I had the devil of a time getting a Belkin USB Network Hub (Model F5L009) to work.  Symptoms included:

• I could ping the device (after I located its IP address from my DHCP server)
• I could open the device's web server (using its IP address from my DHCP server)
• Other computers on my network could see it
• On my laptop (from the real machine and from a virtual machine), "Control Center" (the device's user interface) clicking "Manage Network USB Hubs" (from the "Search for and manage Network USB Hubs" prompt) would always bring up an empty "Connected Network USB Hubs" list.

I tried the following to no avail:

• Disabling McAfee
• Windows Firewall was already disabled
• Rebooting
• Re-installing the driver
• Adding another Ethernet device (a Belking USB Ethernet Dongle)

Along the way, I decided to disable ALL other NICs (including the Microsoft Loopback Adapter), and it started working.  Eventually, I narrowed it down to the loopback adapter. 

Solution -- Disable Microsoft Loopback Adapter.

BTW - Support from Belking was abyssmal.  It was pigin English, and it suggested that I try a number of troubleshooting steps that were clearly proven to be unnecessary from my list of what I had tried.  (i.e. Don't tell me to check to see if I have my Ethernet cable plugged into my laptop.  If I can ping the device, I clearly have a network connection!)

Of course, like many problems, once you know the solution, it is trivial to repeat the solution.  However, it took me weeks of part-time troubleshooting to discover the loopback adapter as the root cause.

Another note: If you extract (via 7-zip) the setup.exe for this device, then you can get a prompt to enter the device MAC address if you run ...\utility\wired\setup.exe from the extracted folder.

Update:

After all that work to get the Control Center to see the hub, it could see the devices on the hub, but it still couldn't "connect" to them.  There is nothing in the way of diagnostic messages to provide a clue as to why it can't connect.  The Belkin FAQ suggests a firewall or a VPN problem, but neither is active on my (real or virtual) machine.  I'm throwing it out.  After ~20 hours, the opportunity cost (in MBA terminology) is just too much.  From what I read, for many people, even when they get it connected, it is an unreliable connection.  One less piece of clutter in my home.

This device is not yet "spouse ready."  My tech-savvy kid will use it, but my wife will find it too frustrating.  It is cooler than Tivo, but Tivo has a better user experience.

• The first thing to do is to run the firmware refresh until it says there are no more updates.
• The "xim button" is the button with a pseudo-asterisk on it.
  
• Adding Shortcuts:  You have to navigate to the directory to which you want to create a shortcut (the destination for the shortcut) and then press the xim button.
• My Neuros won't recognize my USB drive!
• Make sure it is formatted as FAT32.  (You may be able to get ext2 to work, and even NTFS to work, but start with FAT32 because this is the most solid.)
• Never, never, never remove your USB drive without un-mounting it first.  The Neuros is almost totally incapable of recovering from this -- even after restarting the Neuros and the drive.
• Un-mount your  USB drive by navigating to "Play|Browse", pressing xim, and selecting Eject.
  
• If you yanked your USB drive without ejecting it, take a USB drive (could be a USB flash drive) that the Neuros has never seen before (or one you are POSITIVE has been correctly ejected), and insert it into the Neuros USB port.  After the new drive has been mounted, properly dismount it, and then your original USB drive should be usable again.
  
• If you want to put software on the Neuros, and your USB drive won't work, put it on an SD memory card (using your PC) and use sneakernet to transfer the file to your Neuros;  or use the ftpget command on your Neuros.
  
• Definitely helpful links at http://wiki.neurostechnology.com/index.php/Neuros_OSD
• Somewhat helpful links at http://forums.neurostechnology.com/index.php?topic=8386.0
• Good networking help at http://wiki.neurostechnology.com/index.php/OSD_Mount_network_shares (except something is wrong with the network.ini specification)
  
• ???? Delete the "shortcuts" or the "network" menu item and go directly to the ONE network place I always store video:  How?
• If you run mount.cifs, it will issue an "could not update mount table" error message.  Ignore it.  It is just complaining because the mount table is on a read-only file system.
  
• To dismount, use "umount <mountpoint>" and not "umount.cifs"
  
• The root password (for telnet) is "pablod"
• The Neuros automatically tries to connect to a network share as "guest" without a password.  Life is easier if your network share is accessible this way too. 
• Install Lpkg - http://matthewwild.co.uk/projects/lpkg/osd  (so you can install packages)
  
• Install Wooble, so you can manager your OSD via http - http://matthewwild.co.uk/projects/wooble/installing
  
• Install samba server from http://matthewwild.co.uk/projects/lpkg/packages
  
• Here's info on the startup process and custom startup scripts: http://forums.neurostechnology.com/index.php?topic=7918.msg41973#msg41973
• The short answer is /mnt/OSD/rc.user
  
• MAYBE upgrade dropbear at http://forums.neurostechnology.com/index.php?topic=9251.0
• Arizona firmware does support ext3 (http://forums.neurostechnology.com/index.php?topic=9304.0) 
• PC (Windows) program to convert videos for use on the Neuros http://open.neurostechnology.com/content/winff-neuros
  
• 
  

Adapted From: http://www.windowsnetworking.com/kbase/WindowsTips/WindowsXP/AdminTips/Network/UsingXPasarouter.html on September 12, 2008.  (Saved here because web pages have a nasty habit of vanishing.)

Add a router to your network with Windows XP Professional:

Install an additional network card in the box and then configure the registry setting below it it is able to route IP packets from one interface to another.

Regedit:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters

set IPEnableRouter = 1

Reboot to start routing. You may also need to disable Windows Firewall on the machine.

Note: I don't think this will solve your VirtualBox access to the network.  It is easy to tell the VBOX VM to send packets to the outside world via the router, but if your VM subnet is on its own network, someone is going to have to tell the real, outside router that it can send data to your subnet via your XP router.  You can do this at home, but the corporate IT folks aren't going to do this for you.

The VMWare Player BIOS prompt is way too short to allow you to hit Control-G to send input to the VM, and F8 before Windows starts (or to send F2 before the OS boots).

With the latest edition of VMWare Fusion, there is a .VMX setting that will force the BIOS to start (bios.forceSetupOnce = "TRUE").  This will probably show up in the PC/Linux edition eventually, but here's a work-around that I've found.

First, edit your VMX and tell it that your boot drive is NOT present (something like scsi0:0.present = "FALSE").

Then boot your VM.  It will fail, and tell you to press Control-alt-delete.

Put your keyboard focus in the VM, and press Control-alt-del, and then start banging on F2.

Once it boots and goes to the BIOS, tell it that it should first attempt to boot from the NIC.  This will give you time for Control-G, followed by visually confirming that focus has been set to the VM, followed by F8, before Windows starts.

Finally, edit your VMX and tell it your boot drive is again present.

 

Open a command prompt

set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1

devmgmt.msc

View/Show Hidden Devices

This shows much more than just View/Show Hidden Devices does, without setting the environment variable.

 

ATTENTION: This is what I did on MY computer.  You'll probably want to change this for use on YOUR computer.

Using VMWare Player (version ?) and VirtualBox (version 2.0)

Note: Items marked with "+" are items I did in advance, so I don't have to do them on each conversion attempt.

From Original VMWARE GUEST:

• +Right-click My Computer, select Properties, Advanced tab, select Settings in Startup and Recovery, and give yourself at least 5-10 seconds for "Time to display list of operating systems."
• Shut down the guest VM -- do not suspend it.  Shut it down.

From host:

• Copy your whole VM to another directory

From Copied VMWare Guest in Safe Mode:

• Boot the copied VM Guest in safe mode.  (See http://www.kleinfelter.com/node/138 for a tip on how to boot in safe mode despite VMWare's too-brief BIOS start-up.)
• Reduce your disk drives in use to 3. (VBOX will reserve one of your 4 IDE devices for CD/DVD.)

Note: All of the non-"+" below are in this handy script - VMware-to-VBox-Script-1.

• Right-click My Computer and rename it.  Otherwise you'll get a duplicate name error from the network.
• +Run MergeIDE.reg from http://www.virtualbox.org/attachment/wiki/Migrate_Windows/MergeIDE.zip
• +Search C:\Windows\system32 for hal*.*
  • if you have only hal.dll (and not halacpi.dll or halaacpi.dll), you're good to go. 
  • Otherwise, see http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Migrate_Windows.
    • Short form is to enable IO APIC in Vbox if and only if you have halaacpi.dll.
    • I have hal.dll, so I'm good to go without IO APIC
• Delete (or rename to xxxxx.hideme) from the copied VM (if they exist):
  • C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\agp440.sys
  • C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\intelppm.sys
  • C:\Windows\System32\drivers\processr.sys

From Copied VMWare Guest in Normal Mode:

• Note: All of the non-"+" below are in this handy script - VMware-to-VBox-Script-2.

  Restart the guest VM in normal mode.  I recommend holding down shift-key to prevent your Startup folder from running.
  • Uninstall VMWare Tools
  • Delete C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Tools
  • Regedit: Confirm deleted HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\Vmware Tools
  • Regedit: Confirm deleted HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\Vmware User Process
  • Regedit: Delete HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Eventlog\System\intelppm
  • Regedit: Delete HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\intelppm
  • Regedit: Set Start to 4 in HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Processor (if it exists)
  • +Make sure you have no SMS Mouse driver (you'll need to be proficient with the KEYBOARD Windows interface):
    • Open a command prompt
    • set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
    • devmgmt.msc
    • View/Show Hidden Devices
    • Inside "Mice and other pointing devices" delete "SMS Virtual Mouse" if it exists.
    • While you're there, delete other mice that you don't have.
    • While you're there, delete the NIC devices that you don't have (particularly the VMWare ones)
• Shut down the guest VM -- do not suspend it.  Shut it down.

From the VirtualBox GUI

• Select File/Virtual Disk Manager
  • Add the drives from your VM *copy*
• Select Machine/New
  • Give it a name (I used VBOX-VM-XP-1)
  • Set Memory to 1024 MB
  • Choose your boot disk
• Click the Settings tool-button
  • Add your disks beyond the boot disk.
  • Enable sound (Windows DirectSound + ICH AC97)
  • Add shared folders for C:\ and E:\ and F:\
  • Add a NAT NIC
    • Note: I recommend the Intel Pro 1000 T Server NIC.  You'll have to download the driver from Intel, but otherwise you may find that VBOX NIC drivers conflict with left-over bits of VMWARE drivers.  Otherwise, the AMD NIC keeps getting recognized by the VMWARE drivers and not the VBOX drivers.
    • Note2: I tried Host Interface Networking.  I could get the host to ping the guest successfully, but the guest could not ping the host.  DHCP worked, assigning an address (and the router confirmed that IT set the address.) Firewall was disabled on both, and Host Interface Networking was the only VBOX NCI.  I gave up, and just went with NAT NIC.  

Start your Vbox-VM:

• It will want to install some drivers.  Let it try.  It may fail.  Oh well.
  • Select Device/Install-Guest-Extensions from the VM menu bar.  
    •  If auto-install doesn't happen, start the install and complete it.
    • Let it reboot

Note:

I have been totally unable to get "Host Interface" networking to work. 

I created the interface, and I bridged it to a real interface, and I assigned an IP to the bridge and it didn't work.

I created the interface, and I assigned it 192.168.99.1 and I assigned 192.168.99.2 to the client's NIC and it didn't work.

I tried bridging it to a real NIC and I also (separately) tried bridging it to the Loopback adapter and I got nowhere.

I get too-frequent blue screens with VBox Shared Folders, so I needed to be able to map a host drive in the client.  I can't just use the host's real IP address (e.g. \\10.20.2.42\c-drive) because I use the host at multiple sites and it gets a different IP address at each.  Ultimately, I bound the Host's Loopback adapter to 192.168.99.99, and in the guest I mapped to \\192.168.99.99\c-drive, and I used only a single NAT virtual NIC.

Helpful web pages:

• http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2005/10/24/484461.aspx
• http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Migrate_Windows

I like to use a VM with its NIC bridged to a real NIC.  Sometimes I work at a client site where there's a Windows domain policy that blocks this.  Here's the work-around:

1. Disconnect from the network.
2. Regedit
1. Search for NC_AllowNetBridge_NLA
2. Set each instance of NC_AllowNetBridge_NLA = 1
3. If Network Connections is open, close it.
4. Open Network Connections
1. Select the two connections to bridge, and click Advanced/Bridge-Connections

If there is a domain policy in effect, a few minutes after you reconnect to  the domain, your policy change will be un-done.  However, the policy only prevents the CREATION of new bridges -- it does not disable bridges that are in existence.

Once in a while, I'll search my web site / blog and the search will fail, even though I know the term exists in a page.  Here's some information on Drupal page indexing.

1. You get your pages indexed whenever someone fetches http://yoursite/cron.php.  If nobody fetches cron.php, your site never updates its index.
2. Normally, you'll use wget to fetch cron.php from your crontab.  Doesn't matter whose crontab, or even what machine the cron is executed from, so long as you fetch http://yoursite/cron.php
3. On http://yoursite/admin/settings/search you have the ability to throttle how many of your pages get indexed each time cron.php is fetched.  You also have a button that claims to rebuild your index.  The button doesn't.  It just purges your index.  If you have 100 pages, and you index 20 pages on each fetch of cron.php, after you press the button, you have to wait through 10 fetches of cron.php before all 100 pages are indexed.

So, if you're getting misses in your searches:

1. Visit http://yoursite/admin/settings/search and see how many pages are not yet indexed.
2. If there are un-indexed pages, fetch http://yoursite/cron.php via your web browser, and re-load http://yoursite/admin/settings/search to see if you now have 0 un-indexed pages.
3. Check your crontab to see if you're fetching the proper http://yoursite/cron.php successfully.

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base_foo = foo;

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