Installing WPN111 on Windows 7 Beta

Posted by in Guides

They say it can not be done. I am here to prove them wrong. That is correct, you can run the Netgear WPN111 USB 802.11b/g card in Windows 7. It’s a little cumbersome, but possible. Here is how you do it. Note that you can leave the USB adapter plugged in during the entire process (that is what I did).

First, grab the latest WPN111 drivers from Netgear’s website. Then, right click and select “Run as administrator”. Continue on through the prompts, when it gets to the point of setting up networks use Task Manager to kill the installer. If you do not kill the installer, the finding networks portion will fail, causing it to automagically uninstall itself.

Now, open up device manager (right click on “Computer” select “Properties” and on the left sidebar click “Device Manage”). Under “Other devices” your WPN111 should show up with a nice warning sign. Select it, and right click, select “Update Driver”. Now select the “Browse my computer for driver software” option. Search in the location “C:\Program Files\NETGEAR\WPN111\Driver” for 32bit Windows and “C:\Program Files (x86)\NETGEAR\WPN111\Driver” for 64bit Windows. Then press “Next” if everything goes correctly, near your clock the WiFi signal icon will show up.

This method was tested on a 64bit install of Windows 7 Beta 1. It should work on 32bit installs as well. Though it seems to work, a few words of advice. First off, do not use WEP, instead use WPA or WPA2. I was unable to get WEP to work on this particular card in Windows 7. Also note a Netgear prompt may show up on startup, do press “Accept” and then tell it you want to use the “XP” wireless manager. If you fail to do this you will have to redo the driver installation.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

Breadcrumb NavXT 3.1.0

Posted by in WordPress > Plugins

Welcome to the 3.1.0 branch of Breadcrumb NavXT, to your right you’ll notice paged archives, searches, and the front page all work in a more coherent manner. In the back you’ll notice that the administrative interface has been tweaked to match the look and feel of WordPress 2.7 even better than before. You’ll also notice that the tabbed interface, once a separate plugin, is now built in.

All included translations should be up to date, including the German translations that fell behind since the 3.0.0 release.

You can grab the latest version of Breadcrumb NavXT from the Breadcrumb NavXT page.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

Cran-Berry 2 Mockup 1

Posted by in WordPress > Themes

Just in the initial design stages of Cran-Berry 2. Layout wise I want to experiment with things a little and doubt the final release will look much like the mockup. This was mainly an exercise in using Photoshop to make grungy textures. It also was a bit of a test with ICC profiles for my HP LP2475w. I like the color scheme and it or a variation of it will be what is used in Cran-Berry 2.

A incomplete, grungly look at the next berry theme?

A incomplete, grungly look at the next berry theme?

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

A Tad Delay

Posted by in WordPress > Plugins

As it is now apparent, Breadcrumb NavXT 3.1 was not released last week. Simply put, I ran out of time, fixing the paged feature was a priority for this release and it was not ready. At the moment, the paged function is fixed for paged category archives, search results, and the home page. Fixing date archives is in progress, as is for tag archives. For multi-paged posts and pages there is not simple method to fix this, and I’ll be looking into that later this week. That part may not make it into 3.1.

Currently the release time table looks like this. Tomorrow night what will be fixed for version 3.1 will be done and in the SVN trunk. Translators will be notified tomorrow night and will be given five to seven days to respond with updated translations. That places the release around Monday, the 26th.

Also, qTranslate users, as of qTranslate 2.1.4 it appears to work properly with Breadcrumb NavXT. That includes Breadcrumb NavXT options and output.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

Windows 7 Beta 1

Posted by in Reviews > Software

Like with Vista, I’m beta testing again. This time, I’m using something a little more powerful, my laptop. Since it came with Vista, some direct comparisons can be done. The first thing to note is Windows 7 Beta 1 is just that, a beta. Though I have yet to have something on it crash, there are some visual bugs that need to be worked out. In certain circumstances I am getting visual corruption in Aero. One thing that was improved right off the bat was wireless networking support. Vista was much better than XP, likewise Windows 7 is much better than Vista in this regard.

Booting does not seem much faster than with Vista, but I am using a slightly slower hard drive, and all my ready boost stuff is disabled at the moment. The sound driver that was installed did not work for the built in speakers on my laptop, but installing a Vista driver for it resolved the issue. Like Vista, the automatic installation of drivers is improved greatly over XP. Unlike Vista, in Windows 7 more information about the devise, and process the installer is following is available. Most devices are just plug-n-play with Windows 7, even more so than with Vista.

The window peaking, and new taskbar are two things I’d throw onto the improvement list. On the taskbar you can move around the currently active applications in a manner that reminds me of Avant Window Navigator (OS X is probably like that too). The mouse gestures will take a little bit to get used to and fully learn, so I won’t comment fully on them at this time.

There are still quite a few problems, but hey, it’s a beta so it’s my job to let Microsoft know about them. The first issues is FTP support, it sucks. Vista FTP support wasn’t much better than XP, they both have issues if you double click on an file (they both try to open the files in Internet Explorer). In Windows 7 Beta 1 I can not even log into my FTP folder, all authenticated FTP accesses fail with the error “The handle is invalid.”

Printer drivers for older USB devices do not exist. My HP Officejet v40 (which is built better than most new printers) had drivers built in to Windows since XP. In Vista the included drivers were slow and made printing painfull, in Windows 7 the drivers are not there. HP does not even distribute Vista drivers for the Officejet v40, so unless you have Vista and rip the drivers out of it, or are resourceful with Google, you are SOL.

There are some screen corruption issues, where Aero flakes out, or the font does not render properly. The font issue is reproducible, go add a printer, and scroll quickly through the driver listing (not using the scroll wheel but instead the scroll bar). It is a flaw in the rendering of the letter ‘e’, and specifically the horizontal line is too thick (two to three times the thickness it should be). The fact that a screen capture using the Print Screen button captures this points to a rendering issue caused by windows rather than a driver issue. Using the ClearType configuration utility (a quick, six step, which text chunk looks best ‘test’ ) seems to resolve this issue.

The Aero corruption issue may be a graphics driver issue. So far I have not found a method that reliably reproduces the issue. It will some times affect the taskbar, when opening and closing windows, or minimizing and maximizing them. Sometimes it will affect the titlebar of an application.

Overall Windows 7 is shaping up to be a good replacement for Vista and XP. Sure the Beta has some bugs, but then again it’s a beta.

-John Havlik