The Danosphere.

Quick post before class… Vista stopped recognizing my ipod, it made the “ding” sound but didn’t show up in itunes or “My Computer”. The iPod charges but that’s about it. Thought I was doomed but after some intense googling I found this:

Don’t worry you won’t lose your data, or have to unistall anything.

I simply unplugged the ipod, restarted the computer, and then manually put the ipod into disk mode, waited for windows to load again, and plugged it in! Thats it

Disk mode -

• plug the ipod mains charger into the ipod
• click the hold button on and then off again
• press and hold menu and select together until the apple appears
• then press select and play/pause together until disk mode appers

You don’t need to restart windows to do this btw. That’s it! Time for class, iPod freshly stocked!

After installing AIM the other day my Windows Vista install started acting very weird. It all started on the reboot after installation, for some reason my wireless adapter was no longer connecting to the service. When I tried to connect to a network or do anything pertaining to “networking” the computer would slow to a crawl, stop responding, throw the blue screen of death, then restart; or it would just hand forever. This is a huge problem! Having a laptop without wireless access is pretty useless imo, so I needed to find a fix for this issue ASAP. After some searching I came upon this article on Microsoft Technet, which is extremely long and conversational, so I figure I’d post the important part.

I was able to regain wireless access and normal computer activity by following these steps:

1. Right click “Computer”
2. Click “Manage”
3. Under “System Tools” double click “Local Users and Groups”
4. Click “Groups”
5. Right click “Administrators”
6. Click “Add to group…”
7. Click “Add”
8. Click “Advanced”
9. Click “Find Now”
10. Double click “Local Service” and click “Ok”
11. “NT Authority / Local Service” should now show up in the list
12. Click “Ok” to finish
13. Close computer management and reboot!

That should restore your network functionality and general computer-peace overall. It is important that this bug is not directly tied to AIM- it is triggered by a combination of application and/or services it just happens that in my situation, it was triggered by AIM. So AOL is still crap, but in this case the finger is pointing at Microsoft.

In one of my recent projects using Flex2, I found the need to hook up to MySQL, easy right? Not if your on Windows Vista! I have installed apache.mysql/php on many boxes but this was my first experience installing it under windows vista. The apache install is more or less the same, download the installed, run, check the test page, and your ready to go. Repeat the same process with the php installer and you’ll get some unexpected results! Its hard to describe how it behaves, first install it appeared to work fine, but was missing all the mysql functions, second install it didnt work at all, third install it still didnt work. I was about to start tearing my hair out!

Then i came across this helpful post by senese: Installing PHP under Apache and Vista. I was able to get PHP working correctly, finally! Some steps may seem unnecessary (such as deleting the install directory through the command prompt) but trust me every single step is required! Follow these directions and you’ll be using PHP under vista in no time!