Archive for the ‘Microsoft’ Category

Windows 7, McAfee Firewall and SmartPhone-Sync

Thursday, December 24th, 2009

Windows 7, McAfee Firewall and SmartPhone-Sync - an Adventure. After I installed Windows7 successfully on my Samsung NC10 ("Nessie"), as described in another post in this blog, I wanted to sync my phone with it. I knew how it worked with XP. And I knew this would not help me a bit with Windows 7.

All I had, was the description how to get McAfee and ActiveSync up an running, which worked fine with Windows XP. But with Windows 7, ActiveSync is no longer required, nor is it possible to install it. Windows 7 comes with the Windows Mobile Device Center. What you probably need is the 6.1-update of the WMDC, but that's it.

At the time I was looking for information what I would need to get the SmartPhone-sync working without having to turn off the firewall completely everytime, I found nothing, no matter what keywords I fed into google. So I opened up the old description-page about McAfee and ActiveSync, and added the port that was stated there to the list of system-services:

- Service-name       : SmartPhone Sync
- TCP In/out         :   26695
- Open to a computer
   or network that is: Standard (including Trusted)

Then I looked for Apps on my computer that sounded like they might do what the ActiveSync-Apps did. I found a single 100%-match:

ceappmgr.exe,

in the directory

C:\Windows\WindowMobile .

I added it with Full Access to McAfee's Program-list. Next, I looked at the other executables in that directory. I added

  • wmdcBase.exe
  • WmdHost.exe

And tried again. It did not work. I looked through several more directories, added and removed several applications that looked promising to solve the problem, but nothing helped. Then I looked at the log-file generated by the McAfee-firewall, and noticed, that the IP 169.254.2.1 tried to access my computer through ICMP ping (which the firewall blocks), and tcp-port 990, commonly used by FTP for the control-channel when using TLS/SSL. I remembered both the IP and the port from my experiments with syncing the SmartPhone with linux, and decided to add this IP as "trusted" (which is possible directly from the log-entry).

I tried syncing again - and this time it worked.

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Posted in ActiveSync, Configuration, McAfee, Microsoft, NC10, Samsung, Win7, Windows Mobile Device Center, experiments, gadgets, mda, mobile, netbook, network, operating system, smartphone, smartphone-experiments, synchronization, windows | 2 Comments »

Samsung NC10 and Windows 7

Monday, December 14th, 2009

On Sunday, December 13th 2009, I dared to switch from the pre-installed Windows XP Home to Windows 7 Professional on my Samsung NC10 NetBook* ("Nessie"). Beforehand, I have had already checked whether Samsung would support Windows 7 for the NC10 or not, with the result that they actually really do. So I downloaded all Windows 7 drivers* and tools* from Samsung, made a full backup of all data on the NC10, and downloaded that little tool from Microsoft, which enables you to use an ISO-image of Windows 7, and create a bootable USB-Stick and/or DVD from it. I used my 8GB USB-Stick, and started the installation process.

The installation process went through without a problem. Even Aero started right away and the base-installation of windows was done after about 30 minutes or so - may be it was 45, I did not really stop the time. Wireless LAN (Atheros) was supported directly with native drivers, as was the sound, graphics, and most important periphal systems. I installed the drivers from Samsung nonetheless, as well as all the tools, and now the NetBook runs with Windows 7 as well as it did with Windows XP before. The memory footprint of the base-system is almost identical (approximately 600MB), and as the NC10 has been upgraded from 1GB RAM to 2GB, everything runs really nice atm.

What seems to be way faster is the SMB-stuff. When initiating a connection to a shared directory on a remote machine, I was used to some waiting before the actual content-listing could be viewed in XP's explorer window. Now the listing "is just there" as soon as I hit enter after typing the host's name - though on the remote host nothing was changed.

All in all, my first impression of Windows 7 is all-positive. I really like to use it, it looks nice with this Aero-design, and seems a lot safer with this "elevated-mode" one has to use when attempting to change system-settings. This will definitely slow virus-attacks a bit (at least until they find ways to circumvent this barrier).

I will provide more information about Windows 7 on the NC10 (as well as in general) soon.

For all interested: The NC10 has a performance rating of 2.1 (The rating you see when selecting "Properties" in the rmb-menu of the "My Computer"-icon on the desktop). I will provide the complete rating-result in a seperate posting soon.

*) Please note that links marked with an asterisk are links to Samsung Germany. As it seems, samsung.com redirects you to your local Samsung-Site depending on your IP. The tools are localized (thus german), but work just fine with any Windows 7 (I am using a us-english Windows 7 professional).

Update:

Microsoft seem to have pulled the ISO-Tool from their Websites, as the link above is not working anymore. It seems to be a consequence of an accusation that Microsoft has violated the GPL, under which the tool was released, somehow in the tool's code. If the accusations prove to be rightful, and if the tool will be downloadable again (one way or another), remains yet to be seen.

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Posted in @nyNet, Microsoft, NC10, Samsung, Win7, computer, netbook, operating system, windows | 2 Comments »

Windows-Update and Proxies

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009

After a discussion on IRCnet, I decided this topic might be worth a blog-post: How do I get Windows Update on Windows XP Home to work with proxies?

Windows XP Professional seems to accept the Administrator's Proxy-Settings automagically, but Windows XP Home doesn't. If you have a network that only permits HTTP-Access through a configured proxy, you have a problem: Windows XP Home won't update, because it attempts a direct connection to Microsoft's servers.

My own setup at home is like this: I have a Cisco C836 Router, which ACL's prohibit any traffic not coming from the proxyhost, or being from certain selected reserved protocols. The proxyhost is a NetBSD 5.0 RC3 Box (see this page and this post), running a Squid 3.0 Web-Proxy.  Since I needed to update my XP-Home-running NetBook, I found a simple solution to this problem some time ago: each Windows comes with a small tool named "proxycfg". All you need to do is call it appropriately, and even Windows XP will update through the proxy like a charm.

This is the help-output from proxycfg:

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\>proxycfg -?
Microsoft (R) WinHTTP Default Proxy Configuration Tool
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

usage:

    proxycfg -?  : to view help information

    proxycfg     : to view current WinHTTP proxy settings

    proxycfg [-d] [-p <server-name> [<bypass-list>]]

        -d : set direct access
        -p : set proxy server(s), and optional bypass list

    proxycfg -u  : import proxy settings from current user's
                   Microsoft Internet Explorer manual settings
                   (in HKCU)

C:\>

If you have configured the Internet Explorer to use the proxy, you can simply call

 C:\> proxycfg -u

And the settings will be used. If you don't have the IE configured (which is a wise decision if you don't use it), you need to specify the proxy using the -p switch. In my case, this would look like this:

 C:\> proxycfg -p http://proxy.home.nifelheim.info:3128

After this, Windows Update will use these settings and you can update your machine.

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Posted in Configuration, Microsoft, Windows Update, XP, computer, connection, firewall, internet, network, operating system, proxy, update, windows | No Comments »