Errors

Apparently the NMBS/SNCB website now makes a difference between “Brussels-Midi” and “Brussels-Midi Eurostar”; same station, different track.

Due to this change, iRail was no longer able to provide any scheduling information which included Brussels-Midi.

I’ve made a quick and dirty work around (by including “+ Eurostar” in the drop down menu), solving this bug.

However, please, NMBS/SNCB, please please please provide an API or report such changes to web developers.

As it is now, if you manually fill in Brussels-Midi and do not add the Eurostar text, the iRail website will not be able to to look up the requested information.

There’s a great GUI out for OpenVPN & Windows, located here.

However, this GUI includes an old OpenVPN, that is no longer compatible with Windows 7 and Windows Vista.

The TUN/TAP driver will be blocked due to compatibility issues, and when trying to connect to a VPN, you’ll get an error along the lines of:

All TAP-Win32 adapters on this system are currently in use

The simplest fix, is to install the GUI package (including the old OpenVPN binaries), and reinstall OpenVPN afterwards.

To disable it, as administrator, open cmd.exe (win button + R -> cmd -> [enter]), and copy paste the following 2 lines:

bcdedit.exe -set loadoptions DDISABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECKS bcdedit.exe -set TESTSIGNING ON

Reboot, enjoy. No more annoying messages. :)

Took me a while to notice, but iRail.be was displaying the wrong year by default (2011 instead of 2010) and the NMBS website doesn’t have the 2011 time tables yet. Resulting in errors.

Anyway, fixed!

And the smart playlist syncing issue.

Syncing smart playlists, with “live updating” checked, bugged the playlists on the iPhone (there were songs in the playlist that didn’t belong there). Hoping this bug would be fixed ASAP I tried to ignore it as long as possible… However, it so far hasn’t been fixed.

As I was pretty fed up with unchecking “live updating” for 6 playlists eachtime I synced my iPhone, I tried to play around and find a fix.

After getting the Hamachi 2 update (without a prior notice, nicely done… No more auto update if they continue to break stuff) I started to notice a bunch of XPs receiving this error after a reboot: Failed to connect to the engine.

Hamachi is auto started, at boot, because we have a shortcut in the startup folder. No other way to auto start the free version (as far as I know).

If you’re having troubles using HP ProtectTools and Windows 7, you’ll probably using an outdated version of ProtectTools. Eventhough HP tells you this is the latest version for your notebook.

A simple fix, is to download the latest version, which is model independent.

Be sure to completely uninstall the previous version, reboot, and reinstall the latest version. I can now successfully login using the biometric fingerprint device.

This is usually an error due to incorrect rights on certain files on your system.

In my case, Windows 2008, as domain controller, I was added to the “Domain Guests” group.

Make sure you’re not member of that group, and reboot. This should fix the problem.

Today, I received an e-mail informing iRail was broken, and not showing any information.

The issue has been solved and the site is working again as it should be.

I have no idea for how long the website has been broken, as currently I’m not using any trains to reach my destinations. ;)

Don’t forget to e-mail me if you come across bugs. Much appreciated.

As I usually use my SIM card in my iPhone, I booted my PC, plugged in the Vodafone USB Mobile Connect modem (HAUWEI 220 or something). I then inserted, with the USB device plugged in, my SIM card, and booted up the Mac (and later on Windows) Vodafone application, to connect my PC to the Proximus 3G network.

This resulted in a constant error; “The pin code was not accepted by the mobile device”.