TO-Tech Blog

I hope this is the final HP PhotoSmart C6250 horror story I post here

The printer hardware itself is fine although it is (1) extremely noisy during startup and (2) locks the PC it is connected to if it is on during boot up. However, I had to remove all the printer’s applications software from a Windows XP networked PC this past weekend after suffering through weeks of slowness and occasional system freezing. The problem was that HP’s application monitoring software would go into some kind of endless loop if the printer was not turned on and, therefore, undetectable. Since HP’s software had been unable to actually work with the networked printer for the past two weeks anyway, I didn’t see much point in debugging it further. The XP PC runs much much faster now and has not locked up since removing the HP software this past weekend.

Just a note to myself. I don’t use any of the apps on the list. But, you can never tell…

Information about programs that are known to experience a loss of functionality when they run on a Windows Vista Service Pack 1-based computer

I bought an HP PhotoSmart C6250 multifunction (print, scan, copy) printer just before the holiday season to print the annual family newsletter (multiple pages, lots of photos). The printer did the job but has been an endless source of frustration.

The first problem is that it locks up my Windows Vista PC if the printer is turned on before the PC has completed booting. This is NOT a Vista problem. It locks up right at the initial BIOS screen. This PC has worked fine with two other USB printers. So, the printer ports should be fine.

The next problem is that Windows Vista insists that I have a new printer every time I boot and reinstalls the drivers each time. This is maddening.

Vista seems to lose track of the printer every now and then and the print jobs stalls in the queue without letting me know there is a problem.

HP’s scanning software sometimes saves scanned photos to My Scans. Other times in stores it to a folder under it created under that folder (e.g., 2008-02 (Feb)). Sometimes it brings up the HP browsing software after a scan. Other times it brings up Windows Explorer.

Next, printing over the network (the C6250 is LAN enabled) from a Windows XP PC worked for a few days and then could not find the printer after that even after I manually entered the printer’s IP address.

Finally, HP updated C6250’s driver but never renamed it. Both the old driver and the one released in January 2008 are named PS_AIO_02_Network_ENU.exe. However, the two files have completed different file sizes. And, of course, the earlier one was released prior to January 2008.

The first HP printer I ever bought for myself was the HP ThinkJet released in 1984. I think I bought mine sometime in 1985. So, I’ve bought a series of HP printer for over 20 years now and have been pretty happy with them up until Vista was released, their inability to provide printers for old, and now, apparently even new printers.

So, so long HP! My next printer will probably be a Canon.

I noticed this while beta-testing Windows Vista but never did anything about it: Windows Vista doesn’t let you enable the Administrator account from a simple GUI the way Windows XP does.

Enable Vista’s hidden administrator, and password-protect its XP equivalent

The trick is to run the CMD command line window as Administrator (right click on the item in the Start menu), then use the net command as the CNET article describes. Every Windows user should have a separate standby account to use in case your main account is messed up somehow.

- Right-click on Command Prompt (or Run) in Start Menu and choose option to Run as Administrator
- Type the following in the Command Prompt text window: net user administrator /active:yes

Windows Vista is just too big and slow to run comfortably in a Virtual Machine (VM) unless you have a really fast PC with a really fast hard drive. I’ve found running Vista as a VM on a notebook with a hard drive less than 7200 rpm (which is the norm for desktops) is just a bad idea. It doesn’t matter if you have a reasonably decent amount of RAM (2GB on the host) and a fast processor (Core 2 Duo). I’ve even found Vista slow installed as a VM on a big server (10GB RAM, dual dual-core processors with 10000 rpm RAID-5 drives). The Windows Server 2008 (full GUI, not the Core version) seems to run reasonably well as a VM. But, I will reserve judgement on it until I get the RTM release and install it under both Virtual PC 2007 and Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1.

If you are looking for a relatively resource friendly version of Windows to run as VM on a relatively slow host PC, take a look at Windows Server 2003 R2. I’m running it on an old PC: Athlon 64 3200+ (2.2GHz) with 2GB RAM. I gave Windows Server 2003 R2 512MB RAM and it is running fast enough for me to feel comfortable when using it. I’ve run it with 384MB RAM (if you are on a PC with less than 2GB physical RAM) and it felt decent in that reduced configuration too. The base Windows Server feels lighter and faster than either XP or Vista in a virtualized environment. I may even use it as a virtual desktop PC instead of XP or Vista going forward. Since Windows Server 2003 R2 should remain under standard support until February 2010 (two years after Server 2008 debuts), it should be a reasonably secure Windows test environment for at least the next two years.

I haven’t picked up O’Reilly’s Windows Vista Annoyances book yet. But, since I spend a good chunk of my workday on a notebook running Windows Vista Business Edition, I probably should. In the meantime, here’s a link to a Slashdot review of the book:

Review: Windows Vista Annoyances

I run Vista on three different physical boxes (two notebooks and one desktop). They each have different graphic chip/card configurations. And, yet, I often see all kinds of weird display glitches (screen blanks out, switches from aero to basic, etc.) on each of them.

One of the improved features of Vista compared to earlier versions of Windows is the way it recovers from video driver panics. On older Windows boxes, this would result in a non-functional display that would require, at the least, a reboot.  Vista detects this and restarts the video subsystem without requiring a reboot. However, the real question is why Vista video drivers crash so much more than XP video drivers. I see the message in the figure above several times a week (if not even more often). This doesn’t leave me with a warm and fuzzy feeling. Especially since I NEVER see this kind of problem when I use a computer running Linux (assuming X11 is running at all) or a Mac.

I read earlier this week that the so-called Windows 7 that will replace Vista may emerge as early as 2009. Honestly, this isn’t early enough for me. I generally like Vista and miss the program search feature when I use the Start Menu in XP. But, Vista’s glitchiness is annoying.

According to this ZDNet blog item…

Microsoft (finally) broadens Windows Vista virtualization rules

…Microsoft is going to formally announce that it is ok (license-wise) to install Microsoft Windows Home Basic and Home Premium Editions as Guest OSes on virtual machines. Home Basic and Home Premium cost less than the Business and Ultimate Editions. So, this is good news for those of us who need to run Vista in a virtualized environment for testing and other needs.

The official Microsoft press release on this topic is found at…

Microsoft Announces Vision and Strategy to Accelerate Virtualization Adoption

…and the pertinent paragraph is: Increased licensing flexibility with Windows Vista. For businesses, Windows Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop provides unique licensing and flexibility to run Windows in virtual machines on servers and access them from either PCs or thin clients. The annual subscription to Windows Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop is now an estimated retail price of $23 per desktop for rich clients covered by Software Assurance for Windows Client. For consumers, Windows Vista Home Basic and Windows Vista Home Premium are now licensed for use in a virtual machine environment, and the updated end-user license agreement is available at http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/useterms/default.aspx.

Parallels Desktop for Mac and VMware Fusion (Mac)/Workstation (PC) don’t seem to have issues with the current generation of Linux distros. But, Microsoft’s Virtual PC and Virtual Server do not, unfortunately. And, since most of my work is using Virtual Server, I’ve been spending a bit of time hunting for information and asking questions. Most of my information has come from reading Ben Armstrong’s (Microsoft Program Manager in the Virtual Machines group) blog. But, I haven’t seen all the information I’ve collected there and elsewhere collected in one place to help others trying to run current generation Red Hat Linux distro derivatives (RHEL5, Fedora, CentOS) under Virtual PC and Virtual Server. So, here’s what I’ve found so far to get these Red Hat based distros working. I’ve tested all these items using CentOS 5.1 and one or two using RHEL5 or Fedora. Make a backup of your working (or semi-working) VM/VHD before trying anything mentioned below.

• Degrade color depth from millions of colors (32-bit) to thousands of colors (24-bit). This is due to an issue with the S3 graphics chip emulation. If you need to make this change after the fact, use SSH to get to your odd looking (display-wise) VM and use system-config-display to change color depth from 24-bit to 16-bit. This change will be reflected in /etc/X11/xorg.conf
• Add the following kernel parameters:
• clocksource=pit (this is to help deal with the clock sync issue)
• i8042.noloop (this is to allow using a mouse in X windows) You can read more about this solution in this article this article and this Red Hat bug thread.
• If you need to apply the two kernel parameter changes after the fact, you can edit /boot/grub/menu.list and add both parameters to the kernel line

The clocksource option helps but does not entirely solve the clock drift issue. I end up having the clock resync with a time source once an hour as an added workaround. I hope this collection of findings help’s others run current generation Red Hat related distros under Virtual PC and Server.

Reader Linda asks: I have two Hp printers how do i get them to install properly? i have the Windows Vista Home premium Operating System 32 bit i have no clue what that means really? So what drivers do i want/ and where do i get them/ From Dell? HP? or Windows Vista?

Fortunately, HP makes finding printer drivers pretty easy. Of course, Vista printer driver availability (for any brand) is still pretty spotty even though Vista has been out for a year now (more if you count Business Edition’s launch in November 2006). Just head over to:

http://support.hp.com/

You’ll be asked to designate which country you are in and then be whisked off to the appropriate site. Select Software & Driver downloads as the task, then type in your printer model in the text box below. Note that even if a Vista compatible driver is available, it may not fully support your printer’s features. For example, my PhotoSmart 7760 prints ok (more or less) but does not report ink supply levels as it does when used with Windows XP.