FIX: VirtualBox Host-Only Network Adapter Creates a Virtual “Public Network” Connection That Causes Windows to Disable Services

September 18, 2010 12 Comments

vbox-host-only-net-net-n-sharing

vbox-host-only-net-connectletVirtualBox creates a “VirtualBox Host-Only Network” device which is essentially a loopback adapter for creating network connections between virtual machines and between the host and virutal machines. Unfortunately, it shows up to Windows as an unidentified public network. Connecting to a “public network” ratchets up your firewall and disables network discovery and SMB/CIFS network shares. This is kind of a big side effect of installing some VM software.Fortunately, Windows does have a way to mark a network device as virtual by creating a registry value.

The type of the device. The default value is zero, which indicates a standard networking device that connects to a network. Set *NdisDeviceType to NDIS_DEVICE_TYPE_ENDPOINT (1) if this device is an endpoint device and is not a true network interface that connects to a network. For example, you must specify NDIS_DEVICE_TYPE_ENDPOINT for devices such as smart phones that use a networking infrastructure to communicate to the local computer system but do not provide connectivity to an external network.

This powerhsell script will find the “VirtualBox Host-Only Ethernet Adapter device entry in the registry and adds the ‘*NdisDeviceType’ value of 1. After reboot, the “VirtualBox Host-Only Ethernet Adapter” will no longer be monitored by the Network and Sharing center. 

# tell windows that VirtualBox Host-Only Network Adapter
# is not a true network interface that connects to a network
# see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff557037(VS.85).aspx
pushd
echo 'Marking VirtualBox Host-Only Network Adapter as a virtual device.'
cd 'HKLM:\system\CurrentControlSet\control\class\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}'
ls ???? | where { ($_ | get-itemproperty -name driverdesc).driverdesc `
-eq 'VirtualBox Host-Only Ethernet Adapter' } |`
new-itemproperty -name '*NdisDeviceType' -PropertyType dword -value 1
echo 'After you reboot the VirtualBox Host-Only Network unidentified public network should be gone.'
popd

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FIXED: Boot Camp Audio Pops and Crackles with Windows 7 x64

August 16, 2010 2 Comments

Speaker_IconI have passed the 96 hour mark with a working fix for my audio problems with Boot Camp 3.1 running Windows 7 x64. To recap, I recently did a fresh installation of Windows 7 on my Mac Book Pro unibody (late 2009). Afterward, I started getting audio anomalies in the form of loud pops and permanent crackle distortions. These went away if I restarted audiosrv or reset the drivers in any way. For example, unplugging and plugging the speakers back into the minijack would fix it for a while as would turning audio enhancements on and off in the control panel for one of the devices.

I tried getting the latest Crystal Audio driver from Apple and  a solution from the interwebs that suggested disabling 802.11a. I also dug up a much newer version of the Broadcom wireless network card driver than Apple is distributing. I tried fiddling with Skype, which seemed to be part of the problem. I also disabled the USB audio device in my Apple Cinematic Display. None of these interventions totally solved the problem.

Then I came across a KB article that describes a similar but different issue with USB audio:

  • You attach a USB audio device to a computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2.
  • You configure this device as the default audio device.
  • You put the computer into the S3 sleep mode while an application plays audio.
  • You disconnect the USB audio device while the computer is in the S3 sleep mode.
  • You resume the computer from the S3 sleep mode.

In this scenario, the application that was playing audio stops responding. Additionally, all the other audio-related applications stop responding. For example, Volume Mixer also stops responding.

This is similar. My problems with mangled audio seemed to be related to power management, sleep yes but also not exclusively. My symptoms were much less extreme than the ones described: corruption instead of outright failure. The hotfix replaces the usbaudio.sys driver that shipped with Windows 7/2008R2 gold with a new version from July 14, 2010. What the heck, usbaudio.sys, is being used by one of the audio devices so I decided to give it a try.

Viola. It fixed my issue. I have had no audio squirreliness in 4 days where I previously could not have gone 4 hours.

What has me really scratching my head is how did I not have this problem before? I was running Windows 7 for a year on this computer and I didn’t really notice much of an audio problem until two weeks ago. Maybe it is the sort of thing that you don’t notice until you do and then you really notice.

Microsoft KB article 2122063: “The audio applications stop responding in Windows 7 or in Windows Server 2008 R2 after you resume the computer from the S3 sleep mode”

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Boot Camp: Dated Broadcom Driver Causes Audio Pops and Crackles

August 9, 2010 Leave a comment

broadcom-disable-802-11aI have had a problem with my MacBook Pro having intermittent crackles and pops in the audio in my late 2009 Macbook Pro Unibody. I previously suspected the Cirrus Audio driver.  Restarting “Windows Audio” (aka audiosrv) fixes the problem. The pattern is that everything is fine on boot. The crackles and pops start after resuming from sleep.

I just came across this post which indicates the problem is actually caused somehow by the the 802.11a feature of the Broadcom wireless network adapter. Somewhat incredulously, I gave this a try and it works so far.

It also seems that although, Apple has not seen fit to send out an update, Broadcom has published several newer versions of their 943XX driver. These are available from other OEMs using Broadcom chips (Acer, Dell and HP) that actually provide updates for Windows drivers on a regular basis. HP helpfully offers a version of the Broadcom Wireless driver that is almost a year newer than the one in Boot Camp 3.1. The revision history of here shows notes a series of performance enhancements over the Apple-distributed version 5.60.18.8.

Update

Some good folks have taken it upon themselves to scrape together Broadcom wireless driver downloads posted by various OEMs. Note that sometimes the stuff in the forums is newer than what is listed in the pinned initial post. At the time of this writing, the latest available is 5.100.249.2 from Acer.

Update 2

I’m still getting the intermittent pops and crackles. Perhaps I have unfairly maligned the Broadcom driver based on random info from the interwebs. I just realized that the speakers on my Cinematic Display are running at the same time as my nice speakers on the mini-jack. Maybe that has something to do with it. Still futzing.

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