Sometimes when you install Windows XP under Qemu, you will receive the error “a problem is preventing windows from accurately checking the license for this computer”.  This error prevents you from continuing to use Windows XP, unless you use the following method:

1. Download Windows XP Service Pack 2
2. Create a mountable ISO of the service pack.  In a terminal window, change to the download folder and type the command: mkisofs -o xpsp2.iso WindowsXP-KB835935-SP2-ENU.exe
3. Copy the xpsp2.iso into the same directory as your Windows XP img file.
4. Change to the file’s directory in the console with the cd command.
5. Run qemu with the -cdrom parameter:  qemu -cdrom xpsp2.iso windows.img, where sinwos.img is the name of the virtual drive containing the windows installation.
6. When you’ve logged into Windows XP and confirmed you DO want to run in safe mode, go to My Computer, open the CD Drive, and run the exe file.  This will begin the Windows XP Service Pack 2 extraction and installation.  Follow all of the on-screen prompts until the installation is complete.  This may take a while!
7. Reboot qemu without the -cdrom parameter: qemu windows.img

You should now be able to log in to Windows XP normally.

When developing web sites, it is essential that the developer supports as many browsers and operating systems as possible. Some companies are ignorant to the wider audience and simply create web projects which only really work in Internet Explorer. Whilst this suits the slim majority of users, consumers using other browsers such as Firefox, Opera, and Safari are left with poorly created web sites that appear broken.

If your development environment of choice is Linux, you might have experienced the painstaking task of dual-booting into Windows, then going back to Linux, and so forth. You might have a separate testing machine running Windows… or, you might just neglect to test fully and risk facing the consequences of lost business.

We test all of our projects across multiple platforms and browsers to provide a consistent and accessible experience for as many web site visitors as possible. We achieve this by creating accessible XHTML web sites using CSS which gracefully degrades.

Additionally, we use Virtual Machine software to increase our productivity and work rate during cross platform testing. The software we run is called Qemu, which runs on Linux systems. Qemu can be used to install various operating systems which will then run from within your Linux operating system, removing the need for you to change computers, reboot into another operating system, etc. All you need is the free Qemu software, and the installation CD/DVD of the operating system you wish to install.

The link below will help get you started with your own Linux and Windows Qemu setup:

Instructions for installing Windows XP with Qemu on Ubuntu Linux

If you installed Windows XP or Windows 2000, you may receive the error message “a problem is preventing windows from accurately checking the license for this computer”.

If so, the problem can be rectified by following our guide to running Windows XP on Qemu under linux with error “a problem is preventing windows from accurately checking the license for this computer”.

I’ve been trying to figure out why a joint WEP & WPA encrypted Wireless Network has been failing to work on Ubuntu Linux.  After much delving, i realised that the key was set to 2, and the standard network config GUI did not provide an option to select the key you wanted to use.

If you experience a similar problem, it’s really easy to resolve… I wish i’d had access to this information yesterday as it would have saved me several wasted hours delving into various config files and head scratching!

All you need to is

• open a terminal window
• type “pico /etc/network/interfaces” without the quotes
• if there’s a line reading “wireless-key xxxxx”, change it to “wireless-key2 xxxxx” replacing the “2″ with your wep key id.
• Now save the changes and exit to the terminal.
• Type “sudo ifdown wlan0″ and press enter.  This will stop the card if it’s started.  If you get an error, ignor it - the card probably isn’t started.
• Type “sudo ifup wlan0″ and press enter.  This will start the card again.
• Type “ping google.com” and press enter.  You should now be connected to the internet.

If this doesn’t work, i’m sorry!  It worked for me after many hours of tinkering, so all i can say is - persevere.

Good luck!