I have an old Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet NIC, and it worked well with Windows 8.1 but not with Windows 10 (at least not with the version I had).

Anyway, today I managed to find a set of drivers which work. The driver I found is from Lenovo for its THINKSTATION S10 (TYPE 6423, 6483), ver. 10.86.0.0.  Its URL is:
http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/downloads/ds000638

If you are having one of these Braodcom NIC below, you may want to give it try.

5700, 5701, 5702, 5703, 5704, 5705, 5751, 5753, 5754, 5755, 5756, 5782, 5786, 5787, 5788, 5789, 5901, 5906


By the way, the hardware ID for my card is:

PCI\VEN_14E4&DEV_16A6

Change Window 8/10 Network Location using PowerShell

One thing that I am really annoyed by Windows 8 and then now Windows 10 is Set/Change network location.  Microsoft manages to make something so easy in Windows 7 to something that is so convoluted in new versions.

If you are comfortable with using commands, you may want to use PowerShell to change the Network Location instead.

1) You need to start PowerShell with elevated user account with command as below.

PSH>Start-Process WindowsPowerShell.exe -verb RunAs

Alternatively, you can type powershell in Search, and run it as an administrator by using the "Run As" option from the context menu (right click)

2) Use the Get-NetconnectionProfile to find out the InterfaceIndex of the connected NIC, e.g.

PSH> Get-NetConnectionProfile
......
Name : Unidentified network
InterfaceAlias : vEthernet (Local-10)
InterfaceIndex : 18
NetworkCategory : Public
IPv4Connectivity : LocalNetwork
IPv6Connectivity : LocalNetwork

3) Use the Set-NetConnectionProfile to change to the desired network location.

PSH> Set-NetConnectionProfile -InterfaceIndex 18 -NetworkCategory Private

That's it. This saves you from switching account, and then jump through hoops to get the network location changed.

(ref: http://blogs.msmvps.com/russel/2013/12/29/set-network-location-to-private-in-windows-8-1server-2012-r2/)

Microsoft Edge and Google

One of the selling feature of Windows 10 is its brand new browser Edge. Most review said it is fast, so I give it a spin myself. After a brief moment with it, I almost wrote it off as I couldn't seem to change its default search result provider from Bing to Google. With the old IE, the method was obvious. You click on the option for showing you a list of providers and pick from it; With Edge, you click "Add New", nothing happens. As it turns out, the "Add New" option only comes to live if you are on the search engine page as seen below.

I may be wrong, but this works for me.

ATi X300 Driver for Windows 8.1

I had to dig out my old ATi X300 card when the graphics card cooling fan on one of my desktop failed.  X300 is very old.  It was released in 2004.  It is always a challenge to get graphics this age to work in modem Windows.  To my surprise, it is actually easy.  Windows 8.1 seems to accept and use its dated Vista 64bit driver happily (http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop/legacy?product=Legacy1&os=Windows%20Vista%20-%2064).

Instead of using the installer to install the driver, you run the installer to extract the files, but stop run after the extraction.  You then install the driver manually by asking Windows to look for drivers in the folder when you extract your drivers files.  Windows should pick up the driver, and install it.

Further details can be found at:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?s=f5175aaa350a453115ae1aef89d529f1&t=1536711

Update 2016-08-25: It works on Windows 10 too.  However, it needs to be install under safe mode!

GIMP batch processing

Just want to share a nice little plugin BIMP (Batch Image Manipulation Plugin)for batch processing in GIMP. As it says on the tin, it allows you to queue up processing steps and apply them to a set of images in batch. You can find this plugin at: http://www.alessandrofrancesconi.it/projects/bimp/

Xubuntu 14.10 and Intel i915

It is very easy to setup Xubuntu on this old laptop.  Unlike the OS (Windows) it replaced, it runs smoothly on the laptop's Core2Due processor and with 3GB memory.  Most hardware on this laptop just works in Xubuntu, with the exception of the Intel i915.  Every now and then, I got a corrupted screen.

After reading up a few posts on online forums, it seems this can be fixed by applying

1) Create a i915.conf file in /etc/modprobe.d with this line

options i915 enable_rc6=1 enable_fbc=1 lvds_downclock=1

2) create a xorg.conf in /etc/X11 with the settings below

Section "Device"

   Identifier  "Intel Graphics"

   Driver      "intel"

   Option      "AccelMethod"  "uxa"

EndSection

(source: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Intel_graphics)

This tricks seem to work so far.  I will update this post in few weeks time to let you know if it really gets the job done!

Things to do after installing Xubuntu

This is a checklist that I found useful when setting up a new Xubuntu installation.

1. NetBIOS - Allows computer names to be used rather than IP.
1. sudo apt-get install winbind libnss-winbind
2. Edit /etc/nsswitch.conf, and add wins to the end of the line in (3)
3. host: files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns wins
2. Samba Configuration Tool - Allows folders to be shared with other Windows computers.
1. sudo apt-get install system-config-samba
2. sudo touch /etc/libuser.conf
3. sudo system-config-samba
3. RDP Client - Allows making remote desktop connection to a Windows machine in the network.
1. sudo apt-get install remmina
4. Preserve Job History - Stops CUPS preserving job history
   1. sudo pico /etc/cup/cupsd.conf
   2. add PreserveJobHistory off just before WebInterface Yes

Add optimized driver repository from Oibaf at https://launchpad.net/~oibaf/+archive/ubuntu/graphics-drivers