Older blog entries for asmodai (starting at number 31)

Upgrading dd-wrt for Windows 7, problems and a possible fix?

As noted in my earlier post I had issues with my network interface card (NIC) dropping my connection whimsically.

So finding some posts about possible firmware issues with Linksys routers and disconnects I proceeded to update my router’s firmware from dd-wrt v23 to v24 pre-sp2. This actually caused me some problems. I followed the information presented in the stickies on the dd-wrt forum, which means that prior to updating the firmware I did the 30/30/30 reset to get the factory defaults going again, then proceeded with uploading the new firmware (v24 pre-sp2 build 13064) and once that was done do the 30/30/30 reset again.

And that’s where 2-2,5 hours of frustrating would kick in. After the router had rebooted I couldn’t ping the default 192.168.1.1 address. I was getting a destination unreachable message. So alarm bells started to ring in my head, thinking I had bricked my router in some way. But the strange thing was that it looked like it rebooted correctly, no strange flashing LEDs, or not being responsive to cables being plugged in and taken out. Of course, with the router down I had no Internet connectivity to do some troubleshooting browsing. But thankfully I could use my Android mobile phone for that. I retried various reset routines but to no avail. Of course I started to despair a bit more, thinking I would have to buy a new router. I then noticed that the WLAN LED was lit up. Since my Android phone supports WiFi I figured I should see if it shows up. ‘Lo and behold, it had a network with the SSID ‘dd-wrt’ and sure enough, I could connect to it. Next was trying to router’s web interface and that worked too! Of course that enthusiasm was quickly dampened when I discovered that you cannot do a firmware upgrade over the wireless link. I also couldn’t find any way online on how to override this precautionary lockout, so it was back to square one.

And then I stumbled over a post which mentioned that Linksys routers with the original firmware sometimes have their wired LAN ports revert to 10 Mbit/half-duplex settings. After picking up my jaw from the floor I wondered if it could be so easy. Sure enough, after changing the settings for my NIC in the configuration window, I could ping 192.168.1.1 and load up the administration interface in my browser.

Then I tried my World of Warcraft (WoW) patch download again (which is essentially a BitTorrent client) and stream Bohemian Rhapsody by the Muppets at HD quality from YouTube only to have my NIC go silent on me again. So, after the few hours of futzing with the router and its upgrade I was no closer to a proper solution. Although I did conclude it was, in fact, the Windows 7 box acting up since my WiFi connection as well as the Unix box on another LAN port could still use the network as it should.

Then the morning after I was looking around several Google results again and came to a post on the Windows7Forums.com website where someone had troubles with a wireless connection from Windows 7. I use a wired connection, so aside from the symptoms it’s not quite similar. It then documents the ‘roll back driver’ solution, which I had previously tried. But it became interesting when I found Sage’s post at the bottom which reads:

“I think I’ve found the solution to this problem. It was revealed recently (A week or two ago) that there is a bug in the NVIDIA chipsets when using 64-bit addressing. This ends up affecting a whole host of things on machines, including this nefarious “Random internet disconnect” problem. I posted this solution over at a couple other W7 forums and others with NVIDIA chipsets and 64-bit machines have all found it to succeed in fixing this frustrating issue.

What it more or less comes down to is applying this hotfix: You encounter problems when you move data over USB from a Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2-based computer that has an NVIDIA USB EHCI chipset and at least 4GB of RAM

Ignore the fact that it mentions this fix to be solely for USB hardware issues. It is a fix for the NVIDIA chipset on 64-bit Windows 7 and has been practically a miracle fix for people with the USB harddrive disconnect problem, the random internet drop problem, and the internet-disconnect-on-wake-from-sleep problems that have all been plaguing Windows 7 64-Bit users since the RC.”

Funnily enough my Windows 7 is 64-bits and I also have an NVIDIA nForce chipset. Looking at the hotfix page shows it really is only updated USB driver files. Figuring it cannot possibly be worse than my situation now I installed the hotfix are being emailed the location to download it from. A reboot later I was downloading my WoW patch with the downloader while streaming the Muppets again and haven’t seen it drop dead yet. So initial tests show it might very well be the solution, but I need to stress test it some more.

Syndicated 2009-12-03 10:10:25 from In Nomine - The Lotus Land

Windows 7 and the case of the dropped network traffic

So the good news of Windows 7 is that they removed the TCP half-open limits.

The bad news is that quite a fair number of people have problems with their network interface card (NIC) dropping dead on them as soon as they push their system to sustained high throughput, think of leeching newsgroups, using torrents, but also downloading ISOs (BSD or Linux releases) or even watching YouTube clips and downloading a driver.

The suggested ‘fixes’ have been ranging from absurd to interesting.

Things I have done so far:

  • rolled back the driver from NVIDIA to Microsoft’s stock driver, did NOT help
  • disabled power management features, did NOT help
  • disabled autotuninglevel (netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled), still in testing

Things to try still:

  • disable all Quality of Service (QoS) stuff
  • disable all offloading (netsh int ip set global taskoffload=disabled)
  • disable Gigabit related features

Syndicated 2009-12-01 22:30:40 from In Nomine - The Lotus Land

Windows 7 and the Windows Audio Service

Strange thing, after logging in my Windows 7 task tray suddenly showed my volume icon as a red cross and hovering over it said that the “Audio Service is not running”. Looking at the services by means of services.msc shows that my Creative Audio Service and Windows Audio Service are both running. Restarting the Windows Audio Service and Creative Audio Service fixed the display issue. Apparently just changing the volume ought to fix the display of the icon as well.

Syndicated 2009-11-30 06:43:26 from In Nomine - The Lotus Land

Office 2010 Chinese language pack font list

FZShuTi
FZYaoTi
LiSu
Microsoft YaHei
Microsoft YaHei Bold
STCaiyun
STFangsong
STHupo
STKaiti
STLiti
STSong
STXihei
STXingkai
STXinwei
STZhongsong
YouYuan

It looks like the Chinese Office 2010 font list is the following (Changzhou SinoType, Founder, Microsoft, Stone):

  • FZShuTi
  • FZYaoTi
  • LiSu
  • Microsoft YaHei
  • Microsoft YaHei Bold
  • STCaiyun
  • STFangsong
  • STHupo
  • STKaiti
  • STLiti
  • STSong
  • STXihei
  • STXingkai
  • STXinwei
  • STZhongsong
  • YouYuan

Syndicated 2009-11-29 18:01:40 from In Nomine - The Lotus Land

Office 2010 Japanese language pack font list

It looks like the Japanese Office 2010 font list is the following (all by RICOH):

HGGothicE
HGGothicM Medium
HGGyoshotai Medium
HGKyokashotai Medium
HGMaruGothicMPRO
HGMinchoB Bold
HGMinchoE
HGPGothicE
HGPGothicM Medium
HGPGyoshotai Medium
HGPKyokashotai Medium
HGPMinchoB Bold
HGPMinchoE
HGPSoeiKakugothicUB
HGPSoeiKakupoptai
HGPSoeiPresence EB Extra-Bold
HGSeikaishotaiPRO
HGSGothicE
HGSGothicM Medium
HGSGyoshotai Medium
HGSKyokashotai Medium
HGSMinchoB Bold
HGSMinchoE
HGSoeiKakugothicUB
HGSoeiKakupoptai
HGSoeiPresenceE Extra-Bold
HGSSoeiKakugothicUB
HGSSoeiKakupoptai
HGSSoeiPresence EB Extra-Bold
  • HGGothicE
  • HGGothicM Medium
  • HGGyoshotai Medium
  • HGKyokashotai Medium
  • HGMaruGothicMPRO
  • HGMinchoB Bold
  • HGMinchoE
  • HGPGothicE
  • HGPGothicM Medium
  • HGPGyoshotai Medium
  • HGPKyokashotai Medium
  • HGPMinchoB Bold
  • HGPMinchoE
  • HGPSoeiKakugothicUB
  • HGPSoeiKakupoptai
  • HGPSoeiPresence EB Extra-Bold
  • HGSeikaishotaiPRO
  • HGSGothicE
  • HGSGothicM Medium
  • HGSGyoshotai Medium
  • HGSKyokashotai Medium
  • HGSMinchoB Bold
  • HGSMinchoE
  • HGSoeiKakugothicUB
  • HGSoeiKakupoptai
  • HGSoeiPresenceE Extra-Bold
  • HGSSoeiKakugothicUB
  • HGSSoeiKakupoptai
  • HGSSoeiPresence EB Extra-Bold

Syndicated 2009-11-29 14:55:55 from In Nomine - The Lotus Land

Office 2010 font list

It seems the Office 2010 font list is the following (English installation):

Algerian
Arial Unicode MS
Baskerville Old Face
Bauhaus 93
Bell MT
Berlin Sans FB
Bernard MT Condensed
Bodoni MT Poster Compressed Light
Book Antiqua
Bookman Old Style
Bookshelf Symbol 7
Britannic Bold
Broadway
Brush Script MT Italic
Californian FB
Centaur
Century Gothic
Century
Chiller
Colonna MT
Cooper Black
Footlight MT Light
Freestyle Script
Garamond
Haettenschweiler
Harlow Solid Semi Expanded Italic
Harrington
High Tower Text
Informal Roman
Jokerman
Juice ITC
Kristen ITC
Kunstler Script
Latin Wide
Lucide Bright
Lucida Calligraphy Italic
Lucida Fax
Lucida Handwriting Italic
Magneto Bold
Matura MT Script Capitals
Mistral
Modern No. 20
Modern
Monotype Corsiva Italic
MS Outlook
MS Reference Sans Serif
MS Reference Specialty
MS Sans Serif
MS Serif
MT Extra
Niagara Engraved
Niagara Solid
OCRB Regular
Old English Text MT
Onyx
Parchment
Playbill
Poor Richard
Ravie
Roman
Showcard Gothic
Snap ITC
Stencil
Tempus Sans ITC
Viner Hand ITC
Vivaldi Italic
Vladimir Script
Wingdings 2
Wingdings 3
  • Algerian
  • Arial Unicode MS
  • Baskerville Old Face
  • Bauhaus 93
  • Bell MT
  • Berlin Sans FB
  • Bernard MT Condensed
  • Bodoni MT Poster Compressed Light
  • Book Antiqua
  • Bookman Old Style
  • Bookshelf Symbol 7
  • Britannic Bold
  • Broadway
  • Brush Script MT Italic
  • Californian FB
  • Centaur
  • Century Gothic
  • Century
  • Chiller
  • Colonna MT
  • Cooper Black
  • Footlight MT Light
  • Freestyle Script
  • Garamond
  • Haettenschweiler
  • Harlow Solid Semi Expanded Italic
  • Harrington
  • High Tower Text
  • Informal Roman
  • Jokerman
  • Juice ITC
  • Kristen ITC
  • Kunstler Script
  • Latin Wide
  • Lucide Bright
  • Lucida Calligraphy Italic
  • Lucida Fax
  • Lucida Handwriting Italic
  • Magneto Bold
  • Matura MT Script Capitals
  • Mistral
  • Modern No. 20
  • Modern
  • Monotype Corsiva Italic
  • MS Outlook
  • MS Reference Sans Serif
  • MS Reference Specialty
  • MS Sans Serif
  • MS Serif
  • MT Extra
  • Niagara Engraved
  • Niagara Solid
  • OCRB Regular
  • Old English Text MT
  • Onyx
  • Parchment
  • Playbill
  • Poor Richard
  • Ravie
  • Roman
  • Showcard Gothic
  • Snap ITC
  • Stencil
  • Tempus Sans ITC
  • Viner Hand ITC
  • Vivaldi Italic
  • Vladimir Script
  • Wingdings 2
  • Wingdings 3

Syndicated 2009-11-29 14:54:25 from In Nomine - The Lotus Land

Microsoft Office 2010, typography, and proofing tools

Microsoft has released Office 2010 as a beta that you can use up to and including October 2010 (scheduled to be released in June 2010). You can download it as either 32 or 64 bit, although it seems the 64 bit download is a bit hidden since many buttons for downloading seem to lead to the default 32 bit download. If you follow the link at the Professional Plus site to ‘Get It Now’ you should be presented with links to both versions. At the moment Microsoft supports Chinese (Simplified), English, French, German, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish. If you are like me you just use the application in English, but then miss some of the proofing tools for, say, Japanese.

You can download language packs from the Microsoft Download Center. If you change the language to, say, Japanese you are presented with two download links at the bottom for the Japanese language pack. This language pack includes user interface changes for Japanese as well as proofing tools, OCR support, and fonts.

Once the pack is downloaded just run it and you can customize want you want to install. Since I am not interested in the UI aspects of the pack, I selected the top part and toggled selection for all to not install. Then for the entries 国際フォント (international fonts) and 文章校正ツール (proofing tools) I made sure to install everything. 文章校正ツール includes both 日本語用校正ツール and 英語用校正ツール and I guess you can most likely skip 英語用校正ツール since it is already installed. 国際フォント includes 標準フォント (standards font), which I am guessing is related to JIS X standards for font encodings.

Basic Windows 7 has 134 fonts installed. A basic English Office 2010 install increases this to 198 fonts installed. Installing the Japanese language pack proofing tools with fonts brings this to 228 fonts installed.

If you press the expansion arrow at the bottom-right of the Home part of the ribbon (or press CTRL-D) you will get the Font dialog. If you select the Advanced tab you can turn on features such as OpenType ligatures. This will mean that with text such as ‘fl’ or ‘ffi’ certain parts of the letters will connect instead of showing white space between the letters. This is the same technique used in printed media such as books.

Syndicated 2009-11-29 14:51:54 from In Nomine - The Lotus Land

FreeBSD 7 to FreeBSD 8 update quite painless

So last night I updated my machine to the latest FreeBSD 7-STABLE and from there updated to FreeBSD 8-STABLE (although it’s named PRERELEASE still in the repository). Aside from some minor kernel configuration file revamping the entire effort was just like a regular update.

Syndicated 2009-11-26 09:26:31 from In Nomine - The Lotus Land

James Cameron and his drive

A friend of mine pointed me to this article about James Cameron and his latest film “Avatar”. I am personally much inspired by such things and I hope I share at least some minor part of this kind of zeal in delivering perfectionist accomplishments. I love how he hired experts from different areas of expertise to work on the language, flora, or other parts of his fantasy world, all in all to make the world more consistent. This is the bread and butter of making an experience fully immersive. Sure, it might be wasted on the audience who just goes to watch the movie, but people like myself appreciate this. I am not sure how many experience this, but whenever I play a game where I notice that some design has been reused, watch or read something where I notice the consistency is off I feel kind of let down. I guess it is hard for me to understand why other people would not go the extra mile to avoid such problems.

Syndicated 2009-11-24 12:58:15 from In Nomine - The Lotus Land

Google Groups and Sender header

Since a few days Google Groups mailing lists stopped having a Sender header. Aside from being a violation of RFC 5322 in that this is a SHOULD requirement for mailing lists it also breaks labels in Google Mail as well as procmail filtering. Add to that that moderation messages have strange subjects all of a sudden and I wonder which idiot has been messing around with the mail backend at Google without considering the broader implications.

Syndicated 2009-11-24 08:53:24 from In Nomine - The Lotus Land

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