Just code - Tamir Khason : Vista Battery Saver, tools

New year – new blog or how to migrate Community Server to any other engine, supports XML-RPC

Tamir Khason — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 02:33:04 GMT

Please update your bookmarks, because the new url of this blog is http://khason.net/ (you have not update RSS feeds, it will be done automatically). Why I did it? Why I decided to go to “stand-alone”… Well. there are some reasons. Generally, I do not want to explain all those here, but trust me, there are some. The main reason is, that there is no responsible person in charge for this blog platform in Microsoft Israel. This why, if your blog is popular and you have a respect to your blog visitors, you cannot host it here… Take a look into new comments notifications in my inbox. Would you answer your readers with such “small amount” of SPAM and capcha, that cannot be fixed already for three years in this platform? This how my inbox looks like for last three years. So now, you should not ask me, why I not answered your email or comments. Aren’t you? :)

Currently, all comments in this blog are disabled, so if you want to comment, please use new url of posts (this will appear shortly in the beginning of each post). Also, this post will not be syndicated in RSS.

So, this post is the last. I loved this platform, and loved people started it. But, unfortunately, it seemed, that bloggers community is not important enough for new platform managers.

Also, If you want to learn how to use C# and XML-RCP to migrate from CS2007, used in this platform, visit my new home :)

Have a great year and, as always, be good people. This post marked with all possible tags automatically. Sorry.

Backup and restore your wireless networks settings by using WirelessMigrator

Tamir Khason — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 02:58:00 GMT

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I had to reinstall my working notebook, so I begun to backup all it’s settings. I almost finished, when recognize, that Windows Vista has no tool for backup and restore wireless networks settings (tnx to Daniel Petri). You can manually add or remove it. You can even change the priorities, but you cannot backup or restore it.

What to do? How to save all my passwords for networks and all certificates. Digging a bit deeper I found a way to do it, by using command line prompt.

“netsh wlan show profiles” will show you all wireless network profiles in your system
”netsh wlan export profile name=”name” folder=”folder”” will export each profile to xml file (you can also run netsh wlan export profile” to export them all as bunch
”netsh wlan add profile filename=”name”” will restore each one of profiles and returns them into the system

For some reason, I cannot see my mother doing it… More then this, I cannot see myself remember all those command and doing it manually for each one of saved profiles (and I have a lot of them)

What’s the solution? Build handy tool! I’m developer after all and know to solve my and other’s problems by code.

Let me introduce you WirelessMigrator

What is WirelessMigrator? Wireless Migrator is a handy small program, that knows to backup and restore all wireless networks setting from your computer by one click. For some reason, there is no way to do it by using regular Windows Vista tools.
This feature is extremely useful, when you have to reinstall your computer or use the same settings of wireless networks for different machines. In order to use the program, all you have to do is to run it once. The program generate small file, can be handled and transferred in diskette. Later if you'll run this generated file, all settings of wireless networks will be restored on target machine.

Run “BackupWireless.exe” to backup

And “RestoreWireless.wnb” to restore

That’s all, folks. Now you can save and restore your settings for wireless networks for migration easily.

Download Wireless Migrator >>

At first run, the program will request elevation on Windows Vista, to assign backup archive extension with the program and be able to restore with one click. To completely remove all registry nodes, wrote by program, from the registry, use BackupWireless.exe /remove option. To reinstall the program, just run it for the first time. That’s what I’m calling SmartClient. This is not “real” installation it also not very “web” application.

WirelessMigrator has very advanced and smart user interface

Now a little bit about the user interface of this program. I though a lot about it and decided not to make any user interface for it. Theoretically, it was possible to make kind of “Funky-Vista-Glow” list of all available networks and three buttons “Backup”, “Restore” and “Cancel”. I even done it with half an hour in WPF. But wait a moment. Is it really necessary to have user interface for such program? It wont be more functional by having it. All it have to do, done automatically and you have nothing to do if something going wrong.

So, I build text-only progress bar and key switches to show progress (with will not take more, then 3 seconds), but that’s all. ‘m really interested to know what do you think about it?

Download Wireless Migrator >>

Your feedback is really important for me. Please take a moment and tell me what’s good and what’s bad with this program in order me to be able to continue it’s development. Full source of the program is available under MS-PL from CodePlex.

My other open source projects, you may be interested with

Have a nice day and be good people.

OpenUp and my Open Source submissions

Tamir Khason — Tue, 13 May 2008 23:12:31 GMT

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Amir Shevat from Microsoft Israel DPE department started cool competition, named OpenUp. I decided to give hand to this initiative and posted sources of some of my applications on CodePlex and submit it to the competition.

Currently, my submission includes (except old Vista Battery Saver and Windows Live Writer Plugins):

WebCam control for WPF
Silverlight controls library
Duplicate images finder (yes, yes I posted sources for this application too)

Later I’ll submit my other applications (first I have to make it’s code to looks “submittable” :) ). This will include generic plugin based free hosting upload tool, some applications for Windows Mobile, some Time Tracking applications and others. Keep tracking

For more information about OpenUp, visit its website

Vote for me and see you in PDC

[Action Required] Battery Tracker - download new version

Tamir Khason — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 12:25:58 GMT

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Less, then 12 hours and more then 2500 downloads - that's the verdict for this tool. Awareness, there are some critical bugs found in Battery Tracker. Please download the new version (from the same location) and replace the version on your computer. This is required action, due the version from August, 29th has number of bugs, that prevent you from sending me system traces. Sorry for inconvenience and thank you for cooperation.

Download Battery Tracker >>

Battery Tracker - Power management and battery tracing tool

Tamir Khason — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 01:25:44 GMT

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A lot of people ask me about how to measure power charging or discharging rate. How to know the quality of your battery and power needs of operating system. How to be sure, that Vista Battery Saver really helps to prolong your battery life and detect exactly how it prolongs it. Two evenings and I wrote small utility, that helps you to know exactly what happens with your laptop battery and helps me to understand what to fix and what to add to VBS to make it better.

All you need to do, is to download Battery Tracker, run it, and after some time of tracing hit Stop Tracking link. It asks you to save traces. Write work conditions or any other useful information and then press Save button then, hitting Submit link, send it to me via email. If you want me to know any particular event, write it into text area. By pressing Add link you'll save in into current trace.

Log data-minding tool still not ready to public release, thus currently you can not work with log files, however, submitting this information, highly important for me for future development of Vista Battery Saver. Also, this program works on Windows XP, so if you still have it, please send me traces as well (this mode is not checked enough)

This tool is not collecting any personal information, so, you can quietly submit traces to me. Thank you for cooperation.

Download Battery Tracker >>

Italian locale for Vista Battery Saver

Tamir Khason — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 03:49:35 GMT

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Grazie to Andrea Dellamonica from Tisource for Italian translation of Vista Battery Saver. Get latest installer from CodePlex (some minor fixes there)

I want to purchase Code Signing Digital ID for VBS to sign code and pass Certified for Vista. There are more, then 500K installation of this software. All we need is 99$ (simple certificate) or 399$ (advanced), thus if each 1000th person will donate 1$, we can buy the certificate and have one dollar spare :). Chip in for Microsoft Authenticode here

Vista Battery Saver beta 2 r1 - refresh

Tamir Khason — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 15:51:18 GMT

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New minor release of VBS. In this release - fixes of grammar in English strings (tnx to John Guin), German and French localization +bug with German version fixed (tnx to Muty and Vista french community), changes in default power plans and installer.

Thank you, contributors, keep doing great job - we're very close to RC1 - Features will be included - idle awareness, LCD dimming support (for some models), possibly services disablement.

Download Vista Battery Saver Beta 2 r1 >>

Vista Battery Saver - French version

Tamir Khason — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 05:14:40 GMT

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Now you can get latest beta 2 of Vista Battery Saver in French. Great thanks to Vista french community (VistaRC) for this contribution.

If you want to use Vista Battery Saver in french, just download VistaBatterySaverSetup-MUI.msi from current release location and if your locale is FR, you'll get french UI for this application

Vista Battery Saver Beta 2 is available for download

Tamir Khason — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 23:14:52 GMT

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New version of Vista Battery Saver (beta 2) is available for download from CodePlex. Except bug fixes, there is a new feature - automatic power plan change, depends on power source you are working with. I'm really wondering,  why this feature is not available in Windows Vista out-of-the-box? For example, if you are working on battery, you'd want to use Power Saver plan, however, if you are working on AC, you'd rather use Balanced or High Performance. So, Vista Battery Saver does it for you now. All you have to do is to run it and configure plan you want to use on battery and on AC.

In this version, I completely rewrite power aware routines, and now it's using only direct system API call, this way, I get rid over expensive timers. So, download it, use it and notice report all bugs discovered on CodePlex issues tracker and in comments.

Thank you. Remember, It still do not run itself after the installation. You should look into Start->Accessories menu to find and run it.

Download Vista Battery Saver Public Beta 2

Vista Battery Saver goes Open Source

Tamir Khason — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 01:16:31 GMT

[This blog was migrated. You will not be able to comment here. The new URL of this post is http://khason.net/blog/vista-battery-saver-goes-open-source/ ] Due to chronic lack of time, I decided to publish full source code of Vista Battery Saver on CodePlex . I believe, that only this way, I can assure this really useful and important software to live. All developers, what to take care together with me on this soft development are welcome to join this project. Good luck and thank you. Vista Battery...(read more)

Vista Battery Saver

Tamir Khason — Tue, 15 May 2007 01:44:00 GMT

[This blog was migrated. You will not be able to comment here. The new URL of this post is http://khason.net/blog/vista-battery-saver/ ] It's not a secret, that cool WDM (Aero user interface), announced in Windows Vista eat laptops' battery as hungry animal eats it's victim. But what, actually, "eat" your battery - mostly three things: Aero, Sidebar and your wide laptop screen. We have nothing to do with screen, but we can disable either Aero UI and Sidebar, while working on...(read more)