I’m currently evaluating Small Business Server 2008 on a machine which I also use for testing websites and learning PHP. With such tight integration of IIS7 to run the SBS services of remote access to Exchange email, SharePoint and even just web-based remote access of machine it makes it impossible to simply stop IIS and replace it with Apache. Instead we need to set them both up to run side-by-side.

At first I told Apache to run on a different port but got tired of appending the port number to the URL every time I needed to access it from my PC.

After some more research I found a way of giving the server a second IP address and running IIS7 on one and Apache on the other, both still on port 80. One caveat to this setup is that to keep outside access to Small Business Server’s remote applications is that external SSL connections on port 443 must remain routed to IIS7.

Add a Second IP Address

1. Login to your server’s desktop and click Start –> Control Panel then open Network and Sharing Center and click Manage Network Connections under Tasks in the left panel
2. Right-click the machine’s network adapter and click Properties, clicking Continue on the UAC prompt if enabled
3. In the list select Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) and click the Properties button
4. In the Properties dialog click the Advanced… button down the bottom-right
5. On the IP Settings tab click the Add… button in the IP addresses grouping
6. Enter the new IP address of your choice and the required Subnet mask then click Add
7. You should now have two IP addresses assigned to your machine. Click OK or close all open dialogs and windows

Bind IIS to a Single IP Address

By default IIS listens on all IP addresses assigned to the machine. We need to change this and bind it to only one. I chose to keep IIS running on the original IP address (In my case 192.168.1.100) and run Apache on the second one I assigned to it (192.168.1.110).

1. Click Start, type “cmd” in the search box then right-click cmd.exe in the Programs list and choose Run as Administrator. Click Continue on the UAC prompt
2. In the command prompt type the following:
   netsh http show iplisten
   The list returned should be empty
3. In the command prompt type:
   netsh http add iplisten ipaddress=192.168.1.100
   Replacing 192.168.1.100 with the existing IP address of your machine
4. Type out the show command from step 2 a second time and you should see your IP address in the list
5. Reboot the IIS services by typing the following in your open command prompt
   iisreset
   It will take a few minutes to completely shutdown and restart IIS
6. Once IIS has reset close the command prompt and test both your IPs in a web browser again, this time IIS should only display on a single IP address

Install and Configure Apache

For the installation of Apache you’re on your own. You can either install it from scratch or use one of the combined WAMP packages out there. Personally I use XAMPP as I am quite lazy and no longer have the time to manually install all the required components separately.

Once you have installed Apache, we need to bind it to the second, unused IP address

1. Run notepad as an administrator using the method from step 1 above
2. In Notepad click File –> Open and navigate to the folder Apache installed in. Within this folder select the ‘conf’ folder then open up the httpd.conf file (NOTE: make sure you have All Files (*.*) selected in the drop-down box at the bottom right otherwise you will not see the files)
3. Locate the line
   Listen 80
   And change it to
   Listen 192.168.1.110:80
   Replacing 192.168.1.110 with the second IP you assigned to your machine.
   
4. Save your changes then go to File –> Open and navigate to the ‘extras’ subfolder of the conf folder and open the httpd-ssl.conf file
5. Locate the line
   Listen 443
   And change it to
   Listen 192.168.1.110:443
   Again replacing the IP address written here with your own
   
6. Save your changes and start/restart Apache

You should now be able to view IIS on your original IP address and Apache on the new one you added. To get external access to Apache instead of IIS you would simply change the port forwarding rule for port 80 in your router to point to this new IP address instead of the original one.

Make sure that you do not change port forwarding for port 443 though as this will stop all remote access to email and other SBS 2008 services!

Sources

• http://www.simongibson.com/intranet/multiip/
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms733768.aspx
• http://weblogs.asp.net/steveschofield/archive/2007/07/06/iis7-post-44-iis7-and-apache-on-the-same-machine.aspx - Unfortunately I didn’t find Steve Schofield’s excellent guide on doing the same thing until after I had struggled through it all.

iTunes has some really advanced features for organising your music but seems to ignore the fact that a lot of people may have music libraries larger than their iPod. Its solutions of only adding manually chosen playlists or randomly selecting music itself to go onto the iPod aren’t very helpful for people who still want the majority of their library accessible on the go or want more control over the music on their iPod.

My solution is to create a master live updating ‘smart playlist’ for the iPod which ignores songs that have been tagged with iTunes Only in the Grouping field, unless they have a rating of higher than one star. The reason for the second condition is that it allows me to tag entire albums as iTunes Only but still have single songs off them show up on the iPod if I rate them.

The advantage of doing it this way is that new content you put into iTunes will still automatically get added to the iPod unless you tell it not to.

Create an iPod Master Playlist

1. In iTunes go to File –> New Smart Playlist…
2. Add the rule ‘Grouping does not contain iTunes Only’
3. Optionally add another rule ‘Rating is greater than one star’ and change the Match rule at the top to ‘any’
4. Make sure Live updating is checked, and the Limit and Match only… options are unchecked
5. Click OK and name your playlist ‘iPod’

Tag Selected Songs with ‘iTunes Only’

1. In your iTunes library, select the song(s) you don’t want on your iPod.
2. Right-click and select Get Info
3. On the Info tab, go down to the Grouping field and enter ‘iTunes Only’

Instruct your iPod to Sync with the iPod Playlist

1. Connect your iPod to your PC
2. Select your iPod under Devices on the left
3. From the iPod Summary screen, select the Music tab
4. Make sure Sync Music is checked then click the Selected Playlists radio button
5. Select your iPod playlist in the list and any others you decide you want on your iPod, click Apply in the bottom right then click Sync

Now you can easily select what songs you do or don’t want on your iPod.

I’ve always had troubles with the Microsoft Wireless Desktop 6000 and before it the Microsoft Wireless Desktop Elite not scrolling correctly in iTunes and more recently Picasa. The scrolling was very slow in these applications and a lot of the time seemed to not work at all. It would take frantic scrolling of the wheel to make the listings move just a couple of lines. Completely useless.

My sister is visiting for a couple of weeks and I was complaining about the issue to her when she suggested I try her notebook mouse — It worked perfectly.

The fix is actually pretty simple — change the type of mouse in the IntelliPoint Mouse Properties window to something different. I now have my Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 6000 setup as a Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000. I simply chose this mouse because it has the same number of buttons as mine. Once it’s changed iTunes and Picasa scrolled correctly. Everything else still scrolls fine too (web pages, etc.) however I did find I needed to turn the sensitivity down a fair bit otherwise it was quite jumpy.

I had looked into this a couple of weeks ago and found a forum post that mentioned the same fix and there were a couple of other sites that linked to this Microsoft Help & Support article (or a similar one with the same basic fix) as well but when I tried changing mine to an earlier IntelliMouse Explorer and a couple of others it made no difference. So if it doesn’t work the first time keep selecting different types of mice until you find one that keeps all your buttons and works!

UPDATE

In the excitement of finally having iTunes and Picasa scrolling properly I neglected to test the solution fully. After a couple of reboots the mouse went back to its same old frustrating not-scrolling-properly ways in those programs. Even after a full reinstall of Windows (due to an unrelated matter) I still could not get the mouse to scroll properly no matter what I tried. On top of that, the keyboard has started not picking up all the letters I typed. Especially the CTRL and Question Mark keys.

The final solution? Buy Logitech.

My absolute final solution for these issues was to buy a Logitech wired keyboard and Logitech wireless mouse. I bought the Logitech G15 Keyboard and MX 1100 mouse. The mouse scrolls perfectly in every program I use it in and the keyboard does not miss letters typed or need a bulky wireless receiver sitting right next to it to make it work (completely negating the entire purpose of having it wireless I might add).

While not exactly technology-related this fix has made me very happy and solved an issue I’ve been struggling with for years so I had to share it!

I bought an Epiphone Explorer guitar almost nine years ago and quickly discovered it was near impossible to play standing up with a strap due to “neck dive”.

Neck dive is when the neck of the guitar feels heavier than the body so when you let go of the guitar and let it hang by the strap the neck droops toward the ground. This means that when you are playing it standing up you have to constantly support the weight of the guitar neck with your fretting hand to stop it falling. This makes it very difficult to move around the neck freely.

The only suggestion I could find at the time I bought the guitar was using a wide leather or suede strap so that the friction and surface area of the rough underside clung to your shirt. This didn’t help much at all and just made me feel uncomfortable with my shirt being yanked on. I ended up losing my nice leather strap at school later that year and didn’t even bother replacing it. Until now anyway…

The Fix

I’ve recently gotten back into playing guitar and figured I’d look into fixing the issue again. It turns out that the issue is caused by the improper placement of the neck strap button (I.e. the thing your strap attaches to on the guitar toward the neck). On the Epiphone it is positioned on the flat, cut-off looking bit near the neck on the side of the guitar (I.e. the area where the top “horn” would protrude from on a strat-style guitar. See photo below). Having the button here changes the centre of gravity and pivot point for the guitar when used with a strap.

(Red circles in photos show strap button locations. Original location on left, new location on right)

On the Gibson model (And some other manufacturers from what I’ve seen) this button is instead placed on the back on the guitar just below where the neck joins the body of the guitar.

Placing the button on the back-centre of the guitar not only helps the guitar balance much better, it also helps stop the strap coming off the button which would sometimes happen in the old location due to the strange angle of the surface the button is placed on.

I must admit it did feel strange drilling into my beloved guitar but it is well worth it. The guitar balances perfectly now so the neck no longer dives! If you are going to do it I’d also recommend buying some Straplok buttons to replace the originals as they will offer even more security from the strap coming off the guitar.

Just a quick FYI post if you’ve installed PC-Cillin 2007; have SpyBot Search & Destroy installed; and have found your computer to have started running painfully slow, there is a known compatibility issue between the two security applications.

The issue relates to the immunisation feature of SpyBot and PC-Cillin’s Spyware scanner.

For more information and for instructions to fix the issue, take a look at this Support Bulletin on Trend Micro’s website.

Something I’ve noticed whilst using Windows Vista (which may be closely related to the issues I’ve had previously with my router) is that occasionally all access to websites will stop and all I’ll get is a “Cannot Find Server” error page immediately. I don’t know exactly what is causing it, but flushing the DNS cache seems to fix it.

To flush your system’s DNS Resolver Cache do the following:

1. Open a command prompt with administrator priveliges (Click Start, type “cmd” and right-click it then go to “Run as administrator” or press CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER)
2. Click Continue on the User Account Control dialog
3. Type the following string:
   ipconfig /flushdns
   and hit enter. You should see the message “Successfully flushed the DNS Resolver Cache”
4. Close the command prompt by typing “exit” then enter.

You should now be able to access websites again. This is a perfectly harmless fix to try but there are no guarantees as to whether it will fix your specific problem. However I have found it to be an adequate fix for my own issue until I can pinpoint the cause of it.

I’ve been using Windows Vista Ultimate since it was released and ever since installing there had been one small ‘glitch’ that’d been annoying me constantly. Any folder I opened in an Explorer window had a small green arrow coming out of the folder icon for it on its taskbar button. You can see what I mean in the following screenshot.

I purchased a subscription to Microsoft’s TechNet earlier in the year and so decided to make use of it and asked why this was happening in their Managed Newsgroups. Just over 12 hours later I got a solution from a user called “dean-dean”.

“What you’re seeing is normal, depending on whether or not you have the Navigation Pane open or not. If you are using the Pane, you’ll see the green-arrow icon. If you close the Pane (under Organize >Layout), and open a folder, you will see the normal folder icon (without the arrow). In other words, the default command for “no navigation pane” folders is Open, and the default command for “show navigation pane” folders is Explore, (which then uses the green arrow icon in the taskbar, just to let you know you’re Exploring, I guess). Try it both ways…”

Basically what he’s referring to is the “Folders” pane that is in the left bar underneath “Favourite Links”. This pane is collapsed by default but can be expanded by clicking on the “Folders” heading for it at the bottom of the bar. The Folders pane shows a treeview of all the folders just like in Windows XP. Having this pane open changes the icon to the one with the arrow. Closing it reverts the icon back to the normal folder icon. Strange behaviour I know but some people probably find this useful.

So thank you dean-dean, you saved me from almost reformatting just to get rid of that stupid icon.