Clear Up Router Congestion and Increase Your Bandwidth

A congested home router can reduce your Internet bandwidth and lead to packet loss. Here’s how to turn on a hidden Windows Vista feature to clear it up.

Your broadband ISP may promise you 5-megabit Internet access and above, but if you’ve got a router prone to congestion, you may be getting nowhere near those speeds. Routers can get congested if their incoming packet buffers get full. When this happens, the router drops packets, and bandwidth suffers. In addition, streaming media such as videos may drop packets, and the video may appear jerky, or you may not be able to view it all.

Windows Vista includes a hidden feature, called Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) that can help clear up the problem. Microsoft even claims that ECN can help speed up downloads and improve the reliability of data transfer when your router isn’t congested. ECN is turned off by default because not all home routers support it, and if you turn it on with a nonsupported router, you can cause even worse connection problems.

There is a way, however, to find out if your router supports ECN and then to turn on ECN from the command line.

To find out if your router supports ECN, you need to run the Internet Connectivity Evaluation Tool.Make sure you’re logged in to Windows Vista as an administrator. Then go to www.microsoft.com/windows/using/tools/igd/default.mspx and agree to the terms. When you agree, on the page that appears, Microsoft will attempt to install an ActiveX control. Your Internet Explorer security settings will most likely block the attempt. The Information Bar will light up yellow. Click it, and from the menu that appears (Figure), select Install ActiveX Control.

Telling Internet Explorer to install the Internet Connectivity Evaluation Tool

Follow the prompts for installing the software. A new web page will appear. Click Start Test. After several minutes of testing, you’ll see a results screen like the one shown in (Figure )

You’ve passed the ECN test

Scroll to the Traffic Congestion Test section. If your router passes the test, you can safely turn on ECN. If not, you can’t.

To turn on ECN, fi rst run an elevated command prompt by typing cmd at the Search box and pressing Ctrl-Shift-Enter. Then at the command line, type this command, and press Enter:

netsh interface tcp set global ecncapability=enabled

NOTE :When you turn on ECN, you turn it on only for the computer on which you’ve issued the command, not on the entire network. If you want other Windows Vista PCs on the network to be able to take advantage of ECN, you’ll need to turn it on at each of the PCs.
The command prompt will respond with an OK. ECN will now be enabled. If you notice a degradation in performance, you can turn off ECN by typing this command at an elevated command prompt and pressing Enter:

netsh interface tcp set global ecncapability=disabled
 
See Also

For a good explanation of how ECN works, see this “Cable Guy” article:
www.microsoft.com/technet/community/columns/cableguy/cg1006.mspx. 

For an explanation of the Internet Connectivity Evaluation Tool, see this Microsoft Knowledge
Base article: support.microsoft.com/kb/932134/en-us.

Hack the Start Menu and Taskbar

The Group Policy Editor gives you instant access to changing dozens of interface settings. Here’s how to use it to create your own personalized Start menu and taskbar.


The Group Policy Editor does more than just customize the Control Panel; it gives you control over many aspects of Windows’ interface as well—in particular, the Start menu and taskbar. In fact, it gives you quick access to more than three dozen separate settings for them in Windows XP, and 64 settings in Windows Vista.


Run the Group Policy Editor by typing gpedit.msc at the Run prompt or command line. Go to User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Start Menu and Taskbar. As you can see in Figure below, the right pane displays all the settings you can change. If you click the Extended tab at the bottom of the screen, you’ll be shown a description of the setting that you’ve highlighted, along with an explanation of each option. Settings you can customize include showing the Pictures (in XP, My Pictures) icon, the Run menu, and the Music icon on the Start menu; locking the taskbar so that it can’t be customized; and many others. To change a setting, double-click it and choose your options from the menu that is displayed.

Customizing the Start menu and taskbar in the Group Policy Editor

There’s not room in this hack to go into detail about each setting you can change, so I’ll tell you about some of my favorites. I’ve never been a big fan of My Documents (Documents in Vista), My Pictures (Pictures in Vista), and My Music (Music in Vista) in on the Start menu in Windows. In fact, I never use those folders, so there’s no point having them on the Start menu. The settings in the Group Policy Editor let you get rid of them.

If you share your PC with other people, the Group Policy Editor is a great way to make sure no one can change the Start menu and taskbar except you. So, when you have the Start menu and taskbar working the way you want, they’ll stay that way until you want to change them. Enable “Prevent changes to Taskbar and Start Menu settings,” and no one will be able to change their settings except you (or another user who has administrator privileges). Select “Remove drag-and-drop context menus on the Start Menu,” and no one except you will be able to remove or reorder items on the Start menu. You can even stop anyone else from shutting down Windows by selecting “Remove and prevent access to the Shut Down command.” (Of course, they can still shut down your PC the oldfashioned way: by using the power switch.)

Among the many entries here are a lot of pointless ones, by the way. You can remove the Logoff entry on the Start menu, for example, which certainly isn’t high on my list of must-haves. But who knows—you might want to do that, or make any of the many other changes the Group Policy Editor allows. Go in there yourself and muck around; you’ll find plenty to change.


Hack the Windows XP Taskbar with Tweak UI

You can use Tweak UI to hack the Windows XP taskbar, to a limited degree. Go to its Taskbar section, and you can disable or enable balloon tips, and enable or disable warnings when you’re low on disk space. Underneath the Taskbar section, you’ll fi nd a Grouping subsection that controls how taskbar “grouping” works. When you run too many programs with too many files open, all of them can’t fit individually on the taskbar. So XP groups files from the same application with each other. For example, if you have four Word files open, it shows only a single icon for Word on the taskbar, with the number 4 inside it. Click the icon, and a list of all four files pops up. You can then choose which to open. Tweak UI lets you control how that grouping works; you can decide whether to first group applications with the most windows, or instead first group applications that you use the least. You can also choose to group all applications with two or more windows open, three or more windows open, and so on.

DUAL BOOT XP/UBUNTU LINUX (Part 2)

How to turn your Windows XP into a Linux dual-boot...

Windows XP
Level : Advanced
  

Installing Ubuntu Linux

To install Ubuntu Linux, reboot the system with the Ubuntu boot CD in the drive. At the Partition disks screen, select “Manually edit partition table.” On my systems, Ubuntu found these partitions:

• ntfs /media/hda1

• ext3 /media/hda2

• swap swap

• fat32 /media/hd4

The ntfs partition is the resized Windows partition. The ext3 partition is where you want to install Ubuntu. Make sure you set the mount point to / for this partition, set the bootable flag to on, and let Ubuntu format the partition. For the FAT32 partition, specify a mount point such as /share. When the configuration settings are correct, select Finish partitioning and write changes to disk. The installer will format the ext3 and swap partitions.

Installing GRUB and Making Ubuntu Bootable Using the Windows Bootloader

The remainder of the Ubuntu install is straightforward, until you must choose whether to install the GRUB bootloader to the Master Boot Record (MBR). To be extra protective of my working Windows installation, I chose not to install GRUB to my MBR, which led me to a screen titled Install the GRUB boot loader on a hard disk. Here, I identified my Ubuntu partition:

 (hd0,1)

In GRUB’s zero-based drive identification convention, this indicates the fi rst disk drive (drive hd0), second partition (partition 1).

After installing GRUB, Ubuntu will request a reboot to complete its installation running from the hard drive. On both of my systems, the reboot produced the ominous message “Missing operating system.” This message is the result of Ubuntu having set its own partition as the active partition. The Windows bootloader, which is still installed in the master boot record, cannot boot Windows, because the Windows partition is not fl agged as active; the Windows bootloader also has no knowledge of the Ubuntu operating system, so that cannot boot, either.

To make the system bootable into both Windows and Ubuntu, reboot into the System Rescue CD. Run QtParted, select the Windows partition (for example, /dev/hda1), and select Operations→Set Active. Select Device→Commit to commit your changes. The QtParted progress window will display the operations, ending with Operations completed successfully. Exit QtParted, but don’t shut down.

Now you must copy data from the Ubuntu partition to a file that the Windows bootloader can use for booting Ubuntu. The FAT32 partition, which is accessible to both Linux and Windows, is useful. At the System Rescue CD command prompt, mount the FAT32 partition:

 # mkdir /mnt/share
 # mount -t msdos /dev/hda4 /mnt/share

Make a fi le containing data copied from the boot sector of your Linux drive (substitute your Linux drive designation if it is not /dev/hda2):

  # dd if=/dev/hda2 of=/mnt/share/ubuntu.bin bs=512 count=1

If you enter:

  # ls -l /mnt/share

you should see the file ubuntu.bin with size 512 bytes.

Now configure the Windows bootloader. Shut down the system and let Windows boot. Copy the ubuntu.bin fi le from the FAT32 Windows drive to drive C:\. Next, edit the system startup settings. Open the Control Panel, select System, and go to the Advanced tab. Click the Startup and Recovery settings button. Click the Edit button to edit the startup options file manually (Figure below ).

Navigating to edit the Windows bootloader startup settings

Clicking Edit loads the boot.ini fi le into Notepad. Add a new line at the end of the fi le:

C:\UBUNTU.BIN="Ubuntu Linux"

Save the file and close Notepad. Make sure the “Time to display list of operating systems” has a value of at least 5 or 10, to give yourself plenty of time to select the operating system at boot time. Click OK to save the Startup settings.

You now have a dual-boot XP/Ubuntu notebook computer. Reboot the computer and select Ubuntu Linux to complete the installation and configuration of Ubuntu. Linux configuration issues vary for different computers.

Accessing the Shared Partition from Ubuntu
Ubuntu mounts the shared FAT32 partition at boot time:

kevin@lyrahpnx:~$ df
Filesystem           1K-blocks       Used           Available      Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda2          30233928    1766828    26931288      7% /
tmpfs                   517816              16         517800       1% /dev/shm
tmpfs                   517816         12588        505228        3% /lib/modules   
                                                                                      /2.6.12-9-386/volatile
/dev/hda1          19451896    3548380    15903516      19% /media/hda1
/dev/hda4          25916224           160     25916064       1% /share


By default, the root user owns the partition:

kevin@lyrahpnx:~$ ls -l /share
total 48

drwxr-xr-x       2    root   root   16384   2006-02-09   11:03   Recycled
drwxr-xr-x       3    root   root   16384   2006-02-09   11:03   System Volume
                                                                                               Information
-rwxr-xr-x       1    root   root       512   2006-02-09   10:56    ubuntu.bin


You won’t be able to access the shared partition from Ubuntu Linux using your normal login name unless you change this.

The simplest solution is to have the /share partition mounted at boot time specifying your login ID as the owner. First, display your user ID record from /etc/passwd (substitute your user name for kevin):

kevin@lyrahpnx:~$ grep kevin /etc/passwd
kevin:x:1000:1000:Kevin Farnham,,,:/home/kevin:/bin/bash


The third and fourth items are the user ID and group ID; these are necessary when you modify the mount command in /etc/fstab.

Because fstab is a critical Linux system file, make a backup copy of your working version before you edit the fi e. Then, edit fstab (use sudo, because root owns the file), and change the options section for the /share entry to defaults,uid=uuuu,gid=gggg, where uuuu is your user ID and gggg is your group ID. Here’s my revised /etc/fstab (note the /dev/hda4 /share entry):

When you reboot into Ubuntu, the /share partition will be mounted with your user name having full ownership and full access.

Conclusion

Converting a single disk-drive notebook computer into a dual-boot Windows XP/Ubuntu Linux system requires advance planning and careful execution of multiple sequences of steps. However, the benefit of being able to boot either Windows or Linux on a portable system, and to share data between the two, is well worth the effort for people who work in both realms.

DUAL BOOT XP/UBUNTU LINUX (Part 1)

How to turn your Windows XP into a Linux dual-boot...

Windows XP
Level : Advanced

For those of us who do considerable work in the Linux environment, a Windows-only notebook is far from ideal. I worked with Unix on Windows packages such as Uwin and Cygwin for several years, but I finally decided I wanted a full Linux installation on my notebook.

Prerequisites: Disk Space and CDs

As you might expect, a dual-boot computer requires more disk space than a computer running just one operating system. I don’t recommend performing an XP/Linux dual-boot conversion with a drive smaller than the 30 GB that my older notebook had. A system with more than 60 GB disk space is a more ideal starting point.

When reconfiguring operating systems on a hard drive, you must be able to boot the system using a CD that has appropriate tools for disk partitioning, fi le editing, and so on. I used the System Rescue CD (www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page), a Gentoo Linux 2.4 Live CD (www.gentoo.org) with system utilities including QtParted, GRUB, LILO, archiving tools, editors, CD tools, Perl 5.8, CaptiveNtfs,and others. I downloaded the ISO image file using Windows and made my CD using Alex Feinman’s excellent ISO Recorder (isorecorder.alexfeinman.com/isorecorder.htm). I downloaded the installation ISO file for Ubuntu 5.10, “The Breezy Badger,” at Ubuntu’s download page (www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download). Again, I made the CD using ISO Recorder.


Windows Disk Preparations
If you’re converting a Windows system that you’ve used for some time, the disk may be nearly full, and the files will likely be scattered across it. To install Linux, you need to divide the disk into multiple partitions. One way to do this is to destructively repartition the entire disk, but then you have to reinstall Windows and all of your Windows software—not a pleasing prospect. A better solution is to resize the Windows NTFS partition, then add new partitions for Linux, Linux swap space, and a FAT32 shared partition.

Because my Acer notebook’s disk was 85 percent full, the fi rst thing I had to do was remove files.
If you’re in this situation, see how much space you can free up by:

• Backing up all critical files (or performing a full system backup if you have capability to do that).

• Removing Windows software that you never use and never plan to use, using “Add or Remove Programs” (“Uninstall a program” in Vista) in the Windows Control Panel or the uninstallation programs that came with the software.

• Removing unneeded data files.

• Moving documents, data files, and project workspaces (for example, software development directories) that you can later store temporarily in the new shared partition to another computer.

• Emptying the Windows Recycle Bin.

• Doing all of these things decreased my Windows disk usage to 10 GB, leaving 18 GB free. However, the files were still scattered across the disk.

Before you can resize the NTFS partition, you must move all files to the “front” of the disk. You can see the locations of files on your disk by running the Windows Defragmenter utility. Go to Start→All Programs→Accessories→System Tools→Disk Defragmenter to launch the defragmenter. Figure below illustrates my disk usage after the defragmentation cycle completed.

Notebook disk usage after running the Windows disk defragmenter

The files were not as completely packed into the “front” of the disk (the left side of the Defragmenter diagram) as I would have expected. A little research revealed that the Windows Defragmenter applies a less-comprehensive defragmenting approach than is available in some commercial programs. I decided to rerun the Windows Defragmenter. After three more runs, my disk usage looked more like this:

Notebook disk usage after four Windows disk defragmenter runs

This result looked adequate. More than half of the disk was available for my Linux installation, Linux swap, and the shared FAT32 partition.

One problem that you may encounter in defragmenting a Windows disk using the Windows Defragmenter is unmovable files (the green bars, if you’re looking at your results) located in inconvenient locations (on the right side of the display, near the end of your disk). The two most common unmovable laptop files are the Windows operating system paging file (pagefile.sys) and the hibernation file (hiberfile.sys), which stores the system state when the XP operating system goes into “hibernate” mode. An easy solution is to temporarily remove these files, then reinstall them after you’ve resized the NTFS partition. If you need help with this, see my blog entry “Moving the Unmovable: Windows Disk Defragmentation Strategies” (lyratechnicalsystems.com/?p=9).

Dual-Boot Computer Disk Partitioning

When sizing your partitions, consider the following:

• Windows NTFS partition: Provide adequate space for the full operating system (including anticipated future patches), installation of all applications you want, and plenty of extra space (just to be safe).

• Linux ext3 partition: Provide adequate space for the full operating system; for convenience, allow enough space for software installation in the default install locations (/usr/bin, and so on).

• Linux Swap: Follow the standard rule of allocating swap—twice your RAM.

• Shared FAT32 partition: Don’t make this too small. For example, if your email will reside on the shared partition, that alone can quickly occupy gigabytes of disk space.

Once you’ve decided on partition sizes, boot the system using the System Rescue CD. When the rescue CD presents the boot: prompt, I recommend entering fb800 nodetect:

boot: fb800 nodetect

This setting bypasses a full search for the devices on your computer. When I tried the default boot with my new HP, the system displayed the message “USB and PCI hotplugging” and froze, forcing me into a hard power-down. My Knoppix 3.7 LiveCD also failed to complete its boot on the HP, using the default options. Because I don’t plan to work with USB or hotplug devices, there is no need to detect them.

After the rescue CD boots, you’ll see a Linux command prompt. Enter run_qtparted to launch the QtParted disk partitioning application. (Documentation and screen shots are available from the project’s site at qtparted.sourceforge.net.)

Select the Windows partition (this was /dev/hda on both my systems), and resize it: select Operations→Resize, enter the new partition size (observe your units, MB or GB), and click OK.

Next, create a second primary partition, of type ext3, for the new Ubuntu system: highlight the “02” partition, and select Operations→Create. Set “Create as” to “Primary Partition” (so that the Linux system can boot), select “ext3” as the partition type, give the drive a sensible partition label, enter the partition size, and click OK. Create the Linux swap partition by highlighting number 03 and selecting Operations→Create. Select “linux-swap” as the partition type, select the swap size, and click OK.

Finally, create the FAT32 partition that both operating systems will share. Highlight number “04” and select Operations→Create. Set the partition type to FAT32, provide a label, and allow the partition to use the remainder of the disk.


Now, study the color-coded diagram at the top of the QtParted window. The sizes of the colored partition regions should match what you expect to see based on your disk space allocation design. If there is any doubt, you can select Device→Undo to undo your changes, or exit QtParted and start over.

When you’re absolutely certain that everything looks correct, select Device→Commit. The QtParted program will warn you that all partitions must be unmounted. The hard drive partitions won’t be mounted if you went directly from the CD boot to run_qtparted. Click Yes to commit your changes.

A progress window appears, and QtParted displays various messages as it performs the repartioning operations. It took about ten minutes to repartition my 40 GB Acer drive into the four new partitions, but on my HP all operations completed in about a minute. If everything works, QtParted displays “Operations completed successfully.” Click OK, then select File→Quit to exit QtParted.

Enter shutdown -r now to shut down the system. At this point, you might want to reboot to verify that your Windows system is still bootable. Windows should boot fine if you selected an adequate resize partition size based on the final Windows defragmentation map. At boot time, Windows may detect the change in disk partition size and begin to run the chkdsk utility. Let this continue so that Windows can reset its internal information about available disk drives.

After Windows has completed its analysis of the new disk partitions and booted into its normal operating mode, open Explorer and look at the identified drives. You should see the resized boot drive, plus a new drive letter that designates the FAT32 partition you created using QtParted.

PART 2 : Installing Ubuntu Linux

BIOS Hacks for Faster Bootup

Windows Vista , Windows XP
Level : Beginner

Some of the stuff your computer does at boot time is of no use. We are going to disable those features to boot faster.

The system BIOS does a lot of work in the P.O.S.T. (Power On Self Test) phase before it gets your system to the point where it reads boot-up information from a disk drive to load an operating system. Some of the things that happen in P.O.S.T. have nothing to do with system performance other than impeding the process of getting to the operating system to run your applications. Intel, AMD, AMI, Award/Phoenix, and the PC manufacturers were aware of this waste of time, evaluated the events involved, and in many cases took steps to reduce the number of items and the amount of time the start up process takes. To that end, there are a handful of changes you can make in order to boot up faster.



Disable Extended Tests
Many systems offer the option of allowing an in-depth test of system memory and components (an extended test) or zipping through the system and getting to bootup as quickly as possible.With RAM as reliable and economical as it is (and having so much of it) and having plug-and-play operating systems like Windows—and, to some extent, current versions of Linux—the Quick Testmode is more than adequate, and preferred for faster boot times. And specifies the depth, and thus the time involved, for testing system RAM and finding and checking the basic components of the system—COM and LPT ports and such.

Settings for the fastest P.O.S.T.

Configure Drive Detection
Most BIOSes provide the capability to automatically search for, identify, and confi gure different types of drives across multiple IDE and Serial ATA connections. This parameter setting usually shows up as AUTO in the IDE confi guration choices. If you leave the parameter for all four possible IDE or Serial ATA devices set to AUTO, your BIOS will waste a lot of time searching for nonexistent devices. For faster boot times set the parameter to NONE, for any unused interfaces and connections that have nothing attached to them.

Set any unused IDE devices to NONE to speed boot time

User BIOS Regions
This parameter, if it exists in your setup program, instructs the BIOS to search upper DOS memory (between 640 KB and 1 MB) for the existence of additional BIOS extension code. Such code exists on SCSI host adapters and on network cards that provide the ability to boot from a network server. Most PC users never encounter a SCSI interface, and neither do systems confi gured to boot over a LAN through a network card, so there don’t set this parameter to anything but No, Off, or Disabled
—and save yourself a couple more seconds at boot time.