Configuring Windows Update in Windows 7

Windows Update is a feature of Microsoft Windows that automatically updates the operating system and device drivers. By default, Windows Update is enabled, and it is automatically configured to check for, download and install updates everyday. It is recommended that you do not change the default Windows Update settings. However, you can still configure Windows Update in order to tightly control its behavior. For instance, you could decide to manually run Windows Update and select which updates you want to install. To configure Windows Update, follow these steps:

1. Open the Start menu, click All Programs, and select Windows Update.

   

2. Windows Update will show on the screen. Click Change settings on the left side of Windows Update.

   

3. In the next window, you can change settings for Windows Update. In most cases, you can leave the settings as is. However, if you prefer manual settings, configure Windows Update as shown in the picture below.

   

How to use Westell 7500 as a Wireless Router

Westell Versalink 7500 is a DSL modem with integrated wireless router function. This modem is provided to DSL service customers when they sign up for the Digital Subscriber Line service. It's a good deal since you don't have to buy an additional wireless router. Even if you switch to the cable Internet, don't throw away this thing because you can still use it as a wireless router even without the DSL service.

In this guide, we are making the following assumptions:

• You want to use Westell 7500 as a wireless router where the DSL service is not signed up.
• You use the cable Internet, but the cable modem has no wireless function.
• You want to hook up Westell 7500 to your cable modem so that you can share the Internet among many computers.

Follow these steps to turn Westell 7500 into a wireless router exclusively.

1. Connect your Westell 7500 router to the cable modem with an Ethernet cable. The Ethernet cable should be plugged to the Ethernet port of Westell 7500, labelled E1/UPLINK at one end, and should be plugged to the cable modem at the other end. Do not plug the Ethernet cable into the Ethernet port labelled DSL.

   

2. There are now 3 Ethernet ports that you can use to connect your home or office computers. Connect your computer to Westell 7500 by plugging the Ethernet cable to any remaining port of Westell 7500 (E2, E3 or E4) and the other end of Ethernet cable to your computer's LAN card.

   

3. Open a Web browser (for example, Internet Explorer or Firefox) and type the URL of Westell 7500 modem router (by default, http://192.168.200.1) at the address bar.

4. Click on the Advanced tab, open WAN menu, and then select VersaPort.

   

5. Select WAN Uplink Port below Select how VersaPort will be used heading. Then, select ROUTED for the Protocol under the WAN Ethernet Configuration heading. Enable the DHCP Client and disable Proxy ARP. Then, click the Set button.

6. Restart Westell 7500. Now, Westell 7500 acts as a wireless router for your LAN. You'll be able to connect to the Internet through the wired or wireless connection to Westell 7500 using existing connection settings.

Installing Windows 7 on Asus A7N8X Computer

I installed Windows 7 Home Premium on a computer with Asus A7N8X motherboard. After the first boot, the device manager showed 6 devices for which I needed to install drivers. Since Windows 7 already recognizes and have installed the driver for NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller, I plugged in the Ethernet cable and ran Windows Update. After Windows Update finished and rebooted the computer, there was only one device that needed a driver. Here's the driver for 3Com 3C90X.

• 3Com 3C920B-EMB Integrated Fast Ethernet Controller

After all drivers were installed, I installed the following programs.

• Adobe Digital Editions
• Adobe Reader
• Apache Tomcat
• BlueGriffon
• CDBurnerXP
• Java runtime environment
• Microsoft Security Essentials
• Mozilla Firefox
• PortableApps.com Platform
• QQ international
• Windows Live Essentials 2011: Mail, Writer, and Photo Gallery and Movie Maker only

Cloud Storages for Linux

Today the trend is to put your valuable data somewhere on the Internet and access it anywhere. This is a dramatic departure from the past as our trust grows towards Internet companies. More companies are offering cloud storage services, for example, Box.net and Zumodrive. Here I show how to set up Linux to access cloud storages.

Box.net offers 5GB of free online storage for personal use, but each upload must be smaller than 25MB. Zumodrive offers 2GB free space initially, but unlike box.net you can upload any size of files using the ZumoDrive desktop application.

Adding a Box.net folder in KDE Dolphin

1. Select Network from the Places panel. Then, double-click on Add Network Folder.
   
2. Choose the WebFolder (webdav) and click Next.
   
3. Enter information for Box.net as follows.
   

Setting up Zumodrive on Mint KDE edition

1. Download the Zumodrive package for Ubuntu 8 or later (zumodrive-ubuntu8-i386-0.989.deb).
2. The Zumodrive package depends on openjdk-6-jre, but Sun's JRE is installed in Mint, so you don't have to install openjdk-6-jre.
   However, you need install libinotifytools0, libgnet2.0-0 and libnautilus-extention1. I used Synaptics to install the missing packages.
3. Unpack the zumodrive package into the system.
   

   cd /
   dpkg --extract zumodrive-ubuntu8-i386-0.989.deb .

4. Copy /usr/share/applications/zumodrive.desktop to your Desktop folder, so you can start Zumodrive by double-clicking the icon on desktop. Optionally, right-click on the icon, choose Properties and make it executable.

5. Now double-click on the Zumodrive icon. Once you type in your email and password, you can access Zumodrive through the ~/Zumodrive folder.

Tuning up TCP/IP settings in Windows XP

Microsoft has put some restrictions on Windows XP networking capabilities in order to protect computers running Windows XP from Internet worms. These restrictions include limitation on the number of usable TCP/IP ports available to programs (by default, 5000) and the number of concurrent TCP/IP connections. Such limitation may help deter the spread of Internet worms, but can severely penalize the performance of network intensive applications.

In this post, I'll show how to use the Windows Registry Editor to remove these TCP/IP restrictions and tune up Windows XP TCP/IP networking settings. We'll check the following 2 settings in the Windows Registry and maximize their values if necessary.

• MaxUserPort
• TcpNumConnections

By default, these settings are not present in the Windows Registry, so we'll create new entries in the registry. At the Start menu, select Run. Type regedit.

Registry Editor will open. In the left side of Registry Editor, browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters. In the right side of Registry Editor, locate these 2 values: MaxUserPort, TcpNumConnections. If they are present, then create them by opening the Edit menu, opening New submenu, then selecting DWORD value. Both of MaxUserPort and TcpNumConnections should be set to maximum: fffe. In decimal, it's 65534.

These changes to TCP/IP settings in the Windows Registry will take effect after reboot.