Shame on you Linksys

Yay another technical blog. its been a looooooooong time since i updated this but hey, better late than never eh?

So recently i did the shitty upgrade path from XP to Win 7 only because of 2 things:
1. it was better than Vista in the RTC version i downloaded and used and
2. 64 bit OS

Well i was a little disappointed to find out the final version had a larger memory footprint then its much nicer test version. in the RTC i was seeing ~600-800 megs footprint, close to XP levels i was currently running. comparing that to my vista laptop which was 1.2 gigs to 1.5 gigs right from startup i thought this would be great. well i get the final release and i see 1.2 gigs and it made me a sad panda.

But besides a bunch of hardware issues, lets get to the point at hand, my WUSB54G v4.0 wireless network adapter. ive had this thing for a few years now. on my XP setup it was fine. if you havent kept up with the times, there was an OS that came out not too long ago called Vista and it had a 64 bit flavour... and wouldnt you know, XP had a 64 bit version as well.

When i bought my wireless adapter, i got it along with the Linksys WRT54G wireless router. If you went to Best Buy or such at the time, pretty much it looked like it was there flagship models. And ya know, they worked fine... in a 32 bit environment.

The big issue now? after installing Win 7 x64, i got CONSTANT BSOD's. and rummaging through the debug app, the WUSB54G drivers were the problem. Went to windows driver site, they only had the 32 bit version verified to work. Ok so ill go to Linksys site and get the drivers from there.
this is the response i get:
"WUSB54G is not compatible with Windows7. "

and nothing more... so there big wireless models that have been out forever and during the lifespan of 64 bit OS's is totally not supported, not even for Vista (a lot of Win 7 is Vista based, many if not all the Vista drivers work for Win 7). So rather than take defeat (this thing was freaking $50) i scoured the internet until i found info on this.

i had to track down the chipset manufacturer for the device which is Ralink. and while their website is crappy, they do have drive support for vista 64 bit (and with that also win 7 64bit).

http://www.ralinktech.com/support.php?s=1

the model in question is the RT2500, they have drivers for the PCI and the USB versions.

had to totally uninstall the current drivers from win 7 and then install and doing the "let me choose where to look" option. the driver installed and the device is seen as a Ralink device. and so far after a week, no BSOD.

you would think that as much as they sold the WUSB54G and its sister router the WRT54G (which i also have) for last couple years that oh, hey vista 64 bit has been out for a while, lets make some working 64 bit drivers to support our device. nope. instead i buy $100 worth of equipment that can work in a 64 bit environment but isnt supported. GG linksys, wont be buying linksys products again.

im sick

and it blows

Oh my!

hey all, i updated to say nicole finally has a blog about her and tori, I WANT YOU TO GO TO THERE NAO!

Crazy

so at 2:25 am, Victoria Elizabeth Thaung entered the world at 7 pounds, 6 ounces and 19 and 3/4 inches long. It was a luckily short 12 hour labor and we now have in our hands a little asian girl. We have pics on my facebook but ill post some here soon for those who cant see my facebook photos.
Me and nic are parents! Crazy!
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1044797472&ref=profile

Application.Settings, complex types, and you

So i came across the need to serialize some user settings between instances of an application. I happen to find the Application.Settings object and its "supposed" simple and straightforward uses.
With the Settings object you can add types at design time (or run time) in a key-value pair that load automatically with the application. and when set properly, you could also save values at runtime too. Best of all, the designer even allows you to add complex types. What luck!
...
...
or not...

Apparently while simple primitive types (int, string, colour) are supported, complex ones (youClass, PageSettings, PrinterSettings) arent... but the designer didnt get the memo. This may be an uninformed rant, but since i could find jack squat on the subject in my few days of research, i feel i can rant freely.

So yes, you can add complex types to the Application.Settings file. and yes, when you save you will see your super duper object all serialized in XML just the way you'd think it would be. But when you fire that bad boy up again and try to load that object, well... dont be surprised you get a null value instead.

to get around that, i did your simple serialize/deserialize manually. so what i needed was to save the user's printer settings after they saved them and wanted to keep them persistent between sessions.
with a little help from the following assemblies

using System.IO;
using System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary;

we had the simple following:

private string str_page_settings = "page.set";
private string str_printer_settings = "printer.set";

internal void LoadSettings()
{
try
{
FileStream fs;
BinaryFormatter bf = new BinaryFormatter();

// load the PageSettings
if (File.Exists(str_page_settings))
{
fs = new FileStream(str_page_settings, FileMode.Open);
pageSetupDialog1.PageSettings = (PageSettings)bf.Deserialize(fs);

if (pageSetupDialog1.PageSettings == null)
{
pageSetupDialog1.PageSettings = new PageSettings();
}
}
else
pageSetupDialog1.PageSettings = new PageSettings();

// load the PrinterSettings
if (File.Exists(str_printer_settings))
{
fs = new FileStream(str_printer_settings, FileMode.Open);
printDialog1.PrinterSettings = (PrinterSettings)bf.Deserialize(fs);

if (printDialog1.PrinterSettings == null)
{
pageSetupDialog1.PrinterSettings = new PrinterSettings();
printDialog1.PrinterSettings = new PrinterSettings();
}
}
else
{
pageSetupDialog1.PrinterSettings = new PrinterSettings();
printDialog1.PrinterSettings = new PrinterSettings();
}
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
MessageBox.Show(ex.Message + " " + ex.StackTrace);
}
}

for loading, and for saving after the user saved:

private void btnPrint_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if (printDialog1.ShowDialog() == DialogResult.OK)
{
printDocument1.Print();
// serialize the printer settings the user chose
FileStream fs = new FileStream(str_printer_settings, FileMode.Create);
BinaryFormatter bf = new BinaryFormatter();
bf.Serialize(fs, printDialog1.PrinterSettings);
fs.Close();
}
}