In newer browsers, when you start dragging an image, a default behaviour is triggered, so you can drag the image ex. to the desktop or whereever you want. Firefox, Opera, and Chrome does this, and also Internet Explorer 8. As anyone could guess, problems start with the latter.

I wanted to create a solution where the user can drag and drop objects around, and of course in this case it is not allright when the browser overrides my event handlers with its default one.

In standards-compliant browsers the solution is easy, the Event object has a method called preventDefault(), and when you call it in the 'onmousedown' event handler, this default behaviour is cancelled. I was not really surprised when it was only IE8 where it did not work. Well, in IE the Event object has no preventDefault() method, IE uses a boolean property called returnValue. I tried that one, nothing changed.

I spent some time googling about this, no results. Then in MSDN I found out that IE has a special event, called 'ondragstart' , and I already knew that this is the solution (Safari seems to support this event too). So in an 'ondragstart' event handler you have to set returnValue to false, and you are done.

Sometimes I also do some computer repair, and I was asked to deal with a computer that does not work at all. It did not power up. First I tested the power supply, it was perfect. I disconnected everything from the motherboard, leaving only the processor and the RAMs. Nothing.

So I decided it must be the motherboard. But then I had a strange feeling, that I should test the power button. I tried it, just for fun. I disconnected the cable of the power button from the motherboard and used the good old screwdriver trick to start up the computer. It worked. Ribanc.

Now, would you call that a DOWNGRADE? Popular opinion says no, as it seems a majority of computer users prefer the XP platform to Microsoft's latest version of Windows, Vista. The reason is that to date XP has been the most stable of all the Windows OS releases, having the greatest amount of compatibility with a wide variety of software. And it also afforded you a modicum of control over the settings and operation of your computer, unlike Vista that hides everything behind it's "user-friendly interface" and flashy buttons.

So it's no wonder that a lot of people who have purchased new computers and been "force-fed" Vista as their operating system are choosing to switch back to the familiar and relatively easy to use Windows XP.

Depending on your particular model of computer, and in particular laptop, this may not quite be as simple an operation as you may think. Getting anything running on a computer is always a complex marriage between hardware and software and various settings from the CMOS to the BIO, and this case is no exception.

It has turned out that Windows XP SP2 installation disks don't necessarily have the correct drivers for certain SATA hard drives running on certain motherboards (don't ask me which ones exactly, this is a matter of experience!). If you try installing XP on your new Vista computer and after it loads the installation files you get told that "Setup didn't find any hard disk drives installed in your computer", then you know you have this particular combination. In a nutshell your new computer has a storage controller that isn't supported natively in XP, and this is usually a SATA (Serial ATA) controller.

There are a couple of ways around this. The first is the quick and dirty, and it depends on the BIOS you have running on your computer. If you are lucky enough to have a more comprehensive BIOS allowing you to do more than just change the boot device order on your computer, you can do the following. Either disable the "Native SATA Control" or if that option is not available to you in your particular BIOS, then change your "SATA Device Operation" to ATA instead of AHCI, or try to disable the SATA SCSI setting, and then go ahead with your installation.  

Unfortunately, most "consumer PCs and laptops" sold today have idiot-proof BIOS' installed in them, and will not allow you to change settings such as this. Additionally, this has the side effect of slowing your computer down, as you don't have the benefit of running your hard drive in Serial ATA mode. The best solution is to use a process called slipstreaming to integrate the missing drivers on your XP installation CD so that these get installed when you setup XP on your computer.

That particular task is beyond the scope of this blog, happily there are a couple of great references on the web giving you detailed step by step instructions. Go to HowToGeek or Softpedia and follow their instructions carefully on how to do this using a nifty little application called NLite.

Handy Hints - make sure you get the correct SATA drivers for your chipset from either the computer or component manufacturers website, use the textmode in nLite, make sure your nLite install removes the stock xp SATA/RAID driver entirely, and burn the .iso as an image on the CD. And enjoy using XP once you're done!

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El Presidente

In the office, we have a LAN behind a router. On the LAN there is a fileserver which hosts personal and project files which are to be shared and/or backed up. This fileserver runs Windows XP. We have employees who live in other cities and work from there, and we also wanted to be able to access shared files from home, so we decided to set up a VPN (Virtual Private Network). This basically means that from the Internet we can connect to our LAN and use its resources through a private and secure channel.

I became the lucky person to be selected for this special quest. I expected it to be easy, but this was not the case.

First, I had to set up a VPN Server in Windows XP on the fileserver.  This was easy. I have set up a special user account for VPN with a very strong password and made him a member of the Users group.

Then I had to set up a VPN client on a computer which was not part of our LAN, for which I grabbed a laptop and went to the nearby pub that had WLAN. Steps are described here.

Tried to connect, error. Well, let's set up the router to forward the ports needed to the fileserver. I set it to allow VPN Passthrough for  IPSec, PPTP and L2TP. I forwarded ports 50, 51, 500 and 1723 to the fileserver's IP. I also had to set up the firewall programs (on the client, a Windows Firewall, first I turned it off for the VPN connection to check if it is the problem).

Connection established. Cool. Next problem was that on the LAN we use DHCP, but if I wanted the forwarding to work, I had to set up a fixed IP for the fileserver. I have chosen one, set up subnet mask, gateway and DNS.

Connection can be established now, and not just temporarily. Next problem was that I could ping other computers on the LAN from the client, but could not access their shares through neither \\fileserver\shares nor \\{fileserver's IP}\shares. I started to get a bit angry.

I have read that if the client computer is on a network with IPs like 192.168.10.x and I try to connect to a VPN which also has IPs like 192.168.10.x those will conflict. This was not the case.

After a lot of research I found this article. It is from the Microsoft Knowledge Base and it describes a small registry change. I applied it.

Finally, when I tried to access \\fileserver\shares, it was found! I could not open it though, I had to set up the permissions for the user I created for VPN purposes on the fileserver. After that, it worked just fine. Brilliant.