How to pair an Apple Wireless Keyboard with Windows 7

February 24, 2010

I was having some issues pairing my new Apple Wireless Keyboard with Windows 7, some hunting around came up with a variety of suggestions, from hacking the registry to installing alternative Bluetooth software (neither of which I would recommend, as they are far more likely to break more that it fixes). In the end the procedure was straight forward if unfortunately not as simple as it was for every other Bluetooth keyboard I’ve used.

If you already have Bluetooth setup on your pc of laptop, simply use the windows default bluetooth wizard…

Turn on wireless keys ON and Bluetooth on PC ON (make sure it’s discoverable)
Open the ‘Devices and Printers’ panel
Select ‘Add a device’
Let it scan for your keyboard, which may come up as just ‘keyboard’ or as an ‘Apple Keyboard’
Select use your own Passkeys and type in 1111 using your existing keyboard.
Although it won’t look like it, it will now be waiting for you to enter the same password on your new Apple keyboard (remember to press enter)
If successful it will prompt that the device is installed and ready to use.

Check out the Apple Wireless Keyboard on Amazon US or Amazon UK

How to restart or shut down a PC over remote desktop

February 22, 2010

Here’s a quick tip if you’ve ever needed to restart your media center or home server when connected over Microsoft Remote Desktop connection, it is possible by clicking on the desktop, then hitting control+f4 on the keyboard, the brings up the Shut Down Windows dialog, which offers you all the normal control including restart and shut down, not normally offered to remore desktop users via the start menu.

How to restore a Media Center session after using Remote Desktop

February 21, 2010

This is an excellent tip for media center users, who would prefer to administrate their pc’s remotely rather than direct, this enables users to quit a session and restore the account to the local account…

All you have to do is run a simple command that will log you off and return the system to it’s console. Create a shortcut on the desktop called End RDP and use this command as the target…

%windir%\System32\tscon.exe RDP-Tcp#0 /dest:console

A couple of things to remember. If you find it not working, check the user session that you are using on the RDP. Open Task Manager and check the users tab. See the session tab at the right? That number, in this case it’s 0, corresponds to the number in the command. RDP-Tcp#0

One thing to note, this tip doesn’t work the hack to enable remote desktop access in Windows 7 Home Premium as home premium doesn’t include tscon.exe, which is unfortunate but a small downside to a very handy hack.

via Home Server Show.

How to use an Apple Magic Mouse in Windows (without a Mac & Bootcamp)

February 10, 2010

I’ve decided to play it brave and try and use the lovely new Apple Magic Mouse on Windows, after some initial research I found that drivers hacked from a previous mac bluetooth update were available for Windows users (not just Mac Bootcamp users).

I did however encounter the issue other mac/bootcamp users have experienced with the mouse locking up for a second or two every few minutes. Obviously this was sufficiently annoying to look for updated drivers which come in the form of a monster Bootcamp update (at around 275mb of drivers alone!)

Buried deep within that download are files for each device driver, but unfortunately it’s wrapped in an application that only likes being run on Mac hardware.

This is where a little app called 7-zip comes in hand, as you can use it to look within large compressed files, including exe’s into their contents, this means you can dig around and pull out the latest 2mb driver file for the magic mouse…

Download and install 7-zip.
Download the Boot Camp Software Update 3.1 for Windows 64 bit (or for the standard 32 bit version)
After you have BootCamp_3.1_64-bit.exe, open it up in 7-zip
Navigate to BootCamp_3.1_64-bit.exe\BootCampUpdate64.msp\BootCamp31ToBootCamp303\
Look for Binary.MultiTouchMouse_Bin and click on extract.
Then rename the file and just add .exe to the end.

Being a kind person, I’ve taken the hard work (and large downloads for what is just a mouse driver) and created a direct download for the Apple Magic Mouse Drivers from Bootcamp Update 3.1 for Windows x64 or for Windows x86

After that it runs as a standalone installed, updating the drivers to support multi touch scrolling and fixing the lockups I had previously experienced.

Purchase the Apple Magic Mouse on Amazon US or Amazon UK

Photo via mathewpacker.com

The Bloomfield, Melbourne, Australia

February 2, 2010

via The Bloomfield.

How to enable Shadow Copy on Windows Home Server

February 1, 2010

Shadow copy is a service that was first build into Windows 2003 Server and provided the same service as Mac users now enjoy with Time Machine many years before Apple ‘invented’ it, it provides a way of accessing file that have been changed or delete, often at multiple different times due to the way Shadow Copies are setup to collect changes every 12 hours.

This can be really worth while if you’ve ever been caught accidentally saving over a document or erasing a folder, as you can look thought the folder at in any of it’s saved states and either restore or copy the contents to a safe place.

The service works on the server and client pc can then be used to access the folder cache with the properties menu, and the previous version tab. This is fantastic because it puts the power back into the users hands, without the need of any server administator’s assistance.

Unlike the other Windows Server, the Windows Home Server, Shadow Copy needs to be enabled within a remote desktop session, by right clicking on the drive letter (normally D:) and selecting the Shadow Copy tab, then enable. This will setup your server to take a snapshot every twelve hours. The space this service uses won’t be reported to windows and doesn’t have an detrimental effect on performance, but can save you bacon on those rare occasions.

You may want to change some of the default settings if you are just using your Windows Home Server for private use, I suggest removing one of the snap shots to make it once every 24 hours and including Saturday and Sunday in the schedule.

Restore the default home page on an Acer EasyStore H340

February 1, 2010

The Acer EasyStore is a great little home server, but it comes with some over zealous customisation that you might want to remove, this included the custom Acer home page which is nothing more than a branding road block for most users. To remove this simply…

Remote desktop connect to your home server
Open Control Panel, then Administrative Tools and select Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager
Expand Internet Information Services, then Server (local computer) Web Sites
Right click on ‘Default Website’ and select ‘Properties’
Select the Documents tab
Highlight “Suite.aspx” and click the “Remove”button to remove the custom acer page
Finally click the OK button