Sep 29

MP3 Voyeur is a local area network MP3 search tool that crawls local networks for shared MP3 files. It gets tons of files by diving into shared folders that you didn’t even know were shared on the network. Nokia has taken the cell phone to new levels. Not only can it play MP3’s, make phone calls, but now you can play games at the next level. No more dot matrix graphics. Enter N-Gage.

Sep 18

Video Cards: When it comes to gaming graphics cards its only comes down to ATI and Nvidia. Benchmarks produced by the companys compare charts that really ignore what the end user is concerned about. Personally if you want factors to help you decide, read the message boards.

Sep 18

The Recovery Console, which has a DOS-like interface, is a flexible tool that lets you access and save data when your system won’t boot. Using the Recovery Console, you can copy and delete files on FAT32 and NTFS partitions or even access the CD-ROM drive.

There are three main ways to load the Recovery Console. You can install it on your hard drive and access it when booting your system, you can launch it from the Windows XP start-up disks, or you can use the Windows XP CD.

To install the Recovery Console on your system, put your Windows XP installation CD in your CD drive, click on Start | Run, and type d:\ i386\winnt32.exe/cmdcons, where d is your CD-ROM drive letter. Press OK and you will be asked whether you want to install the Recovery Console. Click on Yes. Once this application is installed, it will add Microsoft Windows Recovery Console as an option on the boot menu.

To start the Recovery Console using the Windows XP CD, boot your system from the CD (be sure your BIOS is set to boot from CD-ROM before the hard drive). Once you’re past the welcome screen, press R and the Recovery Console will start.

Inside the Recovery Console you can obtain a list of possible commands by typing recovery console commands or help at the command prompt and pressing Enter. For more information about a specific command, type help commandname. From here, you can copy important data off your hard drive or, if you are a more advanced user, troubleshoot and replace corrupt files that are preventing your system from booting properly.

Sep 16

Create Start-Up Disks A computer with no operating system installed will usually boot from the Windows XP CD. For that rare system that won’t, Microsoft offers downloadable programs to create the necessary set of bootable floppy disks. Navigate to http://support.microsoft.com and search for article 310994. Find the download link for your Win XP version and language. The downloaded program will create six setup disks, which can be used to start your system up and begin installing the OS from a CD in a nonbootable drive.

If something goes wrong with the boot drive, you may be able to recover the system using a bootable floppy disk. Don’t just format a disk with the box Create an MS-DOS Startup disk checked; you want to boot Windows XP, not MS-DOS. Start by formatting the disk without checking that box. Then copy the three files Boot.ini, Ntdetect.com, and Ntldr from the root directory of the boot drive (C:\) to the floppy disk. Boot the computer from this disk and verify that Windows XP starts (this may require that you change BIOS settings to boot from a floppy disk). Label the disk clearly and store it in a safe place.

If you ever forget your password, a password reset floppy disk can save the day. This isn’t the same as writing down your password and storing it in a safe. The password reset disk lets you reset your password without revealing what the previous password was. The precise technique for creating and using a password reset disk varies by account type and log-on type. Search on password reset disk in the Help and Support applet for details specific to your situation.

Sep 09

Video Cards: When it comes to gaming graphics cards its only comes down to ATI and Nvidia. Benchmarks produced by the companys compare charts that really ignore what the end user is concerned about. Personally if you want factors to help you decide, read the message boards.

Sep 05

Virii: More about the Blaster virus and who created it. Did you know it was a kid? Could this virus have been the cause to the east coast black out?

Aug 24

Can you show me how to create a shortcut to open more than one Web site simultaneously?

In order to have all three sites appear, you need to change a setting in IE. Select Internet Options from the Tools menu, click the Advanced tab, and uncheck the box titled Reuse windows for launching shortcuts. As for using the JavaScript trick from the previous tip, you definitely can do so as long as the URLs you want to open don’t make the batch file lines longer than the command processor accepts. The following batch file launches your three URLs in such a way that each takes about one vertical third of a 1,024-by-768 screen, with a bit left over at the bottom for the taskbar:

start iexplore.exe javascript: resizeTo(1024,240);moveTo(0,0); document.location.href=”http://yahoo.com”

start iexplore.exe javascript: resizeTo(1024,240);moveTo(0,240); document.location.href=”http://www .google.com”

start iexplore.exe javascript: resizeTo(1024,240);moveTo(0,480); document.location.href=”http:// weather.com”

These three batch file lines wrap dreadfully when formatted for publication, so keep in mind that each begins with start and ends with a URL in quotes.

We discovered an odd problem with this technique on an older Windows 98 system, however. Every time the batch file sent the three commands in rapid succession, IE’s Content Advisor kicked in, even though it was clearly turned off. To solve this problem, we introduced a delay of a few seconds between the commands using an old batch file trick: The CHOICE command presents an optional prompt and waits for the user to press one of a specified set of keys. It can optionally return a default value after a specified time-out. To get a batch file delay of 5 seconds, insert a line like CHOICE /c:x /t:x,5 between each line that launches a URL. With this addition, the Content Advisor problem disappeared.

Aug 15

More detailed information of the virus that probably infected your machine. AkA:Blast.worm

Aug 13

Force a crash. You can force Windows 2000 and XP to display the blue screen of death. In the Registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\ CurrentControlSet\Services\i8042prt\Parameters, find or create a DWORD value named CrashOnCtrlScroll. Double-click on the value and set its data to 1. Restart your computer. Now you can cause a crash by holding the right-hand Ctrl key and pressing the Scroll Lock key twice.

Aug 12

Test the speed of your internet connection. Or you can use this one. For those that use SUN machines here is a great resource page.