After I installed the Realtek audio driver on my MacBook under Windows 7 Beta, I could hear music just fine. However, I found that I could not record anything through the microphone. I checked my other MacBook under Vista, and the microphone didn’t work, either. I checked another laptop with Windows 7 Beta, and still, the microphone did not work. I then realized that none of the built-in microphones under Vista and Windows 7 Beta worked.

Some tweaking about the microphone properties got it to work. Here are the steps:

1. Click on Start (the Windows icon) and type sound.
   
2. Click on Sound under Control Panel.
3. Click on Recording tab. Select Microphone and click on Properties.
   
4. Click on Levels tab. The default Microphone Boost is set to 0. Increase it.
   

Close all the dialog boxes, and the microphone will be ready for use.

The Vista Service Pack 1 is finally available to general public. You can download it here.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsvista/bb738089.aspx

You need at least of 3 GB disk space to install it. One of my colleagues reported problems with one system file (tcpip.sys). He has tried to installed it several times and always ends up with a crippled system. I am installing it on my testing machine and see how it goes.

Vista has a cool feature called DreamScene. It lets you play a video file on your computer’s desktop. However, it’s available only on Ultimate edition of Vista. You can somehow simulate it on Windows machines using VLC Media Player.

1. Download VLC Media Player from this site and install it.
2. Change the “Video output module” to “DirectX video output” by following this guide.
3. Play a video file of your choice. Now click on Video menu and select Wallpaper.
4. If you want to play a short file again and again. Click on View menu and select Playlist. In the Playlist dialog, select the file and click on the icon “Repeat one“. Close the Playlist dialog and enjoy!

I forgot to mention that when you run VLC media player in DirectX video output mode, the Aero color scheme will be disabled. The Aero color scheme will be restored once you exit out VLC media player.

We have third party firewalls on all our XP machines, so I had to disable the built-in firewall for XP using domain GPO. Now that Vista is out, the situation is different. The third party firewall doesn’t work under Vista. Therefore, we have to rely on the built-in firewall for Vista machines. Our current GPO applies to all machines regardless the platform. I need to find out a way to restrict GPO depending on the machines’ OS, so that I can have a GPO to disable Windows Firewall for XP and have another GPO to enable Windows Firewall for Vista.

There is an excellent article about how to create GPO specificly for XP. With little modification, you can create GPO just for Vista. This is the final query string I use:

RootCimV2; Select * from Win32_OperatingSystem where Caption like '%Vista%'

This filter would restrict the GPO to apply to only Vista machines.

The MacBook has no eject button under Vista. The eject key doesn’t work either. To eject CD-ROM, you need to use Windows Explorer. Once you have Windows Explorer opened up, you need to right click on the optical drive and select “eject” assuming you have an external mouse. If not, you will need to run a 3rd party utility like applemouse.exe to simulate the right mouse click. Anyway, there are multiple steps involved just to eject CD-ROM.

I found a VBscript to eject CD-ROM. When I tried the script on my MacBook, it didn’t work. After experimenting a bit, I got the code to work. Here is the modified version.

Const CDROM = 4
For Each d in CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject").Drives
  If d.DriveType = CDROM Then
    Eject d.DriveLetter & ":"
  End If
Next
Sub Eject(sDriveLetter)
  Dim ssfDrives
  Dim oShell
  ssfDrives = 17
  CreateObject("Shell.Application")_
    .Namespace(ssfDrives).ParseName(sDriveLetter).InvokeVerb("Eject")
End Sub

I created a shortcut to this script on the Quick Launch bar. Now, I can eject CD-ROM with just one mouse click. Also, remember that the items on the Quick Launch bar have keyboard shortcuts assigned to them. The keyboard shortcut is Windows key + Number where the number represents the order of the item on the Quick Launch bar. For example, the script to eject CD-ROM is the 7th item on the Quick Launch bar. I can use Windows key + 7 to invoke the script to eject the CD-ROM.

Apple’s Boot Camp Assist 1.1.2 b includes SigmaTel audio driver for MacBook. However, when I first installed it, the microphone was not working.

I first thought the microphone driver is not compatible with Vista. Later, I found that it’s not a compatibility problem. The microphone is just not enabled by default. Here is how you enable it.

1. Open up Control Panel. Go to Ease of Access.

   

2. Click on Set up a microphone.

   

3. Follow the wizard to set up your microphone as a desktop microphone.

   

I just upgraded my MacBook from Vista Business to Vista Ultimate. After the upgrade, the audio device is not working any more. I tried to uninstall the audio device and re-install it several times and it didn’t work. I then try to google for solution, and what do you know, I found the solution in my own blog!

A reader left a comment in my early post about Vista RC1 on MacBook. Here is what he said.

For those of you having issues with MacBook sound on Vista after an upgrade from an earlier version of Vista (and maybe XP – not sure), there is a bug with the Sigmatel driver installation package that affects the upgrade scenario. It will look like the install worked, but you’ll get the error “No Audio Output Device Installed” as a tooltip from the system tray speaker icon, and in the Control Panel sound settings dialog. You can get around this by going to Device Manager, *uninstalling* the Sigmatel audio that appears under sound devices (choose to remove the software too, this won’t remove the installer, just the copied driver), and running the installer’s setup.exe (as Administrator).

Vista has many new features over XP. However, the ability to manipulate ISO files is still missing. If you buy a system pre-installed with Vista, it probably has some 3rd party utilities for burning ISO files to CD/DVD. If you are like me who upgrade to Vista by myself, you are out of luck.

There are two free utilities that are very useful. The first is ISO Recorder V3 . It not only burns the ISO image to CD/DVD, it can also create ISO image file from CD/DVD. It’s really indispensable if you frequently download ISO image files and burn them to CD/DVD.

There are some cases where you only want to see what’s on the ISO image and you don’t want to burn it yet. It would be nice if you can view the files before you decide to burn the image to CD/DVD. The second utility does just that. It’s called Virtual CloneDrive . After installation, it creates a virtual drive on your machine. You can then mount the image onto the virtual drive. It’s pretty neat.

I finally got my Vista volume license media yesterday. The edition is Business Edition. The license key we got is called Multiple Activation Key (MAK) . I noticed that I didn’t have to enter license key during the installation. It turns out that Vista’s installation media let you try out Vista for 30 days (this can be extended 3 times). You’ll have to install the key and activate it before the tryout period ends. Here is a step-by-step guide by Microsoft.

If you don’t want to read the comprehensive guide. Here is what I did to install and activate my machine.

1. Open up an elevated command prompt.
2. Enter the following

   slmgr -ipk your-mak-key-here
   
   slmgr -ato

I mentioned that you can extend the tryout period. You use the same command to do it.

slmgr -rearm

You can use this for every editions of Vista except the Enterprise Edition which has only 3 days of tryout period.

I recently visited some web sites which needs Windows Media Player for their multimedia contents. FireFox complained about x-mplayer2 plugin not available. I found this page which solves my problem.

The solution is easy. Just download these two files ( npdsplay.dll and npwmsdrm.dll ) . Copy the files to FireFox’s plugins directory (mine is in C:Program FilesMozilla Firefoxplugins ). Restart FireFox and you are done.

For those who don’t trust dlldump.com, you can download the plugins directly from Microsoft.com. Here is the link. After installation, the plugins are in “c:Program FilesWindows Media Player” directory. Just copy the files to the FireFox’s plugins directory.