Schlage LiNK remote lock Bridge

Schlage's LiNK product appears to be a great concept. However, they are not very clear about network setup. It appears that they assume you local network is wide open for outgoing traffic. Their website does not tell you which port must be opened for the LiNK Bridge to communicate with their web site.

It appears that the only port needed is Outgoing TCP/8879.

UPDATE:
Schlage's customer support just informed me that they also need TCP/8869, 8826, and 2345 opened, as well.

Giving non-Administrators permission to change Power Settings

When you have users who would like to change their power settings to control standby and such, and they are not an administrator, you need to give them certain permissions in the Registry.

• Run Regedit.exe as an administrator
• Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Controls Folder\PowerCfg
• Right-click on the “GlobalPowerPolicy” key and choose “Permissions”.
• Click on the “Advanced” button.
• Click “Add”.
• Type INTERACTIVE and click “Check names”, then OK.
• Check the “Set value” and “Create Subkey” checkboxes in the “Allow” column, and click OK, then OK, then OK.
• Do the same thing with the “PowerPolicies” key.

AT&T Smartphone Mobile Phone GPRS settings

After acquiring a couple of GSM smartphones, I discovered that there's a lot of mis-information about how to properly configure these devices for internet access. This is especially troublesome for phones that has been unlocked, and is being used on a different network.

I've compile enough information to get my unlocked "T-Mobile" HTC Dash / S620 / Excalibur to work properly on the AT&T network.

The setting are as follows:
(WM 6.1)
1. Start / Settings / Connections
2. Goto "GPRS"
3. "New..."

• Description: AT&T GPRS
  
• Connects to: "The Internet"
• Access point: wap.cingular
• Authentication type: "CHAP"
• Done

That is enough to get Internet Explorer and Email to work. From my Blackjack II (SGH-I617), there also is a setting for Proxy, which didn't seem like it was necessary. However, here's the info.

1. Start / Settings / Connections
2. Goto "Proxy"
3. "New..."

• Description: AT&T WAP
• Connects from: "The Internet"
• Connects to: "WAP Network"
• Proxy: wireless.cingular.com:80
• Type: "HTTP"

I hope this works for you.

Disable Windows XP Professional Fast Logon Optimization feature

So Windows XP Pro got the great feature that helps speed up login time. Fast is good, unless it doesn't work.

Well, the Fast Logon feature works, but just not the way "normal" desktop administrator / users would expect.

Read more about it here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305293.

Bottom line on how to disable this? Use either local group policy or AD group policy to set this value to ENABLE:

Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\System\Logon\
Always wait for the network at computer startup and logon

Some of the symptoms of this feature are:

• users not getting network drives at logon
• users net getting User Configuration GPO settings
  

Vista Ultimate (finally)

After "everyone" is on Vista, I finally obtained a copy of Vista Ultimate. Running on a Dell Inspiron E1405, Core Duo, 2gb memory, things are going well.

However, I did have a few small problems, and here are two three tweaks I used.

1. OpenVPN routing issue

When initiating a connection, I got this error message:
ROUTE: route addition failed using CreateIpForwardEntry: One or more arguments are not correct.

Upon a quick search, all I have to do is add two lines to the .ovpn configuration file.
route-method exe
route-delay 2

That's it. Easy.

2. Wireless Group Policy setting (or, Connect to Wireless Network before domain login)

This one is a bit tougher. In XP, the Dell driver took care of this with a check box that said "connect before login", or something similar.

In Vista, the Dell driver didn't provide such option. So on with Google.
Basically, use AD GPO to assign a wifi profile to your PC at bootup, so it could log in to the wifi network by itself, and establish a connection to available pre-determine SSID.

Check out this link. http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2007/04/CableGuy/default.aspx

3. Citrix client reports "Protocol Driver Error" while using CSG (Citrix Secure Gateway)

On two separate Vista computers, I saw this error while trying to launch a published app. Could not figure it out. Firewall, Anti-Virus, nothing.

At one point, I did have one Vista PC running CSG successfully, so I knew it has to work. Turns out, the working Vista PC was using a "incompatible" version of Citrix client (v9.15). Both later Vista PCs were using v10.0. So I went back to 9.15, accepted the "incompatibility" warning message, and got CSG to work.

Windows XP Workgroup issues

Since not everyone has a domain controller with AD at home, using Workgroup for file and print sharing is pretty common.

So what happens when a user of a newly rebuilt computer goes home, and is not able to browse workgroup? For those of us who are not using to using Workgroups, the answer is hard to pinpoint, but easy to fix.

The user reported that she can not see other computers in her workgroup. Her firewall was off, and the other computers are working fine in the workgroup. She can ping the other computers. She can also browse the other computers' resources by IP (eg, \\192.168.0.2). So what's missing?

I suspected that it had to do with NetBIOS name resolution. IPConfig shows a node type P (Peer to Peer). I didn't think that was correct, because P means you need a WINS server to perform NetBIOS resolution.

So what's going on? Turns out, it is because it was connected to an network that sets DHCP Option 46. If a computer connects to a network that sets DHCP Option 46 (WINS Node Type), and then connects to a network that does not change that option, it will stay a the previously set node type. In this case the node type was P. So you can manually change it to B for broadcast, which works well in a small workgroup environment.

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\NetBt\Parameters\DHCPNodeType = 1 (for broadcast)

HP OfficeJet 7200 / 7400 network problem

First, I dislike all-in-ones. The concept is good, but they never do exactly what you want. Second, HP has really undesireable AIO drivers. It tries to be too smart, do too much, and end up delivering much less then you expect. Also, do they have to make 10 programs run at startup!?

OK, here's an observation. I've worked with both HP OfficeJet 7200 and 7400, and have noticed a particular problem. They either don't like to work with the 3com IntelliJack NJ90, or they don't like to work at 100 Mbps / Full Duplex. On both machies, at 100 Full, would fail to print or scan. Go to 10 / Full, and it's ok.