Ever been in a hotel, airport, coffee shop, or some place that you pay per computer to use their Wireless Internet? Windows 7 has a new feature “Virtual Wifi” that lets you use your wireless as if it was multiple wireless NIC’s, but why do we care? One way to use that virtual wifi feature is to use free software to allow connecting to wireless Internet while also turning your wireless into it’s own hotspot. Great for the wife’s or coworkers laptops sitting next to you. Pay once, surf many.
There’s been a similar feature since XP to share connections, but this required you to use two different NIC’s and only supported peer-to-peer network. This software fixes both issues.
Software: Virtual Router – Wifi Hot Spot for Windows 7 – 2008 R2
Info: Share Wireless Internet Connection In Windows 7 Without Ad Hoc
From KB 955392 there’s lot of info there, but the quickest “one time” install method is to follow “Procedure 1: Basic slipstream steps”
- Install the .NET Framework 3.5.1 feature
- Download the SQL SP1 service pack
- Expand the service pack by using 7zip or the command SQLServer2008SP1-KB968369-x64-ENU.exe /x:C:\SP1
- Install the SQL Setup Support files from the SP1 download C:\SP1\x64\setup\1033\sqlsupport.msi
- Now run the SQL Setup.exe from DVD or network and point setup to where SP1 is Setup.exe /PCUSource=C:\SP1
Note the long term best method is “Procedure 2: create a merged drop” but the above is great for the 1 or 2 installs.
I don’t think this problem/solution is much different in older versions.
Problem: when you send a link from Communicator client to another, the link isn’t clickable, has a _ (underbar) in front of it, or both. Results may be different on different computers. It’ll look like this
_http://www.google.com
Solution: Two things are happening here that are not related. The first is the OCS Server (and Edge Server) have the URL Filter enabled, which are adding the _ underbar to all links. Also called “Intelligent IM Filter”. You need to tone that filter down or disable all together to your liking. If users are coming in through an Edge Server, they will follow the Filter settings of the Edge Server they are using, which seams to supersede the Front End Server (my guess is the most restrictive wins). So be sure to set it on both servers separately. Results were instant in new IM’s.
The other issue is the lack of a clickable hyperlink. If you disable the URL Filters above, the underbar goes away but links are still not blue and underlined. To fix this you need to apply a GPO or set a local registry setting to allow Communicator to make hyperlinks clickable:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Communicator\
new DWORD EnableURL=1
After that exit and restart Communicator.
In both of these cases they are secure by default, which is great; but even years after this features release over several versions their use and configuration are still a mystery to most starting out.
They were getting random prompts for passwords in ActiveSync on Windows Mobile 6.0 and 6.1. They had Exchange 2007, and ISA Server 2006, but this problem showed up months after Exchange was migrated to 2007. It seemed random. The error on ActiveSync was the generic:
please log in access was denied 0×85010002
In the ISA Monitoring you would see a denied connection on your ActiveSync rule with this status:
12239 The server requires authorization to fulfill the request. Access to the Web server is denied. Contact the server administrator.
I tested with Windows Mobile Emulator from outside the firewall and was able to reproduce the error within hours (just letting it sit there).
I first thought this was the HTTP session timeout that changed with a Exchange 2003 service pack when Direct Push came out back in 2005. I remembered that setting and looked under the ISA Web Listener for ActiveSync on the Connections tab>Advanced>“connection timeout”. The wizard had correctly set it to 1800 seconds (30 minutes). No dice.
I poked around the web listener settings some more and noticed the timeout settings for forms authentication were set (this same web listener was used for OWA). ISA is supposed to be smart enough to not apply any of the forms auth settings to clients that don’t support it (falling back to basic auth as with ActiveSync).
Tom and the forums at isaserver.org confirmed my suspicion. The forms auth timeout was indeed affecting ActiveSync. To find it, look for the web listener of your ActiveSync rule, go to properties>Forms tab>Advanced> and make sure “apply session timeout to non-browser clients” is unchecked.
On trying to remove a old server from the directory (2003 server in a 2003 forest) I received this error
Failed to configure the service NETLOGON as requested “the wait operation timed out.”
The root problem was that this domain controller had a DNS entry to another domain controller that no longer existed. It was trying to contact it but couldn’t. Removing that entry and running dcpromo.exe again solved it.
