Vista VPN / Firefox / More

A grab bag of follow-ups and tidbits for today.

Firefox Update — Made Mine Happier

Last week I was belly-aching about Firefox and other browsers. After writing that post I uninstalled both versions of Firefox that I had installed: beta and 2.0.x.

I then visited:

boot drive:\Documents and Settings\UserName\Application Data

and blew away the Mozilla folder (Firefox is the only Mozilla product I currently use).

Next I installed the Firefox 3 beta again. Much faster and much more stable. I was apparently due for some housecleaning. I’m no longer a hater!

Incidentally, Firefox 3 beta 3 was released yesterday. Read the release notes carefully.

Vista VPN Issue

I’m still researching Vista + VPN = Locked Domain Account but with little success thus far. However, I’m happy to say that I have a simple work-around:

Every time the domain password changes, change the Cisco VPN password to match. Strange but works.

I’ve also been wondering if this problem would go away if the Cisco VPN username wasn’t the same as the domain username. Something to try someday…

Trials with Win2k3 / .NET / SharePoint / IIS

I spent the day installing Windows 2003 — repeatedly. I somehow got caught up in issues of precedence between installing various .NET versions, IIS and SharePoint services. But when it was all said and done, I had a working server so I guess I figured it out. Damndest thing though; I’ve never been tripped up like that before.

For (my) future reference, this worked:

1. Install Windows 2003 Std and hardware drivers
2. Windows Updates — include select optional but not the .NET frameworks
3. Add server to the Domain
4. Add IIS (not FrontPage extensions nor ASP.NET options)
5. Back to Windows Updates, grab the .NET packages
6. More Windows Updates for the .NET service packs
   1. Pop into IIS manager and “Allow” ASP.NET 2.x
7. Download and install .NET 3.5 framework
8. Download and install SharePoint Services 3.0 (installing 2.0 and then upgrading caused havoc at one point… still not sure why, but I just skipped it this time around)

Possibly Related posts:

1. Vista + VPN = Locked Domain Account
2. Firefox 1.0.1 out
3. Reduce Firefox Memory on Vista
4. Firefox 3.5 beta 4 Out
5. Firefox Updates: 1.5.0.10 and 2.0.0.2