miscellaneous.debris » Desktop http://www.miscdebris.net/blog A blog about my research work, computer and internet stuff, personal life. Sun, 17 Apr 2011 18:19:10 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Apple keyboard keymap (German) for Windows running as guest on Mac OS X host in Virtualbox http://www.miscdebris.net/blog/2009/04/17/apple-keyboard-keymap-german-for-windows-running-as-guest-on-mac-os-x-host-in-virtualbox/ http://www.miscdebris.net/blog/2009/04/17/apple-keyboard-keymap-german-for-windows-running-as-guest-on-mac-os-x-host-in-virtualbox/#comments Fri, 17 Apr 2009 11:52:57 +0000 Werner http://www.miscdebris.net/blog/?p=99 Puh, that’s a long title. I’m working on Mac OS X and use Virtualbox to run Windows XP as a guest operating system. Virtualbox runs exceptionally well and it’s even free. But the keyboard mapping is problematic since Windows XP assumes a standard PC keyboard. The layout of the Apple keyboards is different, so if you are not a Windows guy, you’ll have troubles to find the backslash ‘\’ or ‘@’. I was looking for a solution for a long time now, but didn’t find anything until now. Stefan Bohm actually published a solution for the same problem if you run parallels. He provided a new keyboard layout for installation (the layout is called ‘Parallels Keyboard Map’) as well a registry hack so that the ‘alt’ keys work as expected.

Homepage (German): Mac Tastatur Belegung für Parallels (Deutsch – DE)
Download: parallels_keymap_de.zip (original copy), parallels_keymap_de.zip (local copy)

Installation

Download and extract the zip file. Install the keyboard layout by double-clicking on ‘setup.exe’ and run the registry hack ‘altgr.reg’ to map the left alt-key on altgr. I’m not sure if you need a reboot here (can’t remember) but it doesn’t harm. Then choose the new keymap, by pressing the right mouse button on the ‘DE’ button in the language bar in the task bar and choose “Settings…”. Choose “German (Germany) – Parallels Keyboard Map” as the default input language.

Text Services and Input Languages

After that you must at least logout/login or reboot – hey, it’s Windows after all, isn’t it!

English keymap anyone?

I haven’t tested that, but this keymap was made with The Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator. You could load the german layout (File->Load existing keyboard…, choose ‘Parallels Keyboard Map’) and change the mapping for an English keyboard accordingly. Then make an install package (Project->Build DLL and Setup package) and you are done. You’ll still need the registry hack.

Some more links:

]]> http://www.miscdebris.net/blog/2009/04/17/apple-keyboard-keymap-german-for-windows-running-as-guest-on-mac-os-x-host-in-virtualbox/feed/ 5 Workaround for ‘Black Window Bug’ using Beryl on Kubuntu http://www.miscdebris.net/blog/2007/04/26/workaround-for-black-window-bug-using-beryl-on-kubuntu/ http://www.miscdebris.net/blog/2007/04/26/workaround-for-black-window-bug-using-beryl-on-kubuntu/#comments Thu, 26 Apr 2007 18:34:57 +0000 Werner http://www.miscdebris.net/blog/?p=18 I recently installed Beryl on my Kubuntu Feisty Fawn distribution and I run into two problems:

1) The window decorations were missing – here you need to add the line
Option “AddARGBGLXVisuals” “true”
to Section “Screen”.

2) My windows were all black and this is a bug in the NVidia driver which doesn’t seem to be fixed soon or at all – the problem is, that if you have a card with not much memory, like my NVidia Go 6200, windows content gets black since there is no memory available. There is a lengthy discussion about that here.
An easy fix for this problem is, right click on the red diamond (Beryl manager) in the system tray and choose “Advanced Beryl Options->Rendering Path->Copy”. This should have an effect on the performance but at least it works :) . Thanks Nil.

More info can be found at these links:
An automatic easy solution for nearly (all) problems
Opening too many windows leaves some of them black

]]> http://www.miscdebris.net/blog/2007/04/26/workaround-for-black-window-bug-using-beryl-on-kubuntu/feed/ 0 Access to ext2 or ext3 partitions in Windows XP http://www.miscdebris.net/blog/2006/05/10/access-to-ext2-or-ext3-partitions-in-windows-xp/ http://www.miscdebris.net/blog/2006/05/10/access-to-ext2-or-ext3-partitions-in-windows-xp/#comments Wed, 10 May 2006 12:00:16 +0000 Werner http://www.miscdebris.net/blog/?p=10 By accident I found a nice website which offers a program which allows access to ext2 or ext3 partitions in Windows: Ext2 Installable File System for Windows (which also is capable of reading ext3 file systems). This project provides a nice installer package, which installs an ext2 device driver in Windows – and it also has write support which others (Expore2fs, LTOOLS – though I just found out, that it also provides write access, but not as convenient as Ext2IFS) don’t provide. I use it for some time now it seams to be very useful though there are some minor drawbacks (no user access rights management).

This comes very handy if you use Linux and Windows on the same computer.

]]> http://www.miscdebris.net/blog/2006/05/10/access-to-ext2-or-ext3-partitions-in-windows-xp/feed/ 0 Desktop Search, OpenOffice and Thunderbird (IMAP) http://www.miscdebris.net/blog/2006/04/28/desktop-search-openoffice-and-thunderbird-imap/ http://www.miscdebris.net/blog/2006/04/28/desktop-search-openoffice-and-thunderbird-imap/#comments Fri, 28 Apr 2006 09:26:28 +0000 Werner http://www.miscdebris.net/blog/?p=8 Assume you have a lot of documents and data. Further you use OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Work and Thunderbird instead of Outlook. And you use an IMAP Email Account instead of a POP3 one.

Since you have so much documents you decide to use one of these fancy Desktop Searches to find things you need faster (and they are definitely very helpful). Then you stumble into problems, since only one of these various Desktop Searches is up to the task. I tried them all – here are my considerations:

  1. Google Desktop Search: It’s from Google but definitely not the best. Many things you can’t configure easily (not you should not index my whole hard disc) and OpenOffice support is very bad (only beta plugin from March 2005 or so), though I have to admit I checked out GDS 2 and there is alread GDS 3 – but from the homepage it seems, that OpenOffice support is still shaky.
  2. Windows Desktop Search: better than GDS (better to configure) and also searches the applications, but no support for OpenOffice and Thunderbird. You have to install third party add-ins(OO, TB), which are not up to the task.
  3. Yahoo Desktop Search: much better results, but doesn’t index OpenOffice 2.0 documents. WTF! Hey, OpenDocument is an open standard. Can’t be that difficult.
  4. Copernic Desktop Search: After waisting a lot of time with the three programs above (and with this, I admit), I finally found THE desktop search which is up to the (my) tasks: it nicely indexes OpenOffice documents and also indexes Thunderbird mailboxes. But beware, that you have to use at least version 1.7, I had some problems with 1.63.

I also should mention that none of the desktop search programs above (even CDS) could index an IMAP account with Thunderbird. But there is a solution. You make the folders you are interested in available for offline reading. You than regularily go into offline mode and tell Thunderbird (popup message) to download all emails which are not already on the hard disk. At least CDS and YDS are than able to index your emails.

So, if you have a lot of OpenOffice programs and read your emails with Thunderbird there is only one solution Copernic Desktop Search. If you have an IMAP account make the folders available for download. Also watch out for the next version of CDS: 2.0 Beta looks very promising.

]]> http://www.miscdebris.net/blog/2006/04/28/desktop-search-openoffice-and-thunderbird-imap/feed/ 5 Disable autorun for CD/DVD drives to prevent root-kits to install themselves automatically http://www.miscdebris.net/blog/2006/04/19/disable-autorun-for-cddvd-drives-to-prevent-root-kits-to-install-themselves-automatically/ http://www.miscdebris.net/blog/2006/04/19/disable-autorun-for-cddvd-drives-to-prevent-root-kits-to-install-themselves-automatically/#comments Wed, 19 Apr 2006 09:15:06 +0000 Werner http://www.miscdebris.net/blog/?p=7 If you enter an audio CD or DVD into the CD/DVD drive of your Windows computer, you might install in that moment a root-kit of a copy control program, which prevents you to copy the audio content, or even worse, makes your system unstable and unsecure.

There are two possibilities to prevent Windows from autoplaying the CD/DVD:

  1. Hack in the registry (provided by Microsoft):
    • Click Start, click Run, type regedit in the Open box, and then press ENTER.
    • Locate and click the following registry key:
      HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\ Services\CDRom
    • To disable automatically running CD-ROMs, change the Autorun value to 0 (zero). To enable automatically running CD-ROMs, change the Autorun value to 1.
    • Restart your computer.
  2. Download Tweak UI (also from Microsoft), install and run it. Choose My Computer->AutoPlay->Types. Uncheck “Enable Autoplay …” for CD drives and removeable drives if you wish. Additionally you can choose My Computer->AutoPlay->Drives and uncheck the drives in question (e.g. all :) ).
  3. Reboot (it’s still Windows :) )
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