Snipping Tool as described above, but don’t press the “New” button. Instead, navigate to the area of the screen and get the item you want captured to display itself. Once it’s displayed, press the Ctrl and PrintScreen keys simultaneously. This places your computer into capture mode, with the transient item remaining active and ready for capture.

It’s now a simple matter to select and capture the image, exactly as described above.

Wasn’t that easy?

]]> http://www.gadgetgrill.com.au/2009/01/13/windows-7-beta-snipping-tool/feed/ 0 http://www.gadgetgrill.com.au/2009/01/12/windows-7-beta-auto-login/ http://www.gadgetgrill.com.au/2009/01/12/windows-7-beta-auto-login/#comments Sun, 11 Jan 2009 23:08:54 +0000 Gary Stark http://www.gadgetgrill.com.au/?p=195 One way to secure your system against intrusion is to provide it with a user ID along with a password that is secure. In Windows 7, this is enforced as a part of the setup process.

As a result of this, every time that you start up your computer, it asks you to enter your password using your keyboard.

However, if you’re the only person who uses your PC, and you live in a somewhat secure environment, the need to provide your password upon every login can be the source of frustration and inconvenience to you, the user. Here’s how to bypass this process, and have your PC automatically log you in every time it starts up.

From your Windows 7 desktop, press the Start button.

In the Search box, enter “netplwiz” and press the Enter key. This will launch the Users Properties Applet.

Select the user for whom you wish to enable the automatic logon feature, and then uncheck the check-box that says “Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer”. Press the Apply button.

You will now be presented with the “Automatically Log On” dialog box, into which you now need to enter and confirm the selected user’s password. Do this in the provided text boxes, and then press the OK button.

You’re done!

The next time you restart your Windows 7 computer, it will be automatically logged on as the selected user.