It’s simple: click on the speaker icon in the task bar and the volume dialog will appear. Now move the mouse wheel up or down to change the volume.

Windows 7 has some of this nice features. The thing is to know them I guess there are much more.

Guaranteed original iPad to sell. Incl. original packaging

In my case the only way to get Windows 7 booting again was:

• Insert original Windows 7 CD and boot from it
• Start the console
• Enter “sfc /scannow /offbootdir=C:\ /offwindir=C:\Windows

I’m not sure what happened, but I hope the SSD disc has not failure.

Recently I found a nice online tool which checks the health and configuration of your domain. The online check is available on intoDNS.com. To use it just browse to this site and enter your domain name and you will get many useful checks and information about your server settings.

Links

• intoDNS.com

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But it’s still available, only disabled:

1. Open your control panel
2. Select programs
3. Select “Turn windows features on or off” on the left side
4. Within the box enable [x] Telnet Client

When looking into these disabled windows features, there are features like:

• Services for NFS
• Subsystem for UNIX-based applications

Guess I want to check these NFS features…

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For this reason you can get the MPCL Plugin, it enables support for compiling several files in parallel on all your cores. It’s not for free but the price is fair.

Links

• MPCL plugin homepage

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VMWare Workstation installs two virtual network adapters, one is used for host-only networking and the other for NAT networking. This virtual adapters may cause the network neighborhood to become very slow.

To come around this annoying slow network neighborhood I know two possibilities:

1. If you only use bridged networking for your virtual machines
   => disable both network adapters in the control panel
2. If you use host-only or NAT for your virtual machines
   =>disable the “Client for Microsoft Networks” and “File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks” protocols in the properties of the two virtual network adapters

Links

• VMWare Communities: Slow network browsing in Win XP host

One time a blue screen was displayed with a memory parity error. So I’ve tried to remove first one RAM and after still having freezes the other one. Still with the problem.

After reading many posts which said this may not only be a problem of the RAM, it may be also a problem of:

• motherboard
• graphics card
• WLAN (WiFi) card
• …

Removing the WLAN card isn’t difficult, so I did. Furthermore I’ve disabled everything with WLAN and Bluetooth in the BIOS. Afterwards the notebook was running without problems for a few days.

Today I’ve put the WLAN card back into the Notebook (BIOS settings still disabled) and after a few hours a freeze happened again with crazy graphics output.

It seems that the WLAN card causes this problem in my case. It’s not 100 percent proofed but I’ll do further checks and reports.

Update 28th January 2010

Since the last crash after a few hours putting the WLAN card back in the Notebook it runs stable now. WLAN and Bluetooth is still disabled in the BIOS. It really looks that WLAN or Bluetooth causes the problem in my case.

Update 13th August 2010

In the mean time I’ve recognized that the fan on the left side was blocked by dust. To remove the dust it’s needed to open your notenbook. You have to release quite a lot screws to achieve this, instructions can be found on the internet. After removing the dust from the fan the notebook works much more stable.

Additionally I’ve installed a SSD hard disc. This is pretty cool, you will recognize a noticeable difference:

• performance (boot time and general)
• notebook stays cooler
• saves power when running notebook on battery

Putting a SSD into your notebook, a thing I can really recommend.

Links

• Dell Latitude memory errors messages; freezing, random rebooting problems

Ciscos AnyConnect VPN Client will support 64bit versions but it will not work together Cisco PIX 500 Series. Furthermore the 500 Series has reached it’s end of life date.

Searching the solution for a different solution I first came across the Shrew Soft VPN Client. It’s a free software and should be able to import Ciscos .PCF configuration files. But my .PCF file could not be imported and the client did not tell the exact problem.

After some further research I found the NCP Secure Entry Client. It’s available for Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP for 32 and 64bit. I’ve tried the evaluation version and it imported my .PCF file without any issues and also the VPN connection was immediately established. The price is about 80 EUR for a single user license.

I guess the Shrew Software VPN Client will also work together with the Cisco PIX but I did not make any further tries.

One restriction of the NCP Secure Entry Client is the missing possibility of tunneling IPSec over TCP (transparent tunneling). In certain firewall environments this may be needed. UDP Encapsulation seems to be supported but in my tests I could not get a connection. For more information refer to the knowledgebase of the NCP Secure Entry Client.

According to Cisco(Cisco VPN Client FAQ)  there are no plans to provide 64-bit support for the Cisco CPN Client so the only option to get a VPN connection to your PIX is one of the mentioned third party clients mentioned above.

Another possibility is to install the Cisco CPN Client in a virtual machine but for my use case this is not a suitable possibility.

The world is not yet completely ready for 64bit – always keep that in mind