Fortunately for us end-users there are more options than ever before to let us use this software, Windows 7 Professional/Ultimate/Enterprise includes Windows XP Mode and Windows Virtual PC in order to run applications just as they would in Windows XP and DOSBox allows even 64-bit users the chance to use 16-bit applications and games that were made over 15 years ago.

However up until recently if you wanted to play a 3D Accelerated game that was meant for Windows XP and won’t work in either Windows Vista or Windows 7 for whatever reason, then you were completely out of luck as 3D Acceleration could not be translated in a virtual machine, however that changed when VMWare Workstation was given 3D Acceleration capabilities, since then they appear to have worked on it extensively and now it is a dream to use.

Hidden & Dangerous was created by Illusion Softworks/2K Czech in 1999 and still has a strong following, in 2002 Lonely Cat Games developed an enhanced version of the game called Hidden & Dangerous Deluxe, this game was re-released as a free promotion in 2003 for the sequel that was released in the same year, you can get the game here.

The game works perfectly in Windows Vista and Windows 7, however the networking aspect of the game is broken, there’s not too much that can be done about it, so this is a perfect game to test in VMWare 7.0.

Installing Windows XP in VMWare is really not worth me getting in to, it’s not only easy enough that VMWare installs it for you if you want, but there are countless guides already written explaining every step, the default install and configuration is all we need, the most important element in the configuration of the virtual machine is having 3D Acceleration enabled, apart from that you can probably do whatever you want.

Install VMWare Tools, the tools have an updater now so make sure you keep VMWare and the tools up to date as there may be enhancements and bug fixes in them, it probably wouldn’t come to much of a surprise that this whole thing doesn’t work if VMWare Tools is not installed or is not installed correctly, the ‘Typical’ install type is all you need.

Install the game, in this case it is Hidden & Dangerous Deluxe, just like with Windows XP, install it how you would normally, there should be no need for anything special.

Before we get to starting the game you should download and install the latest Direct X Runtime files from Microsoft, this is not needed at all for this game but it’s always good to keep up to date.

My first starting of the game went well until I tried to view the map intro:

H&D Deluxe VMWare Fail 1

I then tried starting the game:

H&D Deluxe VMWare Fail 2

Clearly there was a problem, H&D Deluxe doesn’t play well in regards to graphics even when running on Windows XP, so I tried Safe Mode instead, once in Safe Mode the game worked perfectly:

H&D Deluxe VMWare Working

Here’s a video of the game in action in VMWare:

Changelog:

• This code can be used with all hardware revisions of the DIR-655
• This code only addresses the shareport issue
• The attached Shareport utility will only work with this version firmware

I don’t know what SharePort issue they are referring to and I have not tested this myself.

Once again this firmware WILL NOT DOWNGRADE to pre 1.3x firmwares so if you are on a pre 1.3x firmware then it is suggested that you stay put because chances are you will only have more issues and you can’t go back.

This firmware is beta, it is a test release, it may break/brick your router for no reason.

As the changelog suggests there is a new SharePort utility included that will supposedly only work with this version, I don’t know if SX Virtual Link works with this firmware, but for the record it has a version number of 5.6.2 making it newer than SX Virtual Link.

Download Link:

D-Link DIR-655 Firmware 1.32 Build 04 Beta 01 (6.66 MB) 03-10-2009

Update 27th of October 2009: I have decided to test this firmware out as some users have reported that there are some small wireless improvements, I will leave any findings in the comments below. I will also try a SharePort stability test as the longest I have been able to keep a single SharePort connection alive has been about half an hour.

I haven’t been following D-Link’s SharePort fiasco since the first few months of my previous blog posting about it here. This is due to the fact that as many users have experienced since the original release it appears to have gained more and more bugs in each new version and we only occasionally see them being fixed.

A forum post in the official D-Link forums about the Apple OSX users of the software pointed me to the fact that the drivers and software used to connect to the router appears to have been made by a company called Silex Technology.

I searched around and found SX-Virtual Link, the original name of the D-Link SharePort Utility, upon downloading and installing the latest version 3.2.3 I found that the application was the same as the SharePort Utility except for the branding and the version. D-Link’s latest SharePort Utility has the date 2009/01/06 and theirs is 2009/02/02, there is also a major version difference, the specific version number for the utility/drivers with SharePort is version 4.9.5 and SX-Virtual Link is up to version 5.3.0.

Upon using the utility I had no problems at all connecting to my D-Link DIR-655’s device, I used a wireless mouse to test the functionality and it worked flawlessly for some time, so I am encouraging users who currently have issues with SharePort to uninstall it and install SX-Virtual Link and see if it fixes any of the issues you are currently having with your devices.

For OSX users I have not been able to test out the OSX version and I am unaware of any changes you might need to make to get it working but I will provide a link below for those users to test if they so wish.

You can get the latest version of SX-Virtual Link just below:

SX-Virtual Link for Windows 3.2.3 (10.9 MB) 20-08-2009
SX-Virtual Link for Mac OSX 3.1.0 (9.41 MB) 20-08-2009

Please comment below with your experiences.

Whispy Blue

Leave a comment below if you experience any issues with using the theme.

Version 1.05 has been released, get it here.

Some users report slow connections, or degrading connection speeds over time, whereas other users (like me) can’t access the shares at all, this guide will alleviate both of those issues.

Firstly, you will need:
Windows 7 RC, or RTM
The XP Mode addon with an installed Virtual XP installation ready to go

Load up your Virtual XP machine.

Make sure you have this set up beforehand

Once the virtual machine has booted up click start, then click on My Network Places.

Opening My Network Places

When My Network Places is open you should have little or no network shortcuts listed, on the left hand side click on Add a network place.

Add a network place

When the wizard opens click next.

Click next

In this step choose “Choose another network location” and click next.

Choose another network location

Type in the URL for the server here including any directories and click next, you may be prompted for a username and password for the resource.
*If the below image doesn’t show it may be due to using an ad blocker as “-300×250″ in an image’s URL is blocked in some lists currently.

Type in the full URL to the resource

Type the name for the folder, this will affect any further shortcuts created for this folder, then click next.

Choose the folder’s name

The wizard is finished, you don’t have to open the folder up yet, so uncheck that option and click finish.

Wizard is finished

Here’s a tricky bit, right click the newly created folder and click “Create shortcut”, it should move it to the Desktop automatically, for me this didn’t do anything, but may have been to do with the environment at the time, if this happens to you right click and drag the folder to the Desktop and when the menu pops up, click Create shortcut.

Create a shortcut

Open up your Documents and Settings/All Users/Start Menu/Programs folder and paste the Shortcut in the main section, then shutdown the Virtual Machine.

Move the shortcut to this directory

In your Windows 7 machine, go to Start menu, All Programs, click Windows Virtual PC, then Virtual Windows XP Applications, the shortcut to the folder will be in there, you may create a shortcut on the desktop for this by right clicking on it and clicking Send to -> Desktop (Create shortcut).

Your new Web Folders for Windows 7

This will not only solve not being able to connect, but most issues to do with running Web Folders on anything newer than Windows XP.

This is old news but I thought it would be best to point out that the final firmware version of 1.32 is out, here is the change log:

Firmware: 1.32NA
Date: 07/20/09

1. Fix when disable DHCP server and enable DHCP server, LAN PC cannot get IP.
2. Fix using wireless client to configure Access Control rules, cause DUT reboot.
3. Fix UPnP bug.
4. Disable CAPTCHA by default
5. Fixed QRS issue, can’t set up wireless setting.
6. Fixed Router DHCP IP range issue.
7. Fixed WPS UI Show Error warning message.
8. Fix potential security leak with CAPTCHA.
9. Fix USB LED issue about Shareport.
10.Fix Shareport HP932C with Wins 7 issue
11. Fix if set more than 8 Trigger or Firewall port in Application Rules. It will show Warning message.
12. Fix bug: When QRS set wan type of rt to DHCP, the rt will not set Primary and second DNS.

Note: This firmware does not allow downgrading to pre-1.3x.

So far it appears that the DNS Relay lockup bug has not been fixed, SharePort is still acting up for users and in some cases even worse, some people report smoother file transfers however.

Download here:
D-Link DIR-655 Firmware 1.32NA (1.47 MB) 10-08-2009

I have recently purchased an OCZ Vertex SSD, the problem with Solid State Drives at the moment is their limited writes and while the MTBF is high enough to not expect to reach the limit before it becomes obselete it is still enough to make you self conscious about what gets to write to the drive.

Web browsers are arguably the most common abusers of file reads/writes on hard drives, the cache is constantly being written and overwritten as you browse and SSD users often look for a way to keep a browser’s cache off their SSD. With Firefox it is as easy as using Firefox Portable, it’s also quite handy to use if you move from computer to computer, but Google Chrome doesn’t have this feature yet, though a Chromium based browser SRWare Iron has a portable version.

There is a simple solution for keeping Chrome’s cache and other user data on another drive and that is the symbolic linking feature found in Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Move the User Data folder from the C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome directory and place it on the other drive in whatever folder you want to call it, I simply put mine in D:\Chrome Profile

The next step is open up Command Prompt as an Administrator (right click, then click “Run as Administrator”) then type in the following command

mklink /J “where you want the symlink and what you want to call it” “where the real folder is”

For Example:

mklink /J “C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data” “D:\Chrome Profile\User Data”

In this case the symlink name must be called User Data.

The /J command tells it to make a Directory Junction, in other words make windows applications believe that the folder is in the same spot as the symlink, you will notice that if you head to the chrome AppData folder on the SSD that there will be a folder with a shortcut icon in it called User Data, if you double click on it all your user data files with be inside and unlike opening up a normal shortcut, or soft symlink, the files in the folder will all appear to be on the SSD in the correct folder.

If you open up Google Chrome it will open as if nothing happened.

Update 22nd August 2009: I have done the same thing with Firefox’s ‘Mozilla’ profile directory, the only problem is if you load Thunderbird Portable it will for some reason (and somehow) delete your ‘Mozilla’ junction for Firefox, the solution for now is to set up Thunderbird with the ‘Thunderbird’ folder in the same fashion and not use Thunderbird Portable for this function.

Update 2: The final release of this firmware has been posted, check below for the download link, click here to read about it.

Update 3: D-Link has released a new beta firmware for the DIR-655 here, it ONLY fixes *a* SharePort issue.

D-Link have just uploaded a new beta firmware release for the DIR-655, this fixes issues with SharePort and fixes that CAPTCHA security leak that could cause the router to give out the admin password. I have not tested it personally so I am unaware of any issues however others at the D-Link forums have experienced no problems so far. There are also no reports of this fixing the lockup issues users of the 1.31 firmware were experiencing but it isn’t mentioned in the release notes, we will know for sure though in a few days.

Update: Some users are reporting great success with the new firmware and SharePort, lets hope that continues, also there has been a report from a Mac user stating that after upgrading the firmware the admin page was unable to be used in Firefox or Safari on OSX so keep that in mind those that don’t have a Windows PC just in case.

Release Notes:
Firmware: 1.32 (Beta 01)

1. Fix potential security leak with CAPTCHA.
2. Fix USB LED issue aboutShareport.
3. Update chklst.txt
4. Fix SharePort issue

Again this is beta firmware so it comes with the added disclaimer of possibly damaging your router, you can download the firmware below, I have made a mirror hosted here so if they take it down it will still be available here.

Download the final (latest) build here:
D-Link DIR-655 Firmware 1.32NA (1.47 MB) 10-08-2009

Download Build 02:
D-Link DIR-655 BETA02 Firmware 1.32NA (1.47 MB) 25-06-2009

Download Build 01 instead:
D-Link DIR-655 BETA01 Firmware 1.32NA (1.47 MB) 05-06-2009

A few people have been experiencing trouble with their DIR-655 routers locking up after about 3-4 days with web browsing slowly going downhill until the lockup during that time, I experienced the same thing.

I realised that I had SPI enabled, which in the past I haven’t had enabled, I disabled it and so far I haven’t had any lockups, it appears the SPI is overloading my router after a few days which to me is surprising for such a supposedly powerful router.

If you experience the lockups try disabling SPI, the other more common solution to do is to disable DNS relay, I’m not sure why this would be causing the router to lockup but it appears to be something to do with the latest firmware, hopefully they fix this in future firmwares.

This new version appears to work correctly for me, the previous version 0422 didn’t do anything when run even though it said it completed successfully and the original version corrupted many files on my drive.

It was run using Windows 7 x64 RC (7100) using IDE mode with the intel IDE driver loaded.

You can view the forum thread and find the file here.