vincentkong.com » Windows

Virtual Deskops for Windows

Vincent Kong — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 04:19:27 +0000

My computer desktop in the office is always clutter with many windows of open applications, and since I couldn’t get a second monitor I decided to go for an alternative solution: virtual desktops. The concept of virtual desktops is not new, it’s available on many operating systems such as Mac OS, and Ubuntu, but for some reason Windows doesn’t have this feature.

VirtuaWin is a virtual desktop manager for the Windows operating system. After installing VirtuaWin, I configured it with the settings displayed in the screen shots below.

To navigate between virtual desktops (also called ‘workspace’), I simply drag the mouse to the edge of the screen.

Installing Windows 7 on Fujitsu LifeBook U820

Vincent Kong — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 04:02:39 +0000

UPDATE: Fujitsu has released updated Windows 7 drivers which includes the missing drivers mentioned before in this blog.

Even before Windows 7 was officially released, many owners of the Fujitsu LifeBook U820 had tried out the Windows 7 beta version and had nothing but praises for it. A week after Windows 7 released I purchased my own electronic digital distribution and created bootable DVD to try out on my U820. The Fujitsu support site had also released U820 Windows 7 compatible drivers.

Fujitsu didn’t provide any “Chipset” or “Video” drivers for Windows 7 therefore I downloaded the ones for Windows Vista and installed those instead. To properly install the drivers for Windows Vista, it needed to be ran in Windows Vista compatibility mode.

Right click on the executable file and select “Properties”. Check off “Run this program in compatibility mode for:”, and select “Windows Vista” from the drop down. Finally, check off “Run this program as an administrator”.

To resolve the unknown devices found in the Device Manager, I installed the “Fujitsu System Extension Driver: FUJ02E3″ and “Fujitsu HotKey Driver FUJ02B1”, followed by the “Fujitsu System Extension Utility” and “Fujitsu HotKey Utility”

To enable the 3 buttons below the screen, I installed the “Button Driver”, “Button Utilities” (for Windows Vista), and the “Fujitsu Zoom Utility”

The touch screen wouldn’t calibrate properly but was resolved by installing the “Pen” driver.

The “GPS” driver for Windows 7 was not provided as well, therefore I used the Windows Vista driver for that as well.

Other drivers that I installed were:

Audio
Bluetooth
Camera
Fingerprint Driver
Fujitsu Mobility Center

Drivers that I did not install:

Media Slot
Power Saving Utility
WLAN (Atheros)
WWAN (Sierra Wireless – AT&T) UMTS

Creating Bootable Windows 7 DVD from Electronic Digital Distribution Files

Vincent Kong — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 01:52:10 +0000

Last week I purchased Windows 7 Professional through an online store where they let me download my copy as an electronic digital distribution. The downloaded files were not a single ISO image but consisted of 3 files: Win7-P-Retail-en-us-x86.exe, setup1.box, and setup2.box. This was annoying because I had to take the files and create a bootable ISO image which can be burned onto a DVD myself.

Creating Bootable Windows 7 ISO image

Place the downloaded files (Win7-P-Retail-en-us-x86.exe, setup1.box, and setup2.box) in the same directory e.g C:\Win7Pro.
Run the Win7-P-Retail-en-us-x86.exe executable to extract and unpack the installation content. A new directory will be created C:\Win7Pro\expandedSetup which will contain all the Windows 7 setup files.
Download the Oscdimg CD/DVD Premastering Utility and copy it into the directory C:\Win7Pro
Open the command prompt and run the following command:
C:\Win7Pro\oscdimg.exe -bC:\Win7Pro\expandedSetup\boot\etfsboot.com -u2 -h -m -lWIN7PRO C:\Win7Pro\expandedSetup\ C:\Win7Pro\Win7Pro.iso

When the command has finished, a bootable Windows 7 UDF format ISO image (Win7Pro.iso) will be created in the directory C:\Win7Pro directory which can be burned into a DVD. The ISO image can also be used to create a bootable USB drive with the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool.

Running GUI Software from Remote Servers with Xming

Vincent Kong — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 03:50:31 +0000

Xming provides an implementation of the X Windows System (X11 server) for Microsoft Windows. Its useful when needing to use a GUI application on a remote server that doesn’t provide remote desktop access.

Installing Xming

Installing Xming on Windows is easy; download the binary file and follow the installation wizard.

To configure Xming run XLaunch from the Start Menu, otherwise run Xming to start up the application.

When started an icon would appear on the taskbar.

Configure X11 Forwarding in PuTTY

Before establishing and SSH connection go to Connection -> SSH -> X11 in the configuration window and check the “Enable X11 forwarding” box.

PuTTY X11 Forwarding

After SSH connection has been established any GUI application can be run by executing it from the command prompt e.g. the Thunar file manager for Xubuntu

Running Thunar in Windows with Xming

More detail information can be found here.

Running Windows Within Windows

Vincent Kong — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 04:10:50 +0000

A while back my workplace’s information security department decided to increase the security of our PCs. The increase in security meant my computer was more locked down with some administration privileges removed, and was being very heavily monitored. Not wanting to through to all the approval process to install free/open source software which aren’t company standards, I decided to create a virtual machine so I can still have my sandbox to play with.

VirtualBox is an open source software from Sun Microsystems that allows a “guest” operating system to run on top of an existing “host” operating system. A portable version is available at http://vbox.me, giving you the ability to create a virtual machine on a portable drive.

Creating a Virtual Machine

Creating a virtual machine with VirtualBox is very intuitive, just click on the “New” icon and go through the “New Virtual Machine Wizard”

Sun VirtualBox

New Virtual Machine Wizard

After you have completed the wizard you will be presented a screen with all the details of the virtual machine you just created. I’ve created a Windows XP virtual machine.

Windows XP Virtual Machine

To install the operating system onto your virtual machine. In the “Details” tab, click on the “CD/DVD-ROM” settings and check off the “Mount CD/DVD Drive” check box.

CD/DVD-ROM Settings

Insert the installation disc of the operating system in your ROM drive and click on the “Start” icon to being the installation.

Installing Windows XP

After the installation has completed un-mount your CD/DVD drive or change the boot sequence in VirtualBox before starting your virtual machine again, and you are done.

Running Windows XP Within Windows XP

Downgrading Fujitsu LifeBook U820 to Windows XP Tablet PC

Vincent Kong — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 05:24:08 +0000

I brought the Fujitsu LifeBook U820 UMPC shortly after it was released 4th quarter last year. With a rotatable touch screen for tablet mode, Bluetooth, GPS, WiFi, memory card readers, and a camera, it had all the gadgets I needed built in a very lightweight and compact computer. The only dissatisfaction was Windows Vista, the default OS it came with. The Intel Atom Processor Z530 was simply not power enough to support such a … piece of software.

Fujitsu probably also knew about this because I managed to find U820 drivers for Windows XP Tablet PC on their support website. Without anything to lose, I decided to give it a shot.

Fujitsu Windows XP Tablet PC Drivers

I managed to find a copy of Windows XP Tablet PC and did a fresh install on my U820. The first thing I learned was the drivers didn’t install properly without Service Pack 3 and .NET Framework 2.0 or above.

Before doing anything else, the first set of drivers I installed were the “Chipset” and “Video (Intel)”.

To enable the 3 buttons below the screen, I installed the “Button Driver” and “Button Utilities”.

Next, to resolve the unknown devices found in the Device Manager, I installed the “Fujitsu System Extension Driver: FUJ02E3″ and “Fujitsu HotKey Driver”, followed by the “Fujitsu System Extension Utility” and “Fujitsu HotKey Utility”

The touch screen wouldn’t calibrate properly but was resolved by installing the “Pen” driver.

The rest of the drivers were pretty intuitive and could be installed in any order.

The drivers which I didn’t install were:

AT&T Communication Manager
AT&T Service Activation
Fujitsu Power Saving
LAN
Pointing
WWAN (Sierra Wireless)

As expected, the computer was a lot more responsive and significantly faster when running Windows XP. The only issue is the volume scroll wheel doesn’t work until the computer wakes up from Standby.

WinPatrol

Vincent Kong — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 04:07:32 +0000

To provide my computer with even more protection against security threats such as viruses, spywares, and rootkits, I recently installed WinPatrol an intrusion prevention system. Unlike traditional security programs which scans your hard drive to search for threats that has already been installed on your system, WinPatrol takes a snapshot of your critical system resources and alerts you to any changes that may occur without your knowledge.

Windows XP Themes

Vincent Kong — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 23:36:42 +0000

Windows XP has been around since 2001, and after using it for such a long time, I’ve gotten really bored with the theme. Other than the blue, green, and silver theme, Microsoft does provide the Zune Theme, but that’s about it.

Microsoft load Windows XP themes (.msstyles) files by using a DLL called uxtheme.dll, unfortunately for compatibility and branding reasons, Microsoft made uxtheme.dll only run Microsoft digitally signed .msstyles files. Thus if you want to install a 3rd party theme, you’ll need to disable Microsoft’s digital signature protection for .msstyles. This can be done by installing the uxtheme.dll patch which can be found in various places if you do a search.

To Install the patch just overwrite the existing uxtheme.dll in the C:\Windows\System32 (make sure to backup the original) and reboot the computer. The harder part is looking for a theme you like there are many sources available such as:

If you don’t want to go through all the hassle of patching the uxtheme.dll you may want to visit the website CyrstalXP.net which provides theme packages they refer to as Bricopacks, which are very easy to install. For me, I installed the Vista Inspirat Ultimate 2.

If you are updating Windows XP with a new service pack, it’s recommended that you uninstall the Bricopack first then reinstall after the service pack. Refer to About Bricopacks and Windows XP SP3 for more information.

Running Windows Application on Ubuntu

Vincent Kong — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 16:24:51 +0000

Wine is a software application which allows Unix-like computer operating systems run programs that were originally written for Microsoft Windows. The Wine developers released the first beta version of Wine (version 0.9) on October 25, 2005 after 12 years of development.

Installing Wine

It’s recommended that you installed the latest version of Wine, unfortunately the version that is included in Ubuntu is often a few versions behind. To get the latest version you’ll need to edit the /etc/app/sources.list and add Wine’s own apt repository.

$ sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Enter the following at the end of the file:

deb http://wine.sourceforge.net/apt binary/

After the changes have been done, run the following command to update the package cache:

$ sudo apt-get update

Finally to install Wine with the command:

$ sudo apt-get install wine

During the installation it will recommend you to install the msttcorefonts (Micrsoft True Type fonts) and cabextract (a tool for extracting the conts of Microsoft .cab archives) as well.

$ sudo apt-get install msttcorefonts cabextract

Configuring Wine

To configure Wine run the Wine configuration utility:

$ winecfg

Note this utility doesn’t need a sudo user to run it.

Once the command is executed, the Wine configuration directory will be created in /home/username/.wine. As well, a tabbed Wine configuration interface will appear. The interface will allow you to adjust various parameters of your Wine installation for the currently logged in user, e.g, the version of Windows that you want Wine to behave like, but everything will work fine with the default settings.

If you want to add a CD-ROM drive:

Click on the “Drive” tab.
Click on the “Add” button to create a new Windows D: drive
Click on the “Browse” button to select the path to your CD-ROM e.g. /media/cdrom0
Click on the “Apply” button to finish.

Installing a Windows Application

To install an Windows application just type the wine command e.g.

$ wine "utorrent.exe"

If you are using an application that works with Wine, the installer will launch and install the application into the mock Windows filesystem in your .wine directory. After the installation has completed you will be able to find the installed program under the menu “Applications” -> “Wine”.

If it doesn’t show up you can run the application in the command prompt:

$ wine "c:\\Progam Files\\utorrent\\utorrent.exe"

Microsoft Origami on Fujitsu LOOX U50X/V

Vincent Kong — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 03:04:40 +0000

In Japan, I brought myself a UMPC (Fujitsu FMV-BIBLO LOOX U50X/V). Unfortunately, the whole system was in Japanese, thus I had to convert things back to English by installing an English version of Windows Vista, and installing the English drivers for the Lifebook U1010.

One software package which I had remaining and wanted to install Microsoft Origami Experience Pack, a software package specifically designed for UMPC. After downloading the software from the Microsoft website.

When I attempted to run the installation I got the error “Origami Experience runs only on Ultra-Mobile PCs running with Windows Vista”. This was puzzling to me as my computers satisfied both conditions. Frustrated, I did some research and finally found a workaround.

Download the Microsoft Windows Software Development Kit for Windows Vista. Apparently, the Origami installer checks the device screen sizes and disallow itself to be installed on any device with a screen wider than 7 inches. The SDK will be used to remove this restriction from the installer.
Run the SDK setup.exe file and under the Installation Options uncheck everything except the “Win32 Development Tools”.
After the installation has been completed go to the directory C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0\Bin and run the file called orca.exe which is the MSI Editor that we will use to hack the Origami msi file.
After the ORCA has been installed, run it from the start menu, and open OrigamiExperiencePack.msi by going to File -> Open from the menu.
On the left panel of the application, scroll down and click on InstallExecuteSequence and then on the right panel click on the LaunchConditions item and delete it.
On the left panel again, look for the InstallUISequence item and then delete the LaunchConditions item from the right panel again.
Finally save your changes, and run the Origami MSI file again. You should be now able to installation the package!