x(perts)64

Interesting review of Arctic Cooling's CPU heatsink/coolers on AnandTech today. I've been using and very much liking the Freezer Pro line of coolers from them for a while, finding them extremely quiet and very effective. Well, Anand agrees with me, and honestly, he's much more thorough and scientific about it. I have used these coolers on Opteron, Athlon 64, and Intel 775 socket motherboards, and they're now part of my standard order when building a new system. I've personally noticed a >5 C drop in temperature on a board where I had originally built it with the standard AMD fan on a 3800+. And the noise reduction was also quite noticeable. So, for ~$25 each? Well worth the money!

Charlie.

While I'm talking about Hyper-V and Server 2008, let me thank Ben Armstrong for a great post on how to get Hyper-V setup and configured on Server Core. Of course, as I just posted, I needed a bit of Terminal Server RemoteApps help to get it all working.

Charlie.

Originally known as "TS Rail", the RemoteApps feature of Windows Server 2008 makes Terminal Servers an absolute essential on everyone's network. There is no way I won't have a TS running full time from here on out, and RemoteApps is the reason. So, what's so cool about it? Utter transparency. The application behaves just as if I were running it on my local machine, but I don't have to have it loaded there - just on the terminal server. And it's a great workaround for applications that are ONLY available on Server 2008, or for any direct management of Server 2008 from your desktop, since we all know that the new AdminPak still isn't available for Vista. So, what got me excited about it today? Getting around a major PITA with Hyper-V. Here's the scenario:

• New Hyper-V server running Server Core (hp380-core-08, 192.168.51.8)
• It's in the other office
• It's not in the same domain as my desktop (it's in example.local)

There's no way to configure Hyper-V on the new server. I can't Remote Desktop to it (different domain, and it just doesn't like it.) Even if I could, the Hyper-V Management Console won't run on it because it's Server Core. So, what to do?

1. Remote Desktop in to the TS (hp350-ts-05, 192.168.51.5, running the x64 version of Windows Server 2008, build 17119, the public Hyper-V enabled version.)
2. Open ServerManager, add the Remote Administration feature, including the Hyper-V Tools
3. Open the Hyper-V Manager and connect to the HP380-core-08 server.
   
4. Open Administrative Tools ->Terminal Services -> TS RemoteApp Manager
5. Click on Add RemoteApp Programs in the Actions pane. Click Next.
6. Click Browse, navigate to Hyper-V folder, and change the File Name type to All Files (*.*).
7. Select virtmgmt and click Open. Repeat 6 and select vmconnect. Click Open.
8. Click Next and then click Finish.
9. Highlight the two files in the RemoteApps Programs section and click Create Windows Installer. Select the defaults for the wizard to create two .MSI files.

Now all you need to do is copy those MSI files to your local workstation, and install them like any other programs.

Once you've installed them, you can run the Hyper-V Manager, or the Hyper-V Connect application (the "VMRC" of Hyper-V) on your workstation. Even though Microsoft hasn't made either of these available for Windows Vista 64bit yet.

So, I used the Hyper-V Manager application to create a new VM (hp380-srv-03), and connected to it using the vmconnect application as shown here:

Now this is cool. And gives me the tools I need, on my desktop, transparently.

Charlie.

I've got a dual monitor setup, running off an ATI 1650 video card. Not exactly hot stuff, but adequate for most of my (non-gaming) needs. But the ATI software is the PITS. It keeps losing track of which monitor is which, turning off the older SGI 1600SW that I have connected to the DVI output (through a converter to the older technology that SGI used), and generally getting totally horked if I change anything - either through the "Personalization" applet or through the Catalyst application. So I hate to touch it once I get it working. I like to use the SGI as my main monitor, and the newer, 21" Samsung as my secondary monitor, since it rotates easily. But I rarely rotate it because the software from ATI is such crud. But when I'm doing research and reading long PDF documents, I really prefer to have that monitor rotated so I can read in Portrait mode.

After the last round of frustration with the POS that is Catalyst, I happened to remember a post on the 64bit newsgroup about a rotation utility. A quick search through Windows Mail and I found the thread that Homer and Dominic had in December. And in it was a link to the iRotate utility, which is a 32-bit app, but works just fine in Vista 64-bit. What a great little utility. No muss, no fuss, it just works. Supports running in in the system tray, or directly from the command line, and lets you control the rotation of either or both monitors. And, most importantly, it just works. Doesn't mess up your other settings, doesn't throw the whole rest of your screen settings out, it just rotates the display you want rotated and nothing else. A real pleasure to add to my list of useful utilities.

The same folks make a more full featured, video card independent, general purpose monitor configuration utility called PowerStrip, which will also do the job. But it's got way more features than I want or need, so I'll stick with iRotate for now.

Charlie.

The Windows Home Server Team Blog announced that Microsoft will soon be releasing (H1, 2008) a free, automatic, upgrade to Windows Home Server called "PowerPack 1" (PP1 for short.)

PP1 has lots of new features I think are important, including a new option for backing up the server itself to an external disk, but the most important new feature is support for Windows Vista x64. 

WHS is an exciting product and one I use every day to keep my desktops backed up. But until they release an update to resolve the potential data corruption issue (see the WHS Team Blog and the MS KB Article), please do NOT directly edit documents, pictures, videos or anything else that is stored on the WHS server. Instead, bring a copy down to your desktop, edit it, and then re-post it up to the server. It's a nuisance, but not as much of a nuisance as screwing up your only copy of something.

I've read enough to convince me that backups are safe from the issue causing problems with editing directly on the shared version of a picture or document, and that simple file copies are also fine. And I know that this is getting addressed as the highest possible priority inside the WHS team. As well it should be. But still, I want that fix more even than I wanted a 64bit connector.

Charlie.

There was a really useful post on the 64bit newsgroup today from Carlos about how to find a driver for a generic device. I'm going to paraphrase it here, but the basic process is to get the hardware ID from the device and use that to find the real manufacturer (using PCI Database), then use Google (or your preferred search engine) to find equivalent adapters that could have drivers. A neat trick, and my thanks to Carlos for posting it.

From Carlos' post:

"Regarding your "old" Motorola USB wireless network adapter there is always a
chance that the same chipset may be used or produced by another manufacturer.
Go to Device Manager, right click on your USB adapter, go to the detail
tabs, choose Hardware ID and take note of the VID and PID entries.
The first one identifies the real manufacturer and the second one the device
itself.
Go here: http://www.pcidatabase.com/
And input your VID in the dialog box in order to find out the real
manufacturer.
Try googling from there on with that info, VID PID and manufacturer, in
order to find equivalent USB adapters that might have Vista x64 drivers.
That worked for me with an unknown brand webcam for which I found drivers in Genius.
Carlos"

Thanks, Carlos.

Charlie.