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Running Windows 8 Pro on Macbook Air (late 2010) [UPDATED]

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[UPDATED 15 Mar 2013]

Apple has finally released the trackpad drivers for Windows 8! It's not as straightforward as I was hoping as the BootCamp 5 install fails but it's quite easy to get it working manually. If you download the bootcamp drivers (http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1638) you might run into an issue where it tells you that "Only Windows 7 can be installed" on your macbook or "x64 installation is not supported". Luckily, all you have to do is run the driver called AppleMultiTouchTrackPadInstaller64.exe and it will update the trackpad drivers for Bootcamp 4 if you have that installed.

The driver you need to install to get the trackpad working on 64-bit Windows 8 installations can be downloaded here: AppleMultiTouchTrackPadInstaller64.exe (2.29 mb)

[Original Article written 25 Oct 2012]

I updated my macbook air from Windows 7 (64 bit ver) to Windows 8 Pro over the weekend. I have to admit I wasn't sure how the whole thing would go. I was worried that the drivers wouldn't work for the wifi but once everything was downloaded and installed I only had one issue - the trackpad.

The basic installation process:

To start off I downloaded Windows 8 from the Microsoft Store. The installation was very straight forward - a few clicks to agree with Microsoft terms and input my payment options and then the download began. From download to Windows 8 Start screen took about 2hrs using an 8mb broadband line to download the OS.

The installation had automatically backed up my files and programs which was great.

Once my macbook air restarted and Windows 8 was loaded I was asked to enter in my Windows Account. There was a cursor on screen and a textbox to enter my email address. I tried to move the mouse but noticed that the trackpad wasn't working. "Great stuff", I thought. Luckily the installation process was fully keyboard controlled. I finished off inputting in the required details and let Windows complete the installation. I noticed that the display driver was also not working as the screen was 100% bright. It was like staring into the sun :) Time to route out my spare usb mouse!

I tried everything to get the trackpad working but none of the articles online were working for me. A lot of articles mention using a third party app called Trackpad++ but this did not work for me. I logged out of Windows and loaded up OSX. Once this was loaded up I ran the Bootcamp Utilities tool and downloaded the drivers for Windows 7. After the download had completed I booted back into Windows 8.

I copied the driver files that Bootcamp had downloaded  from my OSX drive (My OSX Drive\Users\rich\WindowsSupport folder) to my windows desktop. Then I ran the setup.exe file from the WindowsSupport folder and left it install the default drivers for me. After this setup.exe file had completed I was able to control the screen brightness. The on-screen icon that would normally show the brightness or sound levels do not work but the effect of selecting a different brightness or sound does have the desired effect. Unfortunately running this setup did not cure my trackpad issue.

So how did I fix the trackpad issue?

1. Go to the control panel (cmd key/win key + i)
2. Select 'Device Manager' from the 'Devices and Printers' section.
3. You should see the Human Interface Devices displaying 2 Touchpad errors.
4. Right click on the second Touchpad error and select 'Update Device Driver' - not the first one. If you select the first error then this suggestion won't work for you.
5. Click on 'Browse my computer for driver software'.
6. Next, select 'Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer'.
7. You will be presented with a list of drivers. Scroll down the list and select the Apple Multitouch drive under the USB input device. The other drivers will fail but this one will work for you.
8. Once installed you should notice that the trackpad is now working for you....kind of...

What's doesn't work using this 'solution'?

Well for a start the right click does not work. Scrolling is also a pain to the point where it might as well not work either. This isn't an ideal solution but at least you can use the trackpad to move the mouse cursor and left click to allow you do some basic operations.

The best solution will come from Apple themselves when they roll out the Windows 8 drivers for Bootcamp. This is not going to be out for a while though. Windows 7 bootcamp drivers didn't come out for about 4 months after Windows 7 was released. Better keep that spare USB mouse to hand!

Where to get Windows software bundle deals?

Filed under deals

For years now I've been moaning about the lack of a quality 'app bundles' sites for Windows users. Mac users have been spoilt for choice the last few years as sites that have offered software bundles at super discounted rates but Windows users have been left out in the cold a bit. To help fix this I wanted to compile a list of great deal or bundle sites that I've come across lately.

PCBundler.com

I stumbled onto this new site only a few days ago that offers PC users the chance to snap up amazing bundles deals. At the moment for the launch of PCBundler.com they have a bundle that would normally cost you $228 for only $25! That's over 90% of a saving! The best part of this deal is the quality of the apps on offer. SpyGlass and CleanMyPC are 2 of my favourite apps on Windows at the moment. If you were to buy these two software products alone it would cost you $49. DVDRanger looks like an awesome program to help rip Blu-rays (including Blu-ray 3D). For $25 you can't go wrong with this bundle.

If you're in the market for bagging up some top quality apps for Windows at mega discounted prices it might be worth giving PCBundler.com and look. I'll be keeping an eye on this site for the next few weeks to see what other top quality deals they will have going on.

BitsDuJour.com

BitsDuJour.com has been going for a while now and usually offers one piece of software for free a day (although usually these 'daily' deals tend to last a week). The quality of the software on offer is usually ok but not earth shattering. It can be a handy site to keep an eye on as sometimes there are gems to be had. I recently snagged a backup utility program for auto backing up my PC to my NAS drive for free, which was nice.

HumbleBundle.com

For gamers there probably isn't a better deal site out there that the HumbleBundle.com! Usually this site offers deals a few times a year but the wait is nearly always worth it. Top quality games are on offer from not only the latest indie developers but from some of the bigger names in the business too. If you're big into games this is definitely a bookmark!

Steam Sales

Another one for the gamers, Steam offers some fantastic deals from the major publishers every week. Typically they have one or two games at great discounts (50-75% off) once a week. Every Summer and Winter they do a massive 10-15 day sale event where they offer huge games at big discounts. No one does sales as good as Steam when it comes to triple A titles. Well worth a visit when the sales are on.

Wrap Up

So there you have it. There are PC deal sites out there if you're willing to go in search of them. Sure sometimes the deals are not much use to you but if you keep your eyes peeled you can bag a bargain! If you know of any other Windows software deal sites, please let me know and I'll update the list.

How to convert a .htaccess file for use in your Web.Config file on Windows Server

Filed under IIS , php , websites , windows server

 If you're running a Windows Server and you have to run PHP websites on it chances are that you will be asked to apply rules from a .htaccess file to one of the websites on your server. Windows Server does not use .htaccess files. These usually come from Apache servers. However, Windows Servers use a similar file called the Web.Config file located at the root of all your websites hosted on your Windows Server.

You'll be glad to know that there is a converter built into IIS 7 that will convert any .htaccess rules into the format required for the Web.Config file. To convert your .htaccess file simply follow these instructions:

1. Log onto your server and open IIS.
2. Double click on the 'URL Rewrite' icon from the list under 'IIS'.
3. Click on 'Import Rules...' from the right side bar.
4. Copy the htaccess contents supplied to you and paste them into the 'Rewrite Rules' text box. Once pasted you should notice the 'Converted Rules' area will update. If you click on the XML tab you will see the Web.Config format of the rule entered.
5. Ensure you're looking at the Tree tab and right click on the 'rule name' tag in the Tree View and click on 'Rename' to rename the rule to something other than 'Imported Rule 1' so it will make more sense to anyone looking at the web.config file later on.
6. Click on 'Apply' from the right side bar and your rule will be added to your web.config file.

That's it. You're all done! Nice and easy.

RTE News Reader pulled from the Marketplace

Filed under app , C# , windowsphone , wp7

So I guess this was inevitable but RTE sent a cease and desist letter to me via the Windows Phone marketplace tonight. Their reasons for asking for me to take down the app were that I was using the RTE logo (fair enough) and for using the public RSS feeds which according to their terms are for personal use only....even though I never made a cent from the app.

This sucks. I must have spent at least a few hundred hours on the app from design to development to support. I was working on a Windows Phone 8 version of the app which sadly won't see the light of day now.

No point dwelling on the negativity though. I got the experience of working on a windows phone app which was great fun and my app remained in the top 10 free apps since its release nearly a year ago.

I had nearly 7,000 downloads of the app which was good going for an Irish app in the marketplace.

The app has now been removed from the store. Roll on the next venture!

The dreaded Server Application Unavailable IIS error

Filed under IIS , websites

Server Application Unavailable

Is there any error more annoying in .net web development? I hate this error because it's so unhelpful. I actually got this error today and it took me a while to track down what the issue was thanks to that rubbish error message being returned to me.

One of the guys inside in work setup the project for me for a new website but never changed the .net settings from the default asp.net 2 runtime to the asp.net 4 runtime. "No problem" I thought and I quickly updated the runtime from .net 2 to .net 4 using my handy command.

I double checked IIS6 and confirmed that the new runtime was in effect. However, every time I tried to load the website I was seeing the 'Server Application Unavailable' error message. I checked the Event logs and nothing was mentioned in there so that was no help. I double checked all the settings and everything seemed correct.

Then it hit me. I had updated the framework but not refreshed the application pool for this website. Sure enough, once I refreshed the application pool the site came to life. I just wish IIS had some better error messages to help work around these situations. A simple prompt telling me that the application pool runtime wasn't matching the website runtime would have pointed me in the right direction.

Ah well, at least I know in future it this happens again :)

Import a large .sql file into SQL Server using the command line

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A lot of the time we deal with small databases with small data. Importing a backup database is usually ok for these databases using the SQL Server Management Studio. We would normally just open the .sql file we want to import in Management Studio and then click on the Execute button to import it into a new or existing database.

Sometimes this just isn't possible. Large databases or big tables mean that the overhead required for SQL to parse and run the scripts just isn't possible. Normally under these scenarios SQL Server Management studio will inform you that it can't do this by telling you:

Cannot execute script.

Exception of type ‘System.OutofMemoryException’ was thrown.

Don't panic! The solution is to use the built in sql command line tool instead of using the visual SQL Server Management Studio application.

First up, make sure the database you want to import to has been created already.

Next, fire up the command line: Start -> Run -> Type cmd and press enter

Once the command line is on screen tell SQLCMD to import your database by doing something like this:

Sqlcmd -S [server instance name] -d [database name] -i [filename you want to import]

If you're not sure about the server instance name simply open up SQL Server Management Studio and on the login screen take a note of the Server Name textbox as this is the value you need to use as the server instance name.

As an example you should have a line that looks something like this:

sqlcmd -S MyServer\SQLServerInstance -d MyDatabase -i C:\sqlToImport.sql

There are a whole bunch of options you can use while importing, like specifying the username and password to use for a database, which you can read all about over on MSDN - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms165702%28v=sql.105%29.aspx

Arabic culture that uses the Gregorian calendar

Filed under C#

One of the multilingual sites I work on was recently converted to Arabic. The site was already running with French, German, Polish and a whole host of others but Arabic was our first right to left language on this particular site.

Once we got the right to left stuff working for our HTML - mostly by using the 'direction' attribute in CSS - we noticed that our code was failing when displaying dates in the system.

It turns out that our code was setup to use the Gregorian calendar but the base Arabic culture ('AR') uses a different style calendar, Hijri I believe.

The solution was to pass a specific Arabic culture to get it to work with our calendar. We chose Arabic Lebanese as this worked well and uses Gregorian calendars.

// setup .net to use Lebanese Arabic
Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = new CultureInfo("ar-LB");
Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture("ar-LB");

Dragnet Systems is looking to hire a new Tech Support Developer

Filed under General , work

Dragnet Systems is looking to hire a talented .Net developer for a new tech support role. This is a new role in the company that aims to help reduce the level of support that the top tier developers have to give. Full training of all the in-house tools will be provided but you must have the basics so that you can hit the ground running. The main requirements are:

• ASP.Net (C#) and XML skills are a must.
• Fluent T-SQL skills and a totally proficient at using MS SQL Server 2005.
• Good JavaScript knowledge including jQuery
• Classic ASP knowledge an advantage.
• Knowledge of ASP.NET MVC and Entity Framework would be a plus

If you are interested or know someone who might be why not get in touch? Check out the careers page for more information - http://www.dragnet-systems.ie/Careers

How to get Wordpress working on Blacknight's Windows hosting

Filed under wordpress , blacknight

I recently setup a Wordpress site on my Blacknight Windows hosting account using their Web Applications tool. During the setup I had 2 issues that I could not find any blog posts on that I thought might be useful to other people out there who are trying to do the same thing as me.

My requirement was to install Wordpress on the root level of my domain.

Before I started to install Wordpress I setup my Windows hosting so that PHP would work on it. Using the Blacknight control panel I clicked on the domain I wanted to use and then clicked on the Website Configuration link. Click on the Install button to see a list of applications you can setup and choose Wordpress.

In this area, I selected PHP to run as 'Fast CGI application' and ActivePerl support to 'run as a CGI application'. I clicked save and moved onto the Web Application manager.

I selected Wordpress and was brought to the settings screen. Everything looked ok. I changed the folder to install to as '/' and entered the admin password I wanted to use. When I clicked save I was told that the folder had to contain a value so I had to leave it as the default '/Wordpress' option to get it to install for me.

At this point everything looked like it had installed. I had green lights in my Blacknight control panel and was told that the install was successful but when I went to my site I was seeing a 404.0 asp.net error. It turns out that you need to give the blacknight server about 5-15mins to install Wordpress for you. Even if you see the files in FTP you might not be able to go to the website for a few minutes. This is normal. Just give it a while and eventually your Wordpress install will appear for you on yourdomain.com/Wordpress.

Next up I wanted to move the Wordpress install to the root level. I tried following the guide from Wordpress on how to do this but it didn't seem to work for me. It turns out that you can move your Wordpress install by opening your Blacknight control panel and going back into the Web Application section and choosing the Wordpress link. On the bottom of the page is a button saying 'Change URL path'. Simply put in '/' (no quotes) and give it another few moments. Type in yourdomain.com and your Wordpress install will be visible for you.

As you can see, it all makes sense when you know how. the key is to allow the Web Applications to install to a /Wordpress folder, give it 5-10mins to set it up and then update the Wordpress install to the root level. Hopefully this will help some others out who might be scratching their heads as to why they are seeing 404 errors or wondering how to install to root on the Windows Hosting package.

Group, count and order top words or phrases in Excel 2007

Filed under excel , work

This is going to be one of those posts that's probably more for me than anyone else but recently it drove me a little loopy trying to sort out a basic task. I was asked to take one of excel error reports one of our websites generates and get a count for the top 20 recurring error messages. Sounds simple enough you might say, well thanks to Excel unless you know where to dig it can be a little frustrating to do!

Here are the steps I went through to do this work (note: I'm using Office 2007 for this):

1. I downloaded my excel sheet from my site and opened it up in Excel. One of the columns contained the error messages so I copied that and put it into a new worksheet.  
    
2. At this stage I have all my error messages but I want to group them and get a total for the number of occurrences of each error message. First I go to 'Sort & Filter' and order the error messages column alphabetically. Then click on the Data tab and select SubTotal. The default values in the subtotal dialog box are usually ok - just make sure the Use Function option is selected to 'Count' and click OK.
    
3. The data is now grouped and you will have a mixture of the error messages along with the actual occurrences total. In the row number column you should notice some lines indicating the groupings. By default there should be 3 lines here. Selecting the second line will close all of the duplicate records and display just the error message and the number of times it occurs.
   
   "Brilliant", you think. "I'm done". Woah there jimmy, not so fast! Next up you need to order these grouped results by highest to lowest.
    
4. I find the easiest way to order the number of occurrences is to highlight to two columns (the error message and the number of occurrences) and click on the 'Find & Select' option from the Home tab and select 'Go To Special'. When the dialog appears select 'Visible Cells Only'. This will highlight all of the visible cells (it excludes all the collapsed information which is what we want). Copy this and paste the results into a new worksheet.
    
5. Now you can order the number of occurrences from highest to lowest. See, wasn't that easy? :) Maybe someone else out there might know of an easier way to get this end result but I found that this way works best for me. I normally forget step 4 so when I try to paste the collapsed items into a new worksheet it pastes all of the data which is not what I needed or wanted.

Like I said at the start of this post - I don't really expect any of the above to useful to most people but for me, this is going to be one of those posts I go back to and say "Ohhhh ya, that's how I did it!".