- Problem -

After installing Windows 7 (beta or RC) you can’t connect to a Linksys wireless router on some network cards. You may be able to see and connect to other wireless networks, but not specifically configured Linksys devices.

- Solution -

Open an Internet Explorer browser page on a working network computer and connect to your wireless router config page. This is at http://192.168.1.1 by default with a default blank username and password of “admin”.

Click on the Wireless tab and configure the settings on the page as listed below:
- Wireless Network mode should be mixed
- Provide a unique name in the Wireless Network Name (SSID) box in order to differentiate your network from your neighbours network… Write this down as you will need it to connect.
- Set the Radio Band to any one of the listed options (11-2.462GHz is a common one)
-Wireless SSID broadcast should be Enabled

Click on Save Settings…
Click on the Wireless Security tab under the Wireless one:
-Change the Wireless security mode to WEP, WPA or WPA2. Any should work, however make sure your other devices are compatible… ie. Nintendo DS only works with WEP.
-WEP selection will give you an option to put in a “passphrase” and generate keys, this is the recommended method if using WEP.
-If using WPA you can put anything in the “key” field.

NOTE: Write down the wireless key you used as you will need that to connect later.

Click on Advanced Wireless Settings tab (this is the important bit for Windows 7)
-Change the Beacon Interval to 75
-Change the Fragmentation Threshold to 2304
-Change the RTS Threshold to 2304
Click on “Save Settings”…

NOw you should be able to go to the Windows 7 computer and see the wireless network listed. Just provide windows with the security information that you configured earlier and you should be all set.

( copied from here )

“Configuring Updates Stage 3 of 3 0%”

Use your OS disk to access the Vista repair tools.

Even for those without an OS disc, Vista has repair tools built in.

To access them, boot the computer, but when you see the “Microsoft (C)” with the moving lines, hold the power button until it shuts down.

Now windows thinks it didn’t boot properly, and when you turn it back on, you should get the option to run Windows Startup Repair.

Choose this. When it loads, cancel the scan it starts (it won’t find anything anyway), and choose the text on the bottom that says something like “Show advanced repair options.” which should get you to a command prompt option. (Some folks are saying that it asked for the user, and they changed from the Administrator to their user account in order to get access to a few more tools, including a command prompt where you can run fixes).

You can also get to a command prompt via holding down, or repeatedly clicking, F8 as the computer begins its reboot. - select safe with command line.

note that this may take a few runs through the reboot F8 routine as my initial runs still ended up with the forever loop. Which is why the OS disk route - if your machine came with or you later bought such a disk - is preferred. If you are lucky ebough to have a restore point established, that option appears to work on a little less than half the machines I’ve run into.

Once you have the command prompt the need is to remove a file “pending.xml” that is causing the forever loop

Instead of deleting the “pending.xml” files from the c:\windows\winsxs folder I renamed it, so that it can be put back later if needed.

This seemed to do the trick for me. But if it still hangs on “Stage 3 at 0%” with reboot and hang again forever cycle continuing, just do a repeat of the F8, and select safe mode w/networking. Stage 3 may well continue and finish normally (it didn’t for me) but in any case after the second “safe” reboot a boot to normal windows was possible for the folks I was helping.

- Problem -

When you insert a CD/DVD-R/RW in your burner drive in Vista, it tries to create a new CD session. This causes you to be unable to read the other session already on the disk.

- Solution -

1. Launch registry editor (Start Menu > Run > regedit.exe).
2. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Explorer\CD Burning\Drives.
3. Select the correct Volume subkey (or all to disable on every drive).
4. Find and modify the IsImapiDataBurnSupported DWORD to 0.
5. Close the registry editor.

-Problem-

Windows Vista can’t connect to a Windows XP computer file share. You keep getting a logon unsuccessful error message even though you are using a correct username/password.

-Solution-

Method 1:

NOTE: This method is for Vista Business, Ultimate, and Enterprise versions only. For Vista Home versions see the second method.

1. Open Administrative Tools. (In Control Panel after clicking on “Classic View” on the left side bar)
2. Click Local Security Policy. (click continue on security dialog)
3. In the left pane, click the triangle next to Local Policy.
4. In the left pane, click Security Options.
5. In the right pane about 3/4 the way down, double click “Network security: LAN manager authentication level”.
6. Click the drop down box, and click Send LM & NTLM - use NTLMv2 session security if negotiated.
7. Click OK.
8. Restart the computer.

Method 2: (required for home editions of Vista, not recommended for novice users)

1. Open the Start Menu.
2. In the white line (Start Search) area, type regedit and press Enter.
3. Click Continue on the security dialog.
4. In regedit, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa
5. In the right pane, right click LmCompatibilityLevel and click Modify.
NOTE: If it doesn’t already exist, create a DWORD value named LmCompatibilityLevel
6. Set the value to 1
7. Reboot