Firefox 4 Beta 8 released

It's late but Firefox 4 Beta 8 released over the week and with lots of improvements over Beta 7. Mostly it's bug fixes though. Firefox Sync gets streamlined but I'll not comment too much on that. I don't really bother with sync features since I'm not sure I like having a third party manage my browser profile for me. It's inevitable, I suppose, but I'll resist as long as I can.

More interesting is the improvements to WebGL as can be seen on this video. If it's that good, then we can expect some interesting applications soon.

Oh, and Merry Christmas! :-)

Related posts:

Installing Firefox 4 pre-Beta 8 on Ubuntu 10.10

Windows XP sound card conflicts

So Windows XP gives you a strange message about sound card hardware acceleration when opening up Control Panel, and it sounds something like this:

To enable the advanced sound effect for gaming, please make sure the setting of the Hardware Acceleration is "full". The directory is as below: Control Panel -> Multimedia/(Win98)/Sound & Multimedia/Win200,Me)/Sounds & Audio Device(WinXP) ->Audio ->Playback/Advanced ->Performance ->Harware Acceleration.

This happens when the on-board sound device and PCI sound card are in conflict. Just disable the sound device in BIOS (or, remove the PCI sound card) and the problem ceases to exist. You could also just disable the appropriate device in Device Manager.

Related posts:

No sound on Windows XP
More sound issues with Windows XP

Fixing a strange problem with HP's Toolbox FX

HP's Toolbox FX software is known to occasionally start giving errors during startup. What happens is a dialog will pop up with the message "Win32NT - 5.1.2600.196608". And that's all the clue you're getting from HP. That's so... informative.

It's nice to finally figure this one out. And the solution has nothing at all to do with HP: .NET Framework 2.0. Basically, if Microsoft's .NET Framework 2.0 gets corrupted then HP's Toolbox FX software starts giving that error. You'll need to reinstall .NET Framework 2.0.

In case a straight forward uninstall/install fails, you'll have to do it manually following Microsoft's instructions here. I'll reproduce the steps I did based of Microsoft's instructions.

Delete the following from %systemroot%\system32:
- URTTemp folder
- mscoree.dll file

Run the command microsoft.net, then find and delete the v2.0.50727 folder.

Run regedit then delete the following two keys:
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Net Framework Setup\NDP\v2.0.50727
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\.Net Framework\policy\v2.0

After this you should be able to install .NET Framework 2.0. I didn't follow all the steps so if you still have issues then try following the steps to the letter. Once successfully installed, reboot and you'll find that Toolbox FX works and no longer gives you that strange error message.

Unity - A taste of things to come

A video demoing some of the newer features that's already made it into post-Alpha 1 Natty is available. It's nothing too fancy, but the new intellihide feature is definitely greatly appreciated. Having the panel discretely move out of the way just makes Unity that little bit nicer to use.

Unfortunately for me, the instructions on creating a LiveUSB to test run current Unity doesn't seem to be working. The LiveUSB works, but I can't seem to get persistence working which basically means the new updates aren't available. That's even more so thanks to the recent Python 2.7 migration that's going on.

Related posts:

Ubuntu's Unity on the desktop
Unity as the default Ubuntu desktop

Streamline your Windows boot using Soluto

Soluto is a software that profiles your Windows boot and lets you manage the software and services that run on your PC. Information on the various software is based on community feedback which lets you see the proportion of users' preferred settings for particular software. Soluto even gives recommendations on whether to disable, delay, or leave a particular startup item alone.

The typical Windows desktop loads a lot of items that are never or rarely used. Some are not even required to boot (eg, Windows Live Messenger, Skype) yet they startup with Windows by default if you install them and consume system resources unnecessarily. The more items that startup with your system, the slower the boot will be hence the longer it takes for your computer to be ready for use.

Using Soluto is a simple install and reboot to profile your system boot. The caveat is that you can't uninstall Soluto, or it will revert the changes you've to the boot sequence. Soluto is also currently in Beta, so there's many software it can't manage yet.

Soluto main window

So just what can you do with Soluto?

Boot profile view

I've already mentioned that it profiles your boot. Soluto shows you graphically what starts up with your system and how long they take to load. You get to interactively manage startup items on your computer.

Disable or delay startup item simply (with recommendations)

There's also a history view that shows your boot times over multiple system boots that even indicates when you install or remove software from your computer. It's interesting to see how your boot times fluctuate across multiple system startups. Maybe the developers can analyse this and make further optimisation recommendations in future. Just a thought.

The history view

Finally, don't forget to provide feedback with the feedback button. Fledgling projects depend on a healthy community building up around it to evolve into successful projects. I'm quite sure the developers would greatly appreciate bug reports or feature suggestions. Even some words of praise if you particularly liked the software is rewarding.

The all-important feedback button

DNS domain resolution works with nslookup but not ping command

A fine conundrum indeed to be able to resolve Internet addresses with the nslookup command, yet ping fails to do the same. Pinging IP addresses works just fine, though.

It turns out this happens if the following two files get corrupted: dnsapi.dll and dnsrslvr.dll.

It's a simple task to replace these with good copies if you happen to have a Ubuntu LiveUSB and appropriate Windows setup CD on hand. Just boot into the LiveUSB, pop in the Windows CD, make sure the hard disk partition containing Windows is mounted, and do the following:

~$ sudo apt-get install cabextract

~$ rm /media/hdd/Windows/system32/dnsapi.dll

~$ rm /media/hdd/Windows/system32/dnsrslvr.dll

~$ cabextract -d /media/hdd/Windows/system32 /media/cdrom0/i386/dnsapi.dl_

~$ cabextract -d /media/hdd/Windows/system32 /media/cdrom0/i386/dnsrslvr.dl_

Be sure to replace /media/hdd with the appropriate mount point on your system.

Alternatively, you can boot into Windows Recovery Console to restore the files:

:\> expand d:\i386\dnsapi.dl_ c:\windows\system32\dnsapi.dll

:\> expand d:\i386\dnsrslvr.dl_ c:\windows\system32\dnsrslvr.dll

Here, I'm assuming drive D: is your CD-ROM drive but it could be different depending on your specific system.

Reboot into Windows, and DNS domain name resolution should be back to normal.