newsblog

Note: This has all been made redundant by the latest release of the Broadcom software that is available here. That installs and works straight away with no problems for me on Vista x64.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I purchased a Belkin USB Bluetooth adapter (Model F8T013uk) a few days ago from Amazon. As expected it came with a driver CD stating version 6.0.1.5400. A few reviews mentioned it worked on Vista but none mentioned 64 bit. I tried using the installer from the CD via the Autorun menu and it failed to install. I then explored the CD and found an x64 directory. I installed from there via the setupx.exe file and thought all had gone well. The driver itself installed which I could tell because Device Manager now showed a Belkin USB Bluetooth adapter. The installer said it had to reboot to complete the installation. After a restart nothing happened. There was no desktop or startmenu icons so I manually navigated to the installation directory and tried running the tray icon tool. Nada. It showed up under Task Manager but refused to actually appear in the tray.

Alot of sites link to a dev-hacks article which details how to modify the drivers to work, I didn't want to do this as drivers have to be signed to work properly in Vista 64 and even though you can disable driver signing via the boot-up F8 menu I simply couldn't be bothered doing that each time I wanted to use a Bluetooth device. So began the adventure of getting my Sony Ericsson W850i mobile phone to talk to my PC via Bluetooth without hacked drivers.

Full story »

I use a VPN connection to access a remote network. I noticed that whilst connected the speed of browsing sites became incredibly slow. A quick tracert shows that all my network traffic is routed through the VPN connection. The reason for this is that as default new VPN connections in Vista are set to use the gateway on the VPN if it's connected. This is really easy to change:

• Head to Start Menu/Settings/Network Connections
• Right click the VPN connection and choose Properties
• Select the Networking tab and then the IP v6 item and Properties
• On the new popup click Advanced and then on the IP Settings tab untick the "Use default gateway on remote network" box
• Repeat the last two steps for the IP v4 item
• Now click OK to close the VPN properties panel and give it a go

The connection should now use your normal gateway for all net based activity. A quick tracert will tell you for sure:

tracert news.bbc.co.uk

I've been using a Wacom Volito 2 for about a year now and have loved it. It worked great on XP and just as well on Vista 64 although potentially it could be much better thanks to all the new tablet functionality built into the OS. One thing that has been missing over the past few years of using pen tablets has been the scroll wheel that is now a standard feature on mice and trackballs. The new Wacom Bamboo range caught my eye as they sport a scroll wheel at the top of the pad along with four big customisable buttons. There are 3 Bamboo models; the "Bamboo", the "Bamboo Fun" and the "Bamboo One". Mine just arrived today so I'll give you low down on how it handles.

Full story »

Over the years I've had numerous clients who have wanted Flash solutions that adjust their layout based on the current browser dimensions. This can take many forms such as resizing a background image proportionally through to re-configuring a menus structure. This quick tutorial will show you how to use Flashes onResize event to control the positioning of your components as the screen is resized whilst at the same time showing you how to handle this on the HTML/CSS side of things with a forced minimum width and height.

Full story »

If you read my last posting you'd see that I recently overhauled my machine. The motherboard I chose was an Abit IN9 32X-MAX Wi-Fi which was my first Nforce board and as it turns out; will probably be my last. I've had an endless stream of issues since it was installed, the majority of them to do with it having a highly flakey bios and the rest being how picky it is with regards to memory. The latest incident saw the bios getting totaly corrupted which resulted in a 6+ hour mission to repair it afterwhich I discovered that the 3rd and 4th memory slots had been killed. The system refused to boot with any memory in them. Having reached the end of my rope I decided to return the board and try something else. The rest of this post will show you how I transferred my current Vista 64 install to the new motherboard without having to fresh install as well as explain how I decided on my new board which was far from an easy feat.

Full story »