Office 2007 With Wine

Every once in a while I need a real honest to Bill version of Microsoft Office. Not often, but it happens.

Now I have a three license copy of Microsoft Office Home and Student Edition, purchased back in the day when Child No. 1 had a Windows computer. That computer is long gone and replace by a Mac. I could install this copy on Hal's Windows partition, but that means I have to reboot and update Windows 7 every time I want to use the software. Irritating.

Then yesterday I was updating my Harmony Remote, and found that the update software would run on Linux under Wine. True, the fonts were ugly, but hey, it ran, and given that updating a remote is a run-up-and-down-the-stairs-10-times kind of thing, having one less step was a blessing.

Now I've tried Wine before, and never been all that happy with it. But maybe it's now good enough, so what the heck.

Having installed Wine via the Synaptic Package Manager, I went looking to see if there was help for the Office install on the internet, and lo and behold, I found How to Install Microsoft Office 2007 in Ubuntu (Under Wine).

What can I say? As I said, I already had Wine installed, so it was mostly point at setup.exe and click. What do you know, it worked, right down to finding the riched20.dll library and correcting it so that PowerPoint would run.

Now this was a copy of Office 2007, so it's a little out of date. Fortunately, Microsoft is providing extended support until 2017, so it's still viable. There was a problem, though: Microsoft Update wants to work with Internet Explorer, and I don't have that installed under Wine — in fact, I don't know if I can install it properly, and I'm not inclined to try. But you can go fetch the update directly from Microsoft. Just download, make it executable, and run it from a terminal, ignoring all of those evil looking error messages.

A couple of things: LMDE puts all of the Office Suite in the Other tab of the menu. You can edit the menu, make an M$Office tab to hold everything, and move it there. Second, dialog boxes often revert to Wine's font, which is horrible. But Office itself uses native Office fonts, which is what we really want.

Now I have no idea what happens if you try this with a newer version of Office. This works for Office 2007, which was written for Windows XP. If you get a newer version running, leave a comment.

Virtual Windows

Or virtual anything else: I've been playing around with the open source edition of VirtualBox, a utility from Oracle (boo!) that lets you run another operating system in a Window in your current operating system.

Any host operating system: Linux, Windows, OS X. Any target OS: Linux, Windows, OS X — well, maybe you'd better ask Steve about that. Tell him I said it was OK.

The open source version of VirtualBox is included in the Ubuntu repositories, so install it with:

sudo apt-get install virtualbox-ose

On your Gnome menu you'll find and entry for VirtualBox OSE under Applications => Accessories

Click New and follow the directions. I was able to install Windows XP without the usual hassles. VB provided all the needed drivers.

OK, one problem. The virtual machine wouldn't boot. The problem turned out to be that VB was looking for a floppy disk drive, which Hal doesn't have. I had to click Settings => System, and then unclick the Floppy Drive label under Boot Order. After that, everything worked fine.

I was even able to stream Netflix movies in a browser under Windows, once I installed Silverlight.

Useful for the very few times I need Windows.

The Update Log

I've spent most of July out of town/state/country, so I haven't been very diligent about updating all the computers. Today, though, I took a stab at it:

I. Windows Vista

We have a Windows Vista desktop. It's slated to be upgraded to Linux after Child₂ moves files off of it to the new Macbook. For now, though, it runs several programs that said child uses, e.g. Photoshop, and has a full set of browsers (IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari) that I use to judge how new web pages look to the masses.

OK, here's everything I needed to do to update that machine:

• Update Virus Definitions: We have McAfee installed, primarily because we bought this machine before I knew about Microsoft's Windows Security Essentials. It's not smart enough to know that it should autoupdate virus definitions if the computer's been off a long time, it just gives you a Dire Warning of Impending Doom.
• Update Firefox
• Update Thunderbird
• Update Google Chrome
• Update Safari: This one popped up on its own, offering updates to both Safari and iTunes.
• Check Flash Version: Up to date
• Perform Microsoft Updates: At least these were done in the background, all I had to do was reboot.
• Reboot: Note that three (3) programs asked for permission to reboot: Windows itself, Apple's Safari/iTunes, and McAfee
• Run Virus Scan: otherwise it wouldn't do it until late tonight.

II. Mac OS X

This is my work laptop.

• Run Software Update
• Run Microsoft Autoupdate: to check if any Office components needed to be updated.
• Update Firefox
• Update Thunderbird
• Update Google Chrome
• Check Flash Version
• Check for updates to Aqua Emacs
• Run sudo port upgrade: to check for updates to Macports programs.
• Virus check: I'm required to run a virus checker by the powers that be, never mind that the next Mac virus in the wild will be the first I'm aware of. Fortunately, on the Mac McAfee is smart enough to do all its work in the background, without the warnings.
• Reboot to take care of the system updates

III. Linux machines

• System > Administration > Update Manager > Check > Install Updates: then wait a bit
• Reboot: to activate the new kernel

Now. Will some one please remind me how much easier it is to run Windows or Mac OS X as opposed to Linux? Because sometimes I forget.

It's Here!

It's a computer! Have a Cigar.

OK, it's not really that big a deal, but it was a long wait. A month ago I ordered a Gateway SX2840-01 desktop through J&R. After being on backorder for a month, it got here on Monday.

Turns out it's better than advertised. Not only does it have the glowing reviews mentioned in the first post, but Consumer Reports named the top compact desktop, though they said not to buy it because of technical support issues — of course I'm not going to get Linux technical support from HP, either, so that wasn't an issue. The computer also came with 6 GB of memory, more than the 4 originally offered. The only thing it didn't have was a 1 TB disk. The disk actually comes out as 931 GB, but you knew that was going to happen, didn't you?

Of course, it came with Windows 7. I turned it on, booted up 7, said Ooh, shiny!, then went and downloaded the 64 bit version of Ubuntu 10.04. This installed easily, including all the disk partitioning — I left 7 on there, with 100GB of disk, because you never know. I played with the system for a week, and then spent yesterday consolidating all of the files from my old computer and my wife's computer (aka Hal and Hal's formerly evil twin) to the new box. I did have a few minor, and one not-so-minor, problems with the install, which I'll tell you about in the next few days. But, suffice it to say, after a week of using this machine I'm very happy with it.

Heresy

We just bought the New Graduate a new computer (Dell Inspiron 530, 3GB memory, 250 GB disk, 19 inch wide screen monitor), and being in the nature of things, it came with Vista Home Premium. I wasn't particularly happy with that, but NG wants Photoshop (gotten cheap from Creation Engine), as part of the graduation package, and I'm not going to argue with an artist about tools.

So here comes the computer with the evil Windows Vista attached. I hesitated, but then bit the bullet and set it up.

You know what? It doesn't suck.

OK, we're running on a dual-core chip, with lots of memory, but it didn't suck. It actually found the appropriate drives and software for our printer and camera. I suspect it might have even found the driver for our drawing tablet, but I beat it to the punch and got the driver (which works better than the XP one) myself.

• Babylon V episodes from Hulu played flawlessly, widescreen and at high definition, over a wireless connection.
• I was able to transfer files (mostly) from the old computer to the new, again over the same wireless network. Not properly transfered were the settings from Thunderbird and Firefox (go figure), but I was able to get that fixed without too much trouble. It would have been hard for a newbe, though.
• I got a pop-up window asking me if I wanted to permit some action every time I wanted to install some software, but it wasn't particularly obnoxious, and I'm used to it from using apt-get and Mac OS X all these years. In fact, it really needs to ask for a password, just like sudo apt-get and the OS X software installation system.

Would I get a Vista box for myself, unforced by work requirements? Nope, not on your life. But I can see that given a brand new computer, with drivers set up properly by the OEM, Vista can be a reasonable OS.

Now mind you, it still has problems:

• The Command window is still the same as it was in Win95, 25 lines, 80 characters, and no hope of doing anything useful. I hope you can still install the Cygwin package, if you're stuck with a Windows machine and need to do real command-line work.
• You can't just say
  $ apt-get install ...
  to install a new piece of software. No, you've got to go to the originator's site and get the software, clicking on all those boxes that no one ever reads that say that Adobe gets your first grandchild or whatever. (If someone would make an ad-supported software aggregator site that mimicked synaptic and handled all the Windows installation details, they'd get rich. Overnight.)
• It's still Windows, so doing any heavy customization work requires you search all over the place, to, say, have a rotating background.

But it don't suck. So why is Vista so universally hated? Well, for one thing it won't run on most computers in existence, at least not well. It's a resource hog. You need a modern high-power computer to run it right. Something like a Cray YMP just ain't powerful enough.

And it's not XP. There are significant interface differences. Now that doesn't bother someone coming from Linux, and it doesn't bother New Grad, who was heard to say I'll just click around to figure it out. But it does seem to bother many people. I'm not sure why. A backed-up computer is one of the few things in the world you can break with complete and absolute assurance that you can restore it to its previous health. But playing with software seems to scare many people. Learning something new scares them even more.

But Vista doesn't suck. It's still not Open Source, and it's probably not all that secure, and it doesn't give you all the options that a good Linux system does, but it's not as bad as you may have heard – especially from XP fans.

And here ends the heresy.

Extracting $$!#**^% .mht files from email

Everyone once in a while someone sends me an attachment in Microsoft's MHT format, which is apparently how Internet explorer archives web pages and the associated images. I've read that Thunderbird will read these files, but that's apparently not true under Linux, at least I've been unable to open the file.

On one hand you can save the file to disk, use a utility such as munpack to pull out the files (it's just a MIME attachment), find the HTML file, and edit the heck out of it so it displays nicely on your display.

On the other hand, you can email your correspondent and say “Your tanj file won't open. Send it to me in an open format, frak it!” This is counterproductive if you and your correspondent are, say, on a Pastoral Nominating Committee (though if you want to get off of the committee this may be the way to go).

On the gripping hand we can look for a utility that will do all the work for us. These turn out to be surprisingly few and far between. The only one I've been able to find is kmhtConvert, a (duh) KDE app that can either extract the files from the archive into a new directory, convert the archive to KDE's WAR format (whatever happened to .tar.gz?), or display the file directly. I haven't tried the latter two, but it does extract the files from the archive, and you can read the HTML using a standard browser.

There really ought to be a command-line utility for this, or at least a Thunderbird plug-in for Linux, but I haven't found it yet. Anyone?

The X Files

An irritant of the Office 2007 era is that some people insist on sending you files in that $&#**$% program's default format: .docx, .xlsx, or .pptx. And these same people won't comply with your request to save the frakkin' thing in a reasonable format. (Like PDF. Nice, small, and I can't edit them to make you look completely ridiculous and send the result to all our friends. But that's a subject for another post.)

I've really been tempted to send my responses in Swahili. Transliterated into Urdu. Unfortunately, I don't speak Swahili, and my Acme translator's instruction book is in Hindi. So that's out.

Short of ending friendships and associations forever, it's now possible to read these files with version 2.3 or better of OpenOffice.org. You can't write in those formats, unless you want to do some minor hacking, but you can read them and convert them to a reasonable format.

Say as OpenDocument (.odt). Then send it back to them and when they complain, point out that it's an open standard, and Microsoft should be able to read it. (Not my idea.)

The Vista Experience

Friend TK sent these along. Blame him, not me:

Vista True Info - For more funny videos, click here

And here's how to install Vista in two minutes or less (I can do this in about 30 seconds):

How I Spent Columbus Day (Observed)

Last Monday was a Federal Holiday, and I'd done all the yard work I was going to do over the weekend. So how to spend the day? I know! said my Internal Optimist, Let's rebuild the Windows machine!! It will be fun!!! I should have shot him after the first exclamation point.

Follow: Some months ago I had to reinstall Windows XP on Hal's Evil Twin. Well, I pretty much made a hash of it. It's extremely slow. (I'm a Geek, but I don't claim to be a Competent Geek.) Nevertheless, I don't use Windows, and the complaints from the natives were rather quiet, spouse having consented to read her email on Hal.

Then I read that Penguin Pete was playing around with a Windows machine, just to see how fast he could make it. I also remembered that I'd done a test install of XP on Hal's Other Twin, where, unencumbered by anti-virus protection, it boots up very fast (convenient when I want a quick game of Pinball).

I suspect that my problems come from loading up GooglePack and the Comcast supplied McAfee anti-virus software. Both of these packages add a large number of tasks to the start menu. Well, I mainly put in GooglePack to install Firefox and Thunderbird, and McAfee anti-virus because it was free. Pete, however, turned me on to the Open Disc project, a successor to the Open CD, which includes Firefox, the ClamWin anti-virus scanner, and a whole lot more. Good enough, I think.

So to start we:

• Back up Hal's “Documents and Settings” directory, which contains most user settings, as well as the shared “My Music” and “My Pictures” directories. This is much easier than last time, as I now have a 400 GB external disk. It's also easier to do this from the dual-boot Ubuntu partition I put on the Evil Twin. Just go into root and copy everything over as needed.
• Put a copy of the Network Install version of Windows XP Service Pack 2 on a CD, along with the Updated drivers for the Wacom CTE-430 (Sapphire, aka Graphire3) tablet/wireless mouse that we use for drawing. I downloaded both the newest tested version, 5.03, and the 5.01-9 driver I used last time. I'll try 5.03 first, knowing that I have a backup. (It works fine.)
• Make a copy of the OpenDisc CD
• Get a copy of Going Postal, which I'm re-reading before I get to Making Money, since I've forgotten such important plot points as who Adora Bell Dearheart is, and why she's so interested in Golems. I need a refresher course. (Look it up. I Could Tell You, but then I'd have to Lend You Thirty-Some Books.)
• Make sure the current Windows setup can read the backup data.
• Print out all the steps I took last time — something surprisingly difficult to do from my current Blogger template — to serve as a template.
• Take a deep breath — it's too early for a shot of whiskey.

Oh dear me, here we go again. Note that the times noted below are skewed by the fact that I'm doing other things while this long, long process is going on.

1. 12 noon: Put Dell's SP1 Windows Restore drive into the computer. Boot. Do the “Press Any Key” option. Note that the computer has found the Microsoft Wireless Keyboard, and, presumably, the mouse. Wait a bit for the system to load up.
2. 12:15 pm: Choose the “Fresh Install” option.
3. I'd previously divided Twin's 120 GB disk into two partitions — one NTFS, for Windows, and one FAT32, where files can be easily shared with Linux. Well, now we can also share with NTFS, but let's keep everything as before, and put Windows on the 70$nbsp;GB NTFS partition. Reformat the partition, just to avoid problems.
4. 12:38 pm: Setup starts copying files to the Windows Installation folders.
5. 12:44 pm: Windows doesn't like something on one of the hard drives, probably the one holding Linux. That drive's failure started the first reinstallation. Go ahead with boot. The screen says 39 minutes left.
6. 12:48 pm: Missed the world famous 34 minute installation bug. Chose Regional and Language options, US/East Coast, naturally.
7. Give the computer its name: Hal's Evil Twin.
8. Windows wants to know how to make phone calls. Silly Windows.
9. 1:01 pm: Windows reboots, allegedly improving my screen settings — well, it might, but first we have to install the missing Drivers from the Dell driver list:
   • Audio
   • Mouse
   • Intel Chipset Software Installation Utility
   • Intel 845 G/Gl Integrated Video (Had to do this twice. My mistake, I think.)
   • Broadcom 4401 Integrated NIC Driver
   and reboot.
10. 1:24 pm: Change resolution to 1024x768 and 32 color (was 800x600 after driver installation.)
11. 1:26 pm: Install D-Link wireless driver. Reboot.
12. 1:29 pm: Set up wireless network. Well, try. D-Link's software doesn't seem to want to work. Reboot and try, try, again.
13. 1:36 pm: Wireless card still won't find network. Turn off everything before being tempted to throw it out the window.
14. 2:20 pm: Somewhat calmed down, bring up computer again. Still doesn't work. Get the installation manuals off the CD, which requires I install Adobe Reader 6.0. Yuck.
15. 2:27 pm: Finally. You have to uncheck the box that tells Windows to set up the network, then click OK, then wait for D-Link to get around to pulling up its utility. From there you configure access to a WPA-PSK network.
16. 2:29 pm: Network access established.
17. 2:30 pm: WACOM tablet driver, now. Hopefully this will cause it to come up early in the log-on sequence. Reboot.
18. 2:37 pm: Install Service Pack 2. Turn off network while we're doing this, just in case.
19. 2:50 pm: Finished with SP2. Reboot.
20. 2:53 pm: Turn on automatic updates, set up user accounts. Tell Windows that we have an anti-virus program, and keep the Firewall on.
21. 2:58 pm: Install first round of post-SP2 updates.
22. 2:59 pm: Reboot.
23. 3:00 pm: Get out the OpenDisc CD and install:
    • Firefox
    • Thunderbird
    • ClamWin anti-virus scanner. Since it doesn't do on-the-fly scanning, have it do its work at 1 am every day. Note that it takes a while to update the data files off the web. Also note that it only does a scan when someone is logged on, so remember to “switch user” rather than “log off” if we're not going to shut down the machine.
    • GIMP (graphics manipulation)
    • 7-Zip compression/decompression program.
    • OpenOffice.org version 2.3
    • PDF Creator (Note that OpenOffice can create PDFs out of the box, this is for other programs.)
24. 6:01 pm: No, it didn't take that long. We went out to run errands. As we were shutting down, Windows did another update, and now we have to accept yet another set of updates.
25. 6:04 pm: Reboot
26. 6:06 pm: Have ClamWin do a virus scan, just as a safety measure.
27. 8:50 pm: OK, I took another break, but it took a couple of hours to complete the scan on a more-or-less empty machine.
28. 8:52 pm: Install Microsoft Wireless Keyboard/Mouse software, just in case we need it.
29. 8:57 pm: Install drivers for Canon printer.
30. 9:07 pm: Install drivers for Visioneer 4400 Scanner.
31. 9:11 pm: Reboot
32. 9:15 pm: Install the ancient copy of Photoshop Elements (2.0) that came with the equally ancient scanner.
33. 9:18 pm: Install Nero CD/DVD burning software.
34. 9:25 pm: More XP updates have shown up. Load them up and reboot.
35. 9:31 pm: Load in the ancient copy of Office (97). (Why do we need this if we have OpenOffice.org? Because sometimes even really old real PowerPoint looks better than Oo.o's simulated PowerPoint. Don't like it, but there it is.)
36. 9:47 pm: Odd. Internet Explorer, I assume 6.0, hangs up every time I try to run it. Which means no updates, except by AutoUpdate? Scary.
37. 9:51 pm: OK, a reboot fixes that. Go through the update process, installing the “new” version of Windows update, including that Windows Genuine Advantage thing.
38. 9:59 pm: Install files that the users of this computer need, then quit for the night.

And then I ran out of energy to write anything down anymore. In short, the next evening I:

• Set up the individual user accounts: all with administrative access, of course, since you can't easily run Windows without it — actually I think I did this on Monday, but I've repressed many memories from that day.
• Found all possible updates to Office 97.
• Updated Internet Explorer from dreadful to barely acceptable — uh, I mean from 6 to 7.
• Installed VLC off the OpenDisc to enable movie-watching.
• Killed off Adobe Reader 6.0, installed the newest version (8.1?).
• Installed Java.
• Hey, what do you know? It's Update Tuesday. Download and reboot.
• Killed off start menu and bootup items that seem unnecessary.
• Restored everybody's files.
• Say “Good Night,” Dick. “Good Night, Dick.”

And done. So far, one week out, ClamWin has only claimed to discover two viruses, both of which are Win 97 files, which makes the detection look suspect.

And the system runs much faster. I guess we'll keep it this way for now.

Broken Windows (XP) -- Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen

I fixed the problem with all the USB stuff. Apparently Windows associates a device with the USB port where it is attached (Linux doesn't do this with the mouse, but I don't know about other gadgets). When I moved the computer, I disconnected all of the USB devices, and I probably didn't plug them all back into the “correct” ports. Starting up the computer, logging on, and plugging the components fixed the problem.

So I now declare Hal's Evil Twin fixed, and I'm going on to other things, such as installing Ubuntu Feisty Fawn as a dual boot on HsET.

Broken Windows (XP) -- Part V

This was supposed to be a post of triumph, how I overcame adversity and my own ignorance of installing Windows, and restored a computer, from scratch, to the way it Used To Be.

It will probably work out. I suspect I've made a silly mistake because I was working on things at 8 am on a Saturday morning, never a good time to do anything like real work.

But first, the good stuff:

As you will recall (and recall and recall and recall), Hal's Evil Twin (HsET), the XP box upstairs, crashed for no apparent reason, leaving all its data accessible but with no way to boot the computer, even in safe mode. After several attempts to fix the disk, I decided that the easiest thing to do was to copy everything off the XP's disks onto Hal for safekeeping, reinstall Windows, and then copy everything back.

Just so I'd know what I did, I kept a running log of how I performed the reinstall. It's going to be long. There are several reasons for this: the computer is four years old, from before the time when a company would ship a “restore this computer to the way it was when you bought it” option; I've added a fair amount of hardware over the years, so I had a bunch of new drivers to install; I changed the setup of the system, e.g., repartitioning the disk and using Comcast's free McAfee anti-virus rather than the Norton anti-virus package that was coming up for renewal; while just about everyone who's run Linux has done an install, few people reinstall Windows unless the Have To, so there isn't a neighborhood database; and, finally, I'm just ignorant about the ins and outs of Windows. I'm not as ignorant anymore, but before this I was happy if HsET would just get scanned for viruses and download all the proper updates. So this isn't a scathing indictment of Microsoft, because, while they could have made things a lot easier, I probably didn't do things in the most efficient way.

That said, here's the list of all the things I did to restore the system. It's not going to be well documented, but you should be able to Google^TM a string to find the information.

Restoring Hal's Evil Twin

1. Started with a working and updated copy of Windows XP SP2, with IE7, etc., on a 10 GB disk (this was my test install case)
2. Hook up 120 GB disk as slave drive (middle plug on cable). In Linux this would be /dev/hdb
3. Start windows
4. Windows identifies drive, tells you to reboot
5. Reboot
6. Copy contents of 120 GB disk to backup disks, as necessary
7. Hook up 120 GB disk as first disk drive, remembering to set the jumper to “cable select.”
8. Put the Windows restore disk into the CD drive, turn on the computer
9. When asked, have it format the HD. Use full format for NTFS disk
10. Then tell it to install Windows. It will then hang at “Setup will complete in approximately 34 minutes” message. This is a well known bug: http://techtracer.com/2007/03/12/xp-installation-the-34-minute-hiccup/. My file was mdmbcsm.inf. A previous test install indicated that simply restarting the installation may also work.
11. Accept US defaults
12. When asked, name the computer HsET
13. Time is Eastern (GMT -5)
14. Network connection wizard won't find a network until we install the wireless drivers. In fact, we'll have to install the Ethernet drivers as well, so there's nothing to do here.
15. Defrag the disk. Probably not necessary, but it doesn't take much time at this point and makes the next step a little easier.
16. Partition the disk. The idea is to have some shared data, mostly music and pictures, in a VFAT 32 partition so that the data can be read in Linux if (when?) I install a dual boot system. Do this with GParted, booting the computer with the Gparted disk.
17. Use the Force I810 driver option
18. Resize (Resize/Move) the partition from 114471 MB to to make it 73511 MB, followed by 40960 (40 GB) of free space. This will be the C: partition
19. Format the 40 GB as VFAT 32 (Partition Tab) This will be the E: partition (as always, saving D: for the CD/DVD drive)
20. Boot up, let the system check the disks, verify that the partitions are as they should be
21. Install "Dell ResourceCD" on computer. Why Dell couldn't ship the drivers on the same CD with the XP install is beyond me.
22. Install missing drivers:
    • Audio
    • Mouse
    • Intel Chipset Software Installation Utility
    • Intel 845 G/GL Integrated Video
    • Broadcom 4401 Integrated NIC Driver
23. Reboot
24. Up video settings to 1024x768 and 32 bit color
25. Install D-Link Wireless Driver
26. Reboot
27. Install Service Pack 2. Use the Network Install executable, because it's a heck of a lot faster than using Windows Update.
28. Reboot
29. Configure Wireless Network
30. Download and install McAfee Security Suite from Comcast
31. Download and install Google Pack
32. Do a Virus Scan (hey, you never know)
33. Run Windows update, and run, and run, and run, rebooting as needed. Eventually you'll get the thing updated.
34. Find driver for Wacom CTE-430 (Sapphire) (aka Graphire3) drawing tablet. http://www.wacom.com/productsupport Use the supposedly stable 5.01-9 driver.
35. Load drivers for Canon iP4000 printer (reboot may not have been necessary, but I did it anyway).
36. Load drivers for Microsoft Wireless Keyboard & Mouse. (A previous report of Microsoft Hardware's incompatibility with XP turned out to be a bad USB port. Linux & Things regrets the error.)
37. Install (very old) copy of Photoshop Elements (from the original Wacom tablet package, as it turns out)
38. Install (even older) copy of Office 97 (from a previous computer)
39. Add all available updates to Office 97
40. Install Nero CD/DVD Burning software
41. Install Thunderbird and make it the default email client
42. Move “Shared Pictures” and “Shared Music” folders to the E: disk, and create Shortcuts in the “Shared Files” folder on C:
43. Set up user accounts
44. Restore user files from backups
45. Make Firefox the default browser for each account
46. Make Thunderbird the default email client for each account
47. Run msconfig.exe to turn off things you don't want starting up at boot: Google indexing (for now, anyway), that idiot toolbar that Office 97 put up on everyone's screen, anything else that isn't necessary.

And that should have been that.

Except this morning I decided to put everything back the way it was, i.e., HsET under the desk, printer where you can reach it, etc. So I unplugged everything, put everything back where it was before the unfortunate sequence of events, plugged everything back in, and turned the computer on.

It booted fine.

The keyboard doesn't work.

Neither the Microsoft Optical Mouse or the Wacom Tablet Mouse works.

There are several possibilities: I plugged things in wrong, the remaining USB ports on the computer are fried, or I've so offended Bill that he reached out through the Internet and strangled poor innocent HsET (not likely, that one). All of these require debugging, and I'm just too tired of it to work on it right now. Later today, maybe.

Grammatically Correct Tag Line

A loyal reader informs me that the tag line I've been using, Fenestra delenda est, is incorrect, because “Windows” is plural. I was going to say that “Microsoft Windows” is actually only one product, and therefore singular, but then I remembered that we have XP Home, XP Professional, XP Media Edition, Vista Home Basic, Vista Home Premium, Vista Professional Homewrecker ...

I'm assured that the tag line is now correct.

Microsoft (Hardware) Works With Linux

I'm trying, slowly, to get all of the drivers working on the Windows box (see the last few posts). One bit of hardware we have for the XP is the Microsoft Wireless Keyboard/Mouse combo. This is a USB dongle which broadcasts to a wireless mouse and keyboard.

I've installed the drivers for the thing, but Windows still can't find it. If I can find the manual, or the Teenager^TM who installed the thing in the first place, I can probably make it work, as it Worked Before, but it's not automatic.

On a whim, I plugged the thing into my Linux box, and, voila, it worked. (I'm typing this post with it.) No drivers needed be be installed, at least with Ubuntu Dapper, and, I suspect, most major Linux distributions.

The default configuration for Hal is to use a Microsoft USB Optical Mouse plugged into a PS2 adapter and connected through a KVM switch. It's never given me a problem.

Conclusion: Microsoft hardware works best under Linux.

Much later: It turns out that the dongle was plugged into a bad USB port. Linux & Things regrets the error. In any case, Microsoft hardware usually works quite well with Linux.

Broken Windows (XP) -- Part IV

Hey, I'm on a roll. Since last night I've

• run Windows Update about a gadzillion times, rebooting more often than Mitt Romney changes his political position.
• Found the ethernet and audio drivers.
• Figured out what to do next:
  • Install the remaining drivers (graphics tablet, wireless keyboard, printer) and software (except MapleStory)
  • Copy it all to a DVD or two, or maybe one of those dual layer DVDs.
  • Install barebones XP SP1 on a big disk.
  • Copy all the files from the DVD onto the big disk.
  • Boot Windows from the DVD.
  • Restore all the old files I've archived.
  • Install remaining software (Office, Photoshop, etc.)
  • Install the never-to-be-sufficiently-fraked MapleStory.
  • Keep the DVD in a safe place, as a starting point for when I have to do all of this again.
  • Install a second disk on this machine, load up Ubuntu on it, and make it dual boot for my wife, who notes that she can finish reading her email in Linux during the time it takes the Windows computer to boot up.
  • Figure out how to get the DVD image into a form that qemu can use, so that “essential” Windows programs can be run from inside Linux.

Broken Windows (XP) -- Part III

Everyone should have an Igor. I used to have two, but now I'm down to one. He swears that I can restore my trashed Windows disk without having to do a reinstall. In the meantime, just in case, I dug out an old 10 GB hard disk and plugged it into the Windows computer in place of the trashed disk. I'm in the process of installing Windows on that disk, just to see if I can do it. If I can, I'll feel more comfortable in reinstalling Windows on the bigger disk, if it comes to that.

In the process, I've noticed a few differences between the install process for a Linux distribution and the install process for Windows.

How to Install Linux

1. Get a Linux install disk.
2. Put it in the computer.
3. Boot the machine.
4. Answer questions about the installation process. In general, you can use the defaults.
5. Select any additional software you want to install.
6. Click the install button.
7. Wait for Install to finish.
8. Log on.
9. Update software.
10. Configure user accounts.
11. Configure Network and Email Accounts.
12. Enjoy.

How to Install Windows XP

1. Dig out Windows installation disk, or, the days, the “recovery” or “reinstall” disk.
2. Put it in the computer.
3. Boot the machine.
4. Accept the fact that there is nothing customized about this install.
5. Find the driver disk(s).
6. Install the needed drivers. (I still haven't found the Ethernet and Audio drivers. I did find the Wireless drivers, so I can connect the machine to the Internet that way.)
7. Reboot.
8. Since the only legal disk you can use to install Windows XP on this computer is set at Service Pack 1, download Service Pack 2. Note that this is the “Network Installation Package for IT Professionals and Developers.” Use this, or order the CD version. You're probably going to need it in the future. Further note that it's best to do this on another computer, since we don't have firewalls and virus scanners enabled yet.
9. Install SP2.
10. Reboot.
11. Get antivirus software installed. I'm using McAfee, only because Comcast offers it free to subscribers.
12. Reboot.
13. Run Windows Update (or install Microsoft Update) to get latest updates for XP.
14. Reboot.
15. Install Google Pack. Select Firefox as the default browser.
16. Install Mozilla Thunderbird. Make it the default email.
17. Configure user accounts.
18. Configure Network and Email Accounts.
19. For each piece of software you need:
    1. Find it, via Internet or on CD.
    2. Install.
    3. Reboot as required.
20. Enjoy?

Yes, it is so easy to install Windows, and so hard to install Linux.

Broken Windows (XP) -- Part II

After backing up everything on the aforementioned XP machine, I consulted my experts at work, who agreed that the first step should be to put the Windows Reinstallation disk into the CD drive, and boot it up. This should work, right? The computer boots and runs the Ubuntu Live CD without any problem.

Except it doesn't work. The system tells me to “Press any key to boot the CD”, and when I do, it goes straight to the same screens as the last time: First it says Windows won't boot, then when you tell it to boot in safe mode it coughs up a list of files, and finally, it blue screens.

This from an otherwise perfectly healthy computer that runs a live Linux CD without problem.

Meanwhile, people in the house are going through Maple Story withdrawal. It's not pretty.

And you wonder about the subtitle of this blog.

Broken Windows (XP)

This is probably my fault. Here's what I think happened: the main disk on our Windows XP machine filled up. Windows decided to fix this by deleting some system files. Result: the system won't boot, even in safe mode. Nothing, NADA. Just a list of files that scrolls by so fast you can't see the error message at the top of the list, followed by a blue screen of hopeless and utter despair. I'm not positive that the cause is correct, but the result is. In any case, it's probably my fault as much as Windows, because I wasn't watching disk usage on that machine.

So currently I'm pulling off the files from that disk onto an external USB disk. The idea is to backup everything, restore Windows (which will be difficult, since this is an old machine and the restore disk only comes with Service Pack 1), and then copy over the relevant files from the backup. We'll see if that works.

The immediate problem is to get the files onto the USB disk. Obviously you can't boot into Windows.

So here's the procedure I used. I lifted most of it off the web. Ordinarily I'd link back to where I found the information, but that was late last night, and I was working on a machine which at the time had no internet access. So my apologies to all concerned.

• First, we need some way to access the computer. A Linux Live CD is the obvious way to go. I had an old version of Knoppix on hand, but it hung up when trying to find the USB ports. I finally got it running in fail-safe mode, but decided that wasn't a really viable option. Since I'm running Ubuntu on my own machine, the choice was to go get the Edgy Live CD. This booted up immediately (where, in this context, “immediate” == 5 minutes). For some reason it couldn't, or wouldn't, use WPA encryption through the wireless card, but it did everything I needed it to do.
• Except find the disks on the Windows machines. How to do that? Well, the Edgy Live CD has my new favorite command, lshw, which tells you all about the hardware. This says that there is a disk at /dev/hda. I've only seen one partition on this disk, which would be named /dev/hda1. This machine came with XP pre-installed, so we know the partition will be NTFS.
• This means we have to enable Edgy to read the NTFS disk. We'll work with read-only mode for now, since I believe write access under Linux is a bit flaky. First, go in to superuser mode. Since there's no password on the live CD, just enter the command
  $ sudo -i then load the NTFS module into the kernel with
  # /sbin/modprobe ntfs
• Now create a mount point for the partition
  # mkdir /mnt/win
• and mount the disk
  # mount -t ntfs /dev/hda1 /mnt/win
• But Wait!!! This gives a bunch of error messages, most of which say that /dev/hda1 isn't an NTFS partition. Huh. Since the other dominant file-system in WindowsLand is vfat, try
  # mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /mnt/win
• That worked. But what's in that directory?
  ls -l /mnt/win
  Examining the list of files, this seems to be called the Utility Partition. OK. Nothing to see here right now, though maybe it will help us restore things later.
• Well, logically, if the ntfs partition isn't in /dev/hda1, we should try
  # umount /mnt/win
  # mount -t ntfs /dev/hda2 /mnt/win
• That works. Now we plug an external drive into the USB port and merrily copy away:
  # cp -rv /mnt/win/* /media/usbdisk

OK, the files are all saved, tucked nicely away on a disk that can be read by any computer. The next step is to try to revive Windows XP on the target machine, or persuade the family that they don't really need to run Photoshop or Maple Story. (Yeah, I know about GIMP, they know about GIMP, and they prefer Photoshop. There's faint hope for Maple Story.)

Did Bono Approve This?

So the other day I went over to Staples and bought a 2GB SanDisk Cruzer Micro USB Flash Drive, for the pretty low price of $24.98 (including rebate, which Staples makes ridiculously easy). Really nice price, considering I once bought a 256 MB drive for $60.

I have no complaints with the drive. I deleted the junk software that SanDisk put on the drive, and it works just fine under Linux, and on the Mac. I love it. It fits on my keychain, has a retractable USB plug, and looks cute. It'll carry around just about anything I want.

On the Mac, though, two partitions show up. The first is just the partition I see in Linux. The second, however, is labeled U3 and contains the software I deleted off the main partition: the windows only U3 Launchpad and application software. In a partition that Linux doesn't see and Mac OS X won't touch.

Plug this into a Windows XP box and it autolaunches. OK, you can remove the software, but only under windows, and only if Launchpad is running. I'm scared to death to stick it into our one and only XP box to see if I can do it. Apparently one can reformat the drive under Linux, but if I screw it up, I've got a $25 bit of plastic and silicon that's not heavy enough to make a good paperweight.

So what's the problem? Leave it alone, right? But big pendrives are great for Sneakernet applications. Suppose I want to carry a big file to a friend's Windows box? Up pops Launchpad, which should at least freak him out, if it doesn't cause any other problems. I know U3 vets all the software it allows on the drive, but it's still running programs on a friend's computer that he didn't give me permission to run. And then there is our own XP box, Hal's evil twin, which has the nice printer attached to it. I'd really like to Sneaker my files onto it, but not with this drive as long as it has U3 on it.

So I ask my small community of readers: Anyone successfully reformat a 2GB Cruzer, removed the U3 stuff, and still have a drive that can be read under Linux, OS X, and Windows? Leave details in the comments.

Setting Up Your New Toy

Getting a new Windows XP computer for Christmas? The Washington Post's Rob Pegoraro wants to talk to you about it in today's Fast Forward column. He notes that "with most new laptops or desktops, the work doesn't really start until after you first turn it on, thanks to the mix of obsolete or useless programs onboard." He then gives a list of things you should add to your machine to protect it, make it useful, and to enable backups. I'm not going to list everything, but here are some highlights:

• Protect the Computer:
  • Turn on Window's firewall
  • Update Windows and third-party programs that are one or more versions out of date: Internet Explorer, Adobe Reader, Java, Flashplayer
  • Get decent anti-virus and anti-spyware programs. The ones on your computer will expire in a few months. Alternatively, download the Google Pack, which has this stuff.
  • Note that if you have a Mac, turn on the Firewall.
• Make it Useful:
  • Download Firefox, and use it instead of IE. (Or, alternatively, Opera.)
  • Download Thunderbird, and use it for email instead of Outlook Express. (Or get both Web Browsing and Email in SeaMonkey.)
  • Upgrade Windows Media Player from version 10 to 11, and/or download Apple's iTunes, and maybe go get RealPlayer. If you've got a Mac, you can't play Windows files without something called "flip4mac" from Microsoft.
  • I'd add: if you don't absolutely need Microsoft Office, download OpenOffice.org for all your word-processing, spreadsheet, and presentation needs.
  • Added Christmas 2006: If you look carefully at the sites you browse, you'll see that most of the ads aren't being served from that site. No, they belong to some advertising site that exists only to fill your web pages with garish graphical garbage. You can get rid of these. First, install the Adblock extension for Firefox or SeaMonkey. Then, find Mike's (another guy) Ad Blocking Hosts file and install it on your computer. Adblock stops particular sites/graphics from displaying in your browser, the Hosts file doesn't even let your computer find those sites. (Hey, it's Christmas morning. I did a better explanation of the Hosts file some years ago.) Note: I have not actually tried this on a Windows machine, but it works like a charm in Linux. Any Windows users out there who have tried this?
  • Delete all the trial versions of software you'll never need.
• Back it up: get a big USB drive, or install backup software to write to DVDs periodically.

Needless to say, these are all good ideas, even if you are going to upgrade your computer to Vista when it comes out in a month or so — at which time you'll need to do all this again.

Funny, though, Linux-nay sayers are always telling us how hard it is to properly set up a Linux machine, that you need a tech support notice to get it working properly. Well, to you think Gran and Gramps, getting their first computer, are going to do all of the above without any help? Nope, their going to turn the thing on and start downloading viruses and Trojans and spyware (Oh My!) as fast as the CPU can push it out.

What's more, there is no central place to find all of that software. Yet every good Linux distribution has all of it readily available. Depending on your view of what's socially acceptable in a Free Software system, you might have to enable a repository or two, but you can get everything you need using yum, apt-get, or some variant, either from the command line or with a graphical interface. And, of course, Linux has all sorts of alternatives for every computing need.

Of course, some things just won't work. That's not a problem for Linux, though. That's a problem for certain companies that don't want to take your money. (No, Macsters, not even yours.) Write them, and tell them they are passing up a quick buck. (Incidentally, the advertisement shown on the page touting this service played just fine with Firefox and mplayer.)

Have fun with your new Windows machine. If, in the future, it gets bogged down, and your friends complain that they get lots of spam with your name on it, remember that there are alternatives.

New Tag Line

The translation is courtesy of InterTran, but I reached the English to Latin page from here. OK, I'm sure it is not grammatically correct, but if it was, I wouldn't get it.