# Getting Chat to work with Vista



## Doug Brott

Sorry for the double post, but hopefully more people will see this in it's own thread.

http://chat.dbstalk.com does not work "out of the box" with Windows Vista. You will need to apply the following fix to use the Chat site if you are on Windows Vista.

---
I found the solution which I have tailored for our site below:

I have used this and for the FIRST TIME, I can see the Chat Room from my Vista Computer.

SYMPTOMS:
========
If, when loading the chat room, the blue loading bar appears for a very long time, and the chat room applet never comes up, the following may help you to immediately resolve the problem. This problem is also associated with very slow page loading using Firefox, and slow eMail sending/retrieval using Thunderbird.

The following solution applies to *Windows Vista users only*.

SOLUTION:
========
The Windows Vista TCP Stack has been re-written. The following solution appears to correct many internet-related issues with Windows Vista, and seems to resolve the problem. There should be no negative effects from performing the following; but we have provided you with instructions for undoing this should you feel it necessary.

Part I: Disable TCP Autotuning
--------------------------------------
1. Click the Start (Windows Logo) icon
2. Select 'All Programs'
3. Select 'Accessories'
4. Right-Click on 'Command Prompt'
5. Click 'Run as Administrator'
6. A dialog box will ask you to confirm. Click the 'Continue' button to proceed.
7. Type: netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=disabled
8. Press 'Enter'
9. The message 'Ok.' should appear.
10. Type: exit

Part II: Empty your Java Cache
--------------------------------------
11. Visit http://chat.dbstalk.com
12. The Java icon will appear in your task icon list in the lower-right hand corner of your screen
13. Right-click the Java (coffee-cup) icon and select 'Open Control Panel'
14. Under 'Temporary Internet Files', click 'Settings'
15. Click the 'Delete Files...' button
16. A window titled 'Delete Temporary Files' will appear. Make sure all options are checked and click 'OK'
17. Click 'OK' to exit the 'Temporary File Settings' window.
18. Click 'OK' to exit the Java Control Panel

Part III: Empty your browser's cache
--------------------------------------
11. Clear your browser's cache.
12. Shut down all instances of your web browser.

That's all. You may now try to load the chat applet.

This issue is likely to work itself out in the near future as future updates of Windows Vista and Java are released to the public -- once these updates have been released, your users will not be required to go through the above procedure.

How to Un-do the above steps
============================
If, for any reason at all, you need to undo the above procedure, follow these steps:
1. Click the Start (Windows Logo) icon
2. Select 'All Programs'
3. Select 'Accessories'
4. Right-Click on 'Command Prompt'
5. Click 'Run as Administrator'
6. A dialog box will ask you to confirm. Click the 'Continue' button to proceed.
7. Type: netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal
8. Press 'Enter'
9. The message 'Ok.' should appear.
10. Type: exit


----------



## fishingham

Now to see if that works for Vista 64 bit as well.


----------



## Capmeister

"You are coming to a sad realization. Cancel or Allow?"

"Allow."


----------



## davidord

From what I read below, it seems that you should turn it back on after the chat.

*What is TCP auto-tuning*: 

At any given time, the amount that TCP can send is governed by three factors: the congestion window, the receive window and the number of bytes available to send. Without using TCP window scaling (which is disabled by default in previous versions of Windows), the maximum receive window a receiver can advertise is 64K bytes. Since the congestion window is usually greater than 64K bytes in high-bandwidth/high-latency networks, the receive window is often the limiting factor if the application is submitting enough data.

In previous versions of Windows, users can work around this problem by setting the TcpWindowSize registry key value. However, TcpWindowSize is a global setting applied to all connections, and it's often hard for users to know the appropriate window size to set.

To address this issue in Windows Vista, we implemented TCP auto-tuning. It enables TCP window scaling by default and automatically tunes the TCP receive window size based on the bandwidth delay product (BDP) and the rate at which the application reads data from the connection. With TCP auto-tuning, we have seen 1000% (10x) throughput improvements in internal testing over underutilized wide-area network links.


----------



## LarryFlowers

Doug, I ran into a refusal by IE7 in Vista Ultimate to download the "unknown software". Instead I went to sun.com and downloaded JAVA from there and had no further problems.
Thanks, Larry Flowers


----------



## Michael D'Angelo

brott said:


> Sorry for the double post, but hopefully more people will see this in it's own thread.
> 
> http://chat.dbstalk.com does not work "out of the box" with Windows Vista. You will need to apply the following fix to use the Chat site if you are on Windows Vista.
> 
> ---
> I found the solution which I have tailored for our site below:
> 
> I have used this and for the FIRST TIME, I can see the Chat Room from my Vista Computer.
> 
> SYMPTOMS:
> ========
> If, when loading the chat room, the blue loading bar appears for a very long time, and the chat room applet never comes up, the following may help you to immediately resolve the problem. This problem is also associated with very slow page loading using Firefox, and slow eMail sending/retrieval using Thunderbird.
> 
> The following solution applies to *Windows Vista users only*.
> 
> SOLUTION:
> ========
> The Windows Vista TCP Stack has been re-written. The following solution appears to correct many internet-related issues with Windows Vista, and seems to resolve the problem. There should be no negative effects from performing the following; but we have provided you with instructions for undoing this should you feel it necessary.
> 
> Part I: Disable TCP Autotuning
> --------------------------------------
> 1. Click the Start (Windows Logo) icon
> 2. Select 'All Programs'
> 3. Select 'Accessories'
> 4. Right-Click on 'Command Prompt'
> 5. Click 'Run as Administrator'
> 6. A dialog box will ask you to confirm. Click the 'Continue' button to proceed.
> 7. Type: netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=disabled
> 8. Press 'Enter'
> 9. The message 'Ok.' should appear.
> 10. Type: exit
> 
> Part II: Empty your Java Cache
> --------------------------------------
> 11. Visit http://chat.dbstalk.com
> 12. The Java icon will appear in your task icon list in the lower-right hand corner of your screen
> 13. Right-click the Java (coffee-cup) icon and select 'Open Control Panel'
> 14. Under 'Temporary Internet Files', click 'Settings'
> 15. Click the 'Delete Files...' button
> 16. A window titled 'Delete Temporary Files' will appear. Make sure all options are checked and click 'OK'
> 17. Click 'OK' to exit the 'Temporary File Settings' window.
> 18. Click 'OK' to exit the Java Control Panel
> 
> Part III: Empty your browser's cache
> --------------------------------------
> 11. Clear your browser's cache.
> 12. Shut down all instances of your web browser.
> 
> That's all. You may now try to load the chat applet.
> 
> This issue is likely to work itself out in the near future as future updates of Windows Vista and Java are released to the public -- once these updates have been released, your users will not be required to go through the above procedure.
> 
> How to Un-do the above steps
> ============================
> If, for any reason at all, you need to undo the above procedure, follow these steps:
> 1. Click the Start (Windows Logo) icon
> 2. Select 'All Programs'
> 3. Select 'Accessories'
> 4. Right-Click on 'Command Prompt'
> 5. Click 'Run as Administrator'
> 6. A dialog box will ask you to confirm. Click the 'Continue' button to proceed.
> 7. Type: netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal
> 8. Press 'Enter'
> 9. The message 'Ok.' should appear.
> 10. Type: exit


A couple of questions for anyone that has done this. Have you had any problems after doing it? Do you turn it back on after the chat or just leave it off? What are the risk of doing this? Thanks for any replys.


----------



## Michael D'Angelo

I did not do the steps above to get the chat room to work. I have been just trying to get in the chat room every time I have received a windows vista update and hoping it would fix the problem. I did not try for a couple of weeks and I decided to give it a try again this morning and it finally work. So if you have vista and have not be able to get in the chat room you may want to give it a try again.


----------



## Doug Brott

BMoreRavens said:


> I did not do the steps above to get the chat room to work. I have been just trying to get in the chat room every time I have received a windows vista update and hoping it would fix the problem. I did not try for a couple of weeks and I decided to give it a try again this morning and it finally work. So if you have vista and have not be able to get in the chat room you may want to give it a try again.


That's good to hear. I knew at some point either JAVA or Microsoft would get this to work properly - only took 'em 4 months.


----------



## Chris Blount

BMoreRavens said:


> I did not do the steps above to get the chat room to work. I have been just trying to get in the chat room every time I have received a windows vista update and hoping it would fix the problem. I did not try for a couple of weeks and I decided to give it a try again this morning and it finally work. So if you have vista and have not be able to get in the chat room you may want to give it a try again.


Verified. I re-loaded Vista from scratch last week and downloaded all the updates from Microsoft. No problems with the chat room.


----------



## gulfwarvet

Chris Blount said:


> Verified. I re-loaded Vista from scratch last week and downloaded all the updates from Microsoft. No problems with the chat room.


i just re-did the setup to enable, and i to will verify that it works now.


----------



## Drewg5

I was just going to post to the affect 2 above posts covered. I will now do the undo on my Vista desktop outlined in the OP

How to Un-do the above steps
============================
If, for any reason at all, you need to undo the above procedure, follow these steps:
1. Click the Start (Windows Logo) icon
2. Select 'All Programs'
3. Select 'Accessories'
4. Right-Click on 'Command Prompt'
5. Click 'Run as Administrator'
6. A dialog box will ask you to confirm. Click the 'Continue' button to proceed.
7. Type: netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal
8. Press 'Enter'
9. The message 'Ok.' should appear.
10. Type: exit


----------



## YoungMan

For those *Windows Vista Users* like me that couldn't get past the installation of the "ActiveX" module due to security settings from IE7:

I couldn't get the Java cup Icon to appear in the lower right corner, even though I had just installed the latest version and confirmed it installed...

Here's what I did to fix the problem, it may help you:

1) Goto IE7 (Internet Explorer ver 7x)
2) Tools
3) Manage Ad-ons
4) Enable or Disable Ad-ons
5) Find "Sun Java Console"...which will most likely be disabled, click once on the line for the Java Console and then at the bottom of the control box, select to enable.
6) Click OK
7) Close Internet Explorer
8) Restart Internet Explorer and follow the link back to the chat room.
9) This time you should be able to see the Java cup at the lower right corner and be able to follow the previous post directions, if needed.

I found that I didn't have to go that route, I was able to activate the ACTIVEX control for the chat room and enter the chat room.

Hope this helps and good job DBSTALK.


----------



## psweig

I just got in without a problem; Vista service pack #1 and Firefox #3


----------



## Stuart Sweet

That's right, the problem was fixed some time ago.


----------



## CJTE

I cant seem to get the chat to work on Windows 7 RC.
Worked fine in the Beta (Running Firefox 3.0.8 both times, Noscript allows addonchat, dbstalk, etc.)


Works fine in IE.
Damn.


----------

