After the repair installation, XP appeared to work fine for everyone except me. My account still had issues with minimized programs, etc., so I created a new account, moved my data to the new account, deleted the old account, and then renamed the new account with the old account’s name. Now everything looks like before — and actually works again — unless you go and look at the directory structure. Renaming the new account with the old account’s name changes things on the surface, but inside the new account keeps the new directory name. C’est la vie.

Now I have updates to do. The downloads begin and I go to sleep. The next morning, I shut down the account and see that 88 updates are going to install. That’s going to take a while, so I go get coffee. When I come back up, XP has restarted, so I force another update and am surprised to see that I still have 88 updates to install. Time to run the cycle again…

This time I watch, and as XP starts to shut down it begins by saying “Installing update 1 of 88″ and gives the various warnings about not powering down the machine. Seeveral seconds later, however, it gives the “shutting down” message and indeed shuts down. When I reboot and check, nothing has been updated. Off to updates.microsoft.com where I  manually go through the update routine and get a failure message. I search Microsoft support for various terms, including:

XP update failure
XP update fails no error message
XP update downloads but will not install
XP updates will not install
etc.

Nada. Zippo from Microsoft. Don’t get me wrong, the knowledge base has hundreds of entries which show when searching for the above terms, but nothing relates to my problem. I eventually search using a whole sentence from the failure message.

“A problem on your computer is preventing updates from being downloaded or installed.”

But this still gets me nothing. Finally, I search all of the above terms on Google, and on that last sentence I find what I need. It seems that when you do a repair installation of XP, certain modules may not get registered in the kernal properly and must be manually registered. Some of these modules affect the operation of Windows Update. The process to register them is shown below.

1. Click your START button and go up to Accessories.
2. Find  “Command Prompt” and start it. An ugly black box with some white text in it will appear. For those of you who never got to experience DOS, this is what it looked like.
3. Now you need to type in some text. Type each line below exactly as you see it and press enter. After you press enter, a confirmation box that the “DLL was registered” will appear from Windows. Just click OK and proceed to the next line.regsvr32 wuapi.dll
   regsvr32 wuaueng1.dll
   regsvr32 wuaueng.dll
   regsvr32 wucltui.dll
   regsvr32 wups2.dll
   regsvr32 wups.dll
   regsvr32 wuweb.dll
4. When done, you can rejoin the modern era by closing the Command Prompt window by clicking the ‘X’ in the upper righthand corner like a normal Windows program, or you can type ‘exit’, followed by enter. Either way, Command Prompt goes away.

At this point, Windows Update should work fine.

Uff Da!

So…what to do. As I said, I’ve been thinking about this for a while and have already played around with a PBX-in-a-Flash system a couple of times. It works great and I am currently nosing around for a system on which to host a full Linux installation (I’ve VMWare’d it until now.). I was at Fry’s in Tempe today looking at the Intel ICH7-M as a system base and decided to go look at what they had for ATAs (Analog Telephone Adapters). They had the usual Vonage PAP2 systems there (Both old and v2), but what caught my eye and my pocketbook was a shelf full of Earthlink-branded SPA2002 systems (So the SPA2002-ER) at $29.95 each. I now have two, and after tonight’s successful testing in my hotel room I will go and buy several more tomorrow.

The SPA2002-ER is locked into Earthlink, so in order to use them in my OpTel plan my next step was to unlock them. A quick search around the internet showed that the unlock was pretty straightforward, but I didn’t find a step-by-step guide. Here’s a write-up of how I “upgraded” my unit.

First, disconnect your network from the internet to prevent the SPA2002 from contacting the mothership. I don’t know what will happen if they do connect, but some links seem to indicate that once they’ve done that, you’re doomed — Perhaps they update the password when they connect and make it so that you cannot get in as admin any longer. In any case, unplug your cable or DSL modem from your router. If your modem is your router, unplug it from whatever is bringing it the internet signal. You need to keep the router portion running so that you can assign an IP address to your SPA2002 and your PC, so a hub alone will not do it unless you are handy with Linux and setting up a DHCP server yourself. If I’ve just lost you and you can’t figure out how to keep your router alive while not connected to the internet, this project isn’t for you. Go spend the extra $20 and buy an unlocked one.

Once you are sandboxed, plug your SPA2002 in to your router and then into power. Once it has booted up, plug in a phone and dial ****. Once the voice starts speaking in the phone, dial 110# and then note down the IP address that gets read back to you. It will probably be something like 192.168.1.2. Now make sure that your PC is also connected to the router (Could be wired or wireless. I was wireless.), open a browser, and in the address bar at the top type in the address you were given. For me it was 192.168.2.2. This will open up the main configuration page. Click the ADMIN LOGIN link in the upper right and enter the following as your username and password:

user: admin
pass: 0rLhnT34vBg2SqwbSoDyGslvF (Thanks to the unknown source of this password! That one didn’t come easily unless you worked at Earthlink…)

After that, click into the ADVANCED link in the upper right of your screen. Now we are going to scrub out all references to Earthlink to prevent the SPA2002 from knowing it was ever anything but an unlocked box. If you don’t see some of these entries on your screen it is because you didn’t click the ADVANCED link and get into the detailed configuration screens.

In the System tab…
1.) Kill everything under System Configuration in the “Restricted Access Domains” field.
2.) Kill everything under the Optional Network Configuration (Hey — It’s optional, so my theory is that unless they prove I need it, I don’t.)
Now click Submit All Changes. When you get your screen back, go back to the Systems tab and check your results to make sure you are clean. Note that you can also change the Admin Password in this tab as well. If you do, you will need to log on as Admin again with your new password after you Submit All Changes. I highly recommend changing the password as it will prevent your SPA2002 from being accessed and changed if for some reason it does talk with Earthlink servers.

In the Provisioning tab…
1.) Kill the profile rule in the Configuration Profile Section.
Submit All Changes.

Congratulations on your new unlocked SPA2002 box… :-)

Now that your SPA2002 is clean, it’s time to update the firmware to get rid of any possible remaining Earthlink nonsense as well as get you current on what features are available. At the Linksys website they have firmware version 3.1.2. At the Sipura website they have version 3.1.5. I went with the Sipura v3.1.5 and it seems to work just fine. This version seems to add some features and fix some bugs that are still in the Linksys v3.1.2, so unless I have problems, I’ll stay here. I’ll post if I change for whatever reason. For reference, out of the four units I have unlocked so far, 3 were already v3.1.5 and one was v3.1.8. Despite there being no change in the version number, I decided to re-flash the firmware on all the v3.1.5 units with the Sipura firmware as a precaution.

To upgrade the firmware, download whatever firmware you decide to use and unpack it. As far as the upgrade itself, run the .exe file, follow the instructions, and you will be fine. One note is that if you have Windows Firewall running, it will attempt to block the firmware install routines. Even if you allow the program through the firewall the first firmware upgrade attempt will fail. I simply ran it again and it worked the second time. If it doesn’t work, go back and check that upgrades are allowed under the Provisioning tab. They should be allowed by default, but you never know. Once you’ve upgraded, you can re-enter the configuration screen through your browser again and in the first page you can check the version field to see whether the upgrade was successful.

A last few notes. The above process worked for me for 4 units and should work for you. That said, unit #3 (v3.1.5 firmware) choked during the firmware upgrade and refused to do anything until it had sat without power for a while. Even then it wouldn’t connect with my router so that I could access it through my browser. It did, however, respond to the telephone prompts, so I reset the unit to factory defaults (****. then 73738#, then 1 to confirm) and was able to recover it. When it had reset to factory defaults, all of the Earthlink settings were recovered as well, so I had to go back and clean them out a second time.

That’s it! Now it’s a matter of actually putting together the VoIP network, but I’m going to play the fool at first and follow the smart guys over at www.nerdvittles.com. I was waiting for the Asterisk 1.4 version to get established, and they did a good job of it. Now all I have to do is get off of my duff and implement it… :-)

Anyway, Zempt still chokes with an abnormal file termination error when using this version of the xmprpc.php file. It’s probably a script incompatibility, but I can’t be bothered right now. w.bloggar seems to be pretty cool…

Oh yeah, putting the xmlrpc.php file anywhere but the root directory caused both Zempt and w.bloggar to not find it at all. And yes, I did triple-check my set-up information for mistypes, etc.

This post sent in from w.bloggar.

Luckily we had a second camera, our Sony DSC-F55. This is a completely automatic camera and has lower resolution, but it worked great. The Kodak was relegated to taking pictures in our hotel room while tethered to its power supply, which, while powering the camera just fine, refused to charge it. I scrubbed the contacts on the battery and in the camera, tried using the charger adapter on different voltage sockets (Including the 110V one in the airplane!), but to no avail. Thinking that there might be a problem in the connection between the adapter power socket and the battery, upon returning home I immediately plugged the adapter in to the EasyShare docking station, but it also refused to recharge the battery.

Out of ideas, I took the camera off of the docking station and put it on the desk to remind me to find out where to send it for service. Then I got hooked into Counter-Strike:Source and forgot about it for a couple of days. Once on the Kodak website and looking for the Japanese customer service telephone number, I decided — just for the fun of it — to put it back on the docking station. Ten minutes later it is obvious that the thing is charging, and 3 hours later it has a full charge.

So what gives? A hard reboot? Anyone have any ideas?

Oh, and the Kodak doesn’t have a battery charge indicator anywhere in the camera. That really shouldn’t be. Come on, Kodak. You have a great piece of hardware, but the little things matter.

1.) Something in the display or the display cable has fried. I’m hoping that it is not this because Jan really likes the way the Apple monitor looks…

2.) The ADC port alone has fried for whatever reason. I’m hoping that this is the case, because I have been wanting to put a GeForce3 in there…

This is easy to check, of course — I just need to get to another Mac that has an ADC port to see if the display works when connected there. Not really being a Mac expert, I just assumed that all Apple hardware would have this as the standard display port. Uff da! I schlepped the display around Tokyo today trying to find a friend with the right set-up. Unfortunately, they’re even less technical than me, so asking them if they have an ADC port is like asking me my opinion on the latest fashions. Ellie’s school has a whole raft of Macs, however, so I’ll try there when they open next week

1/13/2005 Update

So it’s the display that’s fried. Bummer. I could probably go to one of the companies we work with for LCD repair (PCS, for example, contracts with Apple, I know.) and get it repaired, but for $250 I can get a nice 17″ LCD monitor and run it off the VGA port. Not as elegant, to be sure, but more practical. eBay has the 15″ Studio Displays available for $400 used, sio my options are limited. Sigh.

Anyway, I’m getting a new drive when I’m in the USA at the end of January. They are all made in China using head units made in Japan, of course, but they are cheaper at Fry’s than at anywhere I know of in Tokyo.