My first experience with Vista tonight

[JulesMaximus]

Anyway, I hooked up the router and couldn't get his new Toshiba laptop to see the network. I enabled the wireless adapter on the PC and found about 6-7 wireless networks nearby, about 3 of which were secured, but couldn't see the Netgear router he bought earlier. So, after trying to install the Netgear software a couple times and coming up with the same results I finally tried to work my way through the control panel to see if I could get it to see the router using the utilities already loaded on the PC. That actually worked.

One of the most annoying things about Vista to me was the nanny pop up blockers and active-x blockers. Man, I could not disable them and had to click on the toolbar to allow them every single time I tried to run the Netgear software setup in Windows Explorer (which didn't work BTW). I spent a few minutes searching around to try allow active-x couldn't figure out how to do it. After reading through some of the threads on Vista tonight I'm no closer to a solution but it may be due to the poor search feature...

I have been thinking of building a new system, since I do this every 12-18 months or so, and I was thinking of loading Vista on my new system. It looks promising but I'm not sure that it's worth the headache. Can someone give me some tips here?

 

[tehtank]

In IE7, right click in the area where the tabs are located, check Menu Bar.
Then it's just a matter of
Tools -> Pop-Up Blocker -> Disable Pop-Up Blocker
and
Tools -> Internet Options -> Security Tab -> Custom Level -> Find ActiveX section and turn whatever you want on/off.

 

[Shawn]

Do you really think it's a good idea to have your friends computer automatically accept random activex controls? IE7 prompts you for a reason.

 

[JulesMaximus]

Originally posted by: Shawn
Do you really think it's a good idea to have your friends computer automatically accept random activex controls? IE7 prompts you for a reason.

Well, it was quite annoying to have it halt install, click allow and then click allow again when Windows asks you if you're sure you want to do this over and over.

 

[lxskllr]

Originally posted by: Shawn
Do you really think it's a good idea to have your friends computer automatically accept random activex controls? IE7 prompts you for a reason.

Yea, that's what I was thinking. That's one of the reasons I use Firefox. I'll go to IE if I have to use activex, but I like to keep Firefox activex free.

For the router you'll need to configure it for the type of connection he has. I'm not too swift as far as networking goes. I had some trouble setting up a Linksys router for my mother. It turned out that I needed to set the modem to bridge mode so it would work. She has DSL, while I have cable. I hooked the same router up for my cable connection easily, but the default settings wouldn't work for DSL. I'm not saying that's your problem, but that may be one avenue to explore.

 

[JulesMaximus]

Originally posted by: lxskllr

Originally posted by: Shawn
Do you really think it's a good idea to have your friends computer automatically accept random activex controls? IE7 prompts you for a reason.

Yea, that's what I was thinking. That's one of the reasons I use Firefox. I'll go to IE if I have to use activex, but I like to keep Firefox activex free.

For the router you'll need to configure it for the type of connection he has. I'm not too swift as far as networking goes. I had some trouble setting up a Linksys router for my mother. It turned out that I needed to set the modem to bridge mode so it would work. She has DSL, while I have cable. I hooked the same router up for my cable connection easily, but the default settings wouldn't work for DSL. I'm not saying that's your problem, but that may be one avenue to explore.

I got it working but it was a PITA to try to work around in Vista being that I've never used it before (I didn't know his laptop had Vista on it before hand). Overall it looked pretty good but there were those annoying nanny warnings that I had to deal with over and over again. Trying to figure out how to do things in a new OS is never fun when you're trying to get something done quickly so you can get home to your wife and kid.

Guess I should be glad it only took me about 30-40 minutes to get it working (I did setup WPA security for him and we set a new password for his router...which many people do not do judging by how easy it is to find an unsecured network around here). He's a good friend though and I owed him one. I did tell him jokingly that if he runs into trouble and needs tech support to call someone who actually knows what he's doing. :laugh:

BTW-I use Firefox on all my computers.

 

[Tegeril]

The lesson to learn here is not to ever bother with the router's utilities.

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

Originally posted by: JulesMaximus

Originally posted by: Shawn
Do you really think it's a good idea to have your friends computer automatically accept random activex controls? IE7 prompts you for a reason.

Well, it was quite annoying to have it halt install, click allow and then click allow again when Windows asks you if you're sure you want to do this over and over.

Turn of User Access Control or whatever that setting is.

 

[n7]

Originally posted by: Tegeril
The lesson to learn here is not to ever bother with the router's utilities.

Bingo.

I generally hate the ulitities included w/ routers.
No need for them.

I prefer to let the OS handle wireless, as it's so clean & simple.

 

[JulesMaximus]

Originally posted by: n7

Originally posted by: Tegeril
The lesson to learn here is not to ever bother with the router's utilities.

Bingo.

I generally hate the ulitities included w/ routers.
No need for them.

I prefer to let the OS handle wireless, as it's so clean & simple.

Yeah, I bought the same router and just let Windows handle it. Worked much better.