by WebKeyDesign | Sep 28, 2009 | Apple, Windows
For some reason, Apple has stopped supporting iTunes on Windows 2003 and changed their MSI installer to fail. However if you still prefer to run iTunes on your Windows 2003 Server, you can still modify the iTunes installer by using installer tools such as Microsoft Orca (see Microsoft’s Tutorial on how to modify MSI files) or InstEd. Using InstEd, I was able to install iTunes 9 on my Windows 2003 machine.
- First download the iTunes installer from http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/.
- Next use WinZip or WinRar to extract the contents of iTunesSetup.exe to a folder.
- Now comes the difficult part, you will need to check each of the .MSI files with InstEd or Orca. Open each file one at a time and look for the LaunchCondition settings. You will need to remove this parameter and its value: ((VersionNT=501 And ServicePackLevel>=2) OR VersionNT>501). Once you do that just Save and Exit.
- With the modified MSI files, now start installing them one at at time. Leave the iTunes.msi for last though. The SetupAdmin.exe can be ignored. You do not need to run that one.
If this was a perfect world, you would now be able to launch iTunes 9 on your machine, but since it is far from perfect, you might be staring at this error message:
The iPod Service service failed to start due to the following error: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.
To complete the install, leave the error up on the screen and go launch Services.msc, find the iPod Service and open its properties. You will need to add an account with admin rights and then save the changes. Now click Retry on the error and see if it works.
Additional Resources:
Updates:
The easy fix that works, is to right click on the iTunes installer and choose Properties. Then go to the Compatibility tab and check “Run this program in compatibility mode for” and choose Windows XP from the pulldown list.
by WebKeyDesign | Oct 30, 2008 | Windows
The Internet of late has been very chatty about how Microsoft screwed up and released a Windows version that no one really wanted. Not since WindowsME, has Microsoft had such an unimportant Windows release as Windows Vista. Faithful and ever persistent Apple followers have chimed in with the prophecy that Apple will once again reign supreme and take over the world with Mac OS X. As a Mac user myself, yeah I too can dream of the coming of OS X to all things, but that simply is not going to happen. The Operating System is irrelevant at this point. Yes, I said it. As much as I love Apple for their cool gradients and perfectionist design, the truth is that the operating system war no longer matters. It is the network that matters now. People don’t care what operating system they run as much as, what they want to access, works. Today for technical people like myself, this means Firefox on Windows XP, Safari on Mac OS X and my iPhone, and whatever browser works on anything else. If it is IE, so be it!
In reality there are two markets out there. The consumer market which Apple has already won and which Linux is close to figuring out and the business market where Microsoft rules with iron fists. Apple’s OS X strategy on the consumer side has worked great. Today I can message, play, and communicate on my iPhone better than I ever could on my old Windows98 machine. Most people do not even know what the operating system is on the iPhone, they just know it works. In this respect, OS X has become a consumer operating system. Consumers like choices too, and so today you can buy an Apple widget that works and live with it or you can go with Windows, Linux, and dozens of other operating systems that are out there. Apple’s consumer price is a tad higher, but as the iPod and iPhone have shown, people don’t care as long as it works. As long as Apple keeps OS X running smoothly on all these $300 devices, OS X will be successful, so successful that no one will know that is what they are actually using. The irony is that Microsoft wanted this for Windows and it never really happened. Why? Because Microsoft is obsessed with recognition that they have never figured out that you do not have to blast everything you make with “Microsoft” and version names that make no sense to consumers. What exactly does IE Version: 6.0.2900.2180.xpsp_sp2_qfe.080814-1242 mean? I am sure someone could tell you, but to the consumer it does not matter at all. Apple’s marketing is simple, one logo and one name.
Microsoft is a company that is going in multiple directions, and it is causing them to remain stagnant and sink in quicksand. The relevancy of Vista has been a wake up call, that perhaps Office and Windows no longer matter outside of the business markets that they control. Do not get me wrong, Microsoft makes very impressive products for business. Windows Server 2008 being more impressive than Windows Server 2003 which is my personal favorite version of Windows, but outside of business Microsoft has many ideas, many strategies, but one senses the ambition is gone. Google is the super power of the Internet and it is pushing hard into remaking the world in its image. Google has made products that actually matter to you and me. Google Earth, Maps, Reader, and so on have made an impact on how we live and use this thing called the Internet. Google’s strategy is to make the network work for everyone and it is succeeding in building toolsets that are cutting into Microsoft’s expensive products. This is why the operating system war no longer matters. It is the network that Google is building that is changing the world. The business market is watching this revolution and they are very interested, as they should be. The future will definitely have business going less Microsoft, just how much business abandons Redmond, depends on just how relevant Microsoft products are. Right now, Microsoft still has the podium on which to speak volumes on where they want to take us, but for how much longer can they keep control may be out of their hands entirely. Vista is boring compared to Ubuntu, OS X, RedHat, and others.
On the consumer side, Microsoft has pushed hard with little success to show for it. The XBox 360 remains uninspiring and in third place behind Nintendo Wii and the PS3. Windows Live Search is not even a real contender in search. And Microsoft wonders why Vista (an operating system that can cost upwards of $400 on cheap $300 hardware) is not enticing to consumers? The rise of the netbook laptop, something which neither Intel nor Microsoft saw coming, is now the driving force in the consumer market. Microsoft had to hack Windows XP to run on these $300 laptops, this alone speaks volumes of how stagnant Microsoft has been. If shareholders have not thought of this, they definitely should consider what would happen if business customers start buying netbooks instead of more expensive hardware and switch to Google Apps for their software needs! Microsoft’s Cloud idea has to materialize sooner than later. In essence Windows is doomed, or at least what we think of Windows is. Microsoft has to build the network in ways that matter to everyone. They do not have to follow the same path as Google, but they definitely need to change the way we live. Microsoft’s best strategy is to kill Windows before its competitors make it irrelevant. The clock is ticking away.
by WebKeyDesign | Jul 9, 2008 | Firefox, Internet Explorer
If you installed Firefox 3 and are using Windows, you might run into a problem where Firefox does not allow you to download exe files from the Internet due to a Windows setting. You will get the message: This download has been blocked by your Security Zone Policy and your download file will never download. To fix this problem you must modify Internet Explorer settings!
- Open Internet Explorer.
- Choose Tools menu – Internet Options.
- Click the Security tab and click on the Internet icon.
- Click the Default Level button if it is clickable
- Then click Custom Level… and navigate to Miscellaneous.
- Under this section find the option: Launching applications and unsafe files.
- Change it from Disable to Prompt (Recommended).
- Click OK, Apply, then OK.
- Startup Firefox again and test it to see if it works now.
IE 8 Browsers
If you are using IE 8, you should probably look at modifying these settings as well:
- Click on Tools – Internet Options.
- Click on the Security tab.
- Click on the Sites button and verify that the website URL is in the list of trusted sites.
- Back on the Security tab, click Custom Level…
- Locate the Automatic prompting for file downloads sub-category immediately under the Downloads category. Set the radial button to Enable.
- Locate the File download sub-category immediately under the Downloads category and set the radial button to Enable.
- Click OK to save the changes and Yes when prompted to confirm the changes.
- Exit completely out of all IE windows and then try it again
by WebKeyDesign | Jun 19, 2007 | Microsoft
Over the last month, I have had to do a lot of software testing and I have had to install Linux, Windows XP, and even Windows98, a few times on Virtual PC 2007. Undeniably I have come to some conclusions on operating system installs and Virtual PC as a testing tool. Without a doubt Virtual PC has too many flaws to be the testing tool I wanted it to be. Microsoft has taken Connectix’s Macintosh product and made it into a virtualization tool for Windows users who want to install all different flavors of Windows on their PC, but in doing so they have not improved on the product as one would imagine they would.
- 16-bit color is still really the optimal choice for most virtual machines. This is something that you run into right away when you try installing Ubuntu or Fedora, which default to 24-bit color.
- Virtual machines are not technically virtual, because there is no way to give a machine more memory than is available physically on your machine.
- Accelerated video is still missing from Virtual PC, which means your hi-end video card won’t due much for your virtual machines.
As for Linux, after installing Ubuntu, Kbuntu, and Fedora 6 and trying to setup LAMP (Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP) along with Webmin and PHPMyAdmin, I started to miss Mac OS X and Windows. The package installer in Ubuntu is by far the easiest to use, but to enable extra packages and get dependencies updated, you still have to resort to the command line, and even then just to install Webmin takes more than just a couple of commands. Fedora was actually harder to use when it came to installing other software. On the other hand Fedora was faster and more responsive than Ubuntu. In the end I finally got everything setup in Ubuntu, and even resolved myself to using GNOME, and dare I say, liking some aspects of it, but as a desktop Mac OS X is so much easier to use and maintain, that I really wonder why anyone would want to use Linux or Debian.
When it comes down to it, Ubuntu and Fedora are great systems for running Apache and PHP, but their desktop use is arguably not any better than Windows or Mac OS X. Microsoft has not improved on Virtual PC, since aquiring Connectix, and worst of all they killed another great application on the Mac platform.
by WebKeyDesign | Feb 15, 2007 | Internet Explorer
Just when you think that perhaps Microsoft has learned a thing or two about interface design (after all they just released Vista, which is suppose to be their greatest interface achievement of all time), you install Internet Explorer 7 and are greeted with the cruel joke that is the IE7 Toolbars. Why did they put the menu bar in the middle? This is contrary to every other application on Windows. Supposedly it is due to Vista’s interface.

There is a registry key that you can add to force the menu bar to load on top, like it is in IE6. You will need to add the following key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar\WebBrowser\
ITBar7Position
(Data Type: REG_DWORD) Set to 1 to enable.
After you add the key, close IE7 and open it up and it should now look similar to this:

Reference Microsoft Developer Tony Schreiner’s Weblog.
by WebKeyDesign | Jan 18, 2007 | Internet Explorer
When it comes to Internet Explorer, there is one feature that is not particularly useful for web developers. Both IE 6 and the newer version 7, have a feature that overrides error messages sent from the web server to the browser. This feature takes effect any time an error message is less than 512 bytes long. To turn off this feature, you need to bring up Internet Options and go to the Advanced tab, under the Browsing section you will find: Show Friendly HTTP Error Messages. You need to clear this setting and now IE will display all error messages sent from the server.

Note that most web servers send 404 error messages that are less that 512 bytes, by default.