Blog:: Craig Pringle

Previously I blogged about the lack of a 64-bit Cisco VPN client. 

In the comments of that post yaz points out that NCP has a Beta Client that works on 64-bit clients – and that includes Windows 7.  It also supports 3rd party VPNs and that includes Cisco.

The NCP beta client is available via this page.  Install was simple and there is even a UI to import your existing Cisco VPN profile. 

It appears to be a 30 day trial – which is a bit odd for a beta product.  It does appear to work though.  I’ll give it a good work out over the next couple of days and report back.

A couple weeks ago the OS informed me that the extended battery for my Motion LS800 had issues and should be replaced.  Not really surprising as the battery is 3 or 4 years old and has been heavily used. 

I swapped back to the standard battery and now woe is me – it too tells me that it needs to be replaced.  This battery is actually even older than the Extended battery.

This could spell the end for my much loved Motion LS800, which is a real shame.  Worse than that it is my only tablet that is a slate.  And if I were to replace it – what would I replace it with?

Motion seem to have focused on vertical markets and as such all the new devices they are releasing are ruggudised, specialised or both.  Who makes a nice corporate Slate these days? 

Electrovaya and the Scribbler SC 4000 still seem to be around, but they have never made it downunder AFAIK.

The Tablet Kiosk Sahara range is probably the most comprehensive, but there has been little development in the year or so since I looked at it last.

Fujitsu have had an on again, off again affair with the slate form factor.

Why isn’t anyone building cool new slates these days?  Do you think we’ll see any new slates hitting the market when Windows 7 ships?

Previously I blogged about an issue I first encountered with the Windows 7 M3 build (the one that was released at PDC) and my hosted Exchange provider.

In short when running the M3 build and the public beta I was unable to authenticate to my hosted Exchange provider using my email address and password.  Instead I had to find out the domain name and enter credentials in the format DOMAIN\username in order for outlook to connect to Exchange.  This was a bit of a pain.

The good news is that the Windows 7 Release Candidate resolves this issue and I can now authenticate with my email address as I could under Windows Vista.

For reasons that escape me Cisco have chosen not to release a 64-bit version of the IPSec Cisco VPN Client.

This is a problem for me since I installed the 64-bit version of Windows 7 RC on my Toshiba M750.

To get around this without rebuilding with the 32-bit version I employed Windows 7’s new XP Mode – aka Virtual XP.

First I followed the steps on the download page:

1. Enabled virtualisation extensions in the BIOS.
2. Download and install the Virtual PC Beta.
3. Download Windows XP Mode.

That done I fired up the Virtual Windows XP from my Start Menu:

This loaded up a Virtual Machine already running Windows XP.  I installed the Cisco VPN Client and verified that it could connect to the VPN. 

This is where it gets a little tricky.  At this point I have my Toshiba, which is the host and an XP machine which is a guest.  The XP Guest has a virtual adaptor that leverages the host’s network adaptor and can connect to the remote network.  But the host has not way to connect through the guest to get to the remote network.

For initial testing I created a static route for one of the subnets and pointed it to the IP Address of the guest.  This worked, but it is a bit fiddly as the guest IP address is assigned by DHCP and as such will change depending on where I am.

I wanted something that required a little less work to get connected.  To achieve this I needed to create a virtual adaptor on the Host.  This is done by adding a loopback adapter to the host.

Adding a Loopback Adapter to the Host

In Device Manager right click the root node and select Add Legacy Hardware

On the welcome screen click Next.

Then select Install the hardware that I manually select from a list (Advanced) and then click Next

Scroll down and select Network Adapters and then click Next

Then select Microsoft as the Manufacturer and Microsoft Loopback Adapter and then click Next

On the confirmation screen click Next.  Then when the installation finishes click Finish.

Once this has completed you will find a new network adapter in the Network Connections.

I configured this adapter with a private IP address in a range that I don’t use at home or work. 

Next I added a second Virtual Adapter to the Virtual Windows XP machine and bound this to the new Loopback Adapter.  I assigned a static address to this in the same range as the Loopback adapter.

Because the network I am connecting to uses a number of subnets I wrote two quick CMD scripts.  One adds the routes on the host, the other removes them.

Virtual PC also creates shortcuts for applications installed in the guest on the Start Menu of the host. 

To connect to my VPN I can run this and it hides Virtual Machine’s desktop and the VPN client looks like it is running on the Windows 7 machine.  I then run my script to create the routes and I can work away.  When I disconnect the VPN I run another script to delete the routes again.  Of course I can add shortcuts to all three actions to my desktop to ease the process.  Not quite as clean as installing the client directly on the machine, but it works.

Update: For details of the command scripts see this post.