The Tenuous Link

XPS (XML Paper Specification) files are a bit like PDF files, except not as popular or well supported, even in Microsoft's latest and greatest OS Vista for x64.

I was just forced to create an XPS file as a "print out" of a web page (because I hadn't had a chance to install a PDF print driver yet). That was easy enough, but viewing XPS seemed far harder than it needed to be. By default the viewer for .xps files is your default web browser, but that doesn't work if your default web browser is not Internet Explorer.

Even if I started IE by hand and tried to open the file I had a problem ("An error occurred in the application you were using").

The solution is to install the XPS Essentials Pack (nb: there is a special installer for 64-bit Windows), then right click the .xps file, chose "Open with ...", then "Choose default program ..." then "XPS Viewer EP".

Labels: pdf, vista, xps

// posted by Steven @ 9:06 AM 0 comments

Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) mode is a BIOS option in my computer for the SATA hard disk controller. It lets the OS use Native Command Queuing (NCQ/aka SATA mode) to reorder disk read or write requests to make the reading and writing more efficient, particularly if the disk is very busy.

My BIOS has options IDE, RAID, or AHCI mode. RAID includes all of the ACHI features and Intel recommend that you choose the RAID before you install an OS because changing it afterward can be painful (or "unsupported" if you have an Intel motherboard!).

The process in Vista seems to be less painful than in Windows XP because VISTA includes AHCI drivers by default. However, if AHCI mode was not enabled at the time you installed Vista then the new drivers will not be loaded, and if you change the BIOS setting then Windows doesn't boot.

Simple solution:

1. Start with IDE mode selected in the BIOS, and boot Windows Vista.
2. Exit all Windows-based programs.
3. Click Start, type regedit in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER.
4. If you receive the User Account Control dialog box, click Continue.
5. Locate and then click the following registry subkey: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msahci
6. In the right pane, right-click Start in the Name column, and then click Modify.
7. In the Value data box, type 0, and then click OK.
8. On the File menu, click Exit to close Registry Editor.
9. Reboot, and change to AHCI mode in the BIOS. Windows will detect some changed hardware (anything connected to a SATA port).
10. For good measure I downloaded and (re)installed the chipset drivers for my motherboard. My motherboard uses an Intel G33 chipset and I wasn't sure if I needed to install the Intel Matrix Storage Manager, but when I tried it told me that I already had a more recent version of the software installed. I guess part of the chipset driver package overlaps with the Storage Manager software.

This process worked fine for me - I have AHCI mode enabled. Choosing RAID mode in the BIOS (which provides a superset of the AHCI features) still stops Windows from booting, but I'm not worried about that!

Finally, I'm not sure if it is to do with the change to AHCI or not, but I've had intermittent trouble shutting down the PC - Vista seems to hang on the "Shutting down" screen and the hard disk light keeps flashing. According to my event log the machine reboots itself after 20 minutes of that, but there were no other clues in the event log. (Someone with a related problem? http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/77909774/m/433004204831) [Update 2008/12/31: I haven't noticed this problem for a long time now, so it must have been fixed with SP1 or driver upgrades.]

Labels: AHCI, vista

// posted by Steven @ 9:19 AM 2 comments

Something that has got harder in Windows Vista ...

The sound from my computer comes through a receiver (an amplifier with a built-in radio tuner). I've connected the computer to the tape loop of the receiver, and I leave the amplifier set to the radio input with "tape monitor" switched on. That means that the radio is coming in to the computer "line in" input from the amplifier tape output, and the amplifier plays back whatever sound the computer sends back out to the tape input connection.

Usually I don't want to hear the radio, so I mute the "line in" input in the Windows sound mixer, and unmute it when I want to hear the radio. Whether the radio is muted or not, the normal sounds from Windows (mp3s, or other Windows noises) come out through the speakers. That was easy to do in versions of Windows before Vista, but I keep forgetting how to do it in Windows Vista.

Here's the new process:

1. Right click the volume control icon (in the system tray of the taskbar), and choose "Playback devices"
2. Choose the appropriate soundcard and speakers option from the list of playback options. (I only have one entry in the list, but I still have to click on it.)
3. Click the "Properties" button, and choose the levels tab.
4. Mute or Unmute the Line In input by clicking the speaker icon.
5. Click OK to close all the Speaker configuration and Sound configuration windows.

That's about twice as many clicks as in Windows XP.

Update: Setting the record source is also confusingly different from my XP-style expectations. One input to the soundcard must be nominated as the default, and that is the only one that will be recordable, except that the sound mixer (with the playback configuration as described above) is available as an option if you want to record computer generated sounds, or mixed inputs. See http://fxaudioeditor.com/vista_recording_problems.htm

Labels: vista

// posted by Steven @ 7:31 AM 0 comments