I wouldn't like to convey the idea that this is an actually new annoyance, but I wanted to pair up with the last entry, and it has been annoying me quite recently so...
Well, what's all this about? Putting it briefly, when I switch user, the wireless connection randomly breaks. Which becomes particularly annoying if you have a huge, unresumable, download at 6KB/s going on. This typically -but not always- happens when I switch to another user, and then switch back to myself.
For Win* gurus: I've also tried creating KeepRasConnections with value 1 in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon, as I read somewhere. (Although AIUI that should keep connections up when you logout not when you switch without logging out.) But it seems not to improve the situation...
Why don't I get rid of this alleged OS?!? Different story, and one that I reserve for a longer entry with a report about these last months rather than for a quick shot like this. To put it briefly, however, I also use Linux. No, I don't. No, no, no, on a second thought: yes, I do. Well sort of, the truth being that a priori I'm not preventing myself from using any OS that will allow me to do any specific task with the maximum efficiency and ease, but also that appearently I've been involved in tasks, lately, that didn't make me want to stay away from redmondish sw strongly enough, and more importantly that I'm the unvirtuous kind of lazy man. Or at least not virtuous enough! More Impatience, more hubris, soon!!
I recently installed WinXP as a virtual machine using VMWare Player on my home Linux machine. It's quite remarkable and makes testing Perl on both platforms much easier. (Still stuck with the work-issued WinXP laptop, though.)
You might experiment with it and see if it might give you more flexibility. Even a virtual XP on XP might let you do what you need as a different user without interrupting things going on in the main OS.
That's interesting!
blazar on 2006-11-27T17:18:26
You might experiment with it and see if it might give you more flexibility. Even a virtual XP on XP might let you do what you need as a different user without interrupting things going on in the main OS.This is definitely interesting. If I were not lazy enough to try it, I would have installed Linux on the laptop too, and would be working mostly with it. See above re laziness. Actually my home pc is a mess and I've been wanting to work on it for months, failing to do so for quite about the same period. Indeed the reason why I "need" to switch user is to handle the laptop to daddy and "park" him browsing the web for his planes while I have something else to do, most notably watching tv, which is normally his realm instead. Quite lo-fly for whatever you may have thought of initially, isn't it?
Alternatively there are tons of alternative ways to obtain what I want, like launching the browser through
runas, about which I've just learnt and that AIUI amounts more or less to the redmondish version ofsudo. (Although a quick peek into its help seems to suggest it's as usual more -unnecessarily- complex and bloated.)Still, it eludes my comprehension why something as conceptually simple as keeping a connection up while users do... things, like logging in, logging out, and so on, is not achievable out of the box. For an OS that is alleged to be user friendly...
