I recently encountered problems with Windows 7 logging on to our home domain controlled by our Small Business Server 2003 machine. Joining the domain was no problem and Windows 7 worked well for several days until it started to get stuck on the Welcome screen after logging in.

I discovered that somehow the PC on which I had installed Windows 7 had become disassociated with our domain, because after restarting and booting into Vista, I got an error stating that “the trust relationship between this workstation and the primary domain failed” quitting and then rejoining the domain solved the problem in Vista, but not in Windows 7. In Windows 7, I could log on locally with a user account not associated with the domain, leave the domain and then ostensibly rejoin the domain, but when I try to reboot after rejoining I got the same hang on the Welcome screen in Windows 7 and again the problem carries over to Vista when I tried to log on. Interestingly, Windows 7 gives me an error when I try to use the repair applications to return to a restore point and the application the diagnoses boot problems finds nothing wrong (as the problem isn’t really a boot problem).

In any event, I intend to suspend my testing of Windows 7 until this issue is resolved.

When I last tried to update my Drobo’s firmware, I ended up having to (i) reestablish all of the network shares and associated security settings, and (ii) endure a long (30 minute) reboot of the Small Business Server 2003 machine to which it was attached during the early phase of the boot process in which the only progress indicator was only a black screen.

Because my Drobo was functioning well, I swore off firmware upgrades until yesterday. I was doing a reboot of the sever to try to fix a problem with the Windows Search Service and noticed that the new Drobo firmware promised to do something about video stuttering (a problem when I tried to play HD videos stored on the Drobo, on a Media Center Extender connected to a (different) Media Center PC.

First the good: my network shares and security stayed intact this time; and unlike last time I did not not need to reboot the server as part of the firmware upgrade.

The bad: the firmware would not update using the Drobo Dashboard alone because it insisted some files were still open despite my killing almost all the processing running on the PC to which it was connected. So, I resorted to unplugging the Drobo, figuring that it had be designed to withstand a power failure. That worked, but only after trying twice and enduring a tense 12 minutes of the Drobo flashing red lights on all of its drives as it installed the new firmware and reinitialized itself.

Also, I am still having stutter with my HD video files. These files are large MPEG2 files and I’m betting I won’t have this problem with files the smaller files I will keep in their native MPEG4 format—just as soon as Windows 7 comes out and I can upgrade my Media Center PC (Windows 7 should be able to stream MPEG4 files to extenders.)

After my partitioning nightmare, I finally had the chance to install the Windows 7 beta on a brand new 120GB partition. So far I am favorably impressed, sufficiently so that I plan to use the beta for all my work going forward unless and until I run into a snag and then I’ll go back to my pristine Vista install.

Here are a few of my observations so far:

• Windows 7 started out taking full advantage of my 1600x1200 monitor. No Vista install has ever done that. I have always had to increase the screen resolution manually after an install.
• I only had three updates to install rather than 70 with Vista (admittedly with a pre-SP1 install disk).
• I was able to join my Small Business Server 2003 domain without a hitch.
• I installed Office 2007 and am using Internet Explorer 8 for the first time, so there are MANY interface differences, but none are particularly bothersome.
• Windows 7 still hide file extensions of known file type by default. Why?
• The install required almost no user input and seemed to last about half an hour. The dual boot with Vista was handled automatically after I chose to install Windows 7 to a new partition.
• I am not steeped in the minutiae of Windows 7 changes. but the Aero features seem nicer, especially transparency effects. Is this my imagination?
• My Vipre antivirus/antispyware installation went fine and I have been able to use it without incident.
• When installing Paperport 11 the install dialog actually fit within the unresizable dialog box! When installing in Vista previously there was a problem with the dialog buttons and text not all fitting within the dialog box, leaving me to guess at which button to push for an English language installation previously.
• The new interface feature of pinning running and non-running programs to a common taskbar reminds me of Windows Mobile where the attitude was that the use should not have to worry about what applications was running and what applications were not. If a user wanted to use an application it would come up; whether it was loaded into memory or already there should not make any difference. (The only problem with that approach in Windows Mobile is that often the OS wasn’t smart enough to free up additional memory from non-active applications.) I think this paradigm may actually work better in Windows 7 than did (does) in Windows Mobile.

I recently decided that I wanted to try the Windows 7 beta. Because I did not want to interfere with my current Vista installation, I thought I would install it on its own partition in a dual boot configuration.

I had a 250 gigabyte volume for Vista, of which only 50 GB was used, so I figured I would shrink the Vista partition and install Windows 7 on a new partition using the Disk Management application built into Vista. Unfortunately, it told me I could only shrink the Vista volume by 0.05 GB!

I did an internet search on my problem and discovered that other had success in my situation using GPartEd, a linux boot disk that allows partition manipulation. The only catch is that afterward you need to use the Vista installation DVD to “repair” the Vista installation so that you can boot into it.

When I tried to use GPartEd, however, all it showed me were two empty 500GB drives. I do have two 500GB drives, but they were certainly NOT empty. A couple of postings led me to believe this might be the result of errors in the partition tables for my drives.

So I loaded an old copy of Partition Magic 8.0 (which is probably NOT compatible with Vista) by booting to its CD. It offered to fix some errors in my partition tables. I accepted the offer, but it locked up before completing the operation.

So next I thought I would give Partition Manager (a $40 application that works like Partition Magic, but unlike Partition Manager is supposed to work under Vista) a try. When I ran that application it identified all of the partitions on my two drives, but identified them as “invalid” and would not let me do anything with them except delete them.

Not yet finding satisfaction I returned to Vista’s Disk Manager only to discover that two of my five partitions were not showing up as mountable volumes.

So I tried the free demo of a partition repair application. It offered to repair my partition tables to restore the missing volumes, but could not see the three volumes that Disk Manager COULD see and mount. So I never let this application make any changes to my partition table.

I was able to use Partition Manager to rescue the files from the missing volumes—exporting them onto a USB drive I attached for this purpose. Now my data was safe.

I proceeded to delete these invisible partitions and then repartitioned the two drives. Having shrunk the now Vista Partition, I discovered Vista would not boot. So I tried “repairing” it with the Vista installation DVD. It found errors after running ChkDsk several times, but ultimately it indicated it could not successfully repair my Vista installation and send information off to Microsoft so that they might learn from my dilemma to benefit future souls in my position.

At this point I had little alternative, but just to reinstall Vista. Which I did. I then allowed the Vista updates to be applied. I installed Service Pack 1. I reconnected my PC to our home domain. I installed the dozen or so applications that I use the most. Finally, I tried with limited success to delete the “old” Vista installation on my C drive (there were a few files that refused to be deleted mostly for security permissions related reasons).

Not wanting to repeat the five-hour Vista reinstall process again (and taking the advice of Ed Bott) I tried to use Vista’s Backup and Restore Center to create a backup image of my now pristine Vista installation (complete with my critical applications). It told me a could not because there were disk errors and I would need to run ChkDsk again upon a reboot.

After 45 minute run or ChkDsk I was finally able to create a backup image of my Vista installation and my long journey of three evenings is over. Unfortunately I still don’t have Windows 7 installed, but at least now I have a nice VALID 120GB partition just waiting for it!

I spoke to a Microsoft representative about Sync at the recent Consumer Electronics show. My primary interest was “garage sync” of media files between the car and my home server over a wireless connection. He indicated that was something they would like to do, but not to expect it any time soon. Too bad, because this feature might be sufficient to lead me to buy a new car.

We also talked about the intelligence of the traffic reporting using the Sync’s navigation system. He explained that Sync used the traffic services of Inrix (a company formed by ex-Microsofties). Inrix evidently pulls historical and real time traffic data from many sources: in-road sensors, cell phones that are being used on the expressway; transmitters in cars, etc. They assemble all of this into a sophisticated model that they bring to bear on the key question for every driver: what is the fastest way to get to my destination given current traffic conditions.

This sounds very much like the approach I had assumed all companies had already taken, but alas—not so. It is however, an approach that has the potential to save hours of misery in traffic jams.

From further reading I learned that Navteq (a competing data provider) is working on this problem as well using similar tools.

I also learned that Navteq and Inrix systems and data are already being used by various GPS devices (e.g. some from TomTom and Garmin) , but with inconsistent results.

So I’m not ready to buy a new GPS device yet, but I think that day is coming soon.

Here are some of the themes and trends that I noticed at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show:

• The increasing prevalence of UPnP and DLNA devices. For example, many WiFi digital photo frames are designed to connect to UPnP servers.
• There were a fair number of small digital cameras that could take 1080p video and 5 megapixel stills. I can’t speak to the quality of these small devices…
• There were number of exhibitors besides nVidia that featured nVidia’s 3D Stereo technology involving 3D glasses.
• Most if not all of the major makers of LCD televisions had models that featured some type of compensation for motion blur. It was varyingly called “motionflow” “clearscan” and “trumotion".” I remember seeing this technology demoed a year or two ago by its maker at CES. It was interesting to see how widely it had been adopted.
• There were many multitouch displays. I include both the HP display, Microsoft surface and phones with multitouch displays in this category. I credit the success of the iPhone for the popularity of this technology.

Almost all of the large TV manufactures at this years consumer electronics show were showing vivid, ultra-thin LED Backlit LCD televisions. Some of these display panels were over 50 plus inches in size and had bright, vivid colors.

The potential downside, was revealed in the source material at least one manufacturer chose to use: pans across paintings. Why? I suspect it is because the display  lacked color depth that could have led to banding effects with other types of source material. Instead of displaying the 24+ bit color that produces over 16 million different color, these displays may have used 16 bit color allowing only about 65,000 different colors. This isn’t a problem until you try to display a blue sky. An insufficient number of shades of blue produces banding effects.

Note: edited to correct confusion between OLED and LED Backlit LCDs

There is a nice post at Law and Disorder about how the cable industry has come to prefer CableCard to the alternatives that it once championed. It turns out the alternatives were more expensive that they thought and CableCard was cheaper.

I wonder if there is any evidence that CableCard has become more reliable over the years—after all this was the primary reason for the FCC to mandate CableCard devices. The idea was that by making cable company provided set top boxes and third party cable tuners use the same technology that this would put everyone on an even playing field and encourage cable companies to make CableCard work reliably (because they would depend on it as well).

Home.Live.com is that portion of Windows Live that is a cross-between Facebook and cloud computing:

• It has basic data (including photos and video) storage and manipulation capabilities, which gives it its cloud computing aspect.
• It also exposes different amounts and types of that data (including personal information) to the internet and other Live friends, giving it its Facebook-like aspect.

As with Facebook, your friends can see a “feed” describing your recent online activities. Your blog from Windows Live Spaces is a part of that feed. There is one-way integration with other social sites/services such as Facebook and Twitter allowing you activities on those services to show up on your Windows Live feed.

The site/service has some nice capabilities and is logically organized and integrated, but is is not not used by many of my friends making Facebook superior for my purposes. If activities on Windows Live were reflected in my Facebook feed, Windows Live might be more useful to me. When I talked to Microsoft yesterday at the Consumer Electronics Show that admitted that it would be nice to have a Facebook application that did this and hinted that they might be working on that very thing along with deals to better integrate Windows Live with other social web sites. I think such an application and integration is important to the success of Home.Windows.Live.

One of the reasons I have not posted much recently is that I have been concentrating on actually enjoying my digital media rather than focusing on incremental improvements.

I have been watching many Netflix DVDs and Blu-Ray discs, television shows recorded using Vista Media Center and the Fall game releases for the Xbox, listening to podcasts using a combination of Orb, my PPC6800 Windows Mobile phone and Plantronics Voyage Bluetooth stereo headphones. Our Windows Server 2003 box handles its tasks as an Exchange Server, file server, music server and HomeSeer platform pretty well. Our home lighting systems are sufficiently automated to my taste.

I had convinced myself that everything was pretty good. That is true, but when I asked myself (without reference to what might be there) this evening what I would like to see at the Consumer Electronics Show this weekend, there were a surprising number of responses for such a contented guy:

• A way to rip HD movies from Blu-Ray discs and display them on Windows Media Center Extenders.
• A way to have our digital audio collection easily available for playback in each of our cars (and easily and regularly sync’d if necessary).
• An affordable digital photo frame that can wirelessly display photos from a playlist on a UPnP server.
• A way to play many types of Web video on Media Center extenders.
• A reliable, inexpensive VOIP system for our dual phone home phone lines.
• Affordable 1080P plasma TVs to replace the 3LCD rear projection 720P TVs that we have in our media room and family room.
• A digital music player with color graphical user interface (one like the Sonos or Squeezebox Duet) that works well with UPnP servers.
• The ability to play high bandwidth video on Media Center Extenders from a Drobo connected to a separate server rather than to the Media Center PC itself.
• A small HD video camera that takes acceptable still photos, uses SD cards and MPEG4 files but that is not as susceptible to lighting issues and shaky hands as my current Sanyo Xacti HD1000.
• An affordable wireless color LCD remote that could run HomeSeer macros.

I note that the vast majority of these relate to the ability for multiple devices to easily use common media. The consumer electronics industry has certainly made enough progress in this area to make me generally contented, but not enough to make me stop looking for more.