Posts Tagged ‘Windows 7’

So it came to pass that I had to do another G450 install on a Windows 7 machine, and when I went to Matrox’s web site, I still did not see drivers listed specifically for Windows 7. I did do some digging however, and found that this non-WHQL driver package works perfectly. It was listed as supporting “Windows Server 2003 x64, Windows XP x64, Windows Vista x64, Windows Server 2008 x64″. If it supports Server Win2k8 R2, it should also support Windows 7.

As luck would have it, the install went smoothly and I have a pair of the cards working in a brand new Core i5 machine as I type this.




Good luck!

Having been a customer of Giganews for several years, I recently received an email detailing their new service for Diamond Members, called VyprVPN. The service is exactly what it sounds like – a VPN tunnel through which you can direct your Internet traffic.

If you happen to be in a relatively insecure location, like an airport or hotel with free Wi-Fi, or if your ISP has been using traffic shaping to slow down your favorite apps, a VPN is the way to go.

If you are a Diamond Giganews member, the service is free. I do not believe it is open to the public as of yet, but I would guess that the service will run somewhere around $15/month once it is.

I decided to give VyprVpn a go the other day, and unfortunately could not connect to the service. The “Installation” instructions found on their site are pretty well detailed, but they seem to be missing a few configuration options that prevented me from connecting. Each time I tried to connect, the Windows VPN client would get stuck at the “Verifiying user name and password” dialog prompt. No matter how long I let the VPN client sit, it would not connect.

After poking around awhile and tweaking various settings, I found a solution to my issue. Follow the initial configuration instructions found on the VyprVPN site, then before you connect for the first time, do the following:

In Windows 7:

1) Open the Network and Sharing Center, click on Connect to a network

2) In the list that appears, select your VyprVPN network connection, right-click, and select Properties

3) In the Options tab, uncheck the Include Windows logon domain check box

4) In the Security tab, select Point to Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) in the Type of VPN drop down menu.

5) Select Maximum Strength Encryption in the Data Encryption drop down menu

6) Uncheck all protocols in the Allowed Protocol section, aside from Microsoft CHAP Version 2 (MS-CHAP v2)

7) Click OK and then connect to VyprVPN using your Giganews user name and password

Connecting with Windows Vista is just as easy:

1) Open the Network and Sharing Center, and on the left side, click Connect to a network

2) In the list that appears, select your VyprVPN network connection, right-click, and select Properties

3) In the Options tab, uncheck the Include Windows logon domain check box

4) In the Networking tab, select Point to Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) in the Type of VPN drop down menu.

5) Click OK and then connect to VyprVPN using your Giganews user name and password

For the sake of full disclosure, my Vista PC is part of a Windows domain, but my Windows 7 laptop is not.  I don’t know offhand if the fact that I am running Vista Business and Windows 7 Enterprise has anything to do with the issues I was experiencing, but maybe someone out there can try this on a “Home” version of Windows and let me know how it goes.

Overall, I like the VyprVPN service now that I have it working properly.  In my preliminary speed tests, I found that I could max out the download speed on my network connection at work, after taking encryption overhead into consideration.  The upload speed was sufficient, but somewhat lacking.  I have yet to try it out on my 20 Mb/s connection at home, but I assume I will have similar results.  While I really plan on using the service while away from home and stuck on shared, open Wi-Fi, it is nice to know that there is a healthy amount of bandwidth available if I need it.

VyprVPN gets an A+ in my book so far.  Stay tuned for a secondary review a few months down the road.

Awhile back, I posted a guide detailing how you can configure CopSSH on your home computer and use it to securely route your Windows Remote Desktop traffic in order to add an extra layer of security to the whole process.

Typically, once Putty was configured and used to create the SSH tunnel to the remote machine, all I would need to do is simply create a loopback RDP connection on port 3390, and I was in business.  In my testing of Windows 7, I found that when attempting to create a loopback connection on port 3390, I would receive an error that a connection was already established.  The exact error reads as follows:

Your computer could not connect to another console session on the remote computer because you already have a console session in progress.

I changed Putty’s configuration to forward on port 3391 instead of 3390, and the problem was solved.  I’m not sure why Windows 7 establishes some sort of connection on 3390, but at least the workaround is pretty painless.

I just wanted to pass along this info for anyone having issues with RDP tunneling.