Got a T-Mobile DataStick? Got Windows 7? can’t get em to play nice? OK here we go with a fix, it’s a bit of a hack, but hey it works. This should also work for the Vodafone, 3, Orange variants as they all use the same 3G Data Stick at heart, it’s just the branding of the software that changes.

Things you need :

• T-Mobile DataStick (re-branded Huawei E170, will work with an E172 as well I would think)
• A Windows Vista/XP machine (temporarily I used a VM)
• Switch Port from below

Got all that? good, pop the device into the usb, and when the Virtual CD comes up install the software. Now fire up the VM, insert the USB Stick and make sure the VM captures it (if not VM / Removable Devices / Hauwaei / Connect)

Install the application/drivers and make sure Vista/XP can connect etc, then close all the modem apps down.

Fire up the Switch Port application, and click Find Device, when it’s found click the CDRom to Diag button, it should say all done, disconnect.

Unplug the device and minimise the VM, click the desktop (make sure that the VM is not the active window) and pop the device back into the Windows 7 Machine and watch it detect the device and all it’s hardware.

Right, now what’s not going to work now we have done that? Well the CD-Rom part of the application will not work until you switch it back to CDRom mode (this can be done in Windows 7, Vista/XP  is only needed to switch it back to Windows 7 mode). That means you will be constantly switching between modes, or make sure the machines you want to use it on has the software installed, or have the software on another USB Stick.

Anyhow, I had to get mine going, and the software is on all the PC’s I need it on so matters not to me.

Any problems let me know.

UPDATE : New firmware and Web ‘n Walk Software are available for the E17x Devices.

I’ve been reading all the blog posts, forums, and complaints about Microsoft bringing back their ‘banhammer’ on the 360.

So let’s explain the banning, Microsoft are detecting modifications to the firmware on the DVD-Rom drives and locking the console from accessing Live.

There are lots of complaints about Microsoft doing this, and I cant really work out what people are complaining about, so I’ve decided to post this to try explain some things to people thinking of doing the mod to their consoles.

Now I’m not against people wanting to make backup’s of their game media, in fact I’m all for it and would wish Microsoft would address the problem and allow managed copies of their game disks as I’ve lost a disk or two myself to DVD scratching. This has kind of been addressed with the new NXE update coming soon, as it allows copying to the hard disk, so well done Microsoft.

Now the excuses that people have for doing this. The most common is they want to backup their disk’s, ok, to those that do then great, and in some countries the copyright law allows people to do it. However in most, it’s illegal. However lets be honest, most people do it so they can ‘get backups’ off the internet, and hey I’m not totally against that either, although developers deserve to be paid for a decent product, and most of the games have a decent demo nowadays to try before you buy.

OK, let’s talk about those countries where it IS allowed to copy your own disks and patch your firmware. Now Microsoft are not saying those countries cannot copy disks, they are just saying if you do, and bypass their intellectual rights then you cannot connect to THEIR live service, they don’t stop the 360 work, they just stop it connecting to their proprietary, and free (for silver) online service, and you cannot really blame them, they are trying to protect everyone else on the service. Yes you may be L337, but the 12 year old next door isn’t (well he probably is, but hey) and it’s up to Microsoft to protect them when they use the service. 

Like I said, Microsoft are not killing the 360, just the online connection.

So if you want to use a patched 360 that’s up to you, but make sure your prepared to only play offline, because eventually Microsoft will catch up with everyone that has patched their 360’s.

And before anyone flames me, I have patched the original XBox, it was good to run homebrew, however until someone works out how to do the same or similar on the 360 I doubt I’ll patch mine.

A week on from promoting Win7 onto my ‘production’ lounge media center machine, and I think it’s about time to have a rundown.

The new interface is certainly nicer to look at, although some organisation needs to be fixed, sometimes things are muddled, and the ‘tab’ style interface is not made very clear. Besides that there is inconsistencies in the interface, some is moved to the Win7 MCE way and style, while other parts are lifted straight from TV Pack, although at this early stage it’s nice to see what they have accomplished since then.

Bugs, well there are some, the packed codec issue needs sorting PDQ (worth noting that Matroska support just needs the Haali splitter installing), and there have been a few crashes and bangs along the way, but nothing much worse than the TV Pack update caused, and I’ll put up with it as BBC and ITV’s HD efforts are out of the box this time round.

The new Media Center Sharing stuff is nice as well (see left), this allows access natively to the content recorded on other Media Centers throughout the network, although word of warning it seems to be tied into the home networking feature, so turn that on.

Other things of note are games support, it works, but can be a little flaky, I had to install Red Alert 3 in Vista compatibility mode, but it works ok running in that mode, so can’t really complain (I use the main PC for a bit of gaming on the telly, it’s beefy enough to cope).

Other things that I’ve noticed, make sure you use the video drivers from Windows Update, the new WDDM 1.1 drivers are not feature complete, and don’t have the manufacturer extensions in them, but my Intel, ATI and nVidia cards all run a lot better using them (and the nVidia one especially is better than OEM, it actually supports 1:1 pixel mapping on my telly, which the nVidia ones could not cope with even in Vista!). The only downside besides extensions, is performance is not quite as good as the latest Catalyst drivers, but I can live with that.

Another nice to see is the memory usage, I’ve never seen my VMC box under a gig of ram, and just checking the Win7 one shows 866mb in use, so a lot lower memory footprint. Talking performance, it seems that the IO on my HDD’s is better as well, it’s scored 0.3 higher in the Windows Experience Index than Vista, and certainly feels snappier, my HDD’s are not constantly flashing either, which is good as well.

So all in all I would recommend it as an upgrade, you will break some of your 3rd party app installs, so worth testing them first if they are ‘must have’ installs though.

The Windows 7 ‘SuperCodec’ does not like Packed Bitstream xVids and DivX’s. It shows itself by looking like the playback is at 15-20fps instead of 23.997/25/29.997. Not a problem though, we can fix that with a little PowerShell and MPEG4ModifierCL (see below).

The script is as below, just save this into a UpdateVideoPacking.ps1

# Enumerate through avi files in directory
# and run MMCL to uncompress them if required

foreach ($file in get-childitem *.avi)
{
  $FileTrim = $file.name.TrimEnd(".avi")
  $FileNew = $fileTrim + ".up.avi"
  write-host "Working on " $FileTrim "Output To " $FileNew
  mmcl –unpack $file.name $FileNew
  if($LASTEXITCODE -eq 0)
    {
      if (Test-Path $FileNew)
       {   
         write-host "Would delete "$file
         del $file
       }
    }
   write-host "Completed Folder"
}

Make sure that the MPEG4Modifier executable (mmcl.exe) is in the path, or the same folder as the script/video’s.

Now pull down and install PowerShell if you have not, launch it and type set-ExecutionPolicy unrestricted (will allow the PS1 to run)

Now change folder to the video folder you want to process and type fullpathtoscript\UpdateVideoPacking.ps1 this will run the script in the folder, I put both the script and the mmcl.exe in my c:\utils folder, which is in my path.

The script will read the file in, determine if the file needs unpacking, if it does it will create a file with the same name as the original but put .up before the .avi. It will then make sure the unpack worked without error, and delete the original, if you don’t want it to delete the file put a # in front of the line del $file this will then just echo the file’s name out to the screen that would have been deleted.

Yes I know the code is a little clunky, and this version only does one folder at a time, I do have a version that will traverse the tree, and will post it if anyone wants it.

Sad new that Michael Crichton has died after a private battle with cancer. His books and influence will be missed.

Michael Crichton wrote many great books, and many were adapted into TV or Film with great success.

With a little luck his book due out in December will still be released as it may make for interesting reading considering the circumstances in which it would have been written