Windows 7

VMWare and USB 3

It took me a while to figure out why my external Seagate harddrive wasn’t working on Windows 7 and VMware Fusion 5. As it turns out, VMware Fusion 5 does not support USB 3.0 with Windows 71.

What is not intuitive — and frankly doesn’t make sense — is that VMware Fusion 5 will not automatically revert to USB 2.0 to attempt to support it.

The solution to this is to run your USB 3.0 capable device through a USB 2.0 hub, such as an Apple Keyboard with Numeric Keypad.

See also: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/415658

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  1. you need Windows 8, per their features list “Microsoft Windows 8 required for USB 3 support” ↩

Do you want to scan and fix YUKON (I:)? No, go away.

I had this really annoying box pop up whenever I plugged by iPod into my computer that said, “Do you want to scan and fix YUKON (I:)?” It happened when I was running Windows Vista and it happened when I was running Windows 7. It took a half second to click, which means is wasn’t annoying enough for me to do anything about for the longest time, despite the fact that it drove me nuts.

Fortunately, Mark Flavin has the answer to why it was doing this annoying behavior and how to fix it:

From www.futureofrealestatetechnology.com:

The reason for the error is that his IPOD was formatted FAT32 on Windows XP; this can affect thumbdrives, cameras, smart cards. What happens is the device was not properly dismounted by Windows XP and there is an archival bit set that Vista needs to reset before it will stop reporting there is an error.

Read the solution over at Resolve Vista Scan and Fix Error When Plugging in IPOD or other Devices

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Getting Touchpad to Work with Windows 7

I’ve been using Windows 7 on my Toshiba M700 Tablet since the RTM was available on MSDN a couple of months ago. And it’s been great! No kidding. There were a handful of drivers I needed to download from Toshiba, but everything just works, except for the mouse.

Well, that’s not entirely true. The mouse works just fine. It’s all the special features that don’t work. And that’s not the fault of Microsoft, it’s the fault of Toshiba for not having the needed drivers.

Today though, I got sick of it. One of my biggest issues is that while I’m typing, my hands are very near the touchpad, practically on top. And more often than not, I’ll ever so gently catch the touchpad with my palm, and reposition the cursor. It drives me nuts. Fortunately it hasn’t been an issue because most of the time my tablet is docked at home. However, now that I’m on vacation and using it on the go, it’s been a huge issue.

The solution was easy though. After searching through some forums, several people noted that version 7.2.303.107 of the Alps Pointing Device Driver was working for people using all sorts of laptops with Windows 7 (including Dells).

The best place I found to get it was from the Toshiba Drivers Download Site for the Portege A600. Select “Touchpad” from the categories and click “Alps Pointing Device Driver (32/64bit) (v7.2.303.107; 10-06-2008; 7M)” from the results. It’s designed for Vista 32-/64-bit, however I’m using it on Windows 7 64-bit just fine.

Problem solved!

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