Fun With Windows

OK. Just spent 3 hours of my life that I will never get back trying to troubleshoot and issue with Windows 7 and USB devices that I was having. Figured it out so I thought I would share the problem and solution.

The Problem

Whenever I would plug a new USB device in, it would not be detected by Windows. Instead I would get a driver not found error and no amount of troubleshooting on Windows’ part would help. This affected a new keyboard and mouse I purchased (Logitech MK520) and an old headset that I had lying around. It was also affecting my iPod but I didn’t realize that until after the fact.

In the case of my mouse and keyboard I would see in Device Manager a device names USB Receiver with an annoyed looking yellow icon resting upon it. No amount of messing with the icon helped.

All very frustrating because the hardware would detect the new keyboard and mouse. When I booted the system and accessed the BIOS menu the keyboard worked. The mouse was listed as detected. Everything seemed fine.

Troubleshooting

After much searching of the web in frustration. (Did I mention it was frustrating) I finally found some people actually having the same problem. No solutions, mind you, but the same problem. I determined from the gist of all this posts that it was something to do with the USB drivers. Not the mouse drivers or the keyboard drivers or the headset drivers but the core USB drivers from Windows 7.

So I removed them all in Device Manager and rebooted so they could be reinstalled. This worked — briefly. When the drivers were gone the mouse started working. But Windows quickly fixed that and reinstalled the drivers and I was back to a non-functioning mouse and keyboard.

The Solution

Finally I came across some forum posts suggesting that usb.inf and usb.pnf should exist in Windows\inf and if they didn’t that would cause this issue. So, I Googled to find the files and copied them in. Then I removed the annoyed USB Receiver driver and detected new devices.

Voila! It works.

Hope this helps someone else.

— February 3, 2011

The Rules of Code Club

I hereby establish the rules of Code Club.

1. The first rule of Code Club is, you always write tests first at Code Club.
2. The second rule of Code Club is, you ALWAYS WRITE TESTS FIRST at Code Club.
3. If someone says stop, gets stuck, gets bored, the pair switches.
4. Two coders to a keyboard.
5. One keyboard at a time.
6. No mice, no copy and paste.
7. Coding will go on as long as is has to.
8. If this is your first time at Code Club, you have to code

Carry on.

— September 14, 2010

Site Update

When I initially launched GuyRoyse.com I vacillated about the content I was creating and writing about. Was this to be a blog about writing and games or writing, games, and coding?

Initially I decided to have it just be about writing and games. I wanted to focus on my creative endeavors and frankly, figured most people wouldn’t care too much about the programming stuff. But, as it turns out, a lot of my creative activity is focused around code and programming. This sort of leaked in a posting I made a couple of months back updating everyone on the status of [Corporate Raiders]({% post_url 2009-10-12-a-belated-corporate-raiders-update %}).

So, I’ve decided to cave to my urges and put my code projects on here as well. But, not only will I be including some of my coding project but I will also be sharing some of my thoughts on technology and software engineering. So, if you’re a programmer or other geeky tech person, hopefully you’ll find the additional content enjoyable. And if your not, I won’t be offended if you skip over my more technical posts.

— February 23, 2010

Let Him Who Hath Wisdom Reckon the Number of the Beast

My latest project is something that I have written three times: The Antichrist Detector.

The Antichrist Detector was conceived about 10 years ago when I stumbled upon the entertaining idea that Bill Gates was the Antichrist. The idea was simple and ludicrous. If you take the ASCII values of the name Bill Gates (uppercase only please as any good numerologist will tell you) they add up the 663.

“But wait!”, you’re saying, “That doesn’t add up to 666?”

Correct. But Bill Gates full name is William Henry Gates III. So, Bill Gates plus three does equal 666. It’s so obvious. How could you have not seen it?

Anyhow, this whole idea gave me a slightly twisted thought. You could automate this. Write a simple program and feed it the phone book and out pops a list of potential Antichrist. Not having a digitized phonebook handy I had another more practical (in as much as any of this is practical) idea. Why don’t I put up a website any let people enter their own names.

So, in 2000, I did. It was very successful and a lot of fun. It didn’t do much but it generated a healthy amount of traffic and a lot of logs. In fact, reading the logs was probably the best part about it. The emails I got, however, were also very interesting. The vast majority of them were from crackpots who thought I was serious. This greatly surprised but in hindsight, it probably shouldn’t have.

My initial attempt was written in C++ and invoked via CGI. When I started learning C# and .NET I decided to replatform it. So, version 2.0 was born. Later, I moved to new hosting and no longer had .NET so I replatformed it again and used it as an excuse to learn jQuery and PHP. 3.0 was born. In each incarnation I added new features. 2.0 gained statistics. 3.0 gained an RSS feed.

So, I am now staring down the barrel of The Antichrist Detector 4.0. This time, I am using it to learn Ruby, Google Appengine, and more advanced JavaScript techniques. I plan to also add features to this one as well. Most notably, you will now be able to issue Antichrist Detections via Twitter!

Obviously, the Antichrist Detector has turned into a bit of a “Hello World” application for me that I use to learn new technology. But, it’s also fun and I hope that you can enjoy it as well.

I’ll post the link to the new version once it is somewhat available.

— February 23, 2010

Pairs of Ants Wager on Red and Black at AnCon

Saw this update a while ago from Super Dave, a fellow gamer and geek from my college days, and thought I would share.

Super Dave runs a regional gaming convention in North Eastern Ohio called AnCon. It is with great shame that I share with you that I have never attended. But, word on the street is that it’s a lot of fun. I’d like to try to get up there in 2010. It runs from May 21 through May 23 next year. That’s a Friday, Saturday, Sunday so getting off of work should be easy for all of us corporate wage slaves. The price is only $25 for the entire weekend if you pre-register and apparently if you recruit others to come you’ll get $5 for every person you recruit. So, I would encourage you to check it out (and tell me about it so I can claim my $5).

But the really interesting thing—at least to me right now—is that he has released some PDF games. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Well, looking at his release dates, I think he might have stolen my idea! But, since PDF boards games like Zombie Stomp! at part of what I do here, I thought you might be interested even if he leap-frogged me. Curse you and you’re free time Super Dave!

The games are a dice game called Pairs and Wagers which looks like it would be a lot of fun with the family and Ants: Red vs. Black, a board game which looks a little more involved than what might interest my wife. Which means it’s right up my alley! I haven’t play either of them yet—hell, I’ve hardly had time to update the blog—but I plan to.

— October 16, 2009