FlishFun.com

In October of 2003 I was working in a small Law Firm as their IT support. One of the things I had to do was update many, many computers and using Windows Update was taking forever! I came up with a batch “auto-patcher” to help speed things up, and since I was a member of Neowin, I thought I’d share. Add in the VB coding talents of Antonis Kaladis, and the AutoPatcher was born. I worked day and night with releases for 2 years before I needed a break. Antonis got a bunch more helpers to help with releases and AutoPatcher thrived. Cut to yesterday…

Microsoft Ceases AutoPatcher Project

I had a call from Microsoft Legal this morning and they have told me that we are no longer allowed to endorse AutoPatcher on Neowin.

Microsoft will only allow updates to be downloaded from its own servers.

Read more here: Goodbye AP!

I can’t figure out why Microsoft would wait 4 years to shut down the project… if they didn’t like it, they could have said so 3.5 years ago (and yes, they were aware of it). Oh well… who am I to question the all-knowing powers that be over in Redmond?

Anyway, I just wanted to share my thoughts on the subject. Feel free to comment, either here, on Neowin, or on AutoPatcher.com.

R.I.P. AutoPatcher

Quick Rant…

As someone in the IT field, I’m sick of consumers who don’t understand what they buy. If you go into a store and purchase a new laptop with Windows Vista on it, I don’t want to hear you keep asking “Where is my XP? Why did I get this Vista thing?” Seriously. I don’t know why it’s still acceptable for people to not know anything about technology. I’m not asking that everyone be a technophile, but really, have a little basic knowlege.

Above is a quick example… this is a scan of an actual note I got with a laptop yesterday (the color was added by me, it was a black & white scan). Sure, I’ll look into “Delete Vista” for you. *sigh*

POST UPDATED: APRIL 08, 2008!!

So, I’m sure I’m the last to figure this out… but after losing my charger for my V3M Razr phone, I was told that using a certain driver on the net I could just charge my phone from the USB port! The driver can be found below (from the OSNN Forums and MegaUpload).

These drivers can be downloaded as either version 2.9, for Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/2003, or version 3.4, for Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista (32 or 64bit).  The P2K 2.9 drivers are a manual .inf install, but the new Motorola 3.4 drivers are an automatic install, so you really have your choice.  There are some minor differences between the 2.9 and the 3.4 old drivers, as you can see here in the Change Log:

3.3.0.0 -> 3.4.0.0
1. Added PIDs to support Pau
2. Increased CallSetupFailTimer value to 200 sec for Q9c/Q modem device.
3. Removed TI Locosto blank ROM PID from EU installation to better support ODM products.

3.2.0.0 -> 3.3.0.0
1. Support for switching the phone out of USB Printing mode in Vista
2. Fixed MTP device installation failure seen on a machine with no previous WDF driver installation
3. Added PIDs to support W362 (Calcutta)

3.1.0.0 -> 3.2.0.0
1. Added MSM6800 PIDs to support Athens/Watertown.
2. Added TI OMAP 3430 and TI Neptune ROM PIDs
3. Motousbnet – Fixed DHCP request handling to properly support multi-up on Vista
4. Motccgp – Enhancement to simplify DTM/WHQL testing.
5. Motswch – Added USB reset port IOCTL.

3.0.0.0 -> 3.1.0.0
1. Added Nelson Q9c boot PID
2. Updated motodrv.sys to be complaint with latest DTM tests

2.9.0.0 -> 3.0.0.0
1. LIBmm89883 – Drv: Change default DUN connection speed shown in Windows connection status
2. Support for MSM6280 and QSC6055 PIDs.

As far as what it supports, I don’t know about the 2.9 release, but the 3.4 release supports the following:

This driver supports most Motorola OS, Motorola Linux OS, Motorola iDEN, Motorola Symbian/UIQ, Motorola Windows Mobile® and Motorola i-Mode handsets.

So, pretty much if you have a phone made by Motorola, this driver will help make your PC be able to charge it via USB. So, onto the downloading… here you go:

Razr V3C Usb Driver v2.9

Razr V3C Usb Driver v3.4 (32bit)

Razr V3C Usb Driver v3.4 (64bit)

Razr V3C Usb Driver v2.9 Mirror

Razr V3C Usb Driver v3.4 (32bit) Mirror

Razr V3C Usb Driver v3.4 (64bit) Mirror

If you are downloading the v2.9 drivers, just download the file above (this driver will work with the V3c and V3M), extract out the “P2K Drivers 2.9″ folder and plug in your phone using a USB to Mini-USB cable (see a pic here). When Windows asks for a driver, point it at the folder and once it installs you’ll see your phone change to the “Charging” screen. Neat, huh?

If you are downloading the v3.4 drivers, then just download the file above, and run the installer.  It will automatically install the drivers.  Once it finishes (or if it asks you during install), just plug in your phone using a USB to Mini-USB cable (see a pic here).  Windows should see your phone and your screen will change to the “Charging” screen.

Enjoy!!

I was recently accepted to the Windows Home Server beta test, and just got it all installed yesterday. First, let me explain the system I created. I didn’t want to go out and buy anything so I went through my spare parts (junk piles) to see what I could find that would meet the system requirements. The system I’m running consists of:

Generic Socket-A Motherboard
AMD Athlon 1200 CPU
512 MB PC-133 RAM
32MB AGP nVidia Video Card
10/100 LAN Card
PCI IDE Card
PCI USB 2.0 Card
PCI SATA Card
40 GB PATA Drive – System
40 GB PATA Drive – Data
30 GB PATA Drive – Data
80 GB SATA Drive – Data
120 GB SATA Drive – Data
250 GB USB Drive – Data

Not too bad, huh? So far I’ve copied all my saved data over to the now 500+ GB of storage I have, and tonight I plan to start sorting it into the folders that were created (Music, Pictures, etc). Once that’s done I’ll setup a couple of my systems to backup to the “server” and also enable the data protection to see how that affects the performance. One thing that surprised me is that I have a variety of different drives, all plugged into different controllers, and not only did the system recognize it all, it merges it all into one “pool” of storage space. I kind of hope to see this technology used more in upcoming home user versions of Operating Systems, as I can’t count the number of people I know who have a second Hard Drive and don’t know that they could just save files over to it.

Amazingly for what it is, Windows Home Server works great. It doesn’t have that many options, but it would be excellent for someone like my father, who for now is forced to manually backup to a removable hard drive. It would be nice for him to have a server in the corner of his den that would just sit and hold his data.