1.  If you are having network access/connectivity issues AND you have a Norton or McAfee network security (not AV, but I won’t go there on that one) product, your issue is more than likely the Norton or McAfee product.  I haven’t been answering these questions as I made a conscious decision years ago to never let either of these software manufacturers near any computer system I own/manage.  However, there have been countless posts in which Norton/McAfee security products are either blocking communications altogether, or have otherwise made networking the PC’s virtually impossible.

2.  Make sure you disable network autotuning to get faster file copying/network access to other workgroup/domain computers.

This is easy, though.  Run the following command from a Command Prompt as an administrator:

netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled

netsh int tcp set global rss=disabled

3.  If you can’t enable sharing, make sure that you have identified your network as Private.  If it is unidentified or Public, you will not be able to enable sharing (without hacking).

I would hazard to guess that these three issues probably represent about 50% of the issues on an average day. 

My first thoughts:

• Lack of x64 Connector support! This rules out two of my machines. Actually, what I would prefer is the ability to add the computers running x64 to the “Computer” list so I can get the RWW-like Remote Desktop feature to work. But alas, I couldn’t hack it to get this support.
• The enforcement of what MS considers to be strong passwords. I can disable password complexity for normal computer accounts, but not for any that are accessible remotely. My password is as secure as I want it to be, but WHS is demanding that I change it to work remotely and even to use the computer. There should be a way to relax the password requirement from the current requirement to something that is a bit more reasonable.

I’m still playing with it, but it is a good product, even with these limitations….

I must admit, though, that the Windows Vista networking experience has not been very positive.  Autotuning works well, but forget about using a Vista machine connecting to a Windows 2003 R2 Server or Terminal Server.  The TS/RD experience is painful on the LAN due to the “pauses” that autotuning causes.  What is weird, although predictable, is that TS/RD connections over the WAN with autotuning “enabled” provides an experience like XP or other W2K3 servers.

Vista to Longhorn Server (Beta 3) over the WAN did provide a significant boost to reliability.  In the off hours, I attempted a few tests in connecting and disconnected the WAN session to see how Vista/LH Server handled these interruptions.  XP based workstations and W2K3-R2 servers would immediately pop-up a network error and result in mild system hangs and timeouts.  I didn’t experience this with the Vista/LHS combination.  This would be a welcome relief not only to those who have a WAN setup between branch offices, but also those who are on marginal wireless network connections.

One thing that I have noticed is that DFS Replication in W2K8 Server hasn’t been significantly improved over the offering in R2 server.  For our system, I am having to push several GB of replication data across the WAN to our hot backup server (and local branch office server) and I ended up having to disable RDC (Remote Differential Compression) due to the tremendous system loads that this presented to our system.  Some of this is due to the type, format, and sizes of data that we produce in this office (i.e., AutoCAD drawings and Access  Databases).  RDC has to work too much to track all of the changes that are saved every 10 minutes for all of our workstations (10 minutes is the autosave time in AutoCAD).  I was hoping for some sort of additional tweaking of the RDC mechanism, but I have not experienced this as of yet.

In summary, there are improvements for WAN-related communication, but nothing that I would call earth-shattering.

The Beta 3 release of Longhorn Server has been released and is available for download on Connect…

Unfortunately, there is still nothing on the (immediate) horizon in regards to hypervisor, but one can hope.. 

Also, the IIS 7 team is making a Go Live license available.  More at the IIS blog…

1.  AutoCAD releases prior to the 2008 versions (and all affiliated vertical products) are NOT supported officially by Autodesk.  Some people have reported that they were able to get them to work, but there are issues with stability and the annoying file dialog bugs (with giant thumbnails that can’t be changed permanently).  Source - Autodesk (click here)  - Note that 2008 products work very well..  But that is all I can currently say about that due to NDAs…

2.  There are still no Toshiba M7 and R25 Tablet drivers for Vista available from Toshiba US.  There are older “beta” level drivers available from Toshiba UK and Toshiba Australia, but that is all..  The BIOS updates for the M7 and R25 that support Vista are available if you look hard enough…  However, they are not currently supported as they are the 3.1 BETA BIOS versions.  However, it has worked well on my system since early December.

3.  For Toshiba Satellite R15 tablets, look at the Tecra M4 model for drivers and updates.

4.  Per Bob’s Blog, Toshiba has a patch available that will fix the mute problem with their laptops if you proceeded with an upgrade without unmuting the system.  Check his site here. 

That’s it for now…  I hope that can help all of you Googlers out there…

TOSHIBA WILL NOT BE SUPPORTING EITHER THE TOSHIBA TECRA M7 OR THE SATELLITE R25 TABLET PC FOR WINDOWS VISTA.

Yes, their site states that both of these models do support Vista and both machines carry the Vista Capable label.  In fact, during the beta cycle, Toshiba made drivers available for Windows Vista for the M7 (and the R25, since they are virtually identical).

So where do we go now?

Other Toshiba country units have made drivers available, but these are older ones and virtually match the beta drivers from early December 2006.  Also, the BIOS update has disappeared completely (3.10 for the M7 and the R25).

My solution?

I have been picking parts of drivers from the Tecra M4 and the Portege M400 - choosing the latest versions when possible.  The key drivers are the Toshiba Value Added Package for Windows Vista, the Tablet PC Extensions, the Fingerprint software, and the SD Card drivers.  With these, you will have a functioning system without any missing device drivers.  I would encourage you to download the applicable video drivers (Intel for the R20/R25 and some of the M7 units and Nvidia for the rest of the M7 units).

The only thing that is missing is the 3.10 BIOS update.  I have the M7/R25-Intel version of this BIOS update, but the M7-Nvidia version is history unless someone else has saved it.

What is intolerable about the situation is that Toshiba claims that Vista is not supported on these devices and that no drivers will ever be made available (per three phone calls with Toshiba tech support).  What makes the situation even more infuriating is that Toshiba IS supporting other older Tablet PC models like the Tecra M4 and Satellite R15, which were never meant to be Vista capable.

So keep this in mind if you are in the market for a Tablet PC.  (i.e., my next tablet will probably be Fujitsu or Lenovo and I will not recommend Toshiba to others).

Just one quick warning tonight…

Be careful and check the updates that you are being offered.  I was offered a Toshiba update for HDD protection for my laptop.  This was an optional update, so it wouldn’t have been auto-installed if one would set Vista to auto-update.

The problem?  The update offered was a x64 version of the software.  This doesn’t match the software (or chip capabilities) of my R25 laptop, which is limited to x86.

I’ve bugged this, so we’ll see what happens…