WinPcap is the packet capture driver used in both NetScanTools Pro and LE. If you try to run the NetScanTools installer, everything appears to install OK until you get to the WinPcap 4.1.2 installer that we launch separately. The WinPcap installer refuses to run and shows an error about an unsupported operating system.
The solution is to run the installer in compability mode. Here's how:
1. from within Windows 8 (32 or 64 bit) get to the desktop and launch Windows Explorer.
2. locate your installer file, example: nst*.exe or WinPcap_4_1_2.exe (get WinPcap here) and right click on it to bring up the popup menu.
3. select "Troubleshoot compatibility" and wait a few seconds for it to do it's thing. Then click on "Try recommended settings". It will most likely show Windows Compatibility Mode of Windows XP (service pack 3).
4. Click on "Test the program..." the installer will start - follow the installer directions as you normally would. When you get to actually running the WinPcap installer you may see a message "This program has compatibility issues" - select "Run the program without getting help". WinPcap should now install.
5. When it's all done, click on Cancel instead of Next back on the Program Compatibility Troubleshooter window.
The problem is not NetScanTools Pro/LE. Those installers both launch the WinPcap installer. It is the WinPcap installer that needs to be updated.
The good part is WinPcap works fine on Windows 8 once it is installed.
Update Nov 17, 2012: winpcap.org still shows version 4.1.2. We still are waiting on an updated WinPcap installer.
Showing posts with label installation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label installation. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Friday, August 17, 2012
Windows 8 RTM first impressions
Let's just say that trying to use the new interface (AKA the interface formerly known as Metro) on a desktop machine will only cause legacy desktop and laptop users to flee in droves to a Mac. At least Mountain Lion doesn't pretend to be a mobile OS on a fixed machine. At least on the Mac there is no huge learning curve coming from XP or 7. I've used Windows since 3.0 back in the early 90's and this is the most radical design departure I've ever seen. Will MS break the every other major version is a dud pattern with this?
My Installation Experience
I started by installing Windows 8 x86 Enterprise RTM (32 bit) in a Oracle VirtualBox VM. Simple enough in theory - well there were two install choices and neither of the clearly said install a new OS, but I finally figured out you select the lower one, not the upper one.
Got through to the point of selecting a login. I decided to go with the email address login instead of a local login. When I install the x64 version, it's going to have a local login. I presume you can add a local login somehow if you can find where they buried it. Suppose you have no local login and your internet is down - can you login? something I'm going to have to try.
After I finally got to the first screen, I saw it all looked very similar to the Windows 8 consumer preview, so I at least knew what to do. It requires a mouse click and move to drag the Space Needle and Mt Rainier picture up. Now here's my first complaint: I design my programs to be Section 508 compliant. How is click and drag compliant? a disabled person with a desktop or laptop PC who can't use a mouse is hosed. I've actually talked with people who can't use a mouse and use the tab key. For me it's not intuitive how they get past that first screen. So I tried the 'any' key and it worked to get to the login screen. Then I could login.
Problems with entering a Product Key in Windows 8 Enterprise
So right away I switched to the desktop, then moved my cursor to the lower right, selected Settings, then Control Panel (there must be a way to do this with using the mouse). I saw the usual things in Control Panel so I selected System and went to change the Product Key to match the one I was given in MSDN (I had thought it strange that I wasn't asked for one during install, but remember this is a Enterprise). I couldn't find the usual change product key selection, so I tried activating it. Oops. Got an 0x8007007B error code.
A quick search found a site called windows7hacker.com that had the answer. And I learned a couple new things there too. First was that you have to get to the Command Prompt. Sounds simple enough. Every NT kernel OS since NT 3.1 had an easy way, usually found in accessories. Guess what? no start button, no accessories, no command prompt...grrr...I take no credit for the following section, windows7hacker came up with this but it's in my own words.
How to get to an Administrative Privileges Command Prompt
1. If on the desktop, move your cursor to the lower right, a control bar for lack of a better description will pop out from the right, select Start. Back you go to the Start screen with all the humongous icons.
2. Here's the wierd part: just start typing command or cmd and the search menu automatically appears on the right with Apps listed on the left. At the top was command prompt.
3. Here is the tricky part RIGHT CLICK on the Command Prompt and a new control bar slides up from the bottom with five options, one of which is Run as administrator (I never would have guessed) - click on it, answer the UAC message with Yes and you're there. Something recognizable!
How to enter your Product Key from a Command Prompt
1. Do the steps above.
2. put in this command and press Enter: slmgr.vbs -ipk YOUR-ENTRPRISE-KEY-HERE
3. You will get an acknowledgement popup window.
How to Activate from a Command Prompt
1. from the same admin command prompt, enter: slmgr.vbs -ato
Restart Windows 8 and that part is done - you can use it now - well at least sort of use it depending on your experience with this interface.
So that's where things stand today. I'll be testing NetScanTools Pro and Wireshark on it soon. Remember you have to start those installers using Run as administrator or the WinPcap driver won't install.
Kirk
My Installation Experience
I started by installing Windows 8 x86 Enterprise RTM (32 bit) in a Oracle VirtualBox VM. Simple enough in theory - well there were two install choices and neither of the clearly said install a new OS, but I finally figured out you select the lower one, not the upper one.
Got through to the point of selecting a login. I decided to go with the email address login instead of a local login. When I install the x64 version, it's going to have a local login. I presume you can add a local login somehow if you can find where they buried it. Suppose you have no local login and your internet is down - can you login? something I'm going to have to try.
After I finally got to the first screen, I saw it all looked very similar to the Windows 8 consumer preview, so I at least knew what to do. It requires a mouse click and move to drag the Space Needle and Mt Rainier picture up. Now here's my first complaint: I design my programs to be Section 508 compliant. How is click and drag compliant? a disabled person with a desktop or laptop PC who can't use a mouse is hosed. I've actually talked with people who can't use a mouse and use the tab key. For me it's not intuitive how they get past that first screen. So I tried the 'any' key and it worked to get to the login screen. Then I could login.
Problems with entering a Product Key in Windows 8 Enterprise
So right away I switched to the desktop, then moved my cursor to the lower right, selected Settings, then Control Panel (there must be a way to do this with using the mouse). I saw the usual things in Control Panel so I selected System and went to change the Product Key to match the one I was given in MSDN (I had thought it strange that I wasn't asked for one during install, but remember this is a Enterprise). I couldn't find the usual change product key selection, so I tried activating it. Oops. Got an 0x8007007B error code.
A quick search found a site called windows7hacker.com that had the answer. And I learned a couple new things there too. First was that you have to get to the Command Prompt. Sounds simple enough. Every NT kernel OS since NT 3.1 had an easy way, usually found in accessories. Guess what? no start button, no accessories, no command prompt...grrr...I take no credit for the following section, windows7hacker came up with this but it's in my own words.
How to get to an Administrative Privileges Command Prompt
1. If on the desktop, move your cursor to the lower right, a control bar for lack of a better description will pop out from the right, select Start. Back you go to the Start screen with all the humongous icons.
2. Here's the wierd part: just start typing command or cmd and the search menu automatically appears on the right with Apps listed on the left. At the top was command prompt.
3. Here is the tricky part RIGHT CLICK on the Command Prompt and a new control bar slides up from the bottom with five options, one of which is Run as administrator (I never would have guessed) - click on it, answer the UAC message with Yes and you're there. Something recognizable!
How to enter your Product Key from a Command Prompt
1. Do the steps above.
2. put in this command and press Enter: slmgr.vbs -ipk YOUR-ENTRPRISE-KEY-HERE
3. You will get an acknowledgement popup window.
How to Activate from a Command Prompt
1. from the same admin command prompt, enter: slmgr.vbs -ato
Restart Windows 8 and that part is done - you can use it now - well at least sort of use it depending on your experience with this interface.
So that's where things stand today. I'll be testing NetScanTools Pro and Wireshark on it soon. Remember you have to start those installers using Run as administrator or the WinPcap driver won't install.
Kirk
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Managed Switch Port Mapping Tool v1.99.5 Released
This latest release was made available for download today. It adds support for SMC switches. We tested it thoroughly with an SMC6128L2 switch and there are now SMC specific extensions in our software to gather more information about the switch.
There was one fundamental operational change that you should be aware of: ping sweep has been moved up near the start of the switch mapping process. This was done to force the switch to update it's bridge tables with any mac addresses that may have 'aged' out of the tables. That way as many devices as possible will be seen. Be sure to put in all the IPv4 ranges you need to be pinged ahead of time.
Another set of changed dealt with the operation of the IP to hostname resolver. We added a control in Settings to turn use of the caching table on or off. We also added a control in Settings to be sure that it is erased on exit. The reasoning behind this is that in a DHCP environment, IPs change and you should probably be clearing the table more often. The table is used much like a 'hosts' file for quick resolution of IPv4 addresses to hostnames in successive mappings. This will become more necessary in v2.0. In order to minimize DNS queries, we use this table. Now there are more options for erasing it to remove what will become stale information. One other thing we added was a check for duplicate hostnames - what we mean by this is two IPs having the same hostname. If this is found, you get to see the hostname(s) and IPs that are sharing the hostname. You would definitely want to manually erase the IP/hostname Resolver table in Database Maintenance if this occurs. If it repeats after doing that, you have a DNS problem.
Another change was in the area of print margins. A user pointed out that the print margins were rather large. Investigation revealed that the default margins were supposed to be 25mm. But in reality it was more like 250mm or one inch. If you are using a 96 dpi printer, then it is one inch. The File menu now has Print Page Options to allow you to change this.
Finally, in an effort to get away from the ancient Wise installer that we've used for years, this release now uses Inno Setup. Inno Setup reduced the size of the installer by around 1 MB. That doesn't sound like much but it is when you consider many downloads. It's also a modern and fast installer, so it works better on Windows 7.
http://www.switchportmapper.com/
or
http://www.netscantools.com/spmapmain.html
Enjoy!
Kirk
There was one fundamental operational change that you should be aware of: ping sweep has been moved up near the start of the switch mapping process. This was done to force the switch to update it's bridge tables with any mac addresses that may have 'aged' out of the tables. That way as many devices as possible will be seen. Be sure to put in all the IPv4 ranges you need to be pinged ahead of time.
Another set of changed dealt with the operation of the IP to hostname resolver. We added a control in Settings to turn use of the caching table on or off. We also added a control in Settings to be sure that it is erased on exit. The reasoning behind this is that in a DHCP environment, IPs change and you should probably be clearing the table more often. The table is used much like a 'hosts' file for quick resolution of IPv4 addresses to hostnames in successive mappings. This will become more necessary in v2.0. In order to minimize DNS queries, we use this table. Now there are more options for erasing it to remove what will become stale information. One other thing we added was a check for duplicate hostnames - what we mean by this is two IPs having the same hostname. If this is found, you get to see the hostname(s) and IPs that are sharing the hostname. You would definitely want to manually erase the IP/hostname Resolver table in Database Maintenance if this occurs. If it repeats after doing that, you have a DNS problem.
Another change was in the area of print margins. A user pointed out that the print margins were rather large. Investigation revealed that the default margins were supposed to be 25mm. But in reality it was more like 250mm or one inch. If you are using a 96 dpi printer, then it is one inch. The File menu now has Print Page Options to allow you to change this.
Finally, in an effort to get away from the ancient Wise installer that we've used for years, this release now uses Inno Setup. Inno Setup reduced the size of the installer by around 1 MB. That doesn't sound like much but it is when you consider many downloads. It's also a modern and fast installer, so it works better on Windows 7.
http://www.switchportmapper.com/
or
http://www.netscantools.com/spmapmain.html
Enjoy!
Kirk
Friday, January 14, 2011
Fix for Product Registration Problem on Win 7-64
A recent change in the NetScanTools Pro manifest (v10.98.1) allowing USER accounts to run the program had a negative side effect: there have been more people having trouble completing the registration process. This is due to the fact that we store information in a common area of the registry called HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE (HKLM). It has been there for many years and is there because it can be accessed from any logged in user, ie. it is not user specific. Recently Windows 7 64 bit has been seen as strongly enforcing the 'read-only' status of this part of the registry causing our product registration process to fail. The workaround is to start the program using right-click 'Run as administrator'. This has worked for most people.
I spent a good deal of time this week looking for a better solution. I looked at storing the registration information in a common area, but that presents it's own problems. I found a suggestion on a forum that made sense and worked: Create the registry key in HKLM with read/write permissions for the EVERYONE group during installation. Why during installation? Because when an installer is run, it is run at higher privileges (administrator) than a normal user has.
So I have now modified the methods used to create the HKLM key during running of the installer so that the key has read/write privileges. This has been tested on all versions of Windows that NetScanTools Pro v10 supports: 7 down through 2000, also on Server 2003 and 2008. Now any privilege level user should be able to complete the registration process without a problem. You still need admin privs to install the software - I can't change that.
Along the way I learned a bit about SID, ACE, ACLs, security descriptors and how to apply them to registry items using SetSecurityDescriptorDacl, RegCreateKeyEx and RegSetKeySecurity. Complicated.
The installer for NetScanTools Pro v10.98.1 was modified to include this change and published on Jan 13, 2011 at 3:53pm Pacific Time.
I spent a good deal of time this week looking for a better solution. I looked at storing the registration information in a common area, but that presents it's own problems. I found a suggestion on a forum that made sense and worked: Create the registry key in HKLM with read/write permissions for the EVERYONE group during installation. Why during installation? Because when an installer is run, it is run at higher privileges (administrator) than a normal user has.
So I have now modified the methods used to create the HKLM key during running of the installer so that the key has read/write privileges. This has been tested on all versions of Windows that NetScanTools Pro v10 supports: 7 down through 2000, also on Server 2003 and 2008. Now any privilege level user should be able to complete the registration process without a problem. You still need admin privs to install the software - I can't change that.
Along the way I learned a bit about SID, ACE, ACLs, security descriptors and how to apply them to registry items using SetSecurityDescriptorDacl, RegCreateKeyEx and RegSetKeySecurity. Complicated.
The installer for NetScanTools Pro v10.98.1 was modified to include this change and published on Jan 13, 2011 at 3:53pm Pacific Time.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Installing Windows 7 Beta on Virtual PC 2007
Yes, it worked. In a word: painless. I had no problems installing the new Windows 7 Beta (build 7000) on Virtual PC 2007 sp1. I assumed that Win7 was closest in architecture to Vista, so I selected a Vista configuration and bumped the Virtual Machine memory up to the required 1GB. I left the default max virtual hard drive size at 64GB. The host OS is Vista 64 on a quad core 8GB machine. I "captured" the ISO install file located on a network drive on another machine, then rebooted the virtual machine and installation proceeded from there.
Things I noticed about installation: less user interaction required to get it installed. Yes, there was the usual location and time stuff, but there was less other stuff. And it only rebooted once to complete the installation which was great. I did ask for the product key which I was given before I downloaded it and it did the product activation automatically. Whether all this simplicity remains in the RTM version, we'll just have to see.
Windows 7 Observations: some user interface changes -- more glowing things like icons and bars. The start menu button glows when your cursor hits it. The layout of the start menu is a bit cleaner as is the Windows Explorer layout. The start menu does look fairly much unchanged other than small appearance changes. Everything is where it was in Vista. The taskbar is bigger -- approximately twice as high and the programs are shown as icons without their names. This appears to be a departure from earlier OS's. Maybe some of you will notice that the default background screen is a fish -- not just any fish, but a betta -- you know, a play on the word BETA. I think it should be a active background with the fish moving around. What a cool timewaster that would be.
Another biggee is less and I mean way less of those annoying UAC messages "are you sure you are sure you are sure...". I was able to open the registry editor without a big argument from the operating system -- nice!
Another thing that is on every window titlebar is the "Send Feedback" link. I guess they want feedback, but since I've only used it for an hour, I'll hold off.
So far, I like what I see!
Things I noticed about installation: less user interaction required to get it installed. Yes, there was the usual location and time stuff, but there was less other stuff. And it only rebooted once to complete the installation which was great. I did ask for the product key which I was given before I downloaded it and it did the product activation automatically. Whether all this simplicity remains in the RTM version, we'll just have to see.
Windows 7 Observations: some user interface changes -- more glowing things like icons and bars. The start menu button glows when your cursor hits it. The layout of the start menu is a bit cleaner as is the Windows Explorer layout. The start menu does look fairly much unchanged other than small appearance changes. Everything is where it was in Vista. The taskbar is bigger -- approximately twice as high and the programs are shown as icons without their names. This appears to be a departure from earlier OS's. Maybe some of you will notice that the default background screen is a fish -- not just any fish, but a betta -- you know, a play on the word BETA. I think it should be a active background with the fish moving around. What a cool timewaster that would be.
Another biggee is less and I mean way less of those annoying UAC messages "are you sure you are sure you are sure...". I was able to open the registry editor without a big argument from the operating system -- nice!
Another thing that is on every window titlebar is the "Send Feedback" link. I guess they want feedback, but since I've only used it for an hour, I'll hold off.
So far, I like what I see!
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