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Connecting a Windows client to a WebDAV drive

There are several third party products available to connect a Windows client to a WebDAV drive. This guide will explain how to do it with using native Windows and has been tested using Windows 7 but should work for other versions too. For Windows server 2003, Windows XP and Vista users, you first need to download a web folders patch from Microsoft.

It is a recommendation that you connect to the WebDAV drive using encryption (SSL), i.e. https. If you have a real, non self signed, certificate for your host, you’re good to go (the one that makes they key symbol in your browser show locked, green and give no warnings). Just skip down to the section describing how to setup the connection.

 

Using a self signed SSL certificate

If you are using a self signed SSL certificate, or signed by a non trusted certificate authority (CA), you will get the error message “An unexpected network error occurred” when trying to connect the WebDAV drive.

If you are using a self signed certficate, make sure it is issued for the hostname you are accessing the WebDAV drive through. If not, you must create a new certificate issued for the hostname of your WebDAV host. No workaround on that part as far as I know.

When you have a self signed certificate for your WebDAV hostname installed on your WebDAV server you must add the certificate on the client. This is how you do it:

  1. Run Internet Explorer as Administrator (right click on it and select “Run as administrator”)
  2. Go to your WebDAV host by entering the hostname in the address bar, like https://mywebdavhost (make sure you use https:)
  3. Select “Continue to this website (not recommended)”
  4. Click on the “Certificate error” displayed in red in the address bar
  5. Click on “View certificates”
  6. Click on “Install certificate”
  7. Click on “Next” in the Import wizard
  8. In the next step, select “Place all certificates in the following store” and click “Browse”
  9. Select “Trusted Root Certification Authorities” and click OK
  10. Click “Next”
  11. Answer “Yes” to the security question

 

Setting up Windows to map a network drive using native WebDAV

When your SSL certificate is sorted out (either by using a real certificate or a self signed one using the above steps), you are ready to map the network drives.

  1. Start the file manager, for example by clicking the Start menu and then click on “Computer”
  2. In the top of the file manager window, click on “Map network drive”
  3. Select folder letter, for example Z:
  4. The folder, enter the URL of your WebDAV host, like https://mywebdavhost
  5. Select “Connect using different credentials” and optionally “Reconnect at logon”
  6. Click “Next”
  7. Enter the WebDAV host user name and password and if you previously selected “Reconnect at logon” it can be a good idea to select “Remember my password”
  8. Click “OK”

Install Ubuntu 14.04 on Samsung Ultrabook Ativ Book 9

To install Ubuntu 14.04 on a Samung Ultrabook Ativ Book 9, this is how to do it.

I decided to keep the factory installed Windows 8.1 beside my Ubuntu install using dual boot. Thanks to enrish for the basic info. I found out there is no need to shrink the Windows 8.1 partition as long there is space enough for Ubuntu. The Ubuntu installation will do this for you. Before you do anything – make sure you have a backup as usual. If you decide not to keep the Windows 8.1 install, do keep the recovery partitions. No need to install any screen drivers, Ubuntu worked out of the box.

  1. In WIndows, run the Samsung Update Utility and update everything including BIOS/firmware.
  2. In Window Control Panel go to Power options and click on Choose what the power button does. Click on Change settings that are currently unavailable then scroll down and deselect Turn on fast startup (source http://askubuntu.com/questions/221835/installing-ubuntu-on-a-pre-installed-windows-8-64-bit-system-uefi-supported). Restart your system.
  3. When booting, press F2 to enter the setup.
  4. In the Boot section, disable Fastboot
  5. Insert the USB flash drive with Ubuntu ISO (prepared with create startup disk on another computer). 
  6. Configure boot device order, setting the flash drive to be the first option.
  7. Save and reboot. Now the system should be booting on the flash drive.
  8. Select to Install Ubuntu. During installation Ubuntu will recognize that you have Windows 8.1 installed and you have the option to install Ubuntu beside the Windows 8.1. The Ubuntu install will shrink the Windows 8.1 partition to make room for Ubuntu. By dragging the vertical bar you can decide how large the partitions for Windows vs Ubuntu should be. Continue installing Ubuntu as usual.
  9. After installing Ubuntu, unplug the flashdrive and when booting, press F2 and enable Fastboot again.

 

Windows Live Mail (WLM) problem setting IMAP Sent mail folder

When configuring Microsoft Windows Live Mail (WLM) with an IMAP email account, you should set which folders on the IMAP server that should be used for Sent, Drafts, Deleted and Junk email. This is done by going into the setup for your email account in Windows Live Mail, edit properties for the account and select the IMAP tab. Your email server provider should be able to inform you about the correct IMAP folder names. Normally the root prefix folder should be Inbox

However, in some cases (versions) of WLM there seems to be a bug so when setting the root folder to Inbox your Inbox will not be visible in the left pane. A workaround (solution) is to leave the root folder empty and instead prefix your IMAP folder names with "Inbox." like Inbox.Sent for the sent folder. Like this (sorry for the swedish version screenshot, didn’t have an english WLM at hand): 

Windows Live Mail IMAP folders

Windows Live Mail folders for Sent, Drafts, Deleted and Junk mail

Remmina on Ubuntu 12.04 problem to connect to Windows 7 with RDP ‘Unable to connect to RDP server’

Suddenly I couldn’t connect to my Windows 7 machine by RDP using Remmina on Ubuntu 12.04. It had worked before and suddenly stopped working. The error message displayed was ‘Unable to connect to RDP server’. Other RDP connections worked fine.

For some reason the problem was solved by editing the file ~/.freerdp/known_hosts and deleting the line with the server having the problem. When connecting again I was asked to accept the certificate and now the RDP connection worked again.

 

Windows Vista hangs on Welcome screen

I had a HP desktop PC running Windows Vista that sometimes hanged on the Welcome screen (displayed after entering the password to login). The problem occured randomly but started to occur more and more often causing trouble for the user. Just waiting for the Welcome screen to dissappear (for hours) didn’t help.

I applied different solutions found on the Internet including registry changes, uninstalling HP credential manager and others. One solution suggested on the Internet forums was to reformat the machine and factory install it. Not a preferred solution but ultimately the only thing left to try. 

The machine ended up in my workshop but before formatting it I opened it while running on my workbench. I noticed this machine had a built in flash drive used for Windows Readyboost (in order to make the machine boot faster and load programs faster). I was a bit curious since I hadn’t seen this solution before. The flash memory was connected to the motherboard through a cable. I accidently touched the cable gently and immediately the flash drive dissappeared and reappered in Windows opening the screen asking me what I wanted to do with the newly inserted flash drive. 

This made me suspect that the cause of the problems has been the readyboost located on a flash drive with a poor connection. I disconnected the flash drive completely and the machine have never again had the "hang on welcome screen" problem. Although it doesn’t load programs as fast as before it is way better for the user to have a machine that doesn’t hang on the welcome screen.

Screen is displayed upside down or sideways on my laptop with Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 10

Just press and hold CTRL and ALT and then press the up arrow and the screen will return to it’s normal orientation.

In order to support devices with different orientation you can rotate the screen. The screen can be rotated left (left arrow key), right (right arrow key), upside down (down key) and normal (up key) while pressing CTRL and ALT.

My guess this is going to be the next practical joke at the office 🙂

In case the keyboard shortcut doesn’t work, it can also be fixed through control panel settings described in this article.

Minolta Dimage Scan Dual III AF-2840 in Windows Vista

So, did you also try to get this negitive/slide scanner to work in Windows Vista?  No success? Thought so. Unfortunately I have found that Minolta scanners seems to have kind of a short life cycle in the eyes of the manufacturer. Like many other computer accessories that are not professional grade, drivers are availible for the current operating systems but when new arrives there just isn’t being any drivers developed. For this scanner I believe it was Windows 2000 and possibly Windows XP it had drivers for. But the arrival of Windows Vista was the death for this otherwise perfectly good scanner.

Minolta Dimage Scan Dual III AF-2840Like cameras, a good scanner do have a longer life cycle than normal computer accessories, which means that updated drivers are needed. Hopefully manufacturers will pick that up. Even though this scanner is not a professional grade scanner it has good performance and when sold it was not cheap, more in the price class of a good camera. I think as a consumer you should expect a bit longer life than that. Enough complaining.

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Windows XP users should immediately upgrade Adobe Flash plugin

Microsoft has sent out an urgent message encouraging all Windows XP users to upgrade their Adobe Flash plugins immediately due to a security issue. This includes users of both 32 and 64 bit Windows XP and both SP2 and SP3. The current version of Adobe Flash plugin is version 10.0.42.34.

The latest version of Adobe Flash plugin can be downloaded here.

Windows won’t boot and you need the data on the harddisk?

There is a nice solution to this little problem – called Active@ boot disk LiveCD. Download it as an ISO image (on another working computer of course), burn it to a CD and boot from the CD on your malfunctioning computer. The LiveCD is filled with utilities for you to get your valuable data off your crashed computer.

Even though there is a working free download I would encourage everyone that finds it valuable to pay the license so those guys at LiveCD can continue their good work on this product.

All icons on the desktop has Microsoft Internet Explorer icon

There is a practical joke being spread to Windows Vista users trying to fool them to associate .lnk (shortcuts) files with Microsoft Internet Explorer (MS IE). The so called joke in this is that it is very easy to do, but almost impossble to undo of you are not a skilled computer technician. This is because there is no possibility for the user to “unassociate” a file extension once it has been associated.

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