Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0: Configuration (70-500)

Finally got my 70-500 Beta results today after 6 months of waiting. I passed :-)

Acer TravelMate C300 (TabletPC) and Windows Vista

About a month ago I installed Vista onto Laura's (my partner) C300. Apart from no AERO support due to the unit having an Intel 82852/82855 GM/GME Graphics Adapter (WEI: Graphics 1.9 and Gaming Graphics 1.0), none of the inbuilt tablet buttons worked which meant that WiFi could not be enabled. This was a major crisis; something that had the potential to make my life hell.

As all you IT people know, there's nothing more important than making sure that every PC in your house, your relatives houses, your friends houses, your relatives friends houses and your neighbors houses are all working. It's like you've signed an open ended SLA with everyone you know that requires you to divert all your resources into fixing their problems; no matter what time of day; no matter how inconvenient it may be.

Now, I've got to be fair. This problem's a little bit different. Why? Because I broke the PC. I committed the most unforgivable sin that an IT person could ever make; one that is only punishable by death. I've stopped a family members PC from working. Worse still, it's the bosses PC and now she can't surf the web while lying in bed (He He; that's gonna get me into BIG trouble).

After a few hours of surfing and playing around, I couldn't get WiFi enabled so I reluctantly installed the the Acer Soft Button utility based on another person's success at getting it to work with Vista. Now, this utility can only be described as pitiful. It's a real pain to use. However, it can be used to enable WiFi (albeit with a little bit more inconvenience than using a button) and will get my honey surfing in comfort again.

Proud of my achievement, I gave the laptop to Laura, explained how to use the utility and went on my mary way. I should have known by the look of confusion and disbelief on her face that this was not an acceptable solution.

Over the next couple of weeks Laura experienced nothing but sheer frustration at using the utility. To her credit she persisted; but it was obvious that something needed to be done otherwise we were heading for the divorce courts!

As luck would have it, while researching how to get the Biometric Coprocessor of my Latitude D820 to work with Vista, I stumbled across a driver download page (at Acer Europe) for the Acer TravelMate C310 which included Vista drivers. Curious to see whether they had drivers for the C300, I changed the URL to point to "tm_c300.html" and a driver page loaded. Alas, there were no Vista drivers. I then changed the URL to point to "tm_c210.html" and a driver page for the Acer TravelMate C210 loaded which included Vista Drivers. Very strange I thought. Anyway, given that the C310 was just a revision of the C300, I downloaded these drivers hoping that they'd work.

Well, I'm smiling, I'm not getting a divorce and life has returned to normal. The drivers installed without a hitch and all functions of the C300 are working as normal.

So what have I learnt from this experience?

1. Don't touch a family's PC if it ain't broke
2. There appears to be a few cross-platform drivers available for Vista (Telstra MF332 NextG Card, Biometric Coprocessor, C300) so it pays to play around and experiment a bit.

Cheers
Jeff

Moving On

Today is my last day at ASIS.  After 3.5yrs I've decided it's time to move on; time to move to greener pastures.

I have accepted a contract with the Department of Industry Tourism and Resources (DITR) and will be working for VANguard Branch.

The VANguard Branch is responsible for managing the development and maintenance of whole of government online validation, authentication and notary solutions. The VANguard brokerage service will provide Federal, State and Local government agencies with an accredited, dedicated and consistent infrastructure to meet online audit, evidence and archive requirements, while allowing each agency to retain ownership of their own information and transactions.

The VANguard Branch is made up of four sections:

• Governance
• Research
• Architecture
• Development

I will be working for the Development Section as a C# Programmer. Here is a copy of the RFQ/Duty statement.

Can't tell you much more about the Branch or position as there's not much info floating round.  I did however find the following links that provide some info on the VANgueard Project:

Australian e-Government Guide
Australian Government Smart Card Project
Upgrade falls foul of strategy shift
VANguard another Australian Government smart card project?

Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 Update for Windows Vista Released

The Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 Update for Windows Vista has been relased and can be downloaded from here.

Overview
If the machine participated in the Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 Update for Windows Vista Beta, please be sure to uninstall the beta first.

During the development of Windows Vista, several key investments were made to vastly improve overall quality, security, and reliability from previous versions of Windows. While we have made tremendous investments in Windows Vista to ensure backwards compatibility, some of the system enhancements, such as User Account Control, changes to the networking stack, and the new graphics model, make Windows Vista behave differently from previous versions of Windows. These investments impact Visual Studio 2005. The Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 Update for Windows Vista addresses areas of Visual Studio impacted by Vista enhancements.Many of the Windows Vista enhancements are documented at the Windows Vista Development Center.

This download installs the Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 Update for Windows Vista for the following Visual Studio SKUs:

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office
• Microsoft Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition
• Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition
• Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Express Edition
• Microsoft Visual J# 2005 Express Edition (English Only)
• Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Premier Partner Edition
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Architects
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Developers
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Testers
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Test Load Agent
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Test Load Controller
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Code Profiler
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Explorer

Latitude D820 Biometric Coprocessor and Vista Success - Update

DISCLAIMER: I take no responsibility whatsoever for any damage done to your laptop, it's operating system or any other aspect of the product or its components if you decide to follow the steps outlined in this blog post.

EDIT: Dell has released a Vista upgrade to the EMBASSY Trust Suite so recommend you use it.

Ok, after my success with installing the drivers for the Biometric Coprocessor, I moved onto trying to actually get the fingerprint reader to work.

I spent a bit of time following some of the links on UPEK that dealt with the Protector Suite QL software only to find that most of these links took me to support sites that dealt with the Windows XP version of the software. Maybe the press release on UPEK was just that, a press release and no manufacturer had actually implemented the new version. Feed up with this approach, I once again turned to my old mate Google Search.

After a few minutes of searching, I stumbled across a post on NotebookReview.com about someone's success at getting the ASUS version of the Protector Suite QL v5.6 Software (Vista version) to work on their Sony SZ-350BP laptop. This seemed like a good place to start.

The instructions in this post stated:

1-Uninstall Previous PSQL software.
2-Reboot
3- Download and install this file: (link removed as Dell has released their own software)
4-Reboot

How simple is that? I don't have an existing version so all I need to do is download, install and reboot. It couldn't be that simple, or could it?!?!?

I download the software and it installed without a hitch. Now time to reboot. Was my system going to crash or lockup, or was it going to restart successfully? Fingers crossed; I clicked on the restart now button. Well, I be dammed; the machine rebooted and things look sweet.

Upon logging on, a new taskbar icon appeared with a balloon help message stating that "No Finger Enrolled". I clicked on the balloon help and was presented with a Licence Agreement at which point I closed my eyes and clicked "Accept" (What you don't see can't hurt you!). I was then asked whether I wanted "Enrollment in the biometric device" or "Enrollment to the hard disk". I selected the first option as it seemed to provide stronger security; besides, it was the default so must be the best option! I was then taken to a fingerprint enrollment wizard where I could watch a tutorial on how to correctly enroll fingerprints and then onto enrolling them. This is fun :-)

Anyway, to cut a long story short, the enrollment process worked and I can now use the fingerprint reader to logon to Windows, Web Sites and Applications. The other neat thing is that I can also assign applications to fingerprints allowing me to launch them with the swipe of a finger. How cool is that!!!

The only thing I can't get working is Power-up swiping, even though the settings state that it is switched on. Hopefully I'll have this nutted out soon.

Time to play and read the help file :-)

Latitude D820 Biometric Coprocessor and Vista Success

DISCLAIMER: I take no responsibility whatsoever for any damage done to your laptop, it's operating system or any other aspect of the product or its components if you decide to follow the steps outlined in this blog post.

EDIT: Dell has released a Vista upgrade to the EMBASSY Trust Suite so recommend you use it.

Since installing Vista on my Latitude D820 back in January 2007, I've had a yellow exclamation mark next to the Biometric Coprocessor device (Fingerprint Reader) which is bugging the crap out of me. No matter how hard I try, I can't forget about it. I've become obsessed with wanting to fix it.

Over the last two months I've run the driver update wizard countless times and visited the D820 Vista Support and Wave Systems sites (producers of the Embassy Trust Suite) on a daily basis to see if a driver has been released. I've also tried installing the Windows XP version of the Wave Systems Corp EMBASSY Trust Suite software and UPEK TouchStrip Reader drivers (which are actually the same files as those for the Embassy Suite); to the point where I used ZipScan to unpack the cab files so that I could gain access to the various files and install packages that make up the Embassy Suite. Nothing worked.....

To make things worse, Dell has advised that my upgrade CD won't be available for another 6-8 weeks and may not even include a driver for the UPEK fingerprint reader (This is probably the reason why you can't purchase the D820 with the reader if you select to have it pre-installed with Vista).

Anyway, I got thinking. It looks like the fingerprint reader is actually produced by UPEK (UPEK TouchStrip Reader) so I wondered if they'd have a driver. First things first, I launched IE and typed in www.upek.com and hey presto, I saw this on the front page "UPEK Delivers First Biometric Security Software Solution for Windows Vista Operating System". My eyes lit up with joy. After reading this article, I navigated to the support page and sure enough, there's a link to download drivers for the TouchChip/TouchStrip.

Without wanting to bore you too much, I downloaded the drivers and they work. The exclamation mark next to the Biometric Coprocessor has gone and the device now shows up under a Biometric node in device manager.

Now we've got this far, time to see if any of the other software on UTEK works as it's pointless having the reader working if you don't have the software to ustilise it!

EDIT: Read this post for an update on software I got to work http://blog.wharton.com.au/2007/03/latitude-d820-biometric-coprocessor-and_07.html

MCTS: Windows Mobile 5.0 Applications (70-540)

Back in September 2006 I reported that I sat the Beta exam for 70-540

In November 2006 and January 2007 I reported that results had been delayed due to, amongst other things, an extended beta period.

Well, results are in and.......I passed :-)

This also means that the exam has gone live and can be scheduled through Pearson Vue or Prometric.

Howard Dierking (Product Planner, Developer and Database Certifications, Microsoft Corporation) has posted an explanation for the delay on the Smart Devices General newsgroup.  I'm not going to dwell on the issues in Howard's post, however I must say I'm a little concerned about the comment in relation to "On this beta run we faced problems ranging from insufficient participation to scores of bogus results – a prime indicator of cheating." 

I loathe people who cheat in exams as it has a negative effect on my certifications and makes all the hard work I've put into skilling up and passing them seem pointless.  This is why Microsoft need's to get a LOT more tougher with cheats; especially with sites like TestKing.  Perhaps it's also time to restrict the Beta's to selected MCP's, MVP's, MCT's (like they used to be in the past) to ensure that only genuine testers participate

In closing, I'd just like to say a huge thank you to Howard for putting up with all our whining and for keeping us informed about the dilemmas of this beta.  Let’s hope that the issues raised in your post, and by others on the Smart Devices General newsgroup, are taken seriously and that something is done to improve (mis)communication with beta testers.