When you install Windows Server (Longhorn) 2008, if you wish to connect to the internet through a wireless card you need to perform a few steps first.

The server is completely locked down when installed, which is good for servers, but bad for ease of use.

Open up Windows Firewall -> Select Exceptions Tab -> Select Network Discovery. Click OK.

This will allow Windows to discover networks that you are connected to. This is important for connecting to the internet.

Open up Control Panel -> Go to Network and Sharing Center -> Under Sharing and Discovery click Network Discovery -> Click Turn on network discovery -> Click Apply.

Now you should be able to connect to a workgroup / wireless router.

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I found Windows Vista to be quite polished after I installed it. Many people have said it has major incompatibilities with various programs, but the average user won’t see these. Software companies have had over a year of beta testing to test and release patches for their software to work under Vista. The only program I need that isn’t supported yet is Symantec PC Anywhere. Of course I can use many other VNC / RDP programs to satisfy my remote-server-fixing needs.

Once disabling Superfetch, Windows Search and the User Account Control I found the experience to be quite improved. Disabling superfetch and windows search eliminates most of the performance gap between XP and Vista. Superfetch caches programs in memory for quicker loading and usage which is fantastic for systems with large amounts of memory. Users with any less than 2 GB will find it a nuisance. Gamers and anyone else that uses their computers mainly for single processes (minimal multitasking, such as games, video editing, etc) will likely want to disable this. User Account Control asks you once or twice about every decision you make. It is good for a while, forcing people to re-think their computing decisions, but gets old fast.

Overall, I like Vista and when the first service pack comes I think there will be major adoption in the home and small business sector. Only a few kinks to work out, but still much fewer than the first edition of XP. Remember, XP has had 5 years to mature into a very usable, stable product.

Disable Vista Superfetch here: http://www.iishacks.com/index.php/2007/06/10/speed-up-low-memory-system-running-windows-vista/

Disable Windows Vista Search here: http://www.iishacks.com/index.php/2007/06/19/disabling-windows-search-in-vista-stop-hard-drive-running-constantly/

Speed up Vista Start Menu here: http://www.iishacks.com/index.php/2007/06/09/expanding-start-menu-folders-very-slow-in-vista/

Speed up Vista File Operations here: http://www.iishacks.com/index.php/2007/06/09/vista-file-operations-slow-green-bar-in-windows-explorer/

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This is a quick tip to those who are having trouble installing or using Wordpress on Windows Server with PHP.

Make sure in the PHP.ini file that the following is set:

If this is ON, Wordpress will not allow you to login. It will spit out the following error:

“You do not have sufficient permissions to access this page.”

You CAN have magic_quotes ON though, which is a different setting. The above setting is for data being pulled from a MySQL database for example.

Also make sure the following is set:

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Having dealt with multiple IIS servers with all kinds of PHP configurations, I’ll let you in on a little secret. PHP 4.4.4 or 4.4.x ISAPI is by far the most stable in any situation. PHP 5.2.x has terrible memory management. If you have a piece of bad code that eats up memory, PHP will not put a stop to it like it should. Here’s an error I received:

And of course no matter how much memory I allocate, it eats it all up. It’s just a matter of time. Then comes this error:

The obvious solution is to write better code that doesn’t leak memory. However, this isn’t always possible, especially if you are hosting websites run by other people. Many shared hosting accounts on IIS 6.0 experience total PHP shutdown due to one site’s bad code. I have thoroughly tested every 5.2.x line of PHP and they all suffer from this problem. If you want to or need to use PHP 5.2.x, use CGI or Fast-CGI (there’s a beta from IIS.net) as you will not experience any of these memory issues. However Fast-CGI still isn’t as quick as ISAPI, and in terms of the IIS.net beta, suffers from max uploads of ~1 MB.

Summary for maximum stability/speed combo:

PHP 4.4.x -> use ISAPI

PHP 5.2.x -> CGI (in PHP package) or Fast-CGI (from IIS.net)

Don’t use any other line of PHP since they are no longer supported and have multiple security issues.

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You might have seen this error before in the Windows event viewer. However, even if you haven’t seen it, you still might (if you upgrade MySQL). Below is the full error you might find:

The reason is that in MySQL 5.0.41 libmysql.dll cannot be dynamically loaded on windows. The symbol USE_TLS is no longer defined in the Windows build. Windows is expected to allocate the storage for THR_KEY_mysys in mysys/my_thr_init.c using the pthread_key macro.

How to fix this? Downgrade to MySQL 5.0.40 or 5.0.37. You can find them by simply pasting the download URL of the current build and changing the numbers. They always leave old builds on the FTP server.

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