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

Memory Failure

No, not my own personal memory, although that's up for debate - a bank of memory failed in the old Dell Precision 670 that we kind of depend on daily to do mundane things like accounting. It happened shortly after morning startup, so nothing of importance was going on.

Here's what happened. I was starting all the programs and looking at email, then suddenly BSOD with a message I had never seen before:

Hardware Malfunction
Call your hardware vendor for support
This system has halted

Always a nice way to start your day. So I rebooted and got 1-3-2 beeps and the 4 lights on the front were G-Y-G-Y (or maybe Y-G-Y-G). Anyway, looking online I found that the problem was memory not recognized. Uh oh. At least it wasn't a CPU or power supply in that old computer or I'd be out buying new computer right now.

I pulled the computer and took it outside for a major dusting. I used canned air and blew out lots of dust. Sequim is a dusty place. Then I removed the memory and put them all back. The motherboard has 6 slots with 4 populated by 512M DDR2s (laugh if you must). Problem was still there.

I pulled the two in the middle two slots then powered up again with the same problem. Then I put the two I pulled in the top two slots. Powered up fine except now Windows 7 only has 1 Gig. It seems that the original two memory sticks went bad. Which one I don't know and I don't care. Ordered 4 new 1G from Newegg to be delivered on Monday (I hope). Now the old 670 will have 4 or 5 G depending on compatibility with the old memory and I should get another year or so out of it. Time to think about replacing that computer.

-Kirk

NetScanTools Pro v11.32 Released

This release is minor in that no new tools were added. We did add better error message reporting for both Ping and Traceroute in IPv6 mode plus some changes to reporting. In manual tools reports you can export the report data to a text file. The only problem was that there was no header telling you what the data was all about. That changed - it's there now. Another reporting change is in the web browser reports. For Port Scanning reports there is a new question asked of you that gives the option of showing or not showing non-responding port data. The SQLite dll was updated as were the databases.

If you have NetScanTools Pro installed or USB and an active maintenance plan, please click on Help/Check for New Version.

NetScanTools Sponsors NMAP

NetScanTools.com is sponsoring NMAP for the month of July. NMAP is by far the best port scanning tool available.

Visit http://nmap.org/ to see our sponsorship.

Kirk

Even Better Cisco Nexus Switch Support

I put out Managed Switch Port Mapper 1.99.9.7 (don't you love the numbering) yesterday with two changes in it. The biggest change affects Cisco® Nexus switches - most of this latest work was based on reporting by Nexus 5K owners, particularly a user with a 5596 running 5.0(3)N1(1c). I found out some important things about NX-OS bridge mib reporting that I won't share here to keep SolarWinds® in the dark. I accounted for the strangeness and now it maps Nexus well. I also found out another interesting thing about those switches and now all the MAC addresses should show up - more than in the last version - don't forget you can change the maximum per port MAC reporting limit in Global Settings - you may hit the default limit. That change has the potential to affect MAC reporting on IOS switches too, but I could not see a change in the Cisco switches I have in-house.

A minor fix was made to the processing of qBridge MIB data (affects pretty much everybody else including Cisco Small Business switches) to eliminate a potential infinite loop. We had no user reports of it happening, but now it will never happen.

This release has the usual MAC to Manufacturer database updates and the latest SQLite. Get it at http://www.switchportmapper.com/ and if you need a trial period reset code, contact us from there or from http://www.netscantools.com/email_general.html

-Kirk

Minor releases planned for this week

NetScanTools Pro 11.31 will be released with improvements in IPv6 error reporting in both ping and traceroute. Updates to SQLite and the databases will also be included.

We've been working with several Cisco Nexus series switch managers and found some strange things in what is reported by the switch - in one case the switch reports values outside what is defined in bridge mib. Those have now been accounted for and we plan on another minor release this week.

We at NetScanTools support World IPv6 Launch Day and we would like to tell you that we are incrementally adding IPv6 support to our software. NetScanTools Pro 11 currently has a number of tools supporting IPv6. NetScanTools LE will be doing whois lookups of IPv6 in the next release. Here are the IPv6 enabled tools in NetScanTools Pro 11.30:

• Ping (11.0+) and Traceroute (11.3+ only) both support IPv6 address targets both direct and through tunnels.
• DNS Tools accepts IPv6 input for Simple Query, NSLOOKUP, DiG, Get Basic DNS Records and IP to ASN.
• Network Neighbors (11.3+ only) shows the IPv6 equivalent of the ARP table.
• Packet Flooder can target IPv6 addresses with UDP packets.
• Packet Capture can capture IPv6 network traffic.
• Country to IP or ASN shows IPv6 allocations by country.
• Network Interfaces shows the IPv6 link local and global addresses assigned to each interface.
• Whois accepts IPv6 global address input to find the ownership or assignment of those addresses. (11.3+ works best)

If you have NetScanTools Pro 11.30 and an IPv6 capable OS like Windows 7, please try these tools. You can even use ::1 as input - that's the same as 127.0.0.1 or localhost in IPv4. Try a ping or traceroute to ipv6.google.com or a whois of 2620:0:1cfe:face:b00c::3. Be careful with Packet Flooder - use it with a link local address (starts with fe80:) of a nearby computer - don't forget the %scopeID number for link local addresses - see the IPv6 menu item to get the Scope ID.

Let us know if you like this hints and tips post.