Tag Archives: usb

android usb tether driver for Windows XP

Computer Aid Posted on by

Having recently gotten an Android mobile phone (and since I have a mobile phone plan with 1Gb of downloads), I decided that I might need to occasionally use the phone as a broadband modem (although a wifi “wireless” tether is nice, its also nice to charge my battery-hungry Desire while surfing the net via my laptop).

The laptop is XP, so I thought it should be easy to setup… but XP just didn’t seem to recognise the phone.

I can connect it to my linux-based (easy peasy) laptop, with no issues.

Even Windows 7 worked nicely.

So whats the problem with XP?

It turns out that XP doesn’t know how to handle the “USB” internet without proper drivers (which microsoft seem to be refusing to make available via its update system… how childish).

So I eventually found the solution in an android forum:

  • First, download the driver file: android tether xp
  • Make sure you save someplace (like your desktop)
  • Plug your android phone to the PC via a USB cable
  • When the phone prompts you for the connection type (or by flicking down from the top bar of the phone), select: usb tethering
  • When XP says: “i don’t have a driver for this”… just say you will select the driver maually, and then point it at the “tetherxp.inf” file that you downloaded.
  • After that, you will have a tethered android internet connection (just remember that it can sometimes take up to 1 minute before XP realises that the phone has changed USB connection type.

Dell Dimension 5150 mouse & keyboard

Computer Aid Posted on by

Sometimes progress can happen too fast.

Dell must have realised this when they released the Dell Dimension 5150.

It must have seemed to be ultra-modern, and the the way PCs would be like in the future: They eliminated those really ancient PS2 ports for the mouse and keyboard (ie the round green and purple plugs at the back of your PC).

A Dell engineer must have thought: its about time we went fully USB, and stop wasting time on PS2.

Great in theory, but the reality is very different… as I found out when I had to fix one.

When I take a PC back to my office, I usually just take the tower… no keyboard/mouse/monitor… I’ve got plenty, so I minimise the risk of misplacing a customers equipment.

But once I started the Dimension 5150, the usual XP found new hardware wizard would popup. It would find either a new USB keyboard, or a new USB mouse… and it would ask you to click “next” to continue installing the hardware….

Hmmm… how do I click “next” when its the mouse/keyboard that is being detected?

I tried a few different mice, and tried them in all the USB ports… but to no avail.

One solution would be to use a PS2 to USB adapter like this: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/62620 … but I’m not sure it will work… after all, it still plugs into a USB port, so XP still needs to detect the hardware and so we are back to the beginning again…

Grrr.

Another solution is to use remote desktop… but remote desktop seems to be disabled on on this PC…

So what did I do?

I took it back to the customer, plugged the mouse into a USB port, start PC… XP though it was new hardware… shutdown the PC, plug mouse into next USB port, start PC… repeat process until I find which port the mouse was originally plugged into !!!

How crazy is that!

Anyway, the next time I see one of these monsters, I’ll be sure to plug in my own USB mouse (remembering which USB port I used, and making sure the hardware is detected properly), before I take it away!

If the mouse happens to fail, then at least the keyboard can be used to help the new hardware wizard find a new mouse.

The computer of the future will be your mobile phone – revisited

Computer Aid Posted on by

Back in January 2006, I wrote an article on my vision on the future of computers.

For a recap, take a look at:

http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Computer-of-the-Future-Will-be-Your-Mobile-Phone&id=135735

In 3 years, I can say a lot of progress has happened.

Smartphones based on the windows mobile platform, Googles android platform, and of course the iphone platform have improved “computing” usability.

You can now buy a smartphone that can read/synchronise your emails & calendar, GPS can help you navigate, you can play music and videos, use them as a usb drive, surf the internet, use a messenger client, etc

Smart phones have become more powerful, with CPU speeds up to 1000Mhz (!), and some now have integrated graphics accelerators (!!). Dual-core processors are just aroung the corner.

pdakeyboard

But my original idea of having a bluetooth-like connection to a wireless keyboard and mouse, is already here. But wireless bluetooth-like connection to a monitor hasn’t happened yet.

The closest I’ve seen are:

  • USB to dvi adaptors – OK, its not wireless, but an interesting way to plug multiple monitors into a laptop. How long before we have a wireless version might depend on an enterprising individual who sees a potential market.
  • Displaylink – This is really exciting technology. As long as you have a Displaylink-capable monitor, you can plug it into an existing PC or Mac (no support for linux and smartphones 🙁 ), and you can have an extra display without getting a fancy video card… You can have up to 6 monitors connected to one PC. If only this technology can be adapted to use bluetooth, and support added for smartphones…

You might be thinking: why bother? The resolution is going to be low.

Firstly, some modern smartphones have resolutions of 800 X 480, ie: reasonable.

Secondly, there is no reason why smartphones can’t run displays like laptops, where the resolution of the built-in LCD can be lower than the resolution of an external monitor.

So, is it theoretically possible to use existing technology to utilise a smartphone as a “PC”?

Yes, as long as someone develops a Displaylink driver for smartphones.

But can a monitor be used wirelessly?

Well, USB 2.0 is now capable of displaying onto a monitor, and the data transfer rates are 480 Mbits/s

Bluetooth 1.2 is only capable of transferring data at 721 kbit/s (ie not fast enough)

Bluetooth 2.0 tops out at 2Mbits/s … still not fast enough

Bluetooth 3.0 has just been released (April 2009), and uses wifi to reach speeds of 24Mbits/s … also not fast enough. To get a true “laptop in your pocket” effect, you will need speeds about 20 times faster than Bluetooth 3.0.

Wifi running 802.11n is promising: about 100Mbps to 200Mbps

So, it looks like good wireless monitors will take a while yet.

dlink di-624s usb file sharing

Computer Aid Posted on by

A customer has a dlink di-624S wireless router.

It seems like a nice unit (except for scant documentation). I particularly like the 2 USB ports.

I had previously set it up (wireless network and network printing).

This time, he needs to connect an external 3.5″ 200Gb USB drive, and make it available on his network.

The drive was meant to go into one of his PCs, but the PC motherboard had some serious issues with running SATA and IDE drives at the same time (despite gamedude saying otherwise).

Before I got there, he had been using the HDD plugged into the usb port on one of his PCs.

So I connect to the 624S, and there is just 1 page, with a handful of options for configuring a usb drive.

OK, this should be easy. I change one option, so that there is no “security” on sharing the drive… There’s no point in worrying about security, as he is behind a firewall, and its just him and his wife.

But the drive doesn’t show up under my network places…

A quick web search shows that the 624s doesn’t seem to support ntfs (just FAT32)… now thats annoying.

I test it by using my 2Gb usb pen-drive… and network sharing works great.

Since the drive is ntfs, and contains data that needs to be saved, I connect it to the PCs usb port, so I can backup the data, before I format it to FAT32.

But windows (vista) says something about a drive error… oh no, I have a bad feeling about this.

vista makes the “usb detected” sound, but “disk management” doesn’t show anything. How am I going to format it to FAT32, if I cant see the raw drive?

I plug it into a nearby XP system, but get the same results…

At this point, the customer suggests switching the drive off, then on.

I figure its worth a try… if the file system is stuffed, then it won’t make any difference anyway.

And it works!

So I transfer the 70 Gb of data to the PCs internal drive… but vista decides it will take 40 minutes to copy the data.

OK, I’ll have to show the customer how to reformat the drive, as I don’t want to hang around for over half an hour.

As I go through the motions of formatting the drive, I see Vista only seems to allow the drive to be formatted using one of 2 filesystems: ntfs, and exfat.

Ok, I go to the XP box, and show the customer how to format the drive using FAT32.

I’ll need to find out what this exfat thing is.

Its a shame vista doesn’t allow formatting fat32 drives (how difficult can it be?).

Printer and firewall problems after a spyware infection (backdoor.ranky.x etc)

Computer Aid Posted on by

I worked on a PC with a lot of nasties (winfixer, newdotnet, backdoor.ranky.x, etc etc).

After removing everything, I install SP2, and all the subsequent patches (via autopatcher), but after all that, the windows firewall refuses to start (Windows cannot display windows firewall settings).

I found a great solution at: http://windowsxp.mvps.org/sharedaccess.htm. I downloaded sharedaccess.reg, put it in the registry, and it worked great.

But I also found that the usb ports were no longer working… Device manager showed a problem, so downloading the latest driver fixed that.

I install all the usual free security software (antivir, win defender, etc), but when I take it back to the customer, she says that the printer stopped working at some point (a HP MFP)… can I fix it?

So I say: sure!

I just need to uninstall the printer software, reboot the PC, then reinstall the software.

The uninstall goes well

The reinstallation gets to 18%, and then stalls…

Since I cannot stay for long, I ask the customer to just let it run… it might “snap out of it” in a few hours.

A few days later, she calls saying the PC is now slower than before I worked on it! And hubby cannot do any business “paperwork”.

I manage to go around very soon, and hey! why is Norton AV running on this system! Now I know why its slow. It turns out the customer had the norton AV setup file on her desktop. She wanted to get rid of it, but must have double-clicked on it instead! Anyway I disable the partially installed NAV (cannot be uninstalled unless I complete the installation!).

Since hubby  stopped the printer install soon after I left, I restart the install… but it still freezes at 18%.

I give the customer the following options:

  1. Backup whole system, reformat, and reinstall windows
  2. Try another printer. If another printer works, buy a new printer.
  3. I can try to repair the printer system (probably involves an hour of trawling through the registry, looking for (and removing) HP keys… but I cannot give a fixed quote.

She has a think about it.