WHS: Network Disabled

Alright, its my fault. In the process of tweaking for Jumbo Frame support I mistakenly right-clicked and chose the first option "Disable" instead of the second option "Status" (which would have taken me to the network configuration page) on the Network Connection icon. Dang!

This is obviously a headless machine and I am currently lost. Thankfully its not the first time something like this ever happened and tips from HomeServerLand gave me a clue.

If you have a headless device like the HP MediaSmart Server you can:
1. Connect an USB keyboard and wait about 30 seconds.
2. Next press CTRL + ALT + DELETE and then enter your WHS Administrator password and hit the ENTER key.
3. Then enter "windows + R", (where windows is the windows key on your keyboard) this will open the run dialog and then enter "ncpa.cpl" (without the quotes) this opens up network connections dialog.
4. Press the DOWN ARROW key (only once) and [Jamz: press the RIGHT ARROW key once] then press ENTER enter which will enable the NIC card,
5. If you have multiple NIC adapters you can toggle using the right and left keys [Jamz: or up and down keys] and YES you have to do it blind so make sure every keystroke counts.

I'm doing my darnest to get this working right now with fingers crossed.

[Edit: 10:44am] It worked! Hooaah!

LinuxMCE: WPA2

Its been some tiring hours, but I finally have Kubuntu recognizing my D-Link DWA-142 using ndiswrapper. Before that though, finding out what the default login passwords if you're one of those who just dive first into a project was a chore.

However WPA2 is still a bit tricky to configure and I still need to find a configuration that will make it stick. Some inspiration to get things going, I found here. Well, one problem at a time.

The reason of course for all this is to introduce a nested network. And it would really help your various orbiters and media directors if you had the LinuxMCE network on its own separate wireless network.