I have been waiting to upgrade my work laptop to Windows Vista ever since RTM came out. I have it running at home and it’s great. The only issue that I had was that I could not get iTunes to behave and for a while the songs that I purchased from the iTunes store could not be accessed in any way because iTunes would not authorize my computer and kept giving me a cryptic error. Well, a co-worker gave me a handy book about Vista and its features and I started reading about the Program Compatibility Wizard, which allows you to choose executable files and set them to run as if they were in older Windows Operating Systems. This includes the following:

• Windows 95
  
• NT 4 (SP5)
  
• Windows 98/Me
  
• Windows 2000
  
• Windows XP (SP2)
  

Here is how the Wizard Works.

First step: Start the Wizard. This is not as easy as it might seem. Open the Program Compatibility Wizard by clicking the Start button > Control Panel > Programs >Use an older program with this version of Windows.

Second Step: The Wizard Starts Click Next on the Welcome to the Program Compatibility Wizard Dialog Box.

Third Step: I chose the I want to Locate the program manually option here. If you choose the I want to choose from a list of programs, it will search your machine for a list of executables to formulate the list. This takes a while, which is why I took the third option. Obviously, click Next to move to the next step.

Fourth Step: Locate the program. Click Browse and navigate to it. In the case of iTunes it would be c:\Program Files\iTunes\iTunes.exe. Click Next once you have selected it.

Fifth Step: Choose Compatibility Mode. In this case I selected Windows XP (Service Pack 2), which works perfectly. Click Next once you select it.

Sixth Step (Not Necessary for iTunes): You are able to select some specific display settings in this step. I chose none of these for iTunes. Click Next.

Seventh Step: You can now choose to Run this program as an administrator. I turned User Account Control Off on my home machine, so this is grayed out for me and will automatically do this. If you still have UAC On, then I would select this. It would avoid an additional warning message every time you launch the program. You are already going to get one. Either Select it or don’t. Either way, click Next.

Eighth Step: Almost done. You will now review the settings and Click Next to have the Wizard test them.

If you are running Aero Glass, your screen will flicker and you will get this message:

Vista will revert to Windows Basic, then you will get this message:

Click OK and iTunes will start.

Navigate in iTunes to your Purchased music and click Play. You will we asked to login to iTunes to Authorize the computer and it will authorize and play the song.

Ninth Step: If things worked, select Yes, set this program to always use these compatibility settings and click Next.

The wizard will flash a dialog box like this for about 4 seconds.

It will then present you with this screen. You can either send the information to Microsoft or not. Select one or the other and click Next.

Last Step: Click Finish. The Wizard closes and you’re done.

Without this Compatibility Wizard, you would be dead in the water with your purchased music until Apple releases the Vista-friendly version of iTunes. For now, this will work and I am happy. Once Apple releases the new version with Vista Support, you will simply run the Wizard again and during the Fifth Step, choose Do not apply a compatibility mode and finish the Wizard just the same.

Happy new year to all.

I got to take a few days hours off last week, which was great. I took care of some overdue projects around the house which included moving my % complete on my desk refinishing project from about 25% to about 97%. I am waiting for the 2nd clear coat to dry so that I can run some sandpaper on it and apply the last coat. It’s only taken me 8 months to get this far. 30 hours over 8 months… not bad.

I also installed my bed lights in my truck, which was fun and fairly easy to do. I love to tinker with this kind of stuff. It’s good to get the hands dirty doing something every once in a while. The project was cheap and smooth. Here are some pics and here is a write up I did on the f150online.com forum I lurk on from time to time. These lights are a long time coming and I actually used them the night I finished them on a trip to the store with the wife.

The strangest thing just happened, I opened up a new tab to grab a link to the flickr gallery of the bed lights and mistakenly typed in http://www.flckr.com/ for the URL and got a page for the Real Player. Have things gotten that bad for Real that they are now using misspellings of flickr’s URL to market their crap. WOW. Just give up already. Anyway… on to the rest of this post.

I also did some meaningless surfing while I was off and came across something fairly cool and fun. Check this out. It asks you some questions and then tells you what video game you would be based on your responses. Here is what it told me:

I am a Defender-ship.  I am fiercely protective of my friends and loved ones, and unforgiving of any who would hurt them. Speed and foresight are my strengths, at the cost of a little clumsiness. I’m most comfortable with a few friends, but sometimes particularly enjoy spending time in larger groups. What Video Game Character Are You?

I’m not sure how accurate this assessment is, but it was a fun 3 minutes. 

I decided that there would be only one resolution this new year. No resolutions. They rarely are successful endeavors and lead to some degree of guilt along the way, so I am canning them. In their place will be a set of goals and objectives for myself this year. Some are professional and some are personal. I may decide to share them at some point, but not at the moment.

2006 was a good year. It was busy. It was hectic at times. It was successful in my eyes. It’s a new year with new goals and objectives. Time to get down to business and start making 2007 a GREAT year.