#homestead #surface pro 3

Introduction

I recently picked up the Surface Pro 3, as it seemed like the perfect travel companion. I purchased the i5 250GB 8GB model, and felt like it would be enough to do everything I need on the go. Added benefit would be it's ability to use Mirracast which I envisioned being very nice for doing presentations.

I also needed this device to be able to keep up with all of my development projects. Out of the gate, all my tools that I'm use to using in OSX work on Windows as well. GitHub client, PHPStorm, VirtualBox, and I would be able to make due with the Power Shell enough to get Homestead up and running with Vagrant.

For actually connecting to my servers, I found that Bitvise SSH client is actually the perfect tool. It allows me to save all my connection information including .pem key files from AWS. It opens a terminal, and it opens an SFTP client. Which i've found to be very handy not having to manage multiple applications for one server connection.

The Problem

So this all sounds fantastic so far right? Where's the but? There's always a but. And the "but" here is that when you install virtual box, which is required for me to do my development work, it messes with the network stack, and that's not really a problem, except Mirracast won't work.

Well I found if I uninstalled VirtualBox it worked just fine. I also attempted going into device manager and disabling the network adapter that VirtualBox installs, that didn't seem to solve the problem either. Well, it appeared that I was going to have to keep uninstalling and reinstalling VirtualBox every time I wanted to use my Surface Pro for presentations, and make use of MirraCast.

Solution

However there is hope! If you, like me, only use Homestead/VirtualBox for development purposes, once you get homestead all setup you can do the following to have both working:

  1. Swipe in from the right side of your screen
  • Select Settings
  • Select Control Panel
  • Open Network and Sharing Center
  • On the left hand side, click Change adapter settings
  • Select your Wi-fi connection
  • Along the top menu select Change settings of this connection
  • In the list of "this connections uses the following items" uncheck the VirtualBox Bridged Network Driver
  • Click ok

Now when you swipe in from the right and select devices and select Project your surface will properly show the Add a wireless display, and look for other devices.

Your Homestead should still be able to connect to the internet. Ping works, composer works, and the API's one of my project is consuming still works just fine. If you do experience any issues with this, you can simply follow the instructions above, except instead of unchecking the VirtualBox Bridge, check it and click Ok. You'll loose MirraCast support again, however your configuration should be back to default.