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  • How can I troubleshoot Virtualbox port forwarding from Windows guest to OSX host not working?

    - by joe larson
    There are a plethora of questions about virtual box port forwarding problems but none with my specific details. I have a Windows install living in Virtual Box, hosted within OSX. I've got several webservers running on localhost on different ports within the Windows install. I cannot for the life of me get port forwarding to work so I can access those webservers from OSX. My settings look like this (yes I have a NAT adapter): And in my vbox configuration file the relavent portion looks like this: <NAT> <DNS pass-domain="true" use-proxy="false" use-host-resolver="false"/> <Alias logging="false" proxy-only="false" use-same-ports="false"/> <Forwarding name="RLPWeb" proto="1" hostport="7084" guestip="127.0.0.1" guestport="7084"/> <Forwarding name="UtilWeb" proto="1" hostport="4040" guestip="127.0.0.1" guestport="4040"/> <Forwarding name="WCARLP" proto="1" hostport="8084" guestip="127.0.0.1" guestport="8084"/> <Forwarding name="WCAUtil" proto="1" hostport="4848" guestip="127.0.0.1" guestport="4848"/> </NAT> I've turned off the Windows firewall to ensure it is not interfering, and I am not running a firewall on OSX. Anyway, when I attempt to go to for example http://127.0.0.1:4040/ on any of my OSX browsers, it will eventually time out. The log file for this VM shows that it is correctly reading the settings and implying it's doing the right thing here: 00:00:08.286 NAT: set redirect TCP host port 4848 => guest port 4848 @ 127.0.0.1 00:00:08.286 NAT: set redirect TCP host port 8084 => guest port 8084 @ 127.0.0.1 00:00:08.286 NAT: set redirect TCP host port 4040 => guest port 4040 @ 127.0.0.1 00:00:08.286 NAT: set redirect TCP host port 7084 => guest port 7084 @ 127.0.0.1 00:00:08.290 Changing the VM state from 'LOADING' to 'SUSPENDED'. 00:00:08.290 Changing the VM state from 'SUSPENDED' to 'RESUMING'. 00:00:08.290 Changing the VM state from 'RESUMING' to 'RUNNING'. 00:00:08.337 Display::handleDisplayResize(): uScreenId = 0, pvVRAM=000000012017d000 w=1834 h=929 bpp=32 cbLine=0x1CA8, flags=0x1 00:00:09.139 AIOMgr: Host limits number of active IO requests to 16. Expect a performance impact. 00:00:13.454 NAT: DHCP offered IP address 10.0.2.15 I've tried setting the Host IP to 127.0.0.1, and I've tried setting Guest IP blank and also 10.0.2.15. None of these seem to help. What else can I look at to troubleshoot this issue? Details of setup: OSX 10.6.8 Windows 7 Professional 64bit VirtualBox 4.1.2

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  • Help debugging Sendmail/Mailman configuration issue

    - by inxilpro
    Hi folks, I'm trying to configure a server with Sendmail and Mailman. I've been getting "Broken pipe" errors for a while, and have slowly been debugging. I fixed some permission issues, and changed the user that Mailman expects to be called from, among other things. Finally, I'd gone through everything I could think of, so I added a new test to see if it's the Mailman script or Sendmail that's causing the problem. Here's the error I'm getting now (stripped of timestamps and identifying information): <-- MAIL FROM:[email protected] Authentication-Warning: xxxxx.org: xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.net [xx.xx.xxx.xxx] didn't use HELO protocol --- 250 2.1.0 [email protected]... Sender ok <-- RCPT TO: [email protected] --- 250 2.1.5 [email protected]... Recipient ok <-- DATA --- 354 Enter mail, end with "." on a line by itself [email protected], size=20, class=0, nrcpts=1, msgid=<[email protected]>, proto=SMTP, relay=xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.net [xx.xx.xxx.xxx] --- 250 2.0.0 o6KMg2xZ025804 Message accepted for delivery alias [email protected] => "|/bin/echo foo" SYSERR(root): putbody: write error: Broken pipe 0: fl=0x0, mode=20660: CHR: dev=0/15, ino=776, nlink=1, u/gid=0/0, size=0 1: fl=0x1, mode=20660: CHR: dev=0/15, ino=776, nlink=1, u/gid=0/0, size=0 2: fl=0x1, mode=20660: CHR: dev=0/15, ino=776, nlink=1, u/gid=0/0, size=0 3: fl=0x2, mode=140777: SOCK localhost->[[UNIX: /dev/log]] 5: fl=0x0, mode=100600: dev=8/3, ino=486765, nlink=1, u/gid=0/51, size=5 6: fl=0x8000, mode=100640: dev=8/3, ino=65501, nlink=1, u/gid=0/0, size=12288 7: fl=0x8000, mode=100640: dev=8/3, ino=65501, nlink=1, u/gid=0/0, size=12288 8: fl=0x8000, mode=100640: dev=8/3, ino=65510, nlink=1, u/gid=0/0, size=12288 9: fl=0x8000, mode=100640: dev=8/3, ino=65510, nlink=1, u/gid=0/0, size=12288 10: fl=0x8000, mode=100640: dev=8/3, ino=64814, nlink=1, u/gid=0/51, size=12288 11: fl=0x8000, mode=100640: dev=8/3, ino=64814, nlink=1, u/gid=0/51, size=12288 12: fl=0x1, mode=100600: dev=8/3, ino=486767, nlink=1, u/gid=0/51, size=754 13: fl=0x1, mode=10600: FIFO: dev=0/5, ino=7649785, nlink=1, u/gid=0/51, size=0 14: fl=0x0, mode=10600: FIFO: dev=0/5, ino=7649786, nlink=1, u/gid=0/51, size=0 MCI@0x0: NULL MCI@0x0: NULL to="|/bin/echo foo", [email protected] (8/0), delay=00:00:08, xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=prog, pri=30476, dsn=5.0.0, stat=Service unavailable o6KMsnxX025948: DSN: Service unavailable done; delay=00:00:08, ntries=1 The alias in /etc/aliases is: cmtest: "|/bin/echo foo" As you can see, even when trying to pipe to /bin/echo I still get the same error. But I can't for the life of me figure out what else to check. Normal aliases work fine. Any ideas? Thanks!

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  • How is DNS used by individual processes?

    - by atroon
    When resolving FQDNs or machine names to IP addresses on my local network (mycompany.internal) I can use dig on the command line (linux/mac) or nslookup (windows) to query the configured server and get a response. But trying to enter the FQDN or even just the machine name in a ping command or in a web browser results in 'Unknown Host' or DNS errors. Here's a sample, this one from the Mac: mac:~ atroon$ dig server.mycompany.internal ; <<>> DiG 9.6.0-APPLE-P2 <<>> server.mycompany.internal ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 5219 ;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;server.mycompany.internal. IN A ;; ANSWER SECTION: server.mycompany.internal. 1200 IN A 172.16.254.36 ;; Query time: 0 msec ;; SERVER: 172.16.254.8#53(172.16.254.8) ;; WHEN: Wed Dec 16 11:39:15 2009 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 55 mac:~ atroon$ ping server.mycompany.internal<br> ping: cannot resolve server.mycompany.internal: Unknown host I cannot for the life of me figure this one out. The DNS server is a SBS 2003 box which handles AD, some file/print, etc for a small company network. This issue happens to me about three times a week, and when I'm connected to the local network directly, the same switch as the server even. I can make any connection I want with IP addresses, I just can't make DNS work. Additionally, at the same time I'm experiencing this, other users are fine, which makes me think it's a problem on my Mac. But what sort of problem? How can dig send a query and get a reply, and ping say 'unknown host'? I'm posting here vs. serverfault because I think this is a local problem not a server problem...but if anyone can point me at the server, I guess we'll head down the street a domain or two.

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  • Seriousness of a "Smart" disk error. How long will it last?

    - by Workshop Alex
    I have an 1 TB data disk and the bios and Windows are reporting a "Smart" error. At least, I get a Smart event but it doesn't indicate how serious the failure could be. My system is about 6 months old, including the disk so the warranty will cover the damage. Unfortunately, I lack a second disk of 1 TB in size which I can use to make a full backup. The most important data on this disk is safe, but there's a lot of work data which can be regenerated but this would cost a lot of time. So I ordered an USB disk of 1 TB which will arrive in three days. By then I can make a full backup of the data and afterwards, it can crash. But will the disk live that long? (Well, I won't use the PC as long as I can't make a backup.) How serious is such a Smart event? I know it's serious enough to have it replaced, but will it live for another week or could it die any moment?Update: I purchased an 1 TB external disk and spent most of the day making a backup of the 1 TB disk. It survived that. I then received a new disk, since it was still under warranty and replaced the hard disk. Then I had to spend most of a day again to put back the backup. I need to send back the faulty disk and now have an additional external disk, which could always be practical. :-) The Smart Error report did not cause any failures on the original disk. I won't advise to ignore these warnings, but the disk still has enough life in it to last a few more days. (Just make sure you have a good back-up.) And oh, the horror of having to make a complete backup such a huge disk. :-) If your data is important, make sure you have something that supports incremental backups and lots of space. (In my case, the data wasn't very important, just practical to have on-disk together.)

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  • File copying software to do this kind of work... in Windows 7 32 bit

    - by Senthil
    I need a software (Windows 7 32bit) to help me in this process: I have my documents, music, video clips, movies, pictures in my hard disk. These will not be scattered around the system. But will be inside C:\Senthil\ At the end of every week, I want to plug in an external hard disk and run a software that should make sure whatever is inside C:\Senthil\ is also present in the external disk. Files deleted from C:\Senthil\ should be deleted there, and new files should be copied etc... at the end of the process, every bit inside the source folder in my internal disk should be inside my external disk. A couple of important requirements and points: I do NOT need multiple versions or historic versions. I don't need the previous versions of my files. I only want the latest copy to be present in my "backup". Incremental backup makes sense. If files were not touched since the last backup, it need not copy. The size of my folder will run into GBs and in a year or two will go into TBs. But I will make sure the size of the external HDD is equal to or bigger than my source folder. I do not want it to run automatically because when I accidentally delete a file in my source, it will delete the one in the backup (I know this is why we have versioning facilities). I just want to be able to run it manually so that I am in control of when the backup is made and what is backed up and I should be able to pick something from the backup and restore it to the source folder in the above situation. Is there any software that will let me do exactly this? I don't want any other "smart" facility of the software to interfere with this process. I know what I want and the software can keep its smartness to itself :D The main reason I am asking this question is, I am a software developer and I can write this software myself. But I am a little constrained by time at the moment and I want to know if there is an existing program that can do this. Kindly don't worry about earthquakes or fire or snowstorms and bring up the "in case of a natural disaster your backup will also be in the damage zone and will be lost" argument because: I will have bigger things to worry about than my holiday memories. I don't think I will digitally store any life-ruining documents. This backup is only to avoid the inconvenience of obtaining a new copy of stuff that I have. Not to protect them against the end of the world. I am more worried about power surges in my area frying my system, hard disk failure, children who merrily hit Delete or teens who hit Shift + Delete or myself getting a little careless at times! In short: Is there a file/folder syncing software that listens to what I say and doesn't try to act smart? Please forgive me if I sound arrogant :)

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  • Seeking past end of file causes Apache hang, and it never restarts.

    - by talkingnews
    I've actually solved my problem with a better script, but I'm still left wondering why Apache2 hung completely - this is an out-of-the-box ISPCONFIG 3.03 install, everything bang up to date, running perfectly. Until... The troublesome but innocent-looking script: $fp = fopen("/var/log/ispconfig/cron.log", "r"); fseek($fp, -5000, SEEK_END); $line_buffer = array(); while (!feof($fp)) { $line = fgets($fp, 1024); $line_buffer[] = $line; $line_buffer = array_slice($line_buffer, -10, 10); } foreach ($line_buffer as $line) { echo $line; } You get the idea, just a script I found on a forum somwehere. I did this for various logs, since it's a nice easy window on what's occurring (in a protect dir, of course!). One day, the logs having grown large an me having sorted all my cron, scripting and mail queue errors, I thought I was time to start afresh. updated, rebooted, archived and deleted the logs. When I ran my script a couple of hours later, it hung. And hung. 8 minutes I waited. Chrome timed the page out, of course, but the server never came back to life. htop showed /usr/sbin/apache2 -k restart using 100% CPU. Never came back until I did a service apache2 restart. Ran fine, as soon as I hit that logfile again...dead. So, I worked out it was the logfile script, and I worked out that seeking beyond the end of the file wasn't good, and I found a better script http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.fseek.php#90450 But what I'm left wondering is... why didn't something restart or kill the process? How was one hanging page able to bring down the whole server? It's running suphp. I say "out of the box", I've tweaked mysql and apache to fork and reserve sensible amounts of processes for the 512Mb RAM the VPS has, and it'll handle multiple refreshes of large pages, and hadn't hung before. Any ideas how I'd avoid this? Google isn't my friend in this instance beyond the reccs. above about number of processes vs RAM available.

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  • Problem with several USB devices on Windows XP. How to diagnose USB device?

    - by Lukasz Baran
    Hello All, Recently I've bought some electronic devices (like e.g. Sony Ebook reader PRS-600 or HP PDA IPaq) which are connected to PC using USB ports. These devices have own batteries and they are recharged using USB. However, I am experiencing a problem with Ebook Reader and the similiar thing happens with my PDA (but in this case it's more rare). Sometimes, I am unable to make it start recharging, when it's connected to USB port. The LCD diode on my Reader lights up and the icon in the system tray appears. They both indicate that the device has been connected. However, the device should start recharching and it should appear on Windows XP as a 'explorable' device (just like pendrive it offers some HDDs). None of these happens:( This problem appears on two PCs - desktop and laptop. Both have Windows XP SP3 installed. And what's interesting and surprising to me is the fact that these devices sometimes work without any problems. I mean, I just plug them in and they work properly. Besides that, there are some computers (I have tested a variety of possible conditions) on which the problem does not appear! I am confused and, on the other hand, determined to find out what is the real cause of such strange behavior. Maybe I'm wrong but I always assumed that I'm using deterministic machines, but the described situation makes me feel like I was dreaming:) And that's why I'm asking you here. Are there any tools that could help me diagnose USB ports? Or maybe anyone knows the solution? I have a lot experience with low level programming (mostly from the times of MS-DOS applications), but I'm not an expert when it comes to WinXP technology. If this was a problem with network connection, I would know what to do - I know how to track network traffic, but with USB ports I feel powerless. I have a feeling that the problem may lie in a way WinXP handles USB devices. Personally, I hate auto-discovery and P'n'P features available in Windows. I know that some of may suggest to move to Linux or other *Nix system. Unfortunately, I have to use WinXP in my professional life, so it's rather impossible. Besides that, I don't consider XP as a total disaster. Any help from you will be appreciated!

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  • Vista stuck at "Shutting down..." screen. Any way to get verbose logging?

    - by CapBBeard
    Hi all, My home machine has been running fine for about 3 years, no problems at all. Within the last couple of weeks it's had real trouble trying to shut down. It'll get so far and then just sit there at the "Shutting down..." screen for hours. I've left it overnight, I've tried in safe mode, all to no avail. These days, I just wait for the disk activity to finish up and then hold the power button to turn it off. Feels dirty as, especially because there's a RAID involved! The hardware itself is in pretty good shape and of decent spec; Core 2 Quad, 4GB RAM, 1TB RAID 1+0, so it's not quite like a 7 year old PC coming to end of life! In the last month, hardware hasn't changed except for a new monitor. Admittedly I haven't tried unplugging the monitor but I've never heard of that preventing a shutdown. I might give it a whirl later I guess, as a last resort. I've uninstalled old apps, done updates, checked the event log, looked in device manager, uninstalled all non-present devices, disabled various non-critical devices (imaging, audio etc), unplugged peripherals, stopped non-essential services, unplugged the network, disabled the network adapter entirely, ran chkdsk, verified my RAID, the list goes on. But not a single lead. I'm pretty stumped. It could be hardware, but I have no other evidence to suggest so; when the PC is running, it runs fine. Temperatures are good, gaming is smooth as always, disk performance is fine. Event log even makes it look like the shutdown was completed (gets to the point where the event log service stops). In fact, the PC doesn't appear to realise that I cut the power to it. So my question is, does anyone know if there is a way I can get some verbose output (or a log) from shutdown to give me some idea of what is causing the issue? I'm guessing it's stuck unloading some app/driver but it would be good to get some specifics! Unless anyone has any other ideas? I suspect a reinstall would resolve the issue, however I'm looking to get a new PC built in the next month or so, and the reinstall is going to be quite a big job so I'd rather just wait until then if it comes to that. Would still be nice to get this sorted in the mean time though. Cheers!

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  • How to encrypt dual boot windows 7 and xp (bitlocker, truecrypt combo?) on sdd (recommended?)

    - by therobyouknow
    I would like to setup a dual boot Windows 7 and Windows XP laptop/notebook computer where each operation system's partition is fully encrypted. I would like to do this on a SSD - a 128Gb Crucial M4. My research Dual boot of truecrypt encrypted OSs on one drive (not possible - in Truecript 7.x at time of writing) This cannot be done on a standard Truecrypt setup - it will only support encrypting one of the operating systems. I have tried this and also read about it here on superuser.com However, I did see a solution here that uses grub4dos as the initial bootloader to chain to separate truecrypt encrypted OSs, in my case Windows 7 and Windows XP: http://yyzyyz.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/truecrypt-how-to-encrypt-multiple.html I am not going to consider this solution as it relies upon some custom code for use in the bootloader that is provided by the author. I would prefer a solution that can be fully understood so that I can be sure that there is nothing undesirable occuring (i.e. malware or just simply bugs in the code). I would like to believe such a solution doesn't have those risks but I can't be sure. BitLocker and Truecrypt combination - possible solution? So I am now considering a combination of encryption programs: I now aim to encrypt Windows XP with Truecrypt and Windows 7 with BitLocker. Assuming Truecrypt bootloader can boot into non-Truecrypt OSs (e.g. via hitting Escape to go to another menu), then this solution may be viable. SSDs and Encryption (use fastest possible spinning hard disk instead (?)) I read on various superuser.com posts and elsewhere that current SSDs are not suited to whole drive encryption for various reasons: impact of performance algorithms that give SSDs advantage over spinning harddisks. Algorithms used in compression of data for example. Wear on the SSD, shortening its life Security issues whereby data is repeated, as indicated in some Truecrypt documentation So I am now considering not using SSD. But with the aim to have the fastest drive possible, I am considering using the Western Digital Scorpion black 2.5" 7200rpm harddisk as this appears to be top rated among spinning platter-based harddrives (don't work for Western Digital). Summary So to achieve whole drive encrypted dual boot Windows 7 and Windows XP with minimal performance impact I intend to use a combination of Truecrypt and Bitlocker on a top-rated conventional spinning platter-based harddisk. Questions Will my summary: achieve whole disk encryption of the dual-boot Windows XP, Windows 7? OR an you suggest a simpler solution, including one that only requires only Truecrypt (BitLocker not available on XP). Or another encryption tool, including paid-for? provide the highest performance. Am I correct to avoid using SDD with encryption for the reasons I discovered? Are the concerns about SSDs and encryption still very real (some articles I read go back to 2010) Thanks for your input!

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  • Well....a ghost lives in my server...

    - by tsgiannis
    Hello to every body and greetings from Greece I have a rather unusual situation and i am running out of ideas. I have this old server (IBM x205 - P4 2.4Ghz,3xSCSI 36gb) and i was about a year ago i decided to use it as an additional domain controller,fax & file server...for this task i had a Delock 70154 SATA card along with 2x320 SATA II HDDs Everything was going super smoothly until about 3 weeks ago. I was on a trip and i was informermed when i got back that the server was found frozen...well i considered it was a glitch since a simple powerdown power up fixed everything.Again 2 weeks ago another freeze situation....it got suspicious but again power down power up everything was running.... Last again it frozen and when i power it up it came with a message that the Domain services could not start due to NTDS corruption....booting in safe mode revealed that there was an issue with the SATA Raid (degraded). After a lot of searching i degraded the server...cleaned Active Directory and pulled both HDDs out (one of these was really BAD ) and recovered my files (i had some problems with ho Delock handles the redudant HDD). Right now my server is vanilla simple...with only what the factory installed and here is where the fun begins. Everyday when i arrive at the office i find this particular machine dead..and i mean total dead...just a black screen and nothing else...the cpu fan is working ,the psu is working .keyboard and mouse are dead(they also lock my kvm) ...network is dead.... the machine is DEAD. I power it down forcilly ...i power it up and for the 8 hours i am in the office it works,either idling or running some kind of diagnostic...when i leave the office after some time..it maybe half an hour ...it maybe 4 hours the machine dies...at least this is the information the event log shows (" the previous shutdown at xx:xx:xx was unexpected) Well i must admit i am runnig out of ideas.... I have tried Memtest....nothing Passmark burn in test.....nothing Carefull study of the event log.....nothing Set Instead of restart..BSOD....nothing Power sceheme to sleep...all set to never. i know there are a lot of other tools that heavily stress a machine like occt but .... the machine is old...today i will give them a try nevertheless ..... One idea is to reformat it...but ... i really like to find what is causing this because i could get to a situation that everything is working for a while and kaboom...one day again is dying.. I really need a helping hand and every opinion / idea is well welcomed.... iknow the obvious solution is to never leave the office but....i have a life...sory server...:) P.S this situation with the machine dying some time after is going on for about one week...everyday i would set either the RAID to rebuild....or to copy/recover files and while everythig was working

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  • Linux Best Practices

    - by Zac
    I'm a life-long Windows developer switching over to Linux for the first time, and I'm starting off with Ubuntu to ease the learning curve. My new laptop will primarily be a development machine: 6GB RAM, 320 GB HD. I'd like there to be 2 non-root users: (a) Development, which will always be me, and (b) Guest, for anyone else. I assume the root user is added by default, like System Administrator in Windows. (1) I'd like to mount /home to its own partition, but how does this work if I have two user accounts (Development and Guest)? Are there 2 separate /home directories, or do they get shared? Is it possible to allocate more space for Development and only a tiny bit of space for Guest in GRUB2? How?!?! (2) I'm assuming that its okay that all of my development tools (Eclipse & plugins, SVN, JUnit, ant, etc.) and Java will end up getting installed in non-/home directories such as /usr and /opt, but that my Eclipse/SVN workspace will live under my /home directory on a separate partition... any problems, issues, concerns with that? (3) As far as partitioning schemes, nothing too complicated, but not plain Jane either: Boot Partition, 512 MB, in case I want to install other OSes Ubuntu & non-/home file system, 187.5 GB Swap Partition, 12 GB = RAM x 2 /home Partition, 120 GB I don't have any bulky media data (I don't have music or video libraries, this is a lean and mean dev machine) so having 320 GB is like winning the lottery and not knowing what to do with all this space. I figured I'd give a little extra space to the OS/FS partition since I'll be running JEE containers locally and doing a lot of file IO, logging and other memory-instensive operations. Any issues, problems, concerns, suggestions? (4) I was thinking about using ext4; seems to have good filestamping without any space ceiling for me to hit. Any other suggestions for a dev machine? (5) I read somewhere that you need to be careful when you install software as the root user, but I can't remember why. What general caveats do I need to be aware of when doing things (installing packages, making system configurations, etc.) as root vs "Development" user? Thanks!

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  • NGINX rewrite rules help. Redirect not working and want to get rid of index.php in urls

    - by Tamerax
    hey! I have 2 questions for nginx users. 1) I'm trying to setup my joomla server onto my new linode running NGINX and after much (like days) of searching and testing, I finally have a config that works with with SEF url plugins...sorta. I was using an apache system on the old server and it used mod_rewrite and life was fine in terms of SEF. Since NGINX doesn't have mod_rewrite, I found something that works BUT it constantly leaves index.php in the urls. ex: http://mysite.com/index.php/forum i want it to be just http://mysite.com/forum but without mod_rewrite it doesn't seem to be possible in joomla that i'm aware of. I know in wordpress it IS possible but I have to use a plugin. Here is my config file: server { listen 80; server_name mysite.com www.mysite.com; access_log /home/public_html/mysite.com/log/access.log; error_log /home/public_html/mysite.com/log/error.log; root /home/public_html/mysite.com/public/; large_client_header_buffers 4 8k; # prevent some 400 errors index index.php index.html; fastcgi_index index.php; location / { expires 30d; error_page 404 = @joomla; log_not_found off; } # Rewrite location @joomla { rewrite ^(.*)$ /index.php?q=last; } # Static Files location ~* ^.+.(jpg|jpeg|gif|css|png|js|ico)$ { access_log off; expires 30d; } # PHP location ~ \.php { keepalive_timeout 0; fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; fastcgi_index index.php; include /usr/local/nginx/conf/fastcgi_params; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /home/public_html/mysite.com/public /$fastcgi_script_name; } } 2) second question should be easy but i can't get it to work. I want to use the same config I posted above and have either mysite.com or www.mysite.com both forward to mysite.com/portal. Basically when you hit up the front page with or without the www, it all gets forwarded to a sub directory on the server I called Portal. I have tried several variations of: rewrite ^/(.*) http://www.example.com/portal/$1 permanent; but it usually ends with firefox telling me there is some crazy loop happening the address bar saying something like mysite.com/portalportalportalportalportal.........on and on. So, any help on either of these issues would be awesome!! Thanks!!

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  • How to find the process(es) which are hogging the machine

    - by Aaron Digulla
    Scenario: All of a sudden, my computer feels sluggish. Mouse moves but windows take ages to open, etc. uptime says the load is 7.69 and raising. What is the fastest way to find out which process(es) are the cause of the load? Now, "top" and similar tools isn't the answer because they either show CPU or memory usage but not both at the same time. What I need is the single command which I might be able to type as it happens - something that will figure out any of System is trying to swap 8GB of RAM to disk because process X ... or process X seeks all over the disk or process X uses 400% CPU" So what I'm looking for is iostat, htop/atop and similar tools run into one with an output like this: 1235 cp - Disk trashing 87 chrome - Uses 2&nbsp;GB of RAM 137 nfs_bench - Uses 95% of the network bandwidth I don't want a tool that gives me some numbers which I can analyze but a tool that tells me exactly which process causes the current load. Assume that the user in front of the keyboard barely knows how to write "process", but the user is quickly overwhelmed when it comes to "resident size", "virtual memory" or "process life cycle". My argument goes like this: A user notices a problem. There can be thousands of reasons ... well, almost :-) The user wants to know the source of the problem. The current solutions give me lots of numbers, and I need to know what these numbers mean. What I'm looking for is a meta tool. 99% of the data is irrelevant to the problem. So what the tool should do is look for processes which hog some resource and list only those along with "this process needs a lot of CPU, this produces many IRQs, this process allocates a lot of RAM (and it's still growing)". This will be a relatively short list. It will be much more simple for someone new to this to locate the culprit from this list than from the output of, say, htop which gives me about 5000 numbers but requires me to fold multi-threaded processes myself (I have 50 lines which say VIRT 2750M but only 16 GB of RAM - the machine ought to swap itself to death but of course, this is a misinterpretation of the data that can happen quickly).

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  • Why isn't passwordless ssh working?

    - by Nelson
    I have two Ubuntu Server machines sitting at home. One is 192.168.1.15 (we'll call this 15), and the other is 192.168.1.25 (we'll call this 25). For some reason, when I want to setup passwordless login from 15 to 25, it works like a champ. When I repeat the steps on 25, so that 25 can login without a password on 15, no dice. I have checked both sshd_config files. Both have: RSAAuthentication yes PubkeyAuthentication yes I have checked permissions on both servers: drwx------ 2 bion2 bion2 4096 Dec 4 12:51 .ssh -rw------- 1 bion2 bion2 398 Dec 4 13:10 authorized_keys On 25. drwx------ 2 shimdidly shimdidly 4096 Dec 4 19:15 .ssh -rw------- 1 shimdidly shimdidly 1018 Dec 4 18:54 authorized_keys On 15. I just don't understand when things would work one way and not the other. I know it's probably something obvious just staring me in the face, but for the life of me, I can't figure out what is going on. Here's what ssh -v says when I try to ssh from 25 to 15: ssh -v -p 51337 192.168.1.15 OpenSSH_5.9p1 Debian-5ubuntu1, OpenSSL 1.0.1 14 Mar 2012 debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config debug1: /etc/ssh/ssh_config line 19: Applying options for * debug1: Connecting to 192.168.1.15 [192.168.1.15] port 51337. debug1: Connection established. debug1: identity file /home/shimdidly/.ssh/id_rsa type 1 debug1: Checking blacklist file /usr/share/ssh/blacklist.RSA-2048 debug1: Checking blacklist file /etc/ssh/blacklist.RSA-2048 debug1: identity file /home/shimdidly/.ssh/id_rsa-cert type -1 debug1: identity file /home/shimdidly/.ssh/id_dsa type 2 debug1: Checking blacklist file /usr/share/ssh/blacklist.DSA-1024 debug1: Checking blacklist file /etc/ssh/blacklist.DSA-1024 debug1: identity file /home/shimdidly/.ssh/id_dsa-cert type -1 debug1: identity file /home/shimdidly/.ssh/id_ecdsa type -1 debug1: identity file /home/shimdidly/.ssh/id_ecdsa-cert type -1 debug1: Remote protocol version 2.0, remote software version OpenSSH_5.9p1 Debian-5ubuntu1 debug1: match: OpenSSH_5.9p1 Debian-5ubuntu1 pat OpenSSH* debug1: Enabling compatibility mode for protocol 2.0 debug1: Local version string SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_5.9p1 Debian-5ubuntu1 debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT sent debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT received debug1: kex: server->client aes128-ctr hmac-md5 none debug1: kex: client->server aes128-ctr hmac-md5 none debug1: sending SSH2_MSG_KEX_ECDH_INIT debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_ECDH_REPLY debug1: Server host key: ECDSA 54:5c:60:80:74:ab:ab:31:36:a1:d3:9b:db:31:2a:ee debug1: Host '[192.168.1.15]:51337' is known and matches the ECDSA host key. debug1: Found key in /home/shimdidly/.ssh/known_hosts:2 debug1: ssh_ecdsa_verify: signature correct debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS sent debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS received debug1: Roaming not allowed by server debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_REQUEST sent debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_ACCEPT received debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,password debug1: Next authentication method: publickey debug1: Offering RSA public key: /home/shimdidly/.ssh/id_rsa debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,password debug1: Offering DSA public key: /home/shimdidly/.ssh/id_dsa debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,password debug1: Trying private key: /home/shimdidly/.ssh/id_ecdsa debug1: Next authentication method: password

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  • Zen and the Art of File and Folder Organization

    - by Mark Virtue
    Is your desk a paragon of neatness, or does it look like a paper-bomb has gone off? If you’ve been putting off getting organized because the task is too huge or daunting, or you don’t know where to start, we’ve got 40 tips to get you on the path to zen mastery of your filing system. For all those readers who would like to get their files and folders organized, or, if they’re already organized, better organized—we have compiled a complete guide to getting organized and staying organized, a comprehensive article that will hopefully cover every possible tip you could want. Signs that Your Computer is Poorly Organized If your computer is a mess, you’re probably already aware of it.  But just in case you’re not, here are some tell-tale signs: Your Desktop has over 40 icons on it “My Documents” contains over 300 files and 60 folders, including MP3s and digital photos You use the Windows’ built-in search facility whenever you need to find a file You can’t find programs in the out-of-control list of programs in your Start Menu You save all your Word documents in one folder, all your spreadsheets in a second folder, etc Any given file that you’re looking for may be in any one of four different sets of folders But before we start, here are some quick notes: We’re going to assume you know what files and folders are, and how to create, save, rename, copy and delete them The organization principles described in this article apply equally to all computer systems.  However, the screenshots here will reflect how things look on Windows (usually Windows 7).  We will also mention some useful features of Windows that can help you get organized. Everyone has their own favorite methodology of organizing and filing, and it’s all too easy to get into “My Way is Better than Your Way” arguments.  The reality is that there is no perfect way of getting things organized.  When I wrote this article, I tried to keep a generalist and objective viewpoint.  I consider myself to be unusually well organized (to the point of obsession, truth be told), and I’ve had 25 years experience in collecting and organizing files on computers.  So I’ve got a lot to say on the subject.  But the tips I have described here are only one way of doing it.  Hopefully some of these tips will work for you too, but please don’t read this as any sort of “right” way to do it. At the end of the article we’ll be asking you, the reader, for your own organization tips. Why Bother Organizing At All? For some, the answer to this question is self-evident. And yet, in this era of powerful desktop search software (the search capabilities built into the Windows Vista and Windows 7 Start Menus, and third-party programs like Google Desktop Search), the question does need to be asked, and answered. I have a friend who puts every file he ever creates, receives or downloads into his My Documents folder and doesn’t bother filing them into subfolders at all.  He relies on the search functionality built into his Windows operating system to help him find whatever he’s looking for.  And he always finds it.  He’s a Search Samurai.  For him, filing is a waste of valuable time that could be spent enjoying life! It’s tempting to follow suit.  On the face of it, why would anyone bother to take the time to organize their hard disk when such excellent search software is available?  Well, if all you ever want to do with the files you own is to locate and open them individually (for listening, editing, etc), then there’s no reason to ever bother doing one scrap of organization.  But consider these common tasks that are not achievable with desktop search software: Find files manually.  Often it’s not convenient, speedy or even possible to utilize your desktop search software to find what you want.  It doesn’t work 100% of the time, or you may not even have it installed.  Sometimes its just plain faster to go straight to the file you want, if you know it’s in a particular sub-folder, rather than trawling through hundreds of search results. Find groups of similar files (e.g. all your “work” files, all the photos of your Europe holiday in 2008, all your music videos, all the MP3s from Dark Side of the Moon, all your letters you wrote to your wife, all your tax returns).  Clever naming of the files will only get you so far.  Sometimes it’s the date the file was created that’s important, other times it’s the file format, and other times it’s the purpose of the file.  How do you name a collection of files so that they’re easy to isolate based on any of the above criteria?  Short answer, you can’t. Move files to a new computer.  It’s time to upgrade your computer.  How do you quickly grab all the files that are important to you?  Or you decide to have two computers now – one for home and one for work.  How do you quickly isolate only the work-related files to move them to the work computer? Synchronize files to other computers.  If you have more than one computer, and you need to mirror some of your files onto the other computer (e.g. your music collection), then you need a way to quickly determine which files are to be synced and which are not.  Surely you don’t want to synchronize everything? Choose which files to back up.  If your backup regime calls for multiple backups, or requires speedy backups, then you’ll need to be able to specify which files are to be backed up, and which are not.  This is not possible if they’re all in the same folder. Finally, if you’re simply someone who takes pleasure in being organized, tidy and ordered (me! me!), then you don’t even need a reason.  Being disorganized is simply unthinkable. Tips on Getting Organized Here we present our 40 best tips on how to get organized.  Or, if you’re already organized, to get better organized. Tip #1.  Choose Your Organization System Carefully The reason that most people are not organized is that it takes time.  And the first thing that takes time is deciding upon a system of organization.  This is always a matter of personal preference, and is not something that a geek on a website can tell you.  You should always choose your own system, based on how your own brain is organized (which makes the assumption that your brain is, in fact, organized). We can’t instruct you, but we can make suggestions: You may want to start off with a system based on the users of the computer.  i.e. “My Files”, “My Wife’s Files”, My Son’s Files”, etc.  Inside “My Files”, you might then break it down into “Personal” and “Business”.  You may then realize that there are overlaps.  For example, everyone may want to share access to the music library, or the photos from the school play.  So you may create another folder called “Family”, for the “common” files. You may decide that the highest-level breakdown of your files is based on the “source” of each file.  In other words, who created the files.  You could have “Files created by ME (business or personal)”, “Files created by people I know (family, friends, etc)”, and finally “Files created by the rest of the world (MP3 music files, downloaded or ripped movies or TV shows, software installation files, gorgeous desktop wallpaper images you’ve collected, etc).”  This system happens to be the one I use myself.  See below:  Mark is for files created by meVC is for files created by my company (Virtual Creations)Others is for files created by my friends and familyData is the rest of the worldAlso, Settings is where I store the configuration files and other program data files for my installed software (more on this in tip #34, below). Each folder will present its own particular set of requirements for further sub-organization.  For example, you may decide to organize your music collection into sub-folders based on the artist’s name, while your digital photos might get organized based on the date they were taken.  It can be different for every sub-folder! Another strategy would be based on “currentness”.  Files you have yet to open and look at live in one folder.  Ones that have been looked at but not yet filed live in another place.  Current, active projects live in yet another place.  All other files (your “archive”, if you like) would live in a fourth folder. (And of course, within that last folder you’d need to create a further sub-system based on one of the previous bullet points). Put some thought into this – changing it when it proves incomplete can be a big hassle!  Before you go to the trouble of implementing any system you come up with, examine a wide cross-section of the files you own and see if they will all be able to find a nice logical place to sit within your system. Tip #2.  When You Decide on Your System, Stick to It! There’s nothing more pointless than going to all the trouble of creating a system and filing all your files, and then whenever you create, receive or download a new file, you simply dump it onto your Desktop.  You need to be disciplined – forever!  Every new file you get, spend those extra few seconds to file it where it belongs!  Otherwise, in just a month or two, you’ll be worse off than before – half your files will be organized and half will be disorganized – and you won’t know which is which! Tip #3.  Choose the Root Folder of Your Structure Carefully Every data file (document, photo, music file, etc) that you create, own or is important to you, no matter where it came from, should be found within one single folder, and that one single folder should be located at the root of your C: drive (as a sub-folder of C:\).  In other words, do not base your folder structure in standard folders like “My Documents”.  If you do, then you’re leaving it up to the operating system engineers to decide what folder structure is best for you.  And every operating system has a different system!  In Windows 7 your files are found in C:\Users\YourName, whilst on Windows XP it was C:\Documents and Settings\YourName\My Documents.  In UNIX systems it’s often /home/YourName. These standard default folders tend to fill up with junk files and folders that are not at all important to you.  “My Documents” is the worst offender.  Every second piece of software you install, it seems, likes to create its own folder in the “My Documents” folder.  These folders usually don’t fit within your organizational structure, so don’t use them!  In fact, don’t even use the “My Documents” folder at all.  Allow it to fill up with junk, and then simply ignore it.  It sounds heretical, but: Don’t ever visit your “My Documents” folder!  Remove your icons/links to “My Documents” and replace them with links to the folders you created and you care about! Create your own file system from scratch!  Probably the best place to put it would be on your D: drive – if you have one.  This way, all your files live on one drive, while all the operating system and software component files live on the C: drive – simply and elegantly separated.  The benefits of that are profound.  Not only are there obvious organizational benefits (see tip #10, below), but when it comes to migrate your data to a new computer, you can (sometimes) simply unplug your D: drive and plug it in as the D: drive of your new computer (this implies that the D: drive is actually a separate physical disk, and not a partition on the same disk as C:).  You also get a slight speed improvement (again, only if your C: and D: drives are on separate physical disks). Warning:  From tip #12, below, you will see that it’s actually a good idea to have exactly the same file system structure – including the drive it’s filed on – on all of the computers you own.  So if you decide to use the D: drive as the storage system for your own files, make sure you are able to use the D: drive on all the computers you own.  If you can’t ensure that, then you can still use a clever geeky trick to store your files on the D: drive, but still access them all via the C: drive (see tip #17, below). If you only have one hard disk (C:), then create a dedicated folder that will contain all your files – something like C:\Files.  The name of the folder is not important, but make it a single, brief word. There are several reasons for this: When creating a backup regime, it’s easy to decide what files should be backed up – they’re all in the one folder! If you ever decide to trade in your computer for a new one, you know exactly which files to migrate You will always know where to begin a search for any file If you synchronize files with other computers, it makes your synchronization routines very simple.   It also causes all your shortcuts to continue to work on the other machines (more about this in tip #24, below). Once you’ve decided where your files should go, then put all your files in there – Everything!  Completely disregard the standard, default folders that are created for you by the operating system (“My Music”, “My Pictures”, etc).  In fact, you can actually relocate many of those folders into your own structure (more about that below, in tip #6). The more completely you get all your data files (documents, photos, music, etc) and all your configuration settings into that one folder, then the easier it will be to perform all of the above tasks. Once this has been done, and all your files live in one folder, all the other folders in C:\ can be thought of as “operating system” folders, and therefore of little day-to-day interest for us. Here’s a screenshot of a nicely organized C: drive, where all user files are located within the \Files folder:   Tip #4.  Use Sub-Folders This would be our simplest and most obvious tip.  It almost goes without saying.  Any organizational system you decide upon (see tip #1) will require that you create sub-folders for your files.  Get used to creating folders on a regular basis. Tip #5.  Don’t be Shy About Depth Create as many levels of sub-folders as you need.  Don’t be scared to do so.  Every time you notice an opportunity to group a set of related files into a sub-folder, do so.  Examples might include:  All the MP3s from one music CD, all the photos from one holiday, or all the documents from one client. It’s perfectly okay to put files into a folder called C:\Files\Me\From Others\Services\WestCo Bank\Statements\2009.  That’s only seven levels deep.  Ten levels is not uncommon.  Of course, it’s possible to take this too far.  If you notice yourself creating a sub-folder to hold only one file, then you’ve probably become a little over-zealous.  On the other hand, if you simply create a structure with only two levels (for example C:\Files\Work) then you really haven’t achieved any level of organization at all (unless you own only six files!).  Your “Work” folder will have become a dumping ground, just like your Desktop was, with most likely hundreds of files in it. Tip #6.  Move the Standard User Folders into Your Own Folder Structure Most operating systems, including Windows, create a set of standard folders for each of its users.  These folders then become the default location for files such as documents, music files, digital photos and downloaded Internet files.  In Windows 7, the full list is shown below: Some of these folders you may never use nor care about (for example, the Favorites folder, if you’re not using Internet Explorer as your browser).  Those ones you can leave where they are.  But you may be using some of the other folders to store files that are important to you.  Even if you’re not using them, Windows will still often treat them as the default storage location for many types of files.  When you go to save a standard file type, it can become annoying to be automatically prompted to save it in a folder that’s not part of your own file structure. But there’s a simple solution:  Move the folders you care about into your own folder structure!  If you do, then the next time you go to save a file of the corresponding type, Windows will prompt you to save it in the new, moved location. Moving the folders is easy.  Simply drag-and-drop them to the new location.  Here’s a screenshot of the default My Music folder being moved to my custom personal folder (Mark): Tip #7.  Name Files and Folders Intelligently This is another one that almost goes without saying, but we’ll say it anyway:  Do not allow files to be created that have meaningless names like Document1.doc, or folders called New Folder (2).  Take that extra 20 seconds and come up with a meaningful name for the file/folder – one that accurately divulges its contents without repeating the entire contents in the name. Tip #8.  Watch Out for Long Filenames Another way to tell if you have not yet created enough depth to your folder hierarchy is that your files often require really long names.  If you need to call a file Johnson Sales Figures March 2009.xls (which might happen to live in the same folder as Abercrombie Budget Report 2008.xls), then you might want to create some sub-folders so that the first file could be simply called March.xls, and living in the Clients\Johnson\Sales Figures\2009 folder. A well-placed file needs only a brief filename! Tip #9.  Use Shortcuts!  Everywhere! This is probably the single most useful and important tip we can offer.  A shortcut allows a file to be in two places at once. Why would you want that?  Well, the file and folder structure of every popular operating system on the market today is hierarchical.  This means that all objects (files and folders) always live within exactly one parent folder.  It’s a bit like a tree.  A tree has branches (folders) and leaves (files).  Each leaf, and each branch, is supported by exactly one parent branch, all the way back to the root of the tree (which, incidentally, is exactly why C:\ is called the “root folder” of the C: drive). That hard disks are structured this way may seem obvious and even necessary, but it’s only one way of organizing data.  There are others:  Relational databases, for example, organize structured data entirely differently.  The main limitation of hierarchical filing structures is that a file can only ever be in one branch of the tree – in only one folder – at a time.  Why is this a problem?  Well, there are two main reasons why this limitation is a problem for computer users: The “correct” place for a file, according to our organizational rationale, is very often a very inconvenient place for that file to be located.  Just because it’s correctly filed doesn’t mean it’s easy to get to.  Your file may be “correctly” buried six levels deep in your sub-folder structure, but you may need regular and speedy access to this file every day.  You could always move it to a more convenient location, but that would mean that you would need to re-file back to its “correct” location it every time you’d finished working on it.  Most unsatisfactory. A file may simply “belong” in two or more different locations within your file structure.  For example, say you’re an accountant and you have just completed the 2009 tax return for John Smith.  It might make sense to you to call this file 2009 Tax Return.doc and file it under Clients\John Smith.  But it may also be important to you to have the 2009 tax returns from all your clients together in the one place.  So you might also want to call the file John Smith.doc and file it under Tax Returns\2009.  The problem is, in a purely hierarchical filing system, you can’t put it in both places.  Grrrrr! Fortunately, Windows (and most other operating systems) offers a way for you to do exactly that:  It’s called a “shortcut” (also known as an “alias” on Macs and a “symbolic link” on UNIX systems).  Shortcuts allow a file to exist in one place, and an icon that represents the file to be created and put anywhere else you please.  In fact, you can create a dozen such icons and scatter them all over your hard disk.  Double-clicking on one of these icons/shortcuts opens up the original file, just as if you had double-clicked on the original file itself. Consider the following two icons: The one on the left is the actual Word document, while the one on the right is a shortcut that represents the Word document.  Double-clicking on either icon will open the same file.  There are two main visual differences between the icons: The shortcut will have a small arrow in the lower-left-hand corner (on Windows, anyway) The shortcut is allowed to have a name that does not include the file extension (the “.docx” part, in this case) You can delete the shortcut at any time without losing any actual data.  The original is still intact.  All you lose is the ability to get to that data from wherever the shortcut was. So why are shortcuts so great?  Because they allow us to easily overcome the main limitation of hierarchical file systems, and put a file in two (or more) places at the same time.  You will always have files that don’t play nice with your organizational rationale, and can’t be filed in only one place.  They demand to exist in two places.  Shortcuts allow this!  Furthermore, they allow you to collect your most often-opened files and folders together in one spot for convenient access.  The cool part is that the original files stay where they are, safe forever in their perfectly organized location. So your collection of most often-opened files can – and should – become a collection of shortcuts! If you’re still not convinced of the utility of shortcuts, consider the following well-known areas of a typical Windows computer: The Start Menu (and all the programs that live within it) The Quick Launch bar (or the Superbar in Windows 7) The “Favorite folders” area in the top-left corner of the Windows Explorer window (in Windows Vista or Windows 7) Your Internet Explorer Favorites or Firefox Bookmarks Each item in each of these areas is a shortcut!  Each of those areas exist for one purpose only:  For convenience – to provide you with a collection of the files and folders you access most often. It should be easy to see by now that shortcuts are designed for one single purpose:  To make accessing your files more convenient.  Each time you double-click on a shortcut, you are saved the hassle of locating the file (or folder, or program, or drive, or control panel icon) that it represents. Shortcuts allow us to invent a golden rule of file and folder organization: “Only ever have one copy of a file – never have two copies of the same file.  Use a shortcut instead” (this rule doesn’t apply to copies created for backup purposes, of course!) There are also lesser rules, like “don’t move a file into your work area – create a shortcut there instead”, and “any time you find yourself frustrated with how long it takes to locate a file, create a shortcut to it and place that shortcut in a convenient location.” So how to we create these massively useful shortcuts?  There are two main ways: “Copy” the original file or folder (click on it and type Ctrl-C, or right-click on it and select Copy):  Then right-click in an empty area of the destination folder (the place where you want the shortcut to go) and select Paste shortcut: Right-drag (drag with the right mouse button) the file from the source folder to the destination folder.  When you let go of the mouse button at the destination folder, a menu pops up: Select Create shortcuts here. Note that when shortcuts are created, they are often named something like Shortcut to Budget Detail.doc (windows XP) or Budget Detail – Shortcut.doc (Windows 7).   If you don’t like those extra words, you can easily rename the shortcuts after they’re created, or you can configure Windows to never insert the extra words in the first place (see our article on how to do this). And of course, you can create shortcuts to folders too, not just to files! Bottom line: Whenever you have a file that you’d like to access from somewhere else (whether it’s convenience you’re after, or because the file simply belongs in two places), create a shortcut to the original file in the new location. Tip #10.  Separate Application Files from Data Files Any digital organization guru will drum this rule into you.  Application files are the components of the software you’ve installed (e.g. Microsoft Word, Adobe Photoshop or Internet Explorer).  Data files are the files that you’ve created for yourself using that software (e.g. Word Documents, digital photos, emails or playlists). Software gets installed, uninstalled and upgraded all the time.  Hopefully you always have the original installation media (or downloaded set-up file) kept somewhere safe, and can thus reinstall your software at any time.  This means that the software component files are of little importance.  Whereas the files you have created with that software is, by definition, important.  It’s a good rule to always separate unimportant files from important files. So when your software prompts you to save a file you’ve just created, take a moment and check out where it’s suggesting that you save the file.  If it’s suggesting that you save the file into the same folder as the software itself, then definitely don’t follow that suggestion.  File it in your own folder!  In fact, see if you can find the program’s configuration option that determines where files are saved by default (if it has one), and change it. Tip #11.  Organize Files Based on Purpose, Not on File Type If you have, for example a folder called Work\Clients\Johnson, and within that folder you have two sub-folders, Word Documents and Spreadsheets (in other words, you’re separating “.doc” files from “.xls” files), then chances are that you’re not optimally organized.  It makes little sense to organize your files based on the program that created them.  Instead, create your sub-folders based on the purpose of the file.  For example, it would make more sense to create sub-folders called Correspondence and Financials.  It may well be that all the files in a given sub-folder are of the same file-type, but this should be more of a coincidence and less of a design feature of your organization system. Tip #12.  Maintain the Same Folder Structure on All Your Computers In other words, whatever organizational system you create, apply it to every computer that you can.  There are several benefits to this: There’s less to remember.  No matter where you are, you always know where to look for your files If you copy or synchronize files from one computer to another, then setting up the synchronization job becomes very simple Shortcuts can be copied or moved from one computer to another with ease (assuming the original files are also copied/moved).  There’s no need to find the target of the shortcut all over again on the second computer Ditto for linked files (e.g Word documents that link to data in a separate Excel file), playlists, and any files that reference the exact file locations of other files. This applies even to the drive that your files are stored on.  If your files are stored on C: on one computer, make sure they’re stored on C: on all your computers.  Otherwise all your shortcuts, playlists and linked files will stop working! Tip #13.  Create an “Inbox” Folder Create yourself a folder where you store all files that you’re currently working on, or that you haven’t gotten around to filing yet.  You can think of this folder as your “to-do” list.  You can call it “Inbox” (making it the same metaphor as your email system), or “Work”, or “To-Do”, or “Scratch”, or whatever name makes sense to you.  It doesn’t matter what you call it – just make sure you have one! Once you have finished working on a file, you then move it from the “Inbox” to its correct location within your organizational structure. You may want to use your Desktop as this “Inbox” folder.  Rightly or wrongly, most people do.  It’s not a bad place to put such files, but be careful:  If you do decide that your Desktop represents your “to-do” list, then make sure that no other files find their way there.  In other words, make sure that your “Inbox”, wherever it is, Desktop or otherwise, is kept free of junk – stray files that don’t belong there. So where should you put this folder, which, almost by definition, lives outside the structure of the rest of your filing system?  Well, first and foremost, it has to be somewhere handy.  This will be one of your most-visited folders, so convenience is key.  Putting it on the Desktop is a great option – especially if you don’t have any other folders on your Desktop:  the folder then becomes supremely easy to find in Windows Explorer: You would then create shortcuts to this folder in convenient spots all over your computer (“Favorite Links”, “Quick Launch”, etc). Tip #14.  Ensure You have Only One “Inbox” Folder Once you’ve created your “Inbox” folder, don’t use any other folder location as your “to-do list”.  Throw every incoming or created file into the Inbox folder as you create/receive it.  This keeps the rest of your computer pristine and free of randomly created or downloaded junk.  The last thing you want to be doing is checking multiple folders to see all your current tasks and projects.  Gather them all together into one folder. Here are some tips to help ensure you only have one Inbox: Set the default “save” location of all your programs to this folder. Set the default “download” location for your browser to this folder. If this folder is not your desktop (recommended) then also see if you can make a point of not putting “to-do” files on your desktop.  This keeps your desktop uncluttered and Zen-like: (the Inbox folder is in the bottom-right corner) Tip #15.  Be Vigilant about Clearing Your “Inbox” Folder This is one of the keys to staying organized.  If you let your “Inbox” overflow (i.e. allow there to be more than, say, 30 files or folders in there), then you’re probably going to start feeling like you’re overwhelmed:  You’re not keeping up with your to-do list.  Once your Inbox gets beyond a certain point (around 30 files, studies have shown), then you’ll simply start to avoid it.  You may continue to put files in there, but you’ll be scared to look at it, fearing the “out of control” feeling that all overworked, chaotic or just plain disorganized people regularly feel. So, here’s what you can do: Visit your Inbox/to-do folder regularly (at least five times per day). Scan the folder regularly for files that you have completed working on and are ready for filing.  File them immediately. Make it a source of pride to keep the number of files in this folder as small as possible.  If you value peace of mind, then make the emptiness of this folder one of your highest (computer) priorities If you know that a particular file has been in the folder for more than, say, six weeks, then admit that you’re not actually going to get around to processing it, and move it to its final resting place. Tip #16.  File Everything Immediately, and Use Shortcuts for Your Active Projects As soon as you create, receive or download a new file, store it away in its “correct” folder immediately.  Then, whenever you need to work on it (possibly straight away), create a shortcut to it in your “Inbox” (“to-do”) folder or your desktop.  That way, all your files are always in their “correct” locations, yet you still have immediate, convenient access to your current, active files.  When you finish working on a file, simply delete the shortcut. Ideally, your “Inbox” folder – and your Desktop – should contain no actual files or folders.  They should simply contain shortcuts. Tip #17.  Use Directory Symbolic Links (or Junctions) to Maintain One Unified Folder Structure Using this tip, we can get around a potential hiccup that we can run into when creating our organizational structure – the issue of having more than one drive on our computer (C:, D:, etc).  We might have files we need to store on the D: drive for space reasons, and yet want to base our organized folder structure on the C: drive (or vice-versa). Your chosen organizational structure may dictate that all your files must be accessed from the C: drive (for example, the root folder of all your files may be something like C:\Files).  And yet you may still have a D: drive and wish to take advantage of the hundreds of spare Gigabytes that it offers.  Did you know that it’s actually possible to store your files on the D: drive and yet access them as if they were on the C: drive?  And no, we’re not talking about shortcuts here (although the concept is very similar). By using the shell command mklink, you can essentially take a folder that lives on one drive and create an alias for it on a different drive (you can do lots more than that with mklink – for a full rundown on this programs capabilities, see our dedicated article).  These aliases are called directory symbolic links (and used to be known as junctions).  You can think of them as “virtual” folders.  They function exactly like regular folders, except they’re physically located somewhere else. For example, you may decide that your entire D: drive contains your complete organizational file structure, but that you need to reference all those files as if they were on the C: drive, under C:\Files.  If that was the case you could create C:\Files as a directory symbolic link – a link to D:, as follows: mklink /d c:\files d:\ Or it may be that the only files you wish to store on the D: drive are your movie collection.  You could locate all your movie files in the root of your D: drive, and then link it to C:\Files\Media\Movies, as follows: mklink /d c:\files\media\movies d:\ (Needless to say, you must run these commands from a command prompt – click the Start button, type cmd and press Enter) Tip #18. Customize Your Folder Icons This is not strictly speaking an organizational tip, but having unique icons for each folder does allow you to more quickly visually identify which folder is which, and thus saves you time when you’re finding files.  An example is below (from my folder that contains all files downloaded from the Internet): To learn how to change your folder icons, please refer to our dedicated article on the subject. Tip #19.  Tidy Your Start Menu The Windows Start Menu is usually one of the messiest parts of any Windows computer.  Every program you install seems to adopt a completely different approach to placing icons in this menu.  Some simply put a single program icon.  Others create a folder based on the name of the software.  And others create a folder based on the name of the software manufacturer.  It’s chaos, and can make it hard to find the software you want to run. Thankfully we can avoid this chaos with useful operating system features like Quick Launch, the Superbar or pinned start menu items. Even so, it would make a lot of sense to get into the guts of the Start Menu itself and give it a good once-over.  All you really need to decide is how you’re going to organize your applications.  A structure based on the purpose of the application is an obvious candidate.  Below is an example of one such structure: In this structure, Utilities means software whose job it is to keep the computer itself running smoothly (configuration tools, backup software, Zip programs, etc).  Applications refers to any productivity software that doesn’t fit under the headings Multimedia, Graphics, Internet, etc. In case you’re not aware, every icon in your Start Menu is a shortcut and can be manipulated like any other shortcut (copied, moved, deleted, etc). With the Windows Start Menu (all version of Windows), Microsoft has decided that there be two parallel folder structures to store your Start Menu shortcuts.  One for you (the logged-in user of the computer) and one for all users of the computer.  Having two parallel structures can often be redundant:  If you are the only user of the computer, then having two parallel structures is totally redundant.  Even if you have several users that regularly log into the computer, most of your installed software will need to be made available to all users, and should thus be moved out of the “just you” version of the Start Menu and into the “all users” area. To take control of your Start Menu, so you can start organizing it, you’ll need to know how to access the actual folders and shortcut files that make up the Start Menu (both versions of it).  To find these folders and files, click the Start button and then right-click on the All Programs text (Windows XP users should right-click on the Start button itself): The Open option refers to the “just you” version of the Start Menu, while the Open All Users option refers to the “all users” version.  Click on the one you want to organize. A Windows Explorer window then opens with your chosen version of the Start Menu selected.  From there it’s easy.  Double-click on the Programs folder and you’ll see all your folders and shortcuts.  Now you can delete/rename/move until it’s just the way you want it. Note:  When you’re reorganizing your Start Menu, you may want to have two Explorer windows open at the same time – one showing the “just you” version and one showing the “all users” version.  You can drag-and-drop between the windows. Tip #20.  Keep Your Start Menu Tidy Once you have a perfectly organized Start Menu, try to be a little vigilant about keeping it that way.  Every time you install a new piece of software, the icons that get created will almost certainly violate your organizational structure. So to keep your Start Menu pristine and organized, make sure you do the following whenever you install a new piece of software: Check whether the software was installed into the “just you” area of the Start Menu, or the “all users” area, and then move it to the correct area. Remove all the unnecessary icons (like the “Read me” icon, the “Help” icon (you can always open the help from within the software itself when it’s running), the “Uninstall” icon, the link(s)to the manufacturer’s website, etc) Rename the main icon(s) of the software to something brief that makes sense to you.  For example, you might like to rename Microsoft Office Word 2010 to simply Word Move the icon(s) into the correct folder based on your Start Menu organizational structure And don’t forget:  when you uninstall a piece of software, the software’s uninstall routine is no longer going to be able to remove the software’s icon from the Start Menu (because you moved and/or renamed it), so you’ll need to remove that icon manually. Tip #21.  Tidy C:\ The root of your C: drive (C:\) is a common dumping ground for files and folders – both by the users of your computer and by the software that you install on your computer.  It can become a mess. There’s almost no software these days that requires itself to be installed in C:\.  99% of the time it can and should be installed into C:\Program Files.  And as for your own files, well, it’s clear that they can (and almost always should) be stored somewhere else. In an ideal world, your C:\ folder should look like this (on Windows 7): Note that there are some system files and folders in C:\ that are usually and deliberately “hidden” (such as the Windows virtual memory file pagefile.sys, the boot loader file bootmgr, and the System Volume Information folder).  Hiding these files and folders is a good idea, as they need to stay where they are and are almost never needed to be opened or even seen by you, the user.  Hiding them prevents you from accidentally messing with them, and enhances your sense of order and well-being when you look at your C: drive folder. Tip #22.  Tidy Your Desktop The Desktop is probably the most abused part of a Windows computer (from an organization point of view).  It usually serves as a dumping ground for all incoming files, as well as holding icons to oft-used applications, plus some regularly opened files and folders.  It often ends up becoming an uncontrolled mess.  See if you can avoid this.  Here’s why… Application icons (Word, Internet Explorer, etc) are often found on the Desktop, but it’s unlikely that this is the optimum place for them.  The “Quick Launch” bar (or the Superbar in Windows 7) is always visible and so represents a perfect location to put your icons.  You’ll only be able to see the icons on your Desktop when all your programs are minimized.  It might be time to get your application icons off your desktop… You may have decided that the Inbox/To-do folder on your computer (see tip #13, above) should be your Desktop.  If so, then enough said.  Simply be vigilant about clearing it and preventing it from being polluted by junk files (see tip #15, above).  On the other hand, if your Desktop is not acting as your “Inbox” folder, then there’s no reason for it to have any data files or folders on it at all, except perhaps a couple of shortcuts to often-opened files and folders (either ongoing or current projects).  Everything else should be moved to your “Inbox” folder. In an ideal world, it might look like this: Tip #23.  Move Permanent Items on Your Desktop Away from the Top-Left Corner When files/folders are dragged onto your desktop in a Windows Explorer window, or when shortcuts are created on your Desktop from Internet Explorer, those icons are always placed in the top-left corner – or as close as they can get.  If you have other files, folders or shortcuts that you keep on the Desktop permanently, then it’s a good idea to separate these permanent icons from the transient ones, so that you can quickly identify which ones the transients are.  An easy way to do this is to move all your permanent icons to the right-hand side of your Desktop.  That should keep them separated from incoming items. Tip #24.  Synchronize If you have more than one computer, you’ll almost certainly want to share files between them.  If the computers are permanently attached to the same local network, then there’s no need to store multiple copies of any one file or folder – shortcuts will suffice.  However, if the computers are not always on the same network, then you will at some point need to copy files between them.  For files that need to permanently live on both computers, the ideal way to do this is to synchronize the files, as opposed to simply copying them. We only have room here to write a brief summary of synchronization, not a full article.  In short, there are several different types of synchronization: Where the contents of one folder are accessible anywhere, such as with Dropbox Where the contents of any number of folders are accessible anywhere, such as with Windows Live Mesh Where any files or folders from anywhere on your computer are synchronized with exactly one other computer, such as with the Windows “Briefcase”, Microsoft SyncToy, or (much more powerful, yet still free) SyncBack from 2BrightSparks.  This only works when both computers are on the same local network, at least temporarily. A great advantage of synchronization solutions is that once you’ve got it configured the way you want it, then the sync process happens automatically, every time.  Click a button (or schedule it to happen automatically) and all your files are automagically put where they’re supposed to be. If you maintain the same file and folder structure on both computers, then you can also sync files depend upon the correct location of other files, like shortcuts, playlists and office documents that link to other office documents, and the synchronized files still work on the other computer! Tip #25.  Hide Files You Never Need to See If you have your files well organized, you will often be able to tell if a file is out of place just by glancing at the contents of a folder (for example, it should be pretty obvious if you look in a folder that contains all the MP3s from one music CD and see a Word document in there).  This is a good thing – it allows you to determine if there are files out of place with a quick glance.  Yet sometimes there are files in a folder that seem out of place but actually need to be there, such as the “folder art” JPEGs in music folders, and various files in the root of the C: drive.  If such files never need to be opened by you, then a good idea is to simply hide them.  Then, the next time you glance at the folder, you won’t have to remember whether that file was supposed to be there or not, because you won’t see it at all! To hide a file, simply right-click on it and choose Properties: Then simply tick the Hidden tick-box:   Tip #26.  Keep Every Setup File These days most software is downloaded from the Internet.  Whenever you download a piece of software, keep it.  You’ll never know when you need to reinstall the software. Further, keep with it an Internet shortcut that links back to the website where you originally downloaded it, in case you ever need to check for updates. See tip #33 below for a full description of the excellence of organizing your setup files. Tip #27.  Try to Minimize the Number of Folders that Contain Both Files and Sub-folders Some of the folders in your organizational structure will contain only files.  Others will contain only sub-folders.  And you will also have some folders that contain both files and sub-folders.  You will notice slight improvements in how long it takes you to locate a file if you try to avoid this third type of folder.  It’s not always possible, of course – you’ll always have some of these folders, but see if you can avoid it. One way of doing this is to take all the leftover files that didn’t end up getting stored in a sub-folder and create a special “Miscellaneous” or “Other” folder for them. Tip #28.  Starting a Filename with an Underscore Brings it to the Top of a List Further to the previous tip, if you name that “Miscellaneous” or “Other” folder in such a way that its name begins with an underscore “_”, then it will appear at the top of the list of files/folders. The screenshot below is an example of this.  Each folder in the list contains a set of digital photos.  The folder at the top of the list, _Misc, contains random photos that didn’t deserve their own dedicated folder: Tip #29.  Clean Up those CD-ROMs and (shudder!) Floppy Disks Have you got a pile of CD-ROMs stacked on a shelf of your office?  Old photos, or files you archived off onto CD-ROM (or even worse, floppy disks!) because you didn’t have enough disk space at the time?  In the meantime have you upgraded your computer and now have 500 Gigabytes of space you don’t know what to do with?  If so, isn’t it time you tidied up that stack of disks and filed them into your gorgeous new folder structure? So what are you waiting for?  Bite the bullet, copy them all back onto your computer, file them in their appropriate folders, and then back the whole lot up onto a shiny new 1000Gig external hard drive! Useful Folders to Create This next section suggests some useful folders that you might want to create within your folder structure.  I’ve personally found them to be indispensable. The first three are all about convenience – handy folders to create and then put somewhere that you can always access instantly.  For each one, it’s not so important where the actual folder is located, but it’s very important where you put the shortcut(s) to the folder.  You might want to locate the shortcuts: On your Desktop In your “Quick Launch” area (or pinned to your Windows 7 Superbar) In your Windows Explorer “Favorite Links” area Tip #30.  Create an “Inbox” (“To-Do”) Folder This has already been mentioned in depth (see tip #13), but we wanted to reiterate its importance here.  This folder contains all the recently created, received or downloaded files that you have not yet had a chance to file away properly, and it also may contain files that you have yet to process.  In effect, it becomes a sort of “to-do list”.  It doesn’t have to be called “Inbox” – you can call it whatever you want. Tip #31.  Create a Folder where Your Current Projects are Collected Rather than going hunting for them all the time, or dumping them all on your desktop, create a special folder where you put links (or work folders) for each of the projects you’re currently working on. You can locate this folder in your “Inbox” folder, on your desktop, or anywhere at all – just so long as there’s a way of getting to it quickly, such as putting a link to it in Windows Explorer’s “Favorite Links” area: Tip #32.  Create a Folder for Files and Folders that You Regularly Open You will always have a few files that you open regularly, whether it be a spreadsheet of your current accounts, or a favorite playlist.  These are not necessarily “current projects”, rather they’re simply files that you always find yourself opening.  Typically such files would be located on your desktop (or even better, shortcuts to those files).  Why not collect all such shortcuts together and put them in their own special folder? As with the “Current Projects” folder (above), you would want to locate that folder somewhere convenient.  Below is an example of a folder called “Quick links”, with about seven files (shortcuts) in it, that is accessible through the Windows Quick Launch bar: See tip #37 below for a full explanation of the power of the Quick Launch bar. Tip #33.  Create a “Set-ups” Folder A typical computer has dozens of applications installed on it.  For each piece of software, there are often many different pieces of information you need to keep track of, including: The original installation setup file(s).  This can be anything from a simple 100Kb setup.exe file you downloaded from a website, all the way up to a 4Gig ISO file that you copied from a DVD-ROM that you purchased. The home page of the software manufacturer (in case you need to look up something on their support pages, their forum or their online help) The page containing the download link for your actual file (in case you need to re-download it, or download an upgraded version) The serial number Your proof-of-purchase documentation Any other template files, plug-ins, themes, etc that also need to get installed For each piece of software, it’s a great idea to gather all of these files together and put them in a single folder.  The folder can be the name of the software (plus possibly a very brief description of what it’s for – in case you can’t remember what the software does based in its name).  Then you would gather all of these folders together into one place, and call it something like “Software” or “Setups”. If you have enough of these folders (I have several hundred, being a geek, collected over 20 years), then you may want to further categorize them.  My own categorization structure is based on “platform” (operating system): The last seven folders each represents one platform/operating system, while _Operating Systems contains set-up files for installing the operating systems themselves.  _Hardware contains ROMs for hardware I own, such as routers. Within the Windows folder (above), you can see the beginnings of the vast library of software I’ve compiled over the years: An example of a typical application folder looks like this: Tip #34.  Have a “Settings” Folder We all know that our documents are important.  So are our photos and music files.  We save all of these files into folders, and then locate them afterwards and double-click on them to open them.  But there are many files that are important to us that can’t be saved into folders, and then searched for and double-clicked later on.  These files certainly contain important information that we need, but are often created internally by an application, and saved wherever that application feels is appropriate. A good example of this is the “PST” file that Outlook creates for us and uses to store all our emails, contacts, appointments and so forth.  Another example would be the collection of Bookmarks that Firefox stores on your behalf. And yet another example would be the customized settings and configuration files of our all our software.  Granted, most Windows programs store their configuration in the Registry, but there are still many programs that use configuration files to store their settings. Imagine if you lost all of the above files!  And yet, when people are backing up their computers, they typically only back up the files they know about – those that are stored in the “My Documents” folder, etc.  If they had a hard disk failure or their computer was lost or stolen, their backup files would not include some of the most vital files they owned.  Also, when migrating to a new computer, it’s vital to ensure that these files make the journey. It can be a very useful idea to create yourself a folder to store all your “settings” – files that are important to you but which you never actually search for by name and double-click on to open them.  Otherwise, next time you go to set up a new computer just the way you want it, you’ll need to spend hours recreating the configuration of your previous computer! So how to we get our important files into this folder?  Well, we have a few options: Some programs (such as Outlook and its PST files) allow you to place these files wherever you want.  If you delve into the program’s options, you will find a setting somewhere that controls the location of the important settings files (or “personal storage” – PST – when it comes to Outlook) Some programs do not allow you to change such locations in any easy way, but if you get into the Registry, you can sometimes find a registry key that refers to the location of the file(s).  Simply move the file into your Settings folder and adjust the registry key to refer to the new location. Some programs stubbornly refuse to allow their settings files to be placed anywhere other then where they stipulate.  When faced with programs like these, you have three choices:  (1) You can ignore those files, (2) You can copy the files into your Settings folder (let’s face it – settings don’t change very often), or (3) you can use synchronization software, such as the Windows Briefcase, to make synchronized copies of all your files in your Settings folder.  All you then have to do is to remember to run your sync software periodically (perhaps just before you run your backup software!). There are some other things you may decide to locate inside this new “Settings” folder: Exports of registry keys (from the many applications that store their configurations in the Registry).  This is useful for backup purposes or for migrating to a new computer Notes you’ve made about all the specific customizations you have made to a particular piece of software (so that you’ll know how to do it all again on your next computer) Shortcuts to webpages that detail how to tweak certain aspects of your operating system or applications so they are just the way you like them (such as how to remove the words “Shortcut to” from the beginning of newly created shortcuts).  In other words, you’d want to create shortcuts to half the pages on the How-To Geek website! Here’s an example of a “Settings” folder: Windows Features that Help with Organization This section details some of the features of Microsoft Windows that are a boon to anyone hoping to stay optimally organized. Tip #35.  Use the “Favorite Links” Area to Access Oft-Used Folders Once you’ve created your great new filing system, work out which folders you access most regularly, or which serve as great starting points for locating the rest of the files in your folder structure, and then put links to those folders in your “Favorite Links” area of the left-hand side of the Windows Explorer window (simply called “Favorites” in Windows 7):   Some ideas for folders you might want to add there include: Your “Inbox” folder (or whatever you’ve called it) – most important! The base of your filing structure (e.g. C:\Files) A folder containing shortcuts to often-accessed folders on other computers around the network (shown above as Network Folders) A folder containing shortcuts to your current projects (unless that folder is in your “Inbox” folder) Getting folders into this area is very simple – just locate the folder you’re interested in and drag it there! Tip #36.  Customize the Places Bar in the File/Open and File/Save Boxes Consider the screenshot below: The highlighted icons (collectively known as the “Places Bar”) can be customized to refer to any folder location you want, allowing instant access to any part of your organizational structure. Note:  These File/Open and File/Save boxes have been superseded by new versions that use the Windows Vista/Windows 7 “Favorite Links”, but the older versions (shown above) are still used by a surprisingly large number of applications. The easiest way to customize these icons is to use the Group Policy Editor, but not everyone has access to this program.  If you do, open it up and navigate to: User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Explorer > Common Open File Dialog If you don’t have access to the Group Policy Editor, then you’ll need to get into the Registry.  Navigate to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft  \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Policies \ comdlg32 \ Placesbar It should then be easy to make the desired changes.  Log off and log on again to allow the changes to take effect. Tip #37.  Use the Quick Launch Bar as a Application and File Launcher That Quick Launch bar (to the right of the Start button) is a lot more useful than people give it credit for.  Most people simply have half a dozen icons in it, and use it to start just those programs.  But it can actually be used to instantly access just about anything in your filing system: For complete instructions on how to set this up, visit our dedicated article on this topic. Tip #38.  Put a Shortcut to Windows Explorer into Your Quick Launch Bar This is only necessary in Windows Vista and Windows XP.  The Microsoft boffins finally got wise and added it to the Windows 7 Superbar by default. Windows Explorer – the program used for managing your files and folders – is one of the most useful programs in Windows.  Anyone who considers themselves serious about being organized needs instant access to this program at any time.  A great place to create a shortcut to this program is in the Windows XP and Windows Vista “Quick Launch” bar: To get it there, locate it in your Start Menu (usually under “Accessories”) and then right-drag it down into your Quick Launch bar (and create a copy). Tip #39.  Customize the Starting Folder for Your Windows 7 Explorer Superbar Icon If you’re on Windows 7, your Superbar will include a Windows Explorer icon.  Clicking on the icon will launch Windows Explorer (of course), and will start you off in your “Libraries” folder.  Libraries may be fine as a starting point, but if you have created yourself an “Inbox” folder, then it would probably make more sense to start off in this folder every time you launch Windows Explorer. To change this default/starting folder location, then first right-click the Explorer icon in the Superbar, and then right-click Properties:Then, in Target field of the Windows Explorer Properties box that appears, type %windir%\explorer.exe followed by the path of the folder you wish to start in.  For example: %windir%\explorer.exe C:\Files If that folder happened to be on the Desktop (and called, say, “Inbox”), then you would use the following cleverness: %windir%\explorer.exe shell:desktop\Inbox Then click OK and test it out. Tip #40.  Ummmmm…. No, that’s it.  I can’t think of another one.  That’s all of the tips I can come up with.  I only created this one because 40 is such a nice round number… Case Study – An Organized PC To finish off the article, I have included a few screenshots of my (main) computer (running Vista).  The aim here is twofold: To give you a sense of what it looks like when the above, sometimes abstract, tips are applied to a real-life computer, and To offer some ideas about folders and structure that you may want to steal to use on your own PC. Let’s start with the C: drive itself.  Very minimal.  All my files are contained within C:\Files.  I’ll confine the rest of the case study to this folder: That folder contains the following: Mark: My personal files VC: My business (Virtual Creations, Australia) Others contains files created by friends and family Data contains files from the rest of the world (can be thought of as “public” files, usually downloaded from the Net) Settings is described above in tip #34 The Data folder contains the following sub-folders: Audio:  Radio plays, audio books, podcasts, etc Development:  Programmer and developer resources, sample source code, etc (see below) Humour:  Jokes, funnies (those emails that we all receive) Movies:  Downloaded and ripped movies (all legal, of course!), their scripts, DVD covers, etc. Music:  (see below) Setups:  Installation files for software (explained in full in tip #33) System:  (see below) TV:  Downloaded TV shows Writings:  Books, instruction manuals, etc (see below) The Music folder contains the following sub-folders: Album covers:  JPEG scans Guitar tabs:  Text files of guitar sheet music Lists:  e.g. “Top 1000 songs of all time” Lyrics:  Text files MIDI:  Electronic music files MP3 (representing 99% of the Music folder):  MP3s, either ripped from CDs or downloaded, sorted by artist/album name Music Video:  Video clips Sheet Music:  usually PDFs The Data\Writings folder contains the following sub-folders: (all pretty self-explanatory) The Data\Development folder contains the following sub-folders: Again, all pretty self-explanatory (if you’re a geek) The Data\System folder contains the following sub-folders: These are usually themes, plug-ins and other downloadable program-specific resources. The Mark folder contains the following sub-folders: From Others:  Usually letters that other people (friends, family, etc) have written to me For Others:  Letters and other things I have created for other people Green Book:  None of your business Playlists:  M3U files that I have compiled of my favorite songs (plus one M3U playlist file for every album I own) Writing:  Fiction, philosophy and other musings of mine Mark Docs:  Shortcut to C:\Users\Mark Settings:  Shortcut to C:\Files\Settings\Mark The Others folder contains the following sub-folders: The VC (Virtual Creations, my business – I develop websites) folder contains the following sub-folders: And again, all of those are pretty self-explanatory. Conclusion These tips have saved my sanity and helped keep me a productive geek, but what about you? What tips and tricks do you have to keep your files organized?  Please share them with us in the comments.  Come on, don’t be shy… Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Fix For When Windows Explorer in Vista Stops Showing File NamesWhy Did Windows Vista’s Music Folder Icon Turn Yellow?Print or Create a Text File List of the Contents in a Directory the Easy WayCustomize the Windows 7 or Vista Send To MenuAdd Copy To / Move To on Windows 7 or Vista Right-Click Menu TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows Track Daily Goals With 42Goals Video Toolbox is a Superb Online Video Editor Fun with 47 charts and graphs Tomorrow is Mother’s Day Check the Average Speed of YouTube Videos You’ve Watched OutlookStatView Scans and Displays General Usage Statistics

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  • AGENT: The World's Smartest Watch

    - by Rob Chartier
    AGENT: The World's Smartest Watch by Secret Labs + House of Horology Disclaimer: Most if not all of this content has been gleaned from the comments on the Kickstarter project page and comments section. Any discrepancies between this post and any documentation on agentwatches.com, kickstarter.com, etc.., those official sites take precedence. Overview The next generation smartwatch with brand-new technology. World-class developer tools, unparalleled battery life, Qi wireless charging. Kickstarter Page, Comments Funding period : May 21, 2013 - Jun 20, 2013 MSRP : $249 Other Urls http://www.agentwatches.com/ https://www.facebook.com/agentwatches http://twitter.com/agentwatches http://pinterest.com/agentwatches/ http://paper.li/robchartier/1371234640 Developer Story The first official launch of the preview SDK and emulator will happen on 20-Jun-2013.  All development will be done in Visual Studio 2012, using the .NET Micro Framework SDK 2.3.  The SDK will ship with the first round of the expected API for developers along with an emulator. With that said, there is no need to wait for the SDK.  You can download the tooling now and get started with Apps and Faces immediately.  The only thing that you will not be able to work with is the API; but for example, watch faces, you can start building the basic face rendering with the Bitmap graphics drawing in the .NET Micro Framework.   Does it look good? Before we dig into any more of the gory details, here are a few photos of the current available prototype models.   The watch on the tiny QI Charter   If you wander too far away from your phone, your watch will let you know with a vibration and a message, all but one button will dismiss the message.   An app showing the premium weather data!   Nice stitching on the straps, leather and silicon will be available, along with a few lengths to choose from (short, regular, long lengths). On to those gory details…. Hardware Specs Processor 120MHz ARM Cortex-M4 processor (ATSAM4SD32) with secondary AVR co-processor Flash & RAM 2MB of onboard flash and 160KB of RAM 1/4 of the onboard flash will be used by the OS The flash is permanent (non-volatile) storage. Bluetooth Bluetooth 4.0 BD/EDR + LE Bluetooth 4.0 is backwards compatible with Bluetooth 2.1, so classic Bluetooth functions (BD/EDR, SPP/AVRCP/PBAP/etc.) will work fine. Sensors 3D Accelerometer (Motion) ST LSM303DLHC Ambient Light Sensor Hardware power metering Vibration Motor (You can pulse it to create vibration patterns, not sure about the vibration strength - driven with PWM) No piezo/speaker or microphone. Other QI Wireless Charging, no NFC, no wall adapter included Custom LED Backlight No GPS in the watch. It uses the GPS in your phone. AGENT watch apps are deployed and debugged wirelessly from your PC via Bluetooth. RoHS, Pb-free Battery Expected to use a CR2430-sized rechargeable battery – replaceable (Mouser, Amazon) Estimated charging time from empty is 2 hours with provided charger 7 Days typical with Bluetooth on, 30 days with Bluetooth off (watch-face only mode) The battery should last at least 2 years, with 100s of charge cycles. Physical dimensions Roughly 38mm top-to-bottom on the front face 35mm left-to-right on the front face and around 12mm in depth 22mm strap Two ~1/16" hex screws to attach the watch pin The top watchcase material candidates are PVD stainless steel, brushed matte ceramic, and high-quality polycarbonate (TBD). The glass lens is mineral glass, Anti-glare glass lens Strap options Leather and silicon straps will be available Expected to have three sizes Display 1.28" Sharp Memory Display The display stays on 100% of the time. Dimensions: 128x128 pixels Buttons Custom "Pusher" buttons, they will not make noise like a mouse click, and are very durable. The top-left button activates the backlight; bottom-left changes apps; three buttons on the right are up/select/down and can be used for custom purposes by apps. Backup reset procedure is currently activated by holding the home/menu button and the top-right user button for about ten seconds Device Support Android 2.3 or newer iPhone 4S or newer Windows Phone 8 or newer Heart Rate monitors - Bluetooth SPP or Bluetooth LE (GATT) is what you'll want the heart monitor to support. Almost limitless Bluetooth device support! Internationalization & Localization Full UTF8 Support from the ground up. AGENT's user interface is in English. Your content (caller ID, music tracks, notifications) will be in your native language. We have a plan to cover most major character sets, with Latin characters pre-loaded on the watch. Simplified Chinese will be available Feature overview Phone lost alert Caller ID Music Control (possible volume control) Wireless Charging Timer Stopwatch Vibrating Alarm (possibly custom vibrations for caller id) A few default watch faces Airplane mode (by demand or low power) Can be turned off completely Customizable 3rd party watch faces, applications which can be loaded over bluetooth. Sample apps that maybe installed Weather Sample Apps not installed Exercise App Other Possible Skype integration over Bluetooth. They will provide an AGENT app for your smartphone (iPhone, Android, Windows Phone). You'll be able to use it to load apps onto the watch.. You will be able to cancel phone calls. With compatible phones you can also answer, end, etc. They are adopting the standard hands-free profile to provide these features and caller ID.

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  • Looking For iPhone 4S Alternatives? Here Are 3 Smartphones You Should Consider

    - by Gopinath
    If you going to buy iPhone 4S on a two year contract in USA, Europe or Australia you may not find it expensive. But if you are planning to buy it in any other parts of the world, you will definitely feel the heat of ridiculous iPhone 4S price. In India iPhone 4S costs approximately costs $1000 which is 30% more than the price tag of an unlocked iPhone sold in USA. Personally I love iPhones as there is no match for the user experience provided by Apple as well as the wide range of really meaning applications available for iPhone. But it breaks heart to spend $1000 for a phone and I’m forced to look at alternates available in the market. Here are the four iPhone 4S alternates available in almost all the countries where we can buy iPhone 4S Google Galaxy Nexus The Galaxy Nexus is Google’s own Android smartphone manufactured by Samsung and sold under the brand name of Google Nexus. Galaxy Nexus is the pure Android phone available in the market without any bloat software or custom user interfaces like other Androids available in the market. Galaxy Nexus is also the first Android phone to be shipped with the latest version of Android OS, Ice Cream Sandwich. This phone is the benchmark for the rest of Android phones that are going to enter the market soon. In the words of Google this smartphone is called as “Galaxy Nexus: Simple. Beautiful. Beyond Smart.”.  BGR review summarizes the phone as This is almost comical at this point, but the Samsung Galaxy Nexus is my favourite Android device in the world. Easily replacing the HTC Rezound, the Motorola DROID RAZR, and Samsung Galaxy S II, the Galaxy Nexus champions in a brand new version of Android that pushes itself further than almost any other mobile OS in the industry. Samsung Galaxy S II The one single company that is able to sell more smartphones than Apple is Samsung. Samsung recently displaced Apple from the top smartphone seller spot and occupied it with loads of pride. Samsung’s Galaxy S II fits as one the best alternatives to Apple’s iPhone 4S with it’s beautiful design and remarkable performance. Engadget summarizes Samsung Galaxy S2 review as It’s the best Android smartphone yet, but more importantly, it might well be the best smartphone, period. Of course, a 4.3-inch screen size won’t suit everyone, no matter how stupendously thin the device that carries it may be, and we also can’t say for sure that the Galaxy S II would justify a long-term iOS user foresaking his investment into one ecosystem and making the leap to another. Nonetheless, if you’re asking us what smartphone to buy today, unconstrained by such externalities, the Galaxy S II would be the clear choice. Sometimes it’s just as simple as that. Nokia Lumia 800 Here comes unexpected Windows Phone in to the boxing ring. May be they are not as great as Androids available in the market today, but they are picking up very quickly. Especially the Nokia Lumia 800 seems to be first ever Windows Phone 7 aimed at competing serious with Androids and iPhones available in the market. There are reports that Nokia Lumia 800 is outselling all Androids in UK and few high profile tech blogs are calling it as the king of Windows Phone. Considering this phone while evaluating the alternative of iPhone 4S will not disappoint you. We assure. Droid RAZR Remember the Motorola Driod that swept entire Android market share couple of years ago? The first two version of Motorola Droids were the best in the market and they out performed almost every other Android phone those days. The invasion of Samsung Androids, Motorola lost it charm. With the recent release of Droid RAZR, Motorola seems to be in the right direction to reclaiming the prestige. Droid RAZR is the thinnest smartphone available in the market and it’s beauty is not just skin deep. Here is a review of the phone from Engadget blog the RAZR’s beauty is not only skin deep. The LTE radio, 1.2GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM make sure this sleek number is ready to run with the big boys. It kept pace with, and in some cases clearly outclassed its high-end competition. Despite its deficiencies in the display department and underwhelming battery life, the RAZR looks to be a perfectly viable alternative when considering the similarly-pricey Rezound and Galaxy Nexus Further Reading So we have seen the four alternates of iPhone 4S available in the market and I personally love to buy a Samsung smartphone if I’m don’t have money to afford an iPhone 4S. If you are interested in deep diving into the alternates, here few links that help you do more research Apple iPhone 4S vs. Samsung Galaxy Nexus vs. Motorola Droid RAZR: How Their Specs Compare by Huffington Post Nokia Lumia 800 vs. iPhone 4S vs. Nexus Galaxy: Spec Smackdown by PC World Browser Speed Test: Nokia Lumia 800 vs. iPhone 4S vs. Samsung Galaxy S II – by Gizmodo iPhone 4S vs Samsung Galaxy S II by pocket lint Apple iPhone 4S vs. Samsung Galaxy S II by techie buzz This article titled,Looking For iPhone 4S Alternatives? Here Are 3 Smartphones You Should Consider, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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  • SQL SERVER – Retrieve and Explore Database Backup without Restoring Database – Idera virtual databas

    - by pinaldave
    I recently downloaded Idera’s SQL virtual database, and tested it. There are a few things about this tool which caught my attention. My Scenario It is quite common in real life that sometimes observing or retrieving older data is necessary; however, it had changed as time passed by. The full database backup was 40 GB in size, and, to restore it on our production server, it usually takes around 16 to 22 minutes, depending on the load server that is usually present. This range in time varies from one server to another as per the configuration of the computer. Some other issues we used to have are the following: When we try to restore a large 40-GB database, we needed at least that much space on our production server. Once in a while, we even had to make changes in the restored database, and use the said changed and restored database for our purpose, making it more time-consuming. My Solution I have heard a lot about the Idera’s SQL virtual database tool.. Well, right after we started to test this tool, we found out that it really delivers what it promises. Using this software was very easy and we were able to restore our database from backup in less than 2 minutes, sparing us from the usual longer time of 16–22 minutes. The needful was finished in a total of 10 minutes. Another interesting observation is that there is no need to have an additional space for restoring the database. For complete database restoration, the single additional MB on the drive is not required anymore. We can use the database in the same way as our regular database, and there is no need for any additional configuration and setup. Let us look at the most relevant points of this product based on my initial experience: Quick restoration of the database backup No additional space required for database restoration virtual database has no physical .MDF or .LDF The database which is restored is, in fact, the backup file converted in the virtual database. DDL and DML queries can be executed against this virtually restored database. Regular backup operation can be implemented against virtual database, creating a physical .bak file that can be used for future use. There was no observed degradation in performance on the original database as well the restored virtual database. Additional T-SQL queries can be let off on the virtual database. Well, this summarizes my quick review. And, as I was saying, I am very impressed with the product and I plan to explore it more. There are many features that I have noticed in this tool, which I think can be very useful if properly understood. I had taken a few screenshots using my demo database afterwards. Let us see what other things this tool can do besides the mentioned activities. I am surprised with its performance so I want to know how exactly this feature works, specifically in the matter of why it does not create any additional files and yet, it still allows update on the virtually restored database. I guess I will have to send an e-mail to the developers of Idera and try to figure this out from them. I think this tool is very useful, and it delivers a high level of performance way more than what I expected. Soon, I will write a review for additional uses of SQL virtual database.. If you are using SQL virtual database in your production environment, I am eager to learn more about it and your experience while using it. The ‘Virtual’ Part of virtual database When I set out to test this software, I thought virtual database had something to do with Hyper-V or visualization. In fact, the virtual database is a kind of database which shows up in your SQL Server Management Studio without actually restoring or even creating it. This tool creates a database in SSMS from the backup of the same database. The backup, however, works virtually the same way as original database. Potential Usage of virtual database: As soon as I described this tool to my teammate, I think his very first reaction was, “hey, if we have this then there is no need for log shipping.” I find his comment very interesting as log shipping is something where logs are moved to another server. In fact, there are no updates on the database from log; I would rather compare it with Snapshot Replication. In fact, whatever we use, snapshot replicated database can be similarly used and configured with virtual database. I totally believe that we can use it for reporting purpose. In fact, after this database was configured, I think the uses of this tool are unlimited. I will have to spend some more time studying it and will get back to you. Click on images to see larger images. virtual database Console Harddrive Space before virtual database Setup Attach Full Backup Screen Backup on Harddrive Attach Full Backup Screen with Settings virtual database Setup – less than 60 sec virtual database Setup – Online Harddrive Space after virtual database Setup Point in Time Recovery Option – Timeline View virtual database Summary No Performance Difference between Regular DB vs Virtual DB Please note that all SQL Server MVP gets free license of this software. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com), Idera (virtual database) Filed under: Database, Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Add-On, SQL Authority, SQL Backup and Restore, SQL Data Storage, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Utility, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Idera

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  • SQL SERVER – Signal Wait Time Introduction with Simple Example – Wait Type – Day 2 of 28

    - by pinaldave
    In this post, let’s delve a bit more in depth regarding wait stats. The very first question: when do the wait stats occur? Here is the simple answer. When SQL Server is executing any task, and if for any reason it has to wait for resources to execute the task, this wait is recorded by SQL Server with the reason for the delay. Later on we can analyze these wait stats to understand the reason the task was delayed and maybe we can eliminate the wait for SQL Server. It is not always possible to remove the wait type 100%, but there are few suggestions that can help. Before we continue learning about wait types and wait stats, we need to understand three important milestones of the query life-cycle. Running - a query which is being executed on a CPU is called a running query. This query is responsible for CPU time. Runnable – a query which is ready to execute and waiting for its turn to run is called a runnable query. This query is responsible for Signal Wait time. (In other words, the query is ready to run but CPU is servicing another query). Suspended – a query which is waiting due to any reason (to know the reason, we are learning wait stats) to be converted to runnable is suspended query. This query is responsible for wait time. (In other words, this is the time we are trying to reduce). In simple words, query execution time is a summation of the query Executing CPU Time (Running) + Query Wait Time (Suspended) + Query Signal Wait Time (Runnable). Again, it may be possible a query goes to all these stats multiple times. Let us try to understand the whole thing with a simple analogy of a taxi and a passenger. Two friends, Tom and Danny, go to the mall together. When they leave the mall, they decide to take a taxi. Tom and Danny both stand in the line waiting for their turn to get into the taxi. This is the Signal Wait Time as they are ready to get into the taxi but the taxis are currently serving other customer and they have to wait for their turn. In other word they are in a runnable state. Now when it is their turn to get into the taxi, the taxi driver informs them he does not take credit cards and only cash is accepted. Neither Tom nor Danny have enough cash, they both cannot get into the vehicle. Tom waits outside in the queue and Danny goes to ATM to fetch the cash. During this time the taxi cannot wait, they have to let other passengers get into the taxi. As Tom and Danny both are outside in the queue, this is the Query Wait Time and they are in the suspended state. They cannot do anything till they get the cash. Once Danny gets the cash, they are both standing in the line again, creating one more Signal Wait Time. This time when their turn comes they can pay the taxi driver in cash and reach their destination. The time taken for the taxi to get from the mall to the destination is running time (CPU time) and the taxi is running. I hope this analogy is bit clear with the wait stats. You can check the Signalwait stats using following query of Glenn Berry. -- Signal Waits for instance SELECT CAST(100.0 * SUM(signal_wait_time_ms) / SUM (wait_time_ms) AS NUMERIC(20,2)) AS [%signal (cpu) waits], CAST(100.0 * SUM(wait_time_ms - signal_wait_time_ms) / SUM (wait_time_ms) AS NUMERIC(20,2)) AS [%resource waits] FROM sys.dm_os_wait_stats OPTION (RECOMPILE); Higher the Signal wait stats are not good for the system. Very high value indicates CPU pressure. In my experience, when systems are running smooth and without any glitch the Signal wait stat is lower than 20%. Again, this number can be debated (and it is from my experience and is not documented anywhere). In other words, lower is better and higher is not good for the system. In future articles we will discuss in detail the various wait types and wait stats and their resolution. Read all the post in the Wait Types and Queue series. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL DMV, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology

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  • Ask How-To Geek: Learning the Office Ribbon, Booting to USB with an Old BIOS, and Snapping Windows

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    You’ve got questions and we’ve got answers. Today we highlight how to master the new Office interface, USB boot a computer with outdated BIOS, and snap windows to preset locations. Learning the New Office Ribbon Dear How-To Geek, I feel silly asking this (in light of how long the new Office interface has been out) but my company finally got around to upgrading from Windows XP and Office 2000 so the new interface it totally new to me. Can you recommend any resources for quickly learning the Office ribbon and the new changes? I feel completely lost after two decades of the old Office interface. Help! Sincerely, Where the Hell is Everything? Dear Where the Hell, We think most people were with you at some point in the last few years. “Where the hell is…” could possibly be the slogan for the new ribbon interface. You could browse through some of the dry tutorials online or even get a weighty book on the topic but the best way to learn something new is to get hands on. Ribbon Hero turns learning the new Office features and ribbon layout into a game. It’s no vigorous round of Team Fortress mind you, but it’s significantly more fun than reading a training document. Check out how to install and configure Ribbon Hero here. You’ll be teaching your coworkers new tricks in no time. Boot via USB with an Old BIOS Dear How-To Geek, I’m trying to repurpose some old computers by updating them with lightweight Linux distros but the BIOS on most of the machines is ancient and creaky. How ancient? It doesn’t even support booting from a USB device! I have a large flash drive that I’ve turned into a master installation tool for jobs like this but I can’t use it. The computers in question have USB ports; they just aren’t recognized during the boot process. What can I do? USB Bootin’ in Boise Dear USB Bootin’, It’s great you’re working to breathe life into old hardware! You’ve run into one of the limitations of older BIOSes, USB was around but nobody was thinking about booting off of it. Fortunately if you have a computer old enough to have that kind of BIOS it’s likely to also has a floppy drive or a CDROM drive. While you could make a bootable CDROM for your application we understand that you want to keep using the master USB installer you’ve made. In light of that we recommend PLoP Boot Manager. Think of it like a boot manager for your boot manager. Using it you can create a bootable floppy or CDROM that will enable USB booting of your master USB drive. Make a CD and a floppy version and you’ll have everything in your toolkit you need for future computer refurbishing projects. Read up on creating bootable media with PLoP Boot Manager here. Snapping Windows to Preset Coordinates Dear How-To Geek, Once upon a time I had a company laptop that came with a little utility that snapped windows to preset areas of the screen. This was long before the snap-to-side features in Windows 7. You could essentially configure your screen into a grid pattern of your choosing and then windows would neatly snap into those grids. I have no idea what it was called or if was anymore than a gimmick from the computer manufacturer, but I’d really like to have it on my new computer! Bend and Snap in San Francisco, Dear Bend and Snap, If we had to guess, we’d guess your company must have had a set of laptops from Acer as the program you’re describing sounds exactly like Acer GridVista. Fortunately for you the application was extremely popular and Acer released it independently of their hardware. If, by chance, you’ve since upgraded to a multiple monitor setup the app even supports multiple monitors—many of the configurations are handy for arranging IM windows and other auxiliary communication tools. Check out our guide to installing and configuring Acer GridVista here for more information. Have a question you want to put before the How-To Geek staff? Shoot us an email at [email protected] and then keep an eye out for a solution in the Ask How-To Geek column. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Upgrade Windows 7 Easily (And Understand Whether You Should) The How-To Geek Guide to Audio Editing: Basic Noise Removal Install a Wii Game Loader for Easy Backups and Fast Load Times The Best of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in 2011 The Worst of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in 2011 HTG Projects: How to Create Your Own Custom Papercraft Toy Download the New Year in Japan Windows 7 Theme from Microsoft Once More Unto the Breach – Facebook Apps Can Now Access Your Address and Phone Number Dial Zero Speeds You Through Annoying Customer Service Menus Complete Dropquest 2011 and Receive Free Dropbox Storage Desktop Computer versus Laptop Wallpaper The Kids Have No Idea What Old Tech Is [Video]

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  • SQL SERVER – Single Wait Time Introduction with Simple Example – Wait Type – Day 2 of 28

    - by pinaldave
    In this post, let’s delve a bit more in depth regarding wait stats. The very first question: when do the wait stats occur? Here is the simple answer. When SQL Server is executing any task, and if for any reason it has to wait for resources to execute the task, this wait is recorded by SQL Server with the reason for the delay. Later on we can analyze these wait stats to understand the reason the task was delayed and maybe we can eliminate the wait for SQL Server. It is not always possible to remove the wait type 100%, but there are few suggestions that can help. Before we continue learning about wait types and wait stats, we need to understand three important milestones of the query life-cycle. Running - a query which is being executed on a CPU is called a running query. This query is responsible for CPU time. Runnable – a query which is ready to execute and waiting for its turn to run is called a runnable query. This query is responsible for Single Wait time. (In other words, the query is ready to run but CPU is servicing another query). Suspended – a query which is waiting due to any reason (to know the reason, we are learning wait stats) to be converted to runnable is suspended query. This query is responsible for wait time. (In other words, this is the time we are trying to reduce). In simple words, query execution time is a summation of the query Executing CPU Time (Running) + Query Wait Time (Suspended) + Query Single Wait Time (Runnable). Again, it may be possible a query goes to all these stats multiple times. Let us try to understand the whole thing with a simple analogy of a taxi and a passenger. Two friends, Tom and Danny, go to the mall together. When they leave the mall, they decide to take a taxi. Tom and Danny both stand in the line waiting for their turn to get into the taxi. This is the Signal Wait Time as they are ready to get into the taxi but the taxis are currently serving other customer and they have to wait for their turn. In other word they are in a runnable state. Now when it is their turn to get into the taxi, the taxi driver informs them he does not take credit cards and only cash is accepted. Neither Tom nor Danny have enough cash, they both cannot get into the vehicle. Tom waits outside in the queue and Danny goes to ATM to fetch the cash. During this time the taxi cannot wait, they have to let other passengers get into the taxi. As Tom and Danny both are outside in the queue, this is the Query Wait Time and they are in the suspended state. They cannot do anything till they get the cash. Once Danny gets the cash, they are both standing in the line again, creating one more Single Wait Time. This time when their turn comes they can pay the taxi driver in cash and reach their destination. The time taken for the taxi to get from the mall to the destination is running time (CPU time) and the taxi is running. I hope this analogy is bit clear with the wait stats. You can check the single wait stats using following query of Glenn Berry. -- Signal Waits for instance SELECT CAST(100.0 * SUM(signal_wait_time_ms) / SUM (wait_time_ms) AS NUMERIC(20,2)) AS [%signal (cpu) waits], CAST(100.0 * SUM(wait_time_ms - signal_wait_time_ms) / SUM (wait_time_ms) AS NUMERIC(20,2)) AS [%resource waits] FROM sys.dm_os_wait_stats OPTION (RECOMPILE); Higher the single wait stats are not good for the system. Very high value indicates CPU pressure. In my experience, when systems are running smooth and without any glitch the single wait stat is lower than 20%. Again, this number can be debated (and it is from my experience and is not documented anywhere). In other words, lower is better and higher is not good for the system. In future articles we will discuss in detail the various wait types and wait stats and their resolution. Read all the post in the Wait Types and Queue series. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL DMV, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology

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  • Fix Windows Computer Problems with Microsoft Fix it Center

    - by Matthew Guay
    Fixing computer problems can often be difficult, but Microsoft is aiming to make it as simple as a couple clicks with.  Here’s how you can easily fix computer problems with Microsoft’s new Fix it Center Beta. Last year Microsoft began offering small Fix it scripts that you could download and run to help solve common computer problems automatically.  These were added to some of the most visited Windows help pages, and helped fix problems with things such as printing errors and Aero glass support.  Now, the Fix it scripts have been bundled together with the Fix it Center, making fixing your computer even easier.  This free tool works great on all editions of Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7. Note: The Fix it Center is currently in beta, so only run if you are comfortable running beta software. Getting Started Download the Fix it Center installer (link below), and install as normal. The installer will download the remaining components, and then finish the installation. In Windows XP, if you have not yet installed .NET 2.0, you may see the following prompt.  Click Yes to go to the download site, and once you’ve installed .NET 2.0, run the Fix it Center setup again. Also, the Fix it Center uses PowerShell to automate its fixes, but if it is not installed yet the installer will automatically download and install it. Find Fixes for Your PC Once Fix it Center is installed, you can personalize it for your computer.  Select Now, and the click Next. It will scan your computer for problems with known solutions, and will offer to go ahead and install these troubleshooters.  If you choose to not install them, you can always download them from within the Fix it Center at a later time. While those troubleshooters are downloading, you can create a Fix it account.  This will give you additional help and support, and let you review Fix it solutions for all your computers from an online dashboard.  You need a Windows Live ID to create an account. Also, choose whether or not to send information to Microsoft about your hardware and software problems. Get Problems Fixed Now that the Fix it Center is installed and has identified issues on your computer, it’s time to get the problems fixed.  Here’s the default front screen in Windows 7, showing all of the available fixes. And here’s the Fix it Center running in Windows XP. Select one of the Troubleshooters to see more information about it, and click Run to start it. You can choose to either detect problems and have them fixed automatically, or you can choose for the Fix it Center to show you the solutions and let you choose whether to apply them or not.  The defaults usually work good, and only take a couple minutes to apply the fixes, but you can select your own fixes if you’d rather be in control. It will scan your computer for known problems in this area, and then will show you the results.  Here, Fix it determined that startup programs may be causing performance issues.  Select Start System Configuration, and uncheck any of the programs you do not usually use. Once you’ve run a troubleshooter, you can see the issues it checked for and any problems it discovered. If you created the online account, you can also choose to view the details online.  This will show all of your computers with Fix it Center and the fixes you’ve run on them.   Conclusion Whether you’re a power user or new to computers, sometimes it’s best to just get your problems fixed and go on with life instead of digging through the registry, forums, and hacking your way to a solution.  Remember the service is still in beta and may not work perfectly or solve your issues every time. But it’s something cool and worth a look. Links Download Microsoft Fix it Center Beta Fix additional problems with Microsoft’s Fix it Center Online Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Disable Windows Mobility Center in Windows 7 or VistaMake Outlook Faster by Disabling Unnecessary Add-InsUsing Netflix Watchnow in Windows Vista Media Center (Gmedia)Disable Security Center Popup Notifications in Windows VistaHow To Manage Action Center in Windows 7 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Icelandic Volcano Webcams Open Multiple Links At One Go NachoFoto Searches Images in Real-time Office 2010 Product Guides Google Maps Place marks – Pizza, Guns or Strip Clubs Monitor Applications With Kiwi

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  • Developer Training – Various Options for Maximum Benefit – Part 4

    - by pinaldave
    Developer Training - Importance and Significance - Part 1 Developer Training – Employee Morals and Ethics – Part 2 Developer Training – Difficult Questions and Alternative Perspective - Part 3 Developer Training – Various Options for Developer Training – Part 4 Developer Training – A Conclusive Summary- Part 5 If you have been reading this series, by now you are aware of all the pros and cons that can come along with training.  We’ve asked and answered hard questions, and investigated them “whys” and “hows” of training.  Now it is time to talk about all the different kinds of training that are out there! On Job Training The most common type of training is on the job training.  Everyone receives this kind of education – even experts who come in to consult have to be taught where the printer, pens, and copy machines are.  If you are thinking about more concrete topics, though, on the job training can be some of the easiest to come across.  Picture this: someone in the company whom you really admire is hard at work on a project.  You come up to them and ask to help them out – if they are a busy developer, the odds are that they will say “yes, please!”   If you phrase your question as an offer of help, you can receive training without ever putting someone in the awkward position of acting as a mentor.  However, some people may want the task of being a mentor.  It can never hurt to ask.  Most people will be more than willing to pass their knowledge along. Extreme Programming If your company and coworkers are willing, you can even investigate Extreme Programming.  This is a type of programming that allows small teams to quickly develop code and products that are released with almost immediate user feedback.  You can find more information at http://www.extremeprogramming.org/.  If this is something your company could use, suggest it to your supervisor.  Even if they say no, it will make it clear that you are a go-getter who is interested in new and exciting projects.  If the answer is yes, then you have the opportunity to get some of the best on the job training around. In Person Training Click on Image to Enlarge When you say the word “training,” most people’s minds go back to the classroom, an image they are familiar with.  While training doesn’t always have to be in a traditional setting, because it is so familiar it can also be the most valuable type of training.  There are many ways to get training through a live instructor.  Some companies may be willing to send a representative to you, where employees will get training, sometimes food and coffee, and a live instructor who can answer questions immediately.  Sometimes these trainers are also able to do consultations at the same time, which can invaluable to a company.  If you are the one to asks your supervisor for a training session that can also be turned into a consultation, you may stick in their minds as an incredibly dedicated employee.  If you can’t find a representative, local colleges can also be a good resource for free or cheap classes – or they may have representatives coming who are willing to take on a few more students. Benefits of On Demand Developer Training Of course, you can often get the best of all these types of training with online or On Demand training.  You can get the benefit of a live instructor who is willing to answer questions (although in this case, usually through e-mail or other online venues), there are often real-world examples to follow along – like on the job training – and best of all you can learn whenever you have the time or need.  Did a problem with your server come up at midnight when all your supervisors are safe at home and probably in bed?  No problem!  On Demand training is especially useful if you need to slow down, pause, or rewind a training session.  Not even a real-life instructor can do that! When I was writing this blog post, I felt that each of the subject, which I have covered can be blog posts of itself. However, I wanted to keep the the blog post concise and so touch based on three major training aspects 1) On Job Training 2) In Person Training and 3) Online training. Here is the question for you – is there any other kind of training methods available, which are effective and one should consider it? If yes, what are those, I may write a follow up blog post on the same subject next week. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Developer Training, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • How To Replace Notepad in Windows 7

    - by Trevor Bekolay
    It used to be that Notepad was a necessary evil because it started up quickly and let us catch a quick glimpse of plain text files. Now, there are a bevy of capable Notepad replacements that are just as fast, but also have great feature sets. Before following the rest of this how-to, ensure that you’re logged into an account with Administrator access. Note: The following instructions involve modifying some Windows system folders. Don’t mess anything up while you’re in there! If you follow our instructions closely, you’ll be fine. Choose your replacement There are a ton of great Notepad replacements, including Notepad2, Metapad, and Notepad++. The best one for you will depend on what types of text files you open and what you do with them. We’re going to use Notepad++ in this how-to. The first step is to find the executable file that you’ll replace Notepad with. Usually this will be the only file with the .exe file extension in the folder where you installed your text editor. Copy the executable file to your desktop and try to open it, to make sure that it works when opened from a different folder. In the Notepad++ case, a special little .exe file is available for the explicit purpose of replacing Notepad.If we run it from the desktop, it opens up Notepad++ in all its glory. Back up Notepad You will probably never go back once you switch, but you never know. You can backup Notepad to a special location if you’d like, but we find it’s easiest to just keep a backed up copy of Notepad in the folders it was originally located. In Windows 7, Notepad resides in: C:\Windows C:\Windows\System32 C:\Windows\SysWOW64 in 64-bit versions only Navigate to each of those directories and copy Notepad. Paste it into the same folder. If prompted, choose to Copy, but keep both files. You can keep your backup as “notepad (2).exe”, but we prefer to rename it to “notepad.exe.bak”. Do this for all of the folders that have Notepad (2 total for 32-bit Windows 7, 3 total for 64-bit). Take control of Notepad and delete it Even if you’re on an administrator account, you can’t just delete Notepad – Microsoft has made some security gains in this respect. Fortunately for us, it’s still possible to take control of a file and delete it without resorting to nasty hacks like disabling UAC. Navigate to one of the directories that contain Notepad. Right-click on it and select Properties.   Switch to the Security tab, then click on the Advanced button. Note that the owner of the file is a user called “TrustedInstaller”. You can’t do much with files owned by TrustedInstaller, so let’s take control of it. Click the Edit… button. Select the desired owner (you could choose your own account, but we’re going to give any Administrator control) and click OK. You’ll get a message that you need to close and reopen the Properties windows to edit permissions. Before doing that, confirm that the owner has changed to what you selected. Click OK, then OK again to close the Properties window. Right-click on Notepad and click on Properties again. Switch to the Security tab. Click on Edit…. Select the appropriate group or user name in the list at the top, then add a checkmark in the checkbox beside Full control in the Allow column. Click OK, then Yes to the dialog box that pops up. Click OK again to close the Properties window. Now you can delete Notepad, by either selecting it and pressing Delete on the keyboard, or right-click on it and click Delete.   You’re now free from Notepad’s foul clutches! Repeat this procedure for the remaining folders (or folder, on 32-bit Windows 7). Drop in your replacement Copy your Notepad replacement’s executable, which should still be on your desktop. Browse to the two or three folders listed above and copy your .exe to those locations. If prompted for Administrator permission, click Continue. If your executable file was named something other than “notepad.exe”, rename it to “notepad.exe”. Don’t be alarmed if the thumbnail still shows the old Notepad icon. Double click on Notepad and your replacement should open. To make doubly sure that it works, press Win+R to bring up the Run dialog box and enter “notepad” into the text field. Press enter or click OK. Now you can allow Windows to open files with Notepad by default with little to no shame! All without restarting or having to disable UAC! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Search and Replace Specific Formatting (fonts, styles,etc) in Microsoft WordHow to Drag Files to the Taskbar to Open Them in Windows 7Customize the Windows 7 or Vista Send To MenuKill Processes from the Windows Command LineChange Your Windows 7 Library Icons the Easy Way TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Use My TextTools to Edit and Organize Text Discovery Channel LIFE Theme (Win7) Increase the size of Taskbar Previews (Win 7) Scan your PC for nasties with Panda ActiveScan CleanMem – Memory Cleaner AceStock – The Personal Stock Monitor

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  • Oracle OpenWorld Preview: Real World Perspectives from Oracle WebCenter Customers

    - by Christie Flanagan
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} If you frequent the Oracle WebCenter blog you’ve probably read a lot about the customer experience revolution over the last few months.  An important aspect of the customer experience revolution is the increasing role that peers play in influencing how others perceive a product, brand or solution, simply by sharing their own, real-world experiences.  Think about it, who do you trust more -- marketers and sales people pitching polished messages or peers with similar roles and similar challenges to the ones you face in your business every day? With this spirit in mind, this polished marketer personally invites you to hear directly from Oracle WebCenter customers about their real-life experiences during our customer panel sessions at Oracle OpenWorld next week.  If you’re currently using WebCenter, thinking about it, or just want to find out more about best practices in social business, next-generation portals, enterprise content management or web experience management, be sure to attend these sessions: CON8899 - Becoming a Social Business: Stories from the Front Lines of Change Wednesday, Oct 3, 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM - Moscone West - 3000Priscilla Hancock - Vice President/CIO, University of Louisville Kellie Christensen - Director of Information Technology, Banner EngineeringWhat does it really mean to be a social business? How can you change your organization to embrace social approaches? What pitfalls do you need to avoid? In this lively panel discussion, customer and industry thought leaders in social business explore these topics and more as they share their stories of the good, the bad, and the ugly that can happen when embracing social methods and technologies to improve business success. Using moderated questions and open Q&A from the audience, the panel discusses vital topics such as the critical factors for success, the major issues to avoid, how to gain senior executive support for social efforts, how to handle undesired behavior, and how to measure business impact. This session will take a thought-provoking look at becoming a social business from the inside. CON8900 - Building Next-Generation Portals: An Interactive Customer Panel DiscussionWednesday, Oct 3, 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM - Moscone West - 3000Roberts Wayne - Director, IT, Canadian Partnership Against CancerMike Beattie - VP Application Development, Aramark Uniform ServicesJohn Chen - Utilities Services Manager 6, Los Angeles Department of Water & PowerJörg Modlmayr - Head of Product Managment, Siemens AGSocial and collaborative technologies have changed how people interact, learn, and collaborate, and providing a modern, social Web presence is imperative to remain competitive in today’s market. Can your business benefit from a more collaborative and interactive portal environment for employees, customers, and partners? Attend this session to hear from Oracle WebCenter Portal customers as they share their strategies and best practices for providing users with a modern experience that adapts to their needs and includes personalized access to content in context. The panel also addresses how customers have benefited from creating next-generation portals by migrating from older portal technologies to Oracle WebCenter Portal. CON8898 - Land Mines, Potholes, and Dirt Roads: Navigating the Way to ECM NirvanaThursday, Oct 4, 12:45 PM - 1:45 PM - Moscone West - 3001Stephen Madsen - Senior Management Consultant, Alberta Agriculture and Rural DevelopmentHimanshu Parikh - Sr. Director, Enterprise Architecture & Middleware, Ross Stores, Inc.Ten years ago, people were predicting that by this time in history, we’d be some kind of utopian paperless society. As we all know, we're not there yet, but are we getting closer? What is keeping companies from driving down the road to enterprise content management bliss? Most people understand that using ECM as a central platform enables organizations to expedite document-centric processes, but most business processes in organizations are still heavily paper-based. Many of these processes could be automated and improved with an ECM platform infrastructure. In this panel discussion, you’ll hear from Oracle WebCenter customers that have already solved some of these challenges as they share their strategies for success and roads to avoid along your journey. CON8897 - Using Web Experience Management to Drive Online Marketing SuccessThursday, Oct 4, 2:15 PM - 3:15 PM - Moscone West - 3001Blane Nelson - Chief Architect, Ancestry.comMike Remedios - CIO, ArbonneCaitlin Scanlon - Product Manager, Monster WorldwideEvery year, the online channel becomes more imperative for driving organizational top-line revenue, but for many companies, mastering how to best market their products and services in a fast-evolving online world with high customer expectations for personalized experiences can be a complex proposition. Come to this panel discussion, and hear directly from customers on how they are succeeding today by using Web experience management to drive marketing success, using capabilities such as targeting and optimization, user-generated content, mobile site publishing, and site visitor personalization to deliver engaging online experiences. Your Handy Guide to WebCenter at Oracle OpenWorld Want a quick and easy guide to all the keynotes, demos, hands-on labs and WebCenter sessions you definitely don't want to miss at Oracle OpenWorld? Download this handy guide, Focus on WebCenter. More helpful links: * Oracle OpenWorld* Oracle Customer Experience Summit @ OpenWorld* Oracle OpenWorld on Facebook * Oracle OpenWorld on Twitter* Oracle OpenWorld on LinkedIn* Oracle OpenWorld Blog

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