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• How to set up a centralized backup server with lots of offsite workstations, intermittent internet connectivity, and stubborn users?

  - by Zac B

  This might be an impossible question. Context: We have a bunch of computers across around 1000 users. We have a centralized office where 900 of the users work, most of the time. Most of the computers are laptops. They are very frequently coming on and off the network for hours at a time. Users often take their computers home and do lots of work from home. In addition, there are a handful of users who work elsewhere in the country, who are offline (no internet connection whatsoever) for more than half of the time they use their machines. All of the machines are Windows 7/XP. Problem: People are always losing data. One day someone accidentally deletes a bunch of files. The next day someone else installs a bad driver or tries to mess with something in system32 and needs a personal data backup/reinstall of Windows. Because of how many of our business operations are done without an internet connection, and how frequently computers come on- and offline, it's unfeasible to make users use network storage for all of their data. We tried giving them Dropboxes, and they stored their files elsewhere. We bought and deployed Altiris, and they uninstalled it and blamed us when they couldn't get files back that they accidentally deleted while they were offline and hadn't taken a backup in months. We tried teaching them backup best-practices, and using scheduled sync tools to upload things to the network drives, and they turned them off because they "looked like viruses". It doesn't help that many of these users are pretty high up in the business and are not amicable to any sort of "you need to do something regularly because we say so" solution. Question: Other than finding another job where IT is treated differently and users are willing to follow best practices, how would people recommend I implement a file backup solution that supports the following: Backs up to a centralized server over LAN or WAN whenever a network link becomes available, or on a schedule. Supports interrupted/resumed backups (and hopefully file-delta only backups), since connections to the network (WAN or LAN) are often slow and only open for half an hour or so. Supports relatively rapid, "I accidentally deleted the TPS reports! Oh no!" single-file recovery, ideally administered from the central backup server rather than the client PC. Supports local-to-local file delta backup on a schedule, so that users without a network connection for a few days can still retrieve accidental deletions or whatnot. Ideally, the local stored backups would be pushed up to the server whenever network link is available. Isn't configurable on the clients without certain credentials. Because the CFOs (who won't give up their admin rights on the domain) will disable it if they can. Backs up the entire hard drive. There are people who are self-righteous about storing things in C:\, or in the recycle bin, or in the C:\Windows dir (yes, I know). I'm fine integrating multiple products/solutions, or scripting different programs together myself (I'm a somewhat competent programmer), but I've been drawing a blank on where to start. Dropbox is folder-specific, Altiris doesn't cope with LAN outages or interrupted/resumed backups, Volume Shadow Copy is awesome for a local-to-local solution, but I don't know how to push days of stored shadow copies up to a server in a 2 hour window of network access. The company is fine with spending decent money on this, thousands (USD) on a server, and hundreds on clients, if necessary. I want to emphasize that this isn't a shopping list request. While I wish there was a program out there that did what I want, I've looked pretty hard, and not found anything that fits the bill. Instead, I'm hoping for ideas on where to start hacking things together from scratch/from different technologies to make something stable that works. Cheers!

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• Did a recent WinXP update break CD/DVD read speeds? SP2/SP3

  - by quack quixote

  I have two systems with fresh installations of Windows XP Pro SP3 (SP3 slipstreamed into the installer; fully updated after install). One's a refurbished 2.4GHz Pentium4 system; the other is a new 1.6GHz Atom330 build. Both have brand-new dual-layer CD/DVD burners (one's a LiteOn IDE, the other an LG SATA). Both take a really looooong time to read a single-layer DVD in Windows with Cygwin tools. Specifically, 40 minutes or more. I burn backup data to single-layer DVD+/-R and use MD5 hashes for data verification (made with the standard md5sum tool in Unix or Cygwin). The hashes are burned to disc with the data files, and I use this command to verify: $ cd /path/to/disc/mountpoint ; time md5sum -c < md5.txt Here's how long that takes to run on a full single-layer DVD+/-R disc: Old system (WinXP SP2, 1.8GHz Athlon 2500+, last summer): ~10 minutes Old system (Ubuntu 9.04, 1.8GHz Athlon 2500+): ~10 minutes Old system (Debian 5, dual 550MHz P3): ~10 minutes New Pentium4 system (running Ubuntu 9.04): ~5 minutes New Pentium4 system (running WinXP SP3, file copy from Win Explorer): ~6 minutes New Atom330 system (running WinXP SP3, file copy from Win Explorer): ~6 minutes Now the weird stuff: Old system (WinXP SP2, 1.8GHz Athlon 2500+, today): ~25 minutes New Pentium4 system (running WinXP SP3, read from Cygwin): ~40-50 minutes (?!!) New Atom330 system (running WinXP SP3, read from Cygwin): ~40 minutes (can do it in ~30 minutes ...if i have another program spin up the drive first) Since both systems will copy files in 6 minutes using Windows Explorer, I know it's not a hardware problem. Windows just never spins up the drive during the Cygwin read, so it stays super-slow the whole time. Other programs like EAC and DVD Decrypter seem to spin up the disc just fine during their processing. DMA is enabled on both systems. (Can confirm in Windows' Device Manager on the Atom330, not on the P4.) Nero's DriveSpeed tool doesn't seem to have any effect. Copy times are comparable from commandline with Windows' xcopy. Copying with Cygwin's cp looks more like the problem state -- it will spin up the drive for a short time, never reaches full speed, and lets it spin back down again for most of the copy. What I need is to get full read speeds from Cygwin. Is this a known issue with SP3 or some other recent Windows update? Any other ideas? Update: More testing; Windows will spin up the drive when data is copied with Windows tools, but not when read in place or copied with Cygwin tools. It doesn't make sense to me that Windows spins up the drive for copying, but not for other reads. Might be more of a Cygwin problem? Update 2: GUI activity is sluggish during the problem state -- during the Cygwin verifies, there's a slight but noticable delay when dragging windows or icons around on the desktop, switching windows, Alt-Tabbing through open applications, opening new windows, etc. It reminds me of the delay when opening a Windows Explorer window on My Computer just after inserting a DVD. I've tried updating Cygwin (from 1.5.x to 1.7.x), but no change in the problem behavior. I've also noticed this issue occurs on WinXP SP2, but it's not exactly the same -- some spin-up occurs, so the read happens in ~25-30 minutes instead of 40+. The SP2 system used to run the verifies in ~10 minutes, and when it first changed (not sure exactly when, maybe in late November or early December 2009) I thought it was dying hardware. This is why I suspect an official update of breaking this functionality; this has worked for years on that SP2 box.

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• Application Does Not Start in Windows 7

  - by Jim Fell

  I recently installed a new 60GB SSD as my primary hard drive and re-installed Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. I then installed SSD Fresh from Abelssoft to optimize Windows to run on the SSD. It seemed to install okay, but when I try to run the utility, its splash screen appears briefly before it quietly closes. No errors are displayed; the utility just fails to launch. I have run SSD Fresh on another SSD-equipped Windows 7 Pro x64 computer in the past without any problems. Does anyone know what might be preventing the program from running? I tried running sfc /scannow from the command line (with administrator privileges), shutting down the Spybot Resident, and disabling the firewall and virus scanner. I also tried running the tool as administrator; I even tried reinstalling it, running the installer as administrator. No luck. Every time I try to launch the program the Event Viewer logs this same set of errors: Error 4/2/2012 11:35:44 PM Application Error 1000 (100) Faulting application name: SSDFresh.exe, version: 1.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x4f2a45d8 Faulting module name: unknown, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x00000000 Exception code: 0xc0000005 Fault offset: 0x000007ff0016dbba Faulting process id: 0x994 Faulting application start time: 0x01cd11fd9fe978df Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\SSD Fresh\SSDFresh.exe Faulting module path: unknown Report Id: dfeed551-7df0-11e1-a2c7-002522c47ec0 Error 4/2/2012 11:35:43 PM .NET Runtime 1026 None Application: SSDFresh.exe Framework Version: v4.0.30319 Description: The process was terminated due to an unhandled exception. Exception Info: System.NullReferenceException Stack: at AbBugReporter.BugForm.InitLanguage() at AbBugReporter.BugForm..ctor(AbFlexTrans.LanguageInfo, AbBugReporter.BugReportManager, Boolean) at AbBugReporter.BugReportManager.Show(System.Exception) at SSDFresh.App.App_DispatcherUnhandledException(System.Object, System.Windows.Threading.DispatcherUnhandledExceptionEventArgs) at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.CatchException(System.Exception) at MS.Internal.Threading.ExceptionFilterHelper.TryCatchWhen(System.Object, System.Delegate, System.Object, Int32, System.Delegate) at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.WrappedInvoke(System.Delegate, System.Object, Int32, System.Delegate) at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.InvokeImpl(System.Windows.Threading.DispatcherPriority, System.TimeSpan, System.Delegate, System.Object, Int32) at MS.Win32.HwndSubclass.SubclassWndProc(IntPtr, Int32, IntPtr, IntPtr) at MS.Win32.UnsafeNativeMethods.DispatchMessage(System.Windows.Interop.MSG ByRef) at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.PushFrameImpl(System.Windows.Threading.DispatcherFrame) at System.Windows.Application.RunInternal(System.Windows.Window) at System.Windows.Application.Run() at SSDFresh.App.Main() Error 4/2/2012 11:35:39 PM SideBySide 59 None Activation context generation failed for "C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\csc.exe".Error in manifest or policy file "C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\csc.exe.Config" on line 0. Invalid Xml syntax. Error 4/2/2012 11:35:39 PM SideBySide 59 None Error 4/2/2012 11:35:39 PM SideBySide 59 None Error 4/2/2012 11:35:39 PM SideBySide 59 None Error 4/2/2012 11:35:39 PM SideBySide 59 None Error 4/2/2012 11:35:39 PM SideBySide 59 None Error 4/2/2012 11:35:39 PM SideBySide 59 None Error 4/2/2012 11:35:39 PM SideBySide 59 None Error 4/2/2012 11:35:39 PM SideBySide 59 None Error 4/2/2012 11:35:39 PM SideBySide 59 None Error 4/2/2012 11:35:39 PM SideBySide 59 None Error 4/2/2012 11:35:39 PM SideBySide 59 None Error 4/2/2012 11:35:39 PM SideBySide 59 None Error 4/2/2012 11:35:39 PM SideBySide 59 None Error 4/2/2012 11:35:39 PM SideBySide 59 None Error 4/2/2012 11:35:39 PM SideBySide 59 None Error 4/2/2012 11:35:39 PM SideBySide 59 None Error 4/2/2012 11:35:39 PM SideBySide 59 None Error 4/2/2012 11:35:39 PM SideBySide 59 None Error 4/2/2012 11:35:39 PM SideBySide 59 None Error 4/2/2012 11:35:39 PM SideBySide 59 None Error 4/2/2012 11:35:39 PM SideBySide 59 None Error 4/2/2012 11:35:39 PM SideBySide 59 None Error 4/2/2012 11:35:39 PM SideBySide 59 None Error 4/2/2012 11:35:39 PM SideBySide 59 None Error 4/2/2012 11:35:39 PM SideBySide 59 None Error 4/2/2012 11:35:39 PM SideBySide 59 None Error 4/2/2012 11:35:39 PM SideBySide 59 None For those who are interested, here is my system configuration: ASRock M3A770DE AM3 AMD 770 ATX AMD Motherboard AMD Athlon II X3 455 Rana 3.3GHz Socket AM3 95W Triple-Core Desktop Processor ADX455WFGMBOX G.SKILL Value Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Desktop Memory Model F3-10600CL9D-8GBNT Mushkin Enhanced Chronos Deluxe MKNSSDCR60GB-DX 2.5" 60GB SATA III Synchronous MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) (Primary/Boot HD) Western Digital Caviar Blue RFHWD1600AAJS 160GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive (Secondary HD) Sony Optiarc CD/DVD Burner Black SATA Model AD-7261S-0B LightScribe Support RAIDMAX RX-850AE 850W ATX12V v2.3 / EPS12V SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply ASUS HD7850-DC2-2GD5 Radeon HD 7850 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card Asus ML228H 21.5" Full HD LED BackLight LED Monitor Slim Design (x3)

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• Long connection times from PHP to MySQL on EC2

  - by Erik Giberti

  I'm having an intermittent issue connecting to a database slave with InnoDB. Intermittently I get connections taking longer than 2 seconds. These servers are hosted on Amazon's EC2. The app server is PHP 5.2/Apache running on Ubuntu. The DB slave is running Percona's XtraDB 5.1 on Ubuntu 9.10. It's using an EBS Raid array for the data storage. We already use skip name resolve and bind to address 0.0.0.0. This is a stub of the PHP code that's failing $tmp = mysqli_init(); $start_time = microtime(true); $tmp-options(MYSQLI_OPT_CONNECT_TIMEOUT, 2); $tmp-real_connect($DB_SERVERS[$server]['server'], $DB_SERVERS[$server]['username'], $DB_SERVERS[$server]['password'], $DB_SERVERS[$server]['schema'], $DB_SERVERS[$server]['port']); if(mysqli_connect_errno()){ $timer = microtime(true) - $start_time; mail($errors_to,'DB connection error',$timer); } There's more than 300Mb available on the DB server for new connections and the server is nowhere near the max allowed (60 of 1,200). Loading on both servers is < 2 on 4 core m1.xlarge instances. Some highlights from the mysql config max_connections = 1200 thread_stack = 512K thread_cache_size = 1024 thread_concurrency = 16 innodb-file-per-table innodb_additional_mem_pool_size = 16M innodb_buffer_pool_size = 13G Any help on tracing the source of the slowdown is appreciated. [EDIT] I have been updating the sysctl values for the network but they don't seem to be fixing the problem. I made the following adjustments on both the database and application servers. net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling = 1 net.ipv4.tcp_sack = 0 net.ipv4.tcp_timestamps = 0 net.ipv4.tcp_fin_timeout = 20 net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_time = 180 net.ipv4.tcp_max_syn_backlog = 1280 net.ipv4.tcp_synack_retries = 1 net.core.rmem_max = 16777216 net.core.wmem_max = 16777216 net.ipv4.tcp_rmem = 4096 87380 16777216 net.ipv4.tcp_wmem = 4096 87380 16777216 [EDIT] Per jaimieb's suggestion, I added some tracing and captured the following data using time. This server handles about 51 queries/second at this the time of day. The connection error was raised once (at 13:06:36) during the 3 minute window outlined below. Since there was 1 failure and roughly 9,200 successful connections, I think this isn't going to produce anything meaningful in terms of reporting. Script: date /root/database_server.txt (time mysql -h database_Server -D schema_name -u appuser -p apppassword -e '') /dev/null 2 /root/database_server.txt Results: === Application Server 1 === Mon Feb 22 13:05:01 EST 2010 real 0m0.008s user 0m0.001s sys 0m0.000s Mon Feb 22 13:06:01 EST 2010 real 0m0.007s user 0m0.002s sys 0m0.000s Mon Feb 22 13:07:01 EST 2010 real 0m0.008s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.001s === Application Server 2 === Mon Feb 22 13:05:01 EST 2010 real 0m0.009s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.002s Mon Feb 22 13:06:01 EST 2010 real 0m0.009s user 0m0.001s sys 0m0.003s Mon Feb 22 13:07:01 EST 2010 real 0m0.008s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.001s === Database Server === Mon Feb 22 13:05:01 EST 2010 real 0m0.016s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.010s Mon Feb 22 13:06:01 EST 2010 real 0m0.006s user 0m0.010s sys 0m0.000s Mon Feb 22 13:07:01 EST 2010 real 0m0.016s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.010s [EDIT] Per a suggestion received on a LinkedIn question, I tried setting the back_log value higher. We had been running the default value (50) and increased it to 150. We also raised the kernel value /proc/sys/net/core/somaxconn (maximum socket connections) to 256 on both the application and database server from the default 128. We did see some elevation in processor utilization as a result but still received connection timeouts.

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• Command-line video editing in Linux (cut, join and preview)

  - by sdaau

  I have rather simple editing needs - I need to cut up some videos, maybe insert some PNGs in between them, and join these videos (don't need transitions, effects, etc.). Basically, pitivi would do what I want - except, I use 640x480 30 fps AVI's from a camera, and as soon as I put in over a couple of minutes of that kind of material, pitivi starts freezing on preview, and thus becomes unusable. So, I started looking for a command line tool for Linux; I guess only ffmpeg (command line - Using ffmpeg to cut up video - Super User) and mplayer (Sam - Edit video file with mencoder under linux) are so far candidates, but I cannot find examples of the use I have in mind.   Basically, I'd imagine there's an encoder and player tools (like ffmpeg vs ffplay; or mencoder vs mplayer) - such that, to begin with, the edit sequence could be specified directly on the command line, preferably with frame resolution - a pseudocode would look like: videnctool -compose --file=vid1.avi --start=00:00:30:12 --end=00:01:45:00 --file=vid2.avi --start=00:05:00:00 --end=00:07:12:25 --file=mypicture.png --duration=00:00:02:00 --file=vid3.avi --start=00:02:00:00 --end=00:02:45:10 --output=editedvid.avi ... or, it could have a "playlist" text file, like: vid1.avi 00:00:30:12 00:01:45:00 vid2.avi 00:05:00:00 00:07:12:25 mypicture.png - 00:00:02:00 vid3.avi 00:02:00:00 00:02:45:10 ... so it could be called with videnctool -compose --playlist=playlist.txt --output=editedvid.avi The idea here would be that all of the videos are in the same format - allowing the tool to avoid transcoding, and just do a "raw copy" instead (as in mencoder's copy codec: "-oac copy -ovc copy") - or in lack of that, uncompressed audio/video would be OK (although it would eat a bit of space). In the case of the still image, the tool would use the encoding set by the video files.   The thing is, I can so far see that mencoder and ffmpeg can operate on individual files; e.g. cut a single section from a single file, or join files (mencoder also has Edit Decision Lists (EDL), which can be used to do frame-exact cutting - so you can define multiple cut regions, but it's again attributed to a single file). Which implies I have to work on cutting pieces first from individual files first (each of which would demand own temporary file on disk), and then joining them in a final video file. I would then imagine, that there is a corresponding player tool, which can read the same command line option format / playlist file as the encoding tool - except it will not generate an output file, but instead play the video; e.g. in pseudocode: vidplaytool --playlist=playlist.txt --start=00:01:14 --end=00:03:13 ... and, given there's enough memory, it would generate a low-res video preview in RAM, and play it back in a window, while offering some limited interaction ( like mplayer's keyboard shortcuts for play, pause, rewind, step frame). Of course, I'd imagine the start and end times to refer to the entire playlist, and include any file that may end up in that region in the playlist. Thus, the end result of all this would be: command line operation; no temporary files while doing the editing - and also no temporary files (nor transcoding) when rendering final output... which I myself think would be nice. So, while I think that all of the above may be a bit of a stretch - does there exist anything that would approximate the workflow described above?

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• PC runs very slowly for no apparent reason

  - by GalacticCowboy

  I have a Dell Latitude D820 that I've owned for about 2.5 years. It is a Core 2 Duo T7200 2.0GHz, with 2 GB of RAM, an 80 GB hard drive and an NVidia Quadro 120M video card. The computer was purchased in late November of 2006 with XP Pro, and included a free upgrade to Vista Business. (Vista was available on MSDN but not yet via retail, so the Vista Business upgrades weren't shipped until March of '07.) Since we had an MSDN subscription at the time, I installed Vista Ultimate on it pretty much as soon as I got it. It ran happily until sometime in the spring of 2007 when Media Center (which I had never used except to watch DVDs) started throwing some kind of bizarre SQL (CE?) error. This error would pop up at random times just while using the computer. Furthermore, Media Center would no longer start. I never identified the cause of this error. I had the Vista Business upgrade by this time, so I nuked the machine, installed XP and all the drivers, and then the Vista Business upgrade. Again, it ran happily for a few months and then started behaving badly once again. Vista Business doesn't have Media Center, so this exhibited completely unrelated symptoms. For no apparent reason and at fairly random times, the machine would suddenly appear to freeze up or run very slowly. For example, launching a new application window (any app) might take 30-45 seconds to paint fully. However, Task Manager showed very low CPU load, memory, etc. I tried all the normal stuff (chkdsk, defrag, etc.) and ran several diagnostic programs to try to identify any problems, but none found anything. It eventually reached the point that the computer was all but unusable, so I nuked it again and installed XP. This time I decided to stick with XP instead of going to Vista. However, within the past couple of months it has started to exhibit the same symptoms in XP that I used to see in Vista. The computer is still under Dell warranty until December, but so far they aren't any help unless I can identify a specific problem. A friend (partner in a now-dead business) has an identical machine that was purchased at the same time. His machine exhibits none of these symptoms, which leads me to believe it is a hardware issue, but I can't figure out how to identify it. Any ideas? Utilities? Seen something similar? At this point I can't even identify any pattern to the behavior, but would be willing to run a "stress test"-style app for as long as a couple days if I had any hope that it would find something. EDIT July 17 I'm testing jerryjvl's answer regarding the video card, though I'm not sure it fully explains the symptoms yet. This morning I ran a video stress test. The test itself ran fine, but immediately afterward the PC started acting up again. I left ProcExp open and various system processes were consuming 50-60% of the CPU but with no apparent reason. For example, "services.exe" was eating about 40%, but the sum of its child processes wasn't higher than about 5%. I left it alone for several minutes to settle down, and then it was fine again. I used the "video card stability test" from firestone-group.com. Its output isn't very detailed, but it at least exercises the hardware pretty hard. EDIT July 22 Thanks for your excellent suggestions. Here is an update on what I have tried so far. Ran memtest86, SeaTools (Seagate), Hitachi drive fitness test, video card stability test (mentioned above). The video card test was the only one that seemed to produce any results, though it didn't occur during the actual test. I defragged the drive (again...) with JkDefrag I dropped the video card

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• My computer freezes irregurarly

  - by Manhim

  My computer started to freeze at irregular times for 3 weeks now. What happens My computer freezes, the video stops. (No graphic glitches, it just stops) Sound keeps playing up to some time (Usually 10-30 seconds) then stops playing. Sometimes, randomly, the screen on my G-15 keyboard flickers and I see caracters not at the right places. Usually happens for about 1-2 seconds and a bit before my computer freezes. I have to keep the power button pressed for 4 seconds to shut my computer down. I still hear my hard drives and fans working. Sometimes it works with no problems for a full day, some other times it just keeps freezing each time I restart my computer and I have to leave it for the rest of the day. Sometimes my mouse freezes for a fraction of a second (Like 0.01 to 0.2 seconds) quite randomly, usually before it freezes. No errors spotted by the "Action center" unlike when I had problems with my last video card on this system (Driver errors). My G-15 LCD screen also freezes. What I did so far I have had similar problems in the past and I had changed my hard drive (It was faulty), so I tested my software RAID-0 array and it was faulty so I changed it. (I reinstalled Windows 7 with this part). I also tested with unplugging my secondary hard drive. My CPU was running at about 100 degree Celsius, I removed the dust between the fans and the heatsink and it's now between 50-60. I ran a CPU stress-test and it didn't freeze during the tests (using Prime95 on all cores) Ran a memory test (using memtest86+) for a single pass and there were no errors. Ran a GPU stress test with ati-tools and furmark and it didn't freeze during the tests. (No artefacts either) I had troubles with my graphic card when I got it, but I think that it got fixed with a driver update. I checked the voltages in my BIOS setup and they all seemed ok (±0.2 I think). I have ran on the computer without problems with Fedora 15 on an external hard drive (Appart that it couldn't load Gnome 3 and was reverting to Gnome 2, didn't want to install drivers since I use it on multiple computers) I used it to backup my files from the raid array to my 1TB hard drive for the reinstallation of Windows. (So the crashes only happenned on Windows) [The external hard drive is plugged directly on a SATA port] I contacted EVGA (My graphic card vendor) and pointed them on this question, I'm looking for an answer. Ran sensors on Fedora 15 and got this output: http://pastebin.com/0BHJnAvu When it happens When I play video games (Mostly) When I play flash games (Second most) When I'm looking at my desktop background (It rarely happens when I have a window open, but it does, sometimes) Specs Windows Seven x64 Home Premium Motherboard: M2N-SLI Deluxe CPU: AMD Phenom 9950 x2 @ 2.6GHz Memory: Kingston 4x2GB Dual Channel (Pretty basic memory sticks) Hard drives: Was 2x250GB (Western digital caviar) in raid-0 + 1TB (WD caviar black), I replaced the raid array with a 750GB (WD caviar black) [Yes I removed the array from the raid configurations] 750W Power supply No overcloking. Ever. There have been some power-downs like 4-5 weeks ago, but the problem didn't start immediately after. (I wasn't home, so my computer got shut-down) My current to-try list Change the thermal paste on my CPU. Change my graphic card with a temporary one and stress the computer. Change my power supply. In this situation, how can I successfully pin-point the current hardware problem? (If it's a hardware problem) Because I don't really have the budget to just forget and replace everything. I also don't really have hardware to test-replace current hardware.

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• Installation of Access Database Engine 32-bit Fails

  - by Rayzor78

  I am trying to install Access Database Engine 2007 32-bit. The splash screen comes up, you click "Next", then it fails with the error: Installation ended prematurely because of an error You click "OK" and another error window says: The installation of the package failed. The exact same situation happens when I try this with Access Database Engine 2010 32-bit. This production server is running Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 64-bit. Before I tried installing Access Database Engine 32-bit, I first needed to install Microsoft Office 2010 Pro (Excel and Office Tools only). I tried the 32-bit version on the production server since that is how I set it up in our Dev environment. No luck. The 32-bit version would not install. I did NOT get the error "You have 64-bit components of Office installed". I simply received the exact same two errors listed above. So, I knew that 32-bit/64-bit did not really matter for the Office install for my project, so I installed 64-bit of Office Pro 2010 (Excel and Office Tools only) with no problems. I have a requirement that I need to have the 32-bit version of the Access Database Engine installed. 2007 or 2010, doesn't matter. I cannot use the 64-bit version of Access Database Engine 2010 because my SSIS package will not work with it. I require the 32-bit version. I've tried several steps to try to get it installed. I seriously think that the production server has some aversion to installing 32-bit applications. Here's what I've tried: Tried installing via command line with the "/passive" switch....no luck. Tried numerous iterations to copy the install file to the server (downloaded a fresh copy directly to the server, downloaded a fresh copy to my local machine then copied it over, copied it over zipped up) (http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sqldataaccess/thread/efd3c1f0-07cd-45ca-a626-2dd0c7ac3e9f). Tried Method 1 from this link. Could not try Method 2 because it requires a server reboot and in my environment that requires a long change management process. I've verified that I am a local administrator on the server. (Evidence, I am able to install other applications (office 64-bit per above)). Verified that there are no other office products that should be blocking the installation. The fore-mentioned install of Excel 2010 64-bit was the first Office product installed on the server. VERY ODD: To test my theory that the production server does not like 32-bit applications, I installed something lightweight. I installed 7-Zip 32-bit on the production server with no problems whatsoever. Here are some things that I have not tried (i will follow-up once I do): Method 2 (as mentioned above). Requires a server reboot. Have not verified that the Dev and Production environments are 100% identical. I've done a cursory check and on the surface they appear to be the same (same OS and SP version). I need to do a deeper dive to be 100% certain. I had no problems in my Dev environment. In Dev, I installed Office 2010 Pro 64-bit (Excel & Office Tools only) then via command line w/ the "/passive" switch, installed Access Database Engine 2010 32-bit. I don't know what else to try. Any suggestions or comments?

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• TCP stops sending weirdly.

  - by Utoah

  In case to find out the cause of TCP retransmits on my Linux (RHEL, kernel 2.6.18) servers connecting to the same switch. I had a client-server pair send "Hello" to each other every 200us and captured the packets with tcpdump on the client machine. The command I used to mimic client and server are: while [ 0 ]; do echo "Hello"; usleep 200; done | nc server 18510 while [ 0 ]; do echo "Hello"; usleep 200; done | nc -l 18510 When the server machine was busy serving some other requests, the client suffered from abrupt retransmits occasionally. But the output of tcpdump seemed irrational. 16:04:58.898970 IP server.18510 > client.34533: P 4531:4537(6) ack 3204 win 123 <nop,nop,timestamp 1923778643 3452833828> 16:04:58.901797 IP client.34533 > server.18510: P 3204:3210(6) ack 4537 win 33 <nop,nop,timestamp 3452833831 1923778643> 16:04:58.901855 IP server.18510 > client.34533: P 4537:4549(12) ack 3210 win 123 <nop,nop,timestamp 1923778646 3452833831> 16:04:58.903871 IP client.34533 > server.18510: P 3210:3216(6) ack 4549 win 33 <nop,nop,timestamp 3452833833 1923778646> 16:04:58.903950 IP server.18510 > client.34533: P 4549:4555(6) ack 3216 win 123 <nop,nop,timestamp 1923778648 3452833833> 16:04:58.905796 IP client.34533 > server.18510: P 3216:3222(6) ack 4555 win 33 <nop,nop,timestamp 3452833835 1923778648> 16:04:58.905860 IP server.18510 > client.34533: P 4555:4561(6) ack 3222 win 123 <nop,nop,timestamp 1923778650 3452833835> 16:04:58.908903 IP client.34533 > server.18510: P 3222:3228(6) ack 4561 win 33 <nop,nop,timestamp 3452833838 1923778650> 16:04:58.908966 IP server.18510 > client.34533: P 4561:4567(6) ack 3228 win 123 <nop,nop,timestamp 1923778653 3452833838> 16:04:58.911855 IP client.34533 > server.18510: P 3228:3234(6) ack 4567 win 33 <nop,nop,timestamp 3452833841 1923778653> 16:04:59.112573 IP client.34533 > server.18510: P 3228:3234(6) ack 4567 win 33 <nop,nop,timestamp 3452834042 1923778653> 16:04:59.112648 IP server.18510 > client.34533: P 4567:5161(594) ack 3234 win 123 <nop,nop,timestamp 1923778857 3452834042> 16:04:59.112659 IP client.34533 > server.18510: P 3234:3672(438) ack 5161 win 35 <nop,nop,timestamp 3452834042 1923778857> 16:04:59.114427 IP server.18510 > client.34533: P 5161:5167(6) ack 3672 win 126 <nop,nop,timestamp 1923778858 3452834042> 16:04:59.114439 IP client.34533 > server.18510: P 3672:3678(6) ack 5167 win 35 <nop,nop,timestamp 3452834044 1923778858> 16:04:59.116435 IP server.18510 > client.34533: P 5167:5173(6) ack 3678 win 126 <nop,nop,timestamp 1923778860 3452834044> 16:04:59.116444 IP client.34533 > server.18510: P 3678:3684(6) ack 5173 win 35 <nop,nop,timestamp 3452834046 1923778860> Packet 3228:3234(6) from client was retransmitted due to ack timeout. What I could not understand was that the client machine did not send out any packets after the first 3228:3234(6) packets was sent. The server machine had advertised a window (scaled) large enough. The data transfer up to the retransmit was fine which meant no slow start should be in action. What can cause the client machine to stop sending until the packet timed out? BTW, I am unable to run tcpdump on the server machine.

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• Problems with XP, Office, and PC in general - any ideas?

  - by molecule

  Hi all This may not make a whole lot of sense so pls bear with me... I am about to perform a routine check on one of my user's PC. Some background - the PC has a Xeon processor and 4Gb of RAM and running XP SP3 He has 2xHDD and pagefile is hosted on the secondary HDD (D:) and min/max values are set to 4096. NO pagefile on C: This user has 6 monitors so he has an NVIDIA Quadro NVS440 hosting 4xmonitors and an NVIDIA Quadro NVS290 hosting 2xmonitors. There is a video card driver from NVIDIA which is compatible with both NVS440 and NVS290 and he is on the latest version of that driver. (Note: Make of video cards are different - one is from leadtek and the other from Nvidia) He is a heavy Bloomberg, Outlook, Word, and Excel user and runs two Citrix applications. Other apps are FoxIt PDF and IE. Problems - Outlook and Excel frequently crashes - I am going to perform an Outlook and Excel repair and also check/remove unnecessary addins - will he lose any customizations if I repaired and chose "Restore my shortcuts while repairing" and do not select "Discard my customized settings and restore default settings". Does repair really repair anything? FYI - It stopped crashing ever since i moved a large spreadsheet he has open to his local HDD instead of over the network. This spreadsheet "refreshes" constantly as it is pulling live data to update cells and I suspect it was auto-saving so frequently that it caused crashes if saving over the network. At times, his right click completely fails to respond. His left click works fine but he can't right click on anything in any Window and even on the desktop. Sometimes, he needs to start to close certain applications such as Adobe and the right click will start functioning again. I removed Adobe and installed FoxIt as I figured it was a resource issue but I do not think so as he does have sufficient resources when the problem is happening. Sometimes he can't bring task manager up until he kills certain apps. Definitely sounds like a resource issue but I am not confident that is the root cause. Also not sure if this is related to one of the apps installed but his Start bar flickers (does not completely disappear) intermittently from time to time. The taskbar icons which are hidden appear and then get hidden again as if it was having "fits". I have performed reg scans, malware scans etc but problems do not go away. I am planning to perform sfc /scannow and office repair but would like to know if anyone has any other suggestions. What about setting a "small" pagefile on C:. I have heard that this is recommended and may be the reason why a minidmp file was not generated when he encountered a blue screen. Also, any feedback on his video cards? Do you think different models would cause problems? The drivers seem to work but he only has 2.5Gb out of 4Gb available RAM as I believe the video card chomped up a portion of this. I have recommended creating a new profile for him but due to the amount of customisations he has and the amount of time and effort it will take to get him up and running again, he prefers to bear with the problem than to go down that path. However, at least once a week, his PC acts up and I can't think of any other tools or techniques to rectify his problems. I guess we are at a stage where we just want to "stabilize" things so he won't encounter issues that frequently. Any feedback is very much appreciated.

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• iptables rule(s) to send openvpn traffic from clients over an sshuttle tunnel?

  - by Sam Martin

  I have an Ubuntu 12.04 box with OpenVPN. The VPN is working as expected -- clients can connect, browse the Web, etc. The OpenVPN server IP is 10.8.0.1 on tun0. On that same box, I can use sshuttle to tunnel into another network to access a Web server on 10.10.0.9. sshuttle does its magic using the following iptables commands: iptables -t nat -N sshuttle-12300 iptables -t nat -F sshuttle-12300 iptables -t nat -I OUTPUT 1 -j sshuttle-12300 iptables -t nat -I PREROUTING 1 -j sshuttle-12300 iptables -t nat -A sshuttle-12300 -j REDIRECT --dest 10.10.0.0/24 -p tcp --to-ports 12300 -m ttl ! --ttl 42 iptables -t nat -A sshuttle-12300 -j RETURN --dest 127.0.0.0/8 -p tcp Is it possible to forward traffic from OpenVPN clients over the sshuttle tunnel to the remote Web server? I'd ultimately like to be able to set up any complicated tunneling on the server, and have relatively "dumb" clients (iPad, etc.) be able to access the remote servers via OpenVPN. Below is a basic diagram of the scenario: [Edit: added output from the OpenVPN box] $ sudo iptables -nL -v -t nat Chain PREROUTING (policy ACCEPT 1498 packets, 252K bytes) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 1512 253K sshuttle-12300 all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT 322 packets, 58984 bytes) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT 584 packets, 43241 bytes) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 587 43421 sshuttle-12300 all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 Chain POSTROUTING (policy ACCEPT 589 packets, 43595 bytes) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 1175 76298 MASQUERADE all -- * eth0 10.8.0.0/24 0.0.0.0/0 Chain sshuttle-12300 (2 references) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 17 1076 REDIRECT tcp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 10.10.0.0/24 TTL match TTL != 42 redir ports 12300 0 0 RETURN tcp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 127.0.0.0/8 $ sudo iptables -nL -v -t filter Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT 97493 packets, 30M bytes) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 131K 109M ACCEPT all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 state RELATED,ESTABLISHED 1370 89160 ACCEPT all -- * * 10.8.0.0/24 0.0.0.0/0 0 0 REJECT all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 reject-with icmp-port-unreachable [Edit 2: more OpenVPN server output] $ netstat -r Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags MSS Window irtt Iface default 192.168.1.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0 10.8.0.0 10.8.0.2 255.255.255.0 UG 0 0 0 tun0 10.8.0.2 * 255.255.255.255 UH 0 0 0 tun0 192.168.1.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0 [Edit 3: still more debug output] IP forwarding appears to be enabled correctly on the OpenVPN server: # find /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/ -name forwarding -ls -execdir cat {} \; 18926 0 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Mar 5 13:31 /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/all/forwarding 1 18954 0 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Mar 5 13:31 /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/default/forwarding 1 18978 0 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Mar 5 13:31 /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/eth0/forwarding 1 19003 0 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Mar 5 13:31 /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/lo/forwarding 1 19028 0 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Mar 5 13:31 /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/tun0/forwarding 1 Client routing table: $ netstat -r Routing tables Internet: Destination Gateway Flags Refs Use Netif Expire 0/1 10.8.0.5 UGSc 8 48 tun0 default 192.168.1.1 UGSc 2 1652 en1 10.8.0.1/32 10.8.0.5 UGSc 1 0 tun0 10.8.0.5 10.8.0.6 UHr 13 0 tun0 10.10.0/24 10.8.0.5 UGSc 0 0 tun0 <snip> Traceroute from client: $ traceroute 10.10.0.9 traceroute to 10.10.0.9 (10.10.0.9), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets 1 10.8.0.1 (10.8.0.1) 5.403 ms 1.173 ms 1.086 ms 2 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 4.693 ms 2.110 ms 1.990 ms 3 l100.my-verizon-garbage (client-ext-ip) 7.453 ms 7.089 ms 6.248 ms 4 * * * 5 10.10.0.9 (10.10.0.9) 14.915 ms !N * 6.620 ms !N

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• How can I check if PHP was compiled with the UNICODE version of the Win32 API?

  - by Wesley Murch

  This is related to this Stack Overflow post: glob() can't find file names with multibyte characters on Windows? I'm having issues with PHP and files that have multibyte characters on Windows. Here's my test case: print_r(scandir('./uploads/')); print_r(glob('./uploads/*')); Correct Output on remote UNIX server: Array ( [0] => . [1] => .. [2] => filename-äöü.jpg [3] => filename.jpg [4] => test?test.jpg [5] => ??? ?????.jpg [6] => ?????????.jpg [7] => ???.jpg ) Array ( [0] => ./uploads/filename-äöü.jpg [1] => ./uploads/filename.jpg [2] => ./uploads/test?test.jpg [3] => ./uploads/??? ?????.jpg [4] => ./uploads/?????????.jpg [5] => ./uploads/???.jpg ) Incorrect Output locally on Windows: Array ( [0] => . [1] => .. [2] => ??? ?????.jpg [3] => ???.jpg [4] => ?????????.jpg [5] => filename-äöü.jpg [6] => filename.jpg [7] => test?test.jpg ) Array ( [0] => ./uploads/filename-äöü.jpg [1] => ./uploads/filename.jpg ) Here's a relevant excerpt from the answer I chose to accept (which actually is a quote from an article that was posted online over 2 years ago): From the comments on this article: http://www.rooftopsolutions.nl/blog/filesystem-encoding-and-php The output from your PHP installation on Windows is easy to explain : you installed the wrong version of PHP, and used a version not compiled to use the Unicode version of the Win32 API. For this reason, the filesystem calls used by PHP will use the legacy "ANSI" API and so the C/C++ libraries linked with this version of PHP will first try to convert yout UTF-8-encoded PHP string into the local "ANSI" codepage selected in the running environment (see the CHCP command before starting PHP from a command line window) Your version of Windows is MOST PROBABLY NOT responsible of this weird thing. Actually, this is YOUR version of PHP which is not compiled correctly, and that uses the legacy ANSI version of the Win32 API (for compatibility with the legacy 16-bit versions of Windows 95/98 whose filesystem support in the kernel actually had no direct support for Unicode, but used an internal conversion layer to convert Unicode to the local ANSI codepage before using the actual ANSI version of the API). Recompile PHP using the compiler option to use the UNICODE version of the Win32 API (which should be the default today, and anyway always the default for PHP installed on a server that will NEVER be Windows 95 or Windows 98...) I can't confirm whether this is my problem or not. I used phpinfo() and did not find anything interesting, but I wasn't sure what to look for. I've been using XAMPP for easy installations, so I'm really not sure exactly how it was installed. I'm using Windows 7, 64 bit - so forgive my ignorance, but I'm not even sure if "Win32" is relevant here. How can I check if my current version of PHP was compiled with the configuration mentioned above? PHP Version: 5.3.8 System: Windows NT WES-PC 6.1 build 7601 (Windows 7 Home Premium Edition Service Pack 1) i586 Build Date: Aug 23 2011 11:47:20 Compiler: MSVC9 (Visual C++ 2008) Architecture: x86 Configure Command: cscript /nologo configure.js "--enable-snapshot-build" "--disable-isapi" "--enable-debug-pack" "--disable-isapi" "--without-mssql" "--without-pdo-mssql" "--without-pi3web" "--with-pdo-oci=D:\php-sdk\oracle\instantclient10\sdk,shared" "--with-oci8=D:\php-sdk\oracle\instantclient10\sdk,shared" "--with-oci8-11g=D:\php-sdk\oracle\instantclient11\sdk,shared" "--enable-object-out-dir=../obj/" "--enable-com-dotnet" "--with-mcrypt=static" "--disable-static-analyze"

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• phpMyAdmin setup issues

  - by EquinoX

  I am trying to follow the tutorial here to setup the user and pass. It says there that "this section is only applicable if your MySQL server is running with --skip-show-database". First question is, how do I check if MySQl server is running with --skip-show-database? Is there any way I can access phpMyAdmin SQL query window without logging in? Otherwise I'd have to execute this SQL from command line. I am also getting this: Cannot load mcrypt extension. Please check your PHP configuration. I have added mcrypt.so to php.ini and doing the following command proves that I have it. [root@DT html]# rpm -qa | grep mcrypt mcrypt-2.6.8-1.el5 php-mcrypt-5.3.5-1.1.w5 libmcrypt-2.5.8-4.el5.centos [root@DT html]# php -v PHP 5.3.5 (cli) (built: Feb 19 2011 13:10:09) Copyright (c) 1997-2010 The PHP Group Zend Engine v2.3.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2010 Zend Technologies Now when I go to phpinfo() and search for mcrypt it can find it inside the Configure Command row ('--with-mcrypt=shared,/usr'). So, what to do next?. UPDATE: I didn't put extension=mcrypt.so in php.ini as it will complain the following: PHP Warning: Module 'mcrypt' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 Here's my nginx.conf: #user nobody; worker_processes 2; #error_log logs/error.log; #error_log logs/error.log notice; #error_log logs/error.log info; #pid logs/nginx.pid; events { worker_connections 1024; } http { include mime.types; default_type application/octet-stream; #log_format main '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" ' # '$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" ' # '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"'; #access_log logs/access.log main; sendfile on; #tcp_nopush on; #keepalive_timeout 0; keepalive_timeout 65; gzip on; server { listen 80; root /usr/share/nginx/html; server_name localhost; #charset koi8-r; #access_log logs/host.access.log main; location / { #root html; index index.html index.htm; } #error_page 404 /404.html; # redirect server error pages to the static page /50x.html # error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html; location = /50x.html { #root html; } # proxy the PHP scripts to Apache listening on 127.0.0.1:80 # #location ~ \.php$ { # proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1; #} # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000 # location ~ \.php$ { #root /usr/local/nginx/html; fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; fastcgi_index index.php; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /usr/share/nginx/html$fastcgi_script _name; include fastcgi_params; } # deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache's document root # concurs with nginx's one location ~ /\.ht { deny all; } } # another virtual host using mix of IP-, name-, and port-based configuration # #server { # listen 8000; # listen somename:8080; # server_name somename alias another.alias; # location / { # root html; # index index.html index.htm; # } #} # HTTPS server # #server { # listen 443; # server_name localhost; # ssl on; # ssl_certificate cert.pem; # ssl_certificate_key cert.key; # ssl_session_timeout 5m; # ssl_protocols SSLv2 SSLv3 TLSv1; # ssl_ciphers ALL:!ADH:!EXPORT56:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:+MEDIUM:+LOW:+SSLv2:+EXP; # ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on; # location / { # root html; # index index.html index.htm; # } #} }

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• Pairing Bluetooth device with PIN fails

  - by Pikaro

  I'm trying to pair my old BlackBerry 8310 to my Linux desktop (up-to-date Debian Sid, 3.15-10.dmz.1-liquorix-amd64) by using blueman and its associated tools. Scanning for the device works equally well for both sides; however, I am unable to pair the two once it comes to entering the PIN. If I scan from my PC, I have two options in blueman-manager regarding my phone: Directly selecting "pair", or selecting "setup". If I select "pair", nothing happens on my desktop, but the phone asks me to enter a PIN; if I do so, it reports that pairing has failed. During that, nothing is logged to the console. Selecting "setup" opens a configuration dialog that allows for entering or generating a PIN. Regardless, I get to a screen that tells me to enter the PIN on the phone, and at the same time, the phone pops up the equivalent dialog. This would be what one would expect to work; but whatever I enter (naturally, the same on both), both devices report that pairing has failed, and blueman-manager logs init_services (/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/blueman/main/Device.py:73) Loading services org.bluez.Error.AuthenticationFailed: Authentication Failed If I instead try to pair from the phone, I cannot see any kind of reaction from my desktop - all I get is the equivalent "pairing failed" message from the BlackBerry after I entered a PIN in the dialog that pops up there. hcitool scan and hciconfig -a work without complaints, but I cannot find a way to try the pairing as a whole on the console since bluez-simple-agent seems to have been discontinued and this recommendation is everywhere on Google. hcitool cc as root opens the PIN dialog on the phone, then fails with "Input/Output error" once I enter it. The user is not permitted to execute this command. I also tried creating /usr/lib/bluetooth/<MAC>/pincodes to manually define a persistent PIN, which seems to have had no effect. The same goes for running the different commands as root, though I'm really confused about the internal structure of the Bluetooth subsystem now: They usually and inconsistently failed with Python or DBUS errors or just showed the same results. The only other Bluetooth device I have around are a pair of Creative speakers. Trying "setup" asks me to enter a key on them, which is impossible. If I try "pair", I'm asked for a PIN as I should, but no pairing takes place, and no errors appear on the console. (It just repeats their name a few times.) Interestingly, I tried that before writing my question, and nothing happened in terms of PIN questions, just like with the BlackBerry, which still shows no change. I don't think I actively changed anything since then. The BlackBerry can pair with and connect to the speakers, and everything goes as one would expect, so the problem is definitely with my desktop. So thus my questions: What is that PIN window generated by, and why does it seem to appear randomly? How can I find out what, exactly, fails after trying to add the speakers, as this may give me a clue? Is there any kind of complete log that concerns itself with Bluetooth? What data can I provide to make this more solvable?

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• Trying to prevent Windows from hibernating/sleeping automatically

  - by user328821

  My Dell XPS 8700 (Win 7) suddenly began putting itself to sleep at 6pm daily, even if I'm typing. I don't know what caused this to occur, except possibly a windows update that took place in the middle of the night. I initially went into settings for power and saw 2 plans set up, one from Dell and the other window's Power saver plan. I set both to never for sleep and hibernate yet it still occurred. I have current drivers and a fairly new UPS that has software to set to shutdown only after power loss. Dell is of little help, can anyone point me in the right direction? I did do the powerdfg -energy program and came up with this: Power Efficiency Diagnostics Report Scan Time 2014-05-08T19:21:48Z Scan Duration 60 seconds System Manufacturer Dell Inc. System Product Name XPS 8700 BIOS Date 08/23/2013 BIOS Version A04 OS Build 7601 Platform Role PlatformRoleDesktop Plugged In true Process Count 115 Thread Count 1631 Report GUID {097caf99-039b-44c3-b154-d797bfbfdfcc} Analysis Results Errors Power Policy:Sleep timeout is disabled (Plugged In) The computer is not configured to automatically sleep after a period of inactivity. System Availability Requests:System Required Request The device or driver has made a request to prevent the system from automatically entering sleep. Requesting Driver Instance HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_10EC&DEV_0899&SUBSYS_102805B7&REV_1000\4&220b1bbc&0&0001 Requesting Driver Device Realtek High Definition Audio CPU Utilization:Processor utilization is high The average processor utilization during the trace was high. The system will consume less power when the average processor utilization is very low. Review processor utilization for individual processes to determine which applications and services contribute the most to total processor utilization. Average Utilization (%) 9.48 Warnings Platform Timer Resolution:Platform Timer Resolution The default platform timer resolution is 15.6ms (15625000ns) and should be used whenever the system is idle. If the timer resolution is increased, processor power management technologies may not be effective. The timer resolution may be increased due to multimedia playback or graphical animations. Current Timer Resolution (100ns units) 10000 Maximum Timer Period (100ns units) 156001 Platform Timer Resolution:Outstanding Kernel Timer Request A kernel component or device driver has requested a timer resolution smaller than the platform maximum timer resolution. Requested Period 10000 Request Count 2 Platform Timer Resolution:Outstanding Timer Request A program or service has requested a timer resolution smaller than the platform maximum timer resolution. Requested Period 10000 Requesting Process ID 8672 Requesting Process Path \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe Platform Timer Resolution:Outstanding Timer Request A program or service has requested a timer resolution smaller than the platform maximum timer resolution. Requested Period 100000 Requesting Process ID 1212 Requesting Process Path \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Windows\System32\svchost.exe Power Policy:802.11 Radio Power Policy is Maximum Performance (Plugged In) The current power policy for 802.11-compatible wireless network adapters is not configured to use low-power modes. CPU Utilization:Individual process with significant processor utilization. This process is responsible for a significant portion of the total processor utilization recorded during the trace. Process Name audiodg.exe PID 1304 Average Utilization (%) 4.73 Module Average Module Utilization (%) \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Windows\System32\msvcrt.dll 1.88 \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Windows\System32\MaxxAudioAPO5064.dll 1.77 \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Windows\System32\AudioEng.dll 0.80 CPU Utilization:Individual process with significant processor utilization. This process is responsible for a significant portion of the total processor utilization recorded during the trace. Process Name thunderbird.exe PID 6036 Average Utilization (%) 0.35 Module Average Module Utilization (%) \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Thunderbird\xul.dll 0.16 \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Thunderbird\mozjs.dll 0.05 \SystemRoot\System32\win32k.sys 0.03 CPU Utilization:Individual process with significant processor utilization. This process is responsible for a significant portion of the total processor utilization recorded during the trace. Process Name dwm.exe PID 1340 Average Utilization (%) 0.25 Module Average Module Utilization (%) \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Windows\System32\dwmcore.dll 0.08 \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Windows\System32\nvwgf2umx.dll 0.05 \SystemRoot\system32\ntoskrnl.exe 0.03 CPU Utilization:Individual process with significant processor utilization. This process is responsible for a significant portion of the total processor utilization recorded during the trace.

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• Windows 8.1 Update 1 Disk Usage 100%

  - by Gookjin Jeong

  Background Information / Computer Specs I have a 14-inch Samsung Series 5 Ultra. Core i5 CPU, 750GB HDD, 8GB RAM, Intel HD Graphics 4000. I've had the computer for about 1.5 years with no major problems. Problem The issue appeared at the beginning of April this year, when I updated the OS to Windows 8.1 Update 1 (not from 8 to 8.1). After being on continually (except for at night, when I put it on sleep mode) for about 48 hours, the disk usage as seen by Task Manager hits 100%. When this happens, everything from opening/closing applications to typing and even bringing up the start screen by pressing the Windows key becomes extremely slow. The only way to make the disk usage decrease is to restart the computer. Then the problem repeats. I've used my current laptop (as well as my previous laptops) this way -- putting it on sleep mode at night and restarting it only when Windows needs to install updates -- for a long time. So I know the 100% disk usage is not due to the way I use the computer. The thing that causes the spike varies. Sometimes it's System, sometimes it's one of the various applications I installed (e.g. Chrome, Evernote, Spotify, Wunderlist, iTunes, etc.), and sometimes it's Antimalware Service Executable, etc. Tried Solutions I think I tried almost every solution out there for this problem: Running the check disk command (chkdsk /b /f /v /scan c:) from Admin Command Prompt Running Windows Memory Diagnostic Disabling Superfetch and Windows Search from services.msc Running "Fix problems with Windows Update" from Control Panel -- Troubleshooting Updating and rolling back the graphics driver (Intel HD 4000) Disabling "Use hardware acceleration when available" from Chrome settings Disabling Intel Rapid Storage Technology Running the SFC /SCANNOW command as recommended here Running a quick scan & a full scan from Windows Defender (no threats found) Taking the hard drive out and putting it back Refreshing the computer, from the Update and recovery -- Recovery option in Windows settings NONE of the above worked for me. I was about to give up but then noticed that one of the main culprits of the disk usage spike, as shown in the "Disk Activity" section of the Resource Monitor, was C:\System (pagefile.sys). I googled around and found that one of the recommended solutions was to disable pagefile. I then went to **Control Panel -- System and Security -- System -- Advanced system settings -- Advanced tab -- Performance settings -- Advanced tab -- "Change" under Virtual memory and discovered that the number for "Currently allocated" at the bottom was 1280MB, although the number for "Recommended" was 4533MB. I immediately changed it to 4533MB and checked my family members' computers to see what the numbers were like. All of theirs had a currently allocated space that was only slightly smaller than the recommended space. See screenshot below: This might fix the problem. I'll have to wait a couple more days.But if it doesn't, what in the world should I do next? I'm guessing the hard drive isn't failing because This computer is less than 2 years old; and Speccy says that the status of the HDD is good. Update 5/27/2014 The "4533MB" solution did not work. I had to reboot the computer about 30 minutes ago because the disk usage again hit 100%. When I opened Resource Monitor the C:\System (pagefile.sys) again was shown to be the culprit. I have now disabled pagefile entirely via the same window shown above in the screenshot. The number for "currently allocated" is now 0MB. Will update again in a couple days, or if the problem occurs again, whichever comes sooner.

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• How does the Cloud compare to Colocation? And development too

  - by David

  Currently I/we run a SaaS web application where each subscriber has their own physical instance of the application in addition to their own database. The setup has each web application instance deployed on two different IIS boxes both for load-balancing and redundancy (the machines have their Windows Update install times 12 hours apart, for example). Databases are mirrored on two different SQL Server 2012 machines with AlwaysOn for uptime. I don't make use of SQL Server clustering (as it doesn't provide storage-level failover: we don't have a shared storage box). Because it's a Windows setup it means there are two Domain Controllers (we cheat: they're both Mac Minis, 17W each, which keeps our colo power costs low). Finally there's also an Exchange server (Mailbox, Hub Transport and Client Access). One of the SQL Servers also doubles-up as an Exchange Hub Transport. Running costs are about $700 a month for our quarter-rack colocation (which includes power and peering/transfer), then there's about $150 a month for SPLA licensing, so $850 a month in total. Then there's the hard-to-quantify cost of administration, but I reckon I spend a couple of hours a week checking-in on the servers: reviewing event logs, etc. I keep getting bombarded by ads and manufactured news stories about how great "the cloud" is. Back in 2008 when the cloud was taking off I was reading up about the proper "cloud" services like Google AppEngine, where you write in Python against Google's API and that's how they scale your application across servers and also use their database provider for scaling storage. Simple enough to understand. Then came along Amazon, and I understand how Amazon Storage works, but I'm not sure how Amazon Compute works: web application pages don't take much CPU time to compute, how do you even quantify usage anyway? Finally, RackSpace gets in the act and now I'm really confused. RackSpace advertise "Cloud" SQL Server 2012 available for about "$0.70 per hour", going by how they advertise it I thought the "hour" meant the sum of CPU time, IO blocking time, maybe time spent transferring data, so for a low-intensity application that works out pretty cheap then? Nope. I went on to a Sales Chat window and spoke to one of their advisors. They told me the $0.70/hour was actually for every hour the SQL Server is running... but who wants a SQL Server for only a few hours? You're going to need it available 24 hours a day for months on end. $0.70 * 24 * 31 works out at $520 a month, which is rediculously expensive for SQL Server. An SPLA license for SQL Server is only $50 a month or so. That $520 a month does not include "fanatical support", and you also need to stack on top the costs of the host Windows server instance too. From what I can tell, Rackspace's "Cloud" products seem like like an cynical rebranding of an overpriced VPS service, but priced by the hour. I have the same confusion about Windows Azure which uses similar terms to describe the products available, but I think that's because Azure offers both traditional shared webhosting in addition to their own APIs you can target for scalable applications.

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• CHAT ROOMs 7 by 6

  - by user2939942

  I am looking for chatroom on one page with 7 loggedin users and 6+rows for say 42 users.these users will keep on adding wthnew users.Need urgent help.A PRETTY UNUSUAL Q FOR MOST OF U.What is MORE REQ new features: Usernames are unique to users currently chatting You can see a "currently chatting" user list There are multiple rooms for chatting <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" /> <title>Simpla Admin</title> <link rel="stylesheet" href="resources/css/reset.css" type="text/css" media="screen" /> <link rel="stylesheet" href="resources/css/style.css" type="text/css" media="screen" /> <link rel="stylesheet" href="resources/css/invalid.css" type="text/css" media="screen" /> <script type="text/javascript" src="resources/scripts/jquery-1.3.2.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="resources/scripts/simpla.jquery.configuration.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="resources/scripts/facebox.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="resources/scripts/jquery.wysiwyg.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="resources/scripts/jquery.datePicker.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="resources/scripts/jquery.date.js"></script> <script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="suggest3.js"></script><script language="javascript"> function popitappup4() { var aid=document.a.cid.value; var url="followup.php?id="+aid; alert(url); newwindow=window.open(url,'name','height=480,width=480, scrollbars=yes'); if (window.focus) {newwindow.focus()} return false; } </script> <script type="text/javascript" src="highslide-with-html.js"></script> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="highslide.css" /> <script type="text/javascript"> hs.graphicsDir = 'graphics/'; hs.outlineType = 'rounded-white'; hs.wrapperClassName = 'draggable-header'; </script> <link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" media="all" href="css/chat.css" /> <link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" media="all" href="css/screen.css" /> </head> <body onload="fnew()"><div id="body-wrapper"> <!-- Wrapper for the radial gradient background --> <div id="sidebar"> <link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" media="all" href="css/chat.css" /> <link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" media="all" href="css/screen.css" /> <script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="js/chat.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> function fnew() { document.getElementById("psearch").focus(); } </script> <div id="sidebar-wrapper"> <!-- Sidebar with logo and menu --> <h1 id="sidebar-title"><a href="#"></a></h1> <!-- Logo (221px wide) --> <a href="#"><img id="logo" src="resources/images/logo.png" alt="Simpla Admin logo" /></a> <!-- Sidebar Profile links --> <form name="frm" action="opd_view1.php"> <table width="240" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <tr> <td width="210"><div align="right" style="font-size:22px; color:#FFFFFF"><b>OPD Search</b></div></td> <td width="30"><div align="right"></div></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="right">&nbsp;</td> <td align="right">&nbsp;</td> </tr> <tr> <td align="right"><div align="right"> <input type="text" name="psearch" id="psearch" class="text-input" style="width:45mm;" /> </div></td> <td align="right"><div align="right"></div></td> </tr> <tr> <td>&nbsp;</td> <td>&nbsp;</td> </tr> <tr> <td><div align="right"></div></td> <td><div align="right"></div></td> </tr> </table> </form> <div id="profile-links"> <a href="welcome.php" title="Sign Out" style="font-size:16px" ><b> </b></a> <br /> <a href="sample.php" title="Chat">Chat</a> </div></div> <!-- End #sidebar --> <div id="main-content"> <!-- Main Content Section with everything --> <noscript> <!-- Show a notification if the user has disabled javascript --> </noscript> <div style="width:100%; height: 600px; overflow-x: scroll; scrollbar-arrow-color: blue; scrollbar-face-color: #e7e7e7; scrollbar-3dlight-color: #a0a0a0; scrollbar-darkshadow-color: #888888; background-color:#FFFFFF "> <ul class="shortcut-buttons-set"> <!-- Page Head --> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('drabhinit')" rel="modal" style=" background-color:#00FF00" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>drabhinit</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('drvarun')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>drvarun</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('sameer')" rel="modal" style=" background-color:#00FF00" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>sameer</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('drchetan')" rel="modal" style=" background-color:#00FF00" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>drchetan</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('neema')" rel="modal" style=" background-color:#00FF00" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>neema</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('drpriya')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>drpriya</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('drchhavi')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>drchhavi</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('drsanjay')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>drsanjay</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('ruchi')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>ruchi</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('drarchana')" rel="modal" style=" background-color:#00FF00" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>drarchana</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('drshraddha')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>drshraddha</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('sunita')" rel="modal" style=" background-color:#00FF00" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>sunita</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('reshma')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>reshma</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('riya')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>riya</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('drritesh')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>drritesh</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('rachana')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>rachana</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('sunita')" rel="modal" style=" background-color:#00FF00" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>sunita</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('kavye')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>kavye</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('paridhi')" rel="modal" style=" background-color:#00FF00" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>paridhi</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('paridhi')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>paridhi</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('drsonika')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>drsonika</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('anny')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>anny</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('nitansh')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>nitansh</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('drekta')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>drekta</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('drritesh')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>drritesh</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('neeraj')" rel="modal" style=" background-color:#00FF00" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>neeraj</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('neeraj')" rel="modal" style=" background-color:#00FF00" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>neeraj</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('drneha')" rel="modal" style=" background-color:#00FF00" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>drneha</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('kirti')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>kirti</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('drratna')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>drratna</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('drratana')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>drratana</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('drnoopur')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>drnoopur</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('admin k')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>admin k</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('web')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>web</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('drarti')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>drarti</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('drsaqib')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>drsaqib</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('neelesh')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>neelesh</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('pooja')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>pooja</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('drneha')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>drneha</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('drnupur')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>drnupur</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('isha')" rel="modal" style=" background-color:#00FF00" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>isha</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('isha')" rel="modal" style=" background-color:#00FF00" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>isha</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('drnamrata')" rel="modal" style=" background-color:#00FF00" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>drnamrata</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('ashish')" rel="modal" style=" background-color:#00FF00" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>ashish</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('ambrish')" rel="modal" style=" background-color:#00FF00" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>ambrish</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('drrashmi')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>drrashmi</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('drsapna')" rel="modal" style=" background-color:#00FF00" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>drsapna</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('manisha')" rel="modal" style=" background-color:#00FF00" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>manisha</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('Isha')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>Isha</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('drrashmi')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>drrashmi</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('Dr Meghna')" rel="modal" style=" background-color:#00FF00" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>Dr Meghna</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('akanksha')" rel="modal" style=" background-color:#00FF00" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>akanksha</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('drashish')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>drashish</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('drpriya')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>drpriya</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('drnitya')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>drnitya</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('drmanoj')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>drmanoj</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('sonali')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>sonali</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('drkhushbu')" rel="modal" style=" background-color:#00FF00" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>drkhushbu</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('drpriyanka')" rel="modal" style=" background-color:#00FF00" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>drpriyanka</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('drabhishek')" rel="modal" style=" background-color:#00FF00" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>drabhishek</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('drpoonam')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>drpoonam</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('drprachi')" rel="modal" style=" background-color:#00FF00" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>drprachi</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('drpeenal')" rel="modal" style=" background-color:#00FF00" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>drpeenal</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('neerajpune')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>neerajpune</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('paridhipune')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>paridhipune</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('faeem')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>faeem</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('rahul')" rel="modal" style=" background-color:#00FF00" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>rahul</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('DrNeha')" rel="modal" style=" background-color:#00FF00" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>DrNeha</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('drmrigendra')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>drmrigendra</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('neetu')" rel="modal" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>neetu</span></a></li> <li> <a class="shortcut-button" href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="javascript:chatWith('drriteshpawar')" rel="modal" style=" background-color:#00FF00" ><span><img src="resources/images/icons/comment_48.png" alt="icon" width="48" height="48" /> <br/>drriteshpawar</span></a></li> </ul> </div> <script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="js/chat.js"></script> <!-- End .shortcut-buttons-set --> <div class="clear"></div> <div class="clear"></div>

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• How To Start Your Own Professional Blog with WordPress

  - by Matthew Guay

  Would you like to start your own blog or website?  With a free WordPress  account, it’s free and easy to get started creating your own professional quality blog site. This is the first part in a series on how to create your own professional quality blog site. No, we’re not talking about some cheapo looking blog from Blogger or something on Facebook, but creating a quality blog you can be proud of and present to millions of readers online. WordPress is one of the most popular blogging platforms, powering hundreds of high-profile websites and blogs around the world.  It’s both powerful and easy to use, which makes it great whether you’re just starting out or are a blogging pro.  To start out with your blogging project WordPress is completely free, and you can use the online interface or install the WordPress software on your own server and blog from there. Getting Started You can start a blog in just a few minutes.  Head over to WordPress.com and click Sign up now on the right-hand side of the main page. Enter a username and password, check that you agree with the legal terms, select the “Gimme a blog” bullet, and click Next. WordPress may inform you that your username is already taken, simply choose a new one and try again. Next, choose a domain for your blog.  This will be the address for your site, and cannot be changed, so be sure to choose exactly what you want.  If you’d prefer your address to be yourname.com instead of yourname.wordpress.com, you can add your own domain for a fee after your blog is setup…but we’ll cover that later. Once you click signup, you will be sent a confirmation email.  While you wait for the email to arrive you can go ahead and enter in your name and a short bio about yourself. When you receive your confirmation email, click the link.  Congratulations; you now have your own blog! You can view your new blog immediately, though the default theme isn’t very interesting without your content and pictures. Back on the page you opened from the email, click Login to access your blog’s administration page and to start adding stuff to your blog.  You can also access your blog’s admin page anytime by from yourname.wordpress.com/admin, substituting your own blog name for yourname. Enter your username and password, then click Log in to get started. Adding Content to your WordPress.com Blog When you sign in to your WordPress blog, you’ll first see the WordPress Admin page.  Here you can see recent posts and comments, and you can see stats of how many people have visited your site.  You can also access all of your blog tools and settings right from this page. To add a new post to your blog, click the Posts link on the left, then click “Add New” either on the left menu or on the top of the Edit Posts page.  Or, if you want to edit the default first post, hover over it and select Edit. Or click the New Posts button on the top of the page.  This menu bar is always visible whenever you’re logged in, so it’s an easy way to add a post. The editor lets you easily write anything you want in a Microsoft Word-style editor.  You can format your text, add lists, links, quotes, and more.  When you’re ready to share your content with the world, click Publish on the right side. To add pictures or other files, click the picture icon beside “Upload/Insert”.  Your free blog account can store up to 3Gb of pictures and documents which will definitely give you a good start. Click Select Files, and then choose the pictures or documents you want to add to your post. When the pictures have uploaded, you can add a caption and choose how to position the picture.  When you’re finished, select “Insert into Post”.   Or, if you want to add a video, click the video button.  You have to add a paid upgrade to upload videos directly, but you can add YouTube and other online videos for free. Click the “From URL” tab, and then paste the link to the YouTube video and click Insert into post. If you’re a code geek, click the HTML tab in the editor and edit the HTML of your blog post the geeky way. Once you’ve added all your content and edited it the way you want, click the Publish button on the right of the editor.  Or, you can click Preview to make sure it looks right, and then click Publish. Here’s our blog with the new blog post containing a picture and video.  While you’re getting to know you’re way around the controls in WordPress, the Preview feature will be your best friend while you try to organize the content to your liking.   Conclusion It only takes a couple minutes to get started blogging at WordPress.com. Whether you want to write about your daily life, share pictures of your children, or review the latest books and gadgets, WordPress.com is a great place to get started for free.  But we’ve only covered a small portion of the WordPress features…but this should get you started. Check back for more WordPress and blogging coverage coming up soon! Links Signup for a free WordPress.com account Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Add Social Bookmarking (Digg This!) Links to your Wordpress BlogHow-To Geek SoftwareProtecting Your WordPress Admin Panel From Hackers With .htaccessMake a Backup Copy of your Production Wordpress Blog on UbuntuLinux QuickTip: Downloading and Un-tarring in One Step 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 Awe inspiring, inter-galactic theme (Win 7) Case Study – How to Optimize Popular Wordpress Sites Restore Hidden Updates in Windows 7 & Vista Iceland an Insurance Job? Find Downloads and Add-ins for Outlook Recycle !

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• The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials

  - by Ross

  The Apple iPad is the latest new toy, and we’ve put together a comprehensive list of every tip, trick, and tutorial that we could find to help you get the most out of it—and we’re even giving one away to one lucky reader. So read on! Note: We’ll be keeping this page updated as we find more great articles, so you should bookmark this page for future reference. Want Your Own iPad? How-To Geek is Giving One Away! All you have to do to enter is become a fan of our Facebook page, and we’ll pick a random fan to win the prize. Win an iPad on the How-To Geek Facebook Fan Page Disable the “clicking sound” on the iPad Keyboard Does the clicking sound when you tap the iPad keyboard bother you? Thankfully it’s easy to disable with a couple of taps. How to disable the “clicking sound” on your iPad’s keyboard Enable and add bookmarks to the Safari Bookmarks Bar on your iPad By default, Safari doesn’t display the Bookmarks Bar. This tip shows you how to change that. How to enable and add bookmarks to the Safari Bookmarks Bar on your iPad Clear the Cache, History and Cookies in Safari for the iPad You’re probably used to clearing this kind of data right from within the browser. Not so with Safari on the iPad – but here’s how you can. How to clear the cache, history and cookies in Safari for iPad How to add more Apps to your iPad Dock The iPad has four icons in its ‘dock’. Did you know it can hold 6? How to add more Apps to your iPad Dock Convert PDF files to ePub files to read on your iPad with iBooks ePub is the format that iBooks are in. So for those of you with large eBook collections in PDF, here’s how you convert them to read in iBooks. How to convert PDF files to ePub files to read on your iPad with iBooks How to force your iPad to restart Has an app caused your iPad to freeze up, and you can’t escape? This tip shows you how to force your iPad to restart. How to force your iPad to restart How to export Keynote for iPad presentations to your Mac or PC Exporting Keynote presentations from your iPad to your Mac or PC isn’t as straight forward as you might have expected. This tutorial shows you how. How to export Keynote for iPad presentations to your Mac or PC How to import presentations to Keynote on your iPad Having trouble getting your presentations onto your iPad? How to import presentations to Keynote on your iPad How to import documents to Pages on your iPad This guide shows you how to transfer documents (MS Word or Pages) from your Mac/PC to your iPad. How to import documents to Pages on your iPad How to insert photos in a Pages document using iPad and share it as a PDF Want to spice up that doc with a picture you just took? This tutorial will show you how – and how to export that document as a PDF. How to insert photos in a Pages document using iPad and share it as a PDF How to lock your iPad If you have kids or co-workers/friends who think it’s funny to mess with your iPad – lock it. How to lock your iPad How to remove the “Sent from my iPad” signature from outgoing email on your iPad Does everyone need to know you just sent that email from your iPad? Probably not. This guide shows you how to remove the “Sent from my iPad” signature and replace it with your own (or none). How to remove the “Sent from my iPad” signature from outgoing email on your iPad How To Sync Multiple Calendars to the iPad With Google Sync This tutorial will show you a workaround on how to sync multiple calendars on your iPad using Google Sync. How to Sync Multiple Calendars to the iPad With Google Sync How to determine the MAC address of your iPad If your network restricts connections via MAC address – this guide will show you how to determine what yours is. How to determine the MAC address of your iPad How to take a screenshot of your iPad Do you need to take a screenshot of your iPad? This quick tip shows you how to do just that. How to take a screenshot of your iPad How to delete apps from your iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad Anyone who had an iPod Touch or iPhone before they had an iPad won’t need this tutorial. But if you’re new to the experience, this one will help. How to delete apps from your iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad How to determine the iPad ECID on Windows and Mac iPadintosh shows us how to determine the iPad’s ECID code – something you’ll want to have come Jailbreak time. How to grab the iPad ECID in Windows or OS X iPad Apps: Twitter and social networking essentials Enggadget has you covered with reviews of the first slew of iPad specific Twitter and other social networking apps. iPad Apps: Twitter and social networking essentials What does your website look like on an iPad? iPad Peek is a web based tool that allows you to enter any given URL, and it will display that page the same way Safari on the iPad does. Great for web site owners who don’t have access to an iPad. iPadPeek Stream Music and Videos to your iPad Gizmodo reviews the iPad app StreamToMe, which allows you to stream media from your Mac to your iPad across your local network. Their feelings in a nutshell – worth the $3, but not perfect. Review: StreamToMe for the iPad Apple iPad : Change links in Google Reader to point to full HTML webpage How to change links in Safari for iPad so that Google Reader points to a full HTML webpage How to connect an iPad to your existing wireless keyboard This video will show you how to connect your iPad to a wireless keyboard if you’re having any problems – and from the sound of things, quite a few folks are. via TUAW How to get started with the iPad Mashable has a very entry-level guide that will help you set up your iPad for the first time. Mashable’s Guide to Setting up the iPad Essential iPad Apps Downloadsquad gives mini-reviews to 8 iPad apps that you should install as soon as you get your iPad. iPad App Buyers Guide: Essential Apps you should get on day one Videos: The Official iPad Guided Tours From none other than Apple! Great getting started videos for all the included iPad apps. The Official iPad Guided Tours The Official iPad Manual When you buy an iPad, you don’t get a manual. But that’s not to say there isn’t one. Apple provides a 150 guide for your iPad in PDF format. The Official iPad Manual (pdf) How to print from your iPad Sure, it’s actually just an App (PrintCentral – $9.99 USD), but as of right now, it’s the only way. PrintCentral How to make your own iPad Wallpaper A perfectly detailed tutorial on how to make your own wallpaper for your iPad. The author also provides a really nice sample wallpaper, published under the Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 Generic license. How to make your own iPad Wallpaper Got any more tips? Share them in the comments, and we’ll update the post with the links, or just the tip itself. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Want an iPad? How-To Geek is Giving One Away!Why Wait? Amazing New Add-on Turns Your iPhone into an iPad! [Comic]Clear the Auto-Complete Email Address Cache in OutlookAsk the Readers: Share Your Tips for Defeating Viruses and MalwareStupid Geek Tricks: Tile or Cascade Multiple Windows 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 Are You Blocked On Gtalk? Find out Discover Latest Android Apps On AppBrain The Ultimate Guide For YouTube Lovers Will it Blend? iPad Edition Penolo Lets You Share Sketches On Twitter Visit Woolyss.com for Old School Games, Music and Videos

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• Remotely Schedule and Stream Recorded TV in Windows 7 Media Center

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Have you ever been away from home and suddenly realized you forgot to record your favorite program? Now Windows 7 Media Center, users can schedule recordings remotely from their phones or mobile devices with Remote Potato. How it Works Remote Potato installs server software on the host computer running Windows 7 Media Center. Once the software is installed, we’ll need to do some port forwarding on the router and setup an optional dynamic DNS address. When setup is completed, we will access the application through a web based interface. Silverlight is required for Streaming recorded TV, but scheduling recordings can be done through an HTML interface. Installing Remote Potato Download and install Remote Potato on the Media Center PC. (See download link below) If you plan to stream any Recorded TV, you’ll also want to install the streaming pack located on the same page. It isn’t required to stream all shows, only shows that require the AC3 audio codec. Click Yes to allow Remote Potato to add rules to the Windows Firewall for remote access. You’ll likely need to accept a few UAC prompts. When notified that the rules were added, click OK. Remote Potato will then prompt you to allow administrator privileges to reserve a URL for it’s web server. Click Yes. Remote Potato server will start. Click on the configuration button at the right to to reveal the settings tabs.   One the General tab, you’ll have the option to run Remote Potato on startup and minimized in the System Tray. If you’re running Media Center on a dedicated HTPC, you’ll probably want to enable both startup options. Forwarding Ports on Your Router You’ll need to forward a couple ports on your router. By default, these will be ports 9080 and 9081. In this example we’re using a Linksys WRT54GL router, however, the steps for port forwarding will vary from router to router. On the Linksys configuration page, click on the Applications & Gaming Tab, and then the Port Range Forward tab. Under Application, type in a name of your choosing. In both the Start and End boxes, type the port number 9080. Enter the local IP address of your Media Center computer in the IP address column. Click the check box under Enable. Repeat the process on the next line, but this time use port 9081. When finished, click the Save Settings button. Note: It’s highly recommended that you configure the home computer running Media Center & Remote Potato with a static IP address.   Find your IP Address You’ll need to find the IP address assigned to your router from your ISP. There are many ways to do this but a quick and easy way is to visit a site like checkip.dyndns.org (link available below) The current external IP address of your router will be displayed in the browser.   Dynamic DNS This is an optional step, but  it’s highly recommended. Many routers, such as the Linksys WRT54GL we are using, support Dynamic DNS (DDNS). What Dynamic DNS allows you to do is affiliate your home router’s external IP address to a domain name. Every time your home router is assigned a a new IP address by your ISP, the domain name is updated to point to your new IP address. Remote Potato’s user interface is accessed over the Internet is by connecting to your router’s IP address followed by a colon and the port number. (Ex: XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX:9080) Instead of constantly having to look up and remember an IP address, you can use DDNS along with a 3rd party provider like DynDNS.com, to sign up for a free domain name and configure it to be updated each time your router is assigned a new IP address. Go to the DynDNS.com website (See link at the end of the article) and sign up for a free Domain name. You’ll need to register and confirm by email.   Once you’ve signed in and selected your domain name click Activate Services. You’ll get a confirmation message that your domain name has been activated.    On the Linksys WRT54GL click on the Setup tab an then DDNS. Select DynDNS.org, or TZO.com if you prefer to use their service, from the drop down list.   With DynDNS, you’ll need to fill in your username and password you signed up with at the DynDNS website and the hostname you chose. Note: You can connect over your local network with the IP Address of the computer running Remote Potato followed by a colon and the port number. Ex: 192.168.1.2:9080 Logging in Remote Potato and Recording a Show Once you connect, you’ll see the start page. To view the TV listings, click on TV Guide. You’ll then see your guide listings. There are a few ways to navigate the listings. At the top left, you can click on any of the preset time buttons to jump to  the listings at that time of the day.  Click on the arrows to the right and left of the day and date at the top center to proceed to the previous or next day. Or, jump to a specific day with the date and date buttons at the top right.   To setup a recording, click on a program.   You can choose to record the individual show or the entire series by clicking on Record Show or Record Series.   Remote Potato on Mobile Devices Perhaps the coolest feature of Remote Potato is the ability to schedule recording from your phone or mobile device. Note: For any devices or computers without Silverlight, you will be prompted to view the HTML page. Select Browse Listings. Select your program to record. In the Program Details, select Record Show to record the single episode or Record Series to record all instances of the series. You will then see a red dot on the program listing to indicate that the show is scheduled for recording.   Streaming Recorded TV Click on Recorded TV from the home screen to access your previously recorded TV programs. Click on the selection you wish to stream. Click on Play. If you receive this error message, you’ll need to install the streaming pack for Remote Potato. This is found on the same download page as installation files. (See link below) The Begin from slider allows you to start playback from the start (by default) or a different time of the program by moving the slider. The Quality (bitrate) setting  allows you to choose the quality of the playback. We found the video quality on the Normal setting to be pretty lousy, and Low was just pointless. High was the best overall viewing experience as it provided smooth quality video playback. We experienced significant stuttering during playback using the Ultra High setting.   Click Start when you are ready to begin. When playback begins you’ll see a slider at the top right.   Move the slider left or right to increase or decrease the size of the video. There’s also a button to switch to full screen.   Media Center users who travel frequently or are always on the go will likely find Remote Potato to be a blessing. Since being released earlier this year, updates for Remote Potato have come fast and furious. The latest beta release includes support for streaming music and photos. If you like those nice network TV logos, check out our article on adding TV channel logos to Windows Media Center. Downloads and Links Download Remote Potato and Streaming Pack Find your IP address Sign Up for a Domain Name at DynDNS.com Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Schedule Updates for Windows Media CenterUsing Netflix Watchnow in Windows Vista Media Center (Gmedia)Add a Sleep Timer to Windows 7 Media CenterStartup Customizations for Media Center in Windows 7Enable Media Streaming in Windows Home Server to Windows Media Player 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 FoxClocks adds World Times in your Statusbar (Firefox) Have Fun Editing Photo Editing with Citrify Outlook Connector Upgrade Error Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app Enable DreamScene in Windows 7 Microsoft’s “How Do I ?” Videos

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• Version Assemblies with TFS 2010 Continuous Integration

  - by Steve Michelotti

  When I first heard that TFS 2010 had moved to Workflow Foundation for Team Build, I was *extremely* skeptical. I’ve loved MSBuild and didn’t quite understand the reasons for this change. In fact, given that I’ve been exclusively using Cruise Control for Continuous Integration (CI) for the last 5+ years of my career, I was skeptical of TFS for CI in general. However, after going through the learning process for TFS 2010 recently, I’m starting to become a believer. I’m also starting to see some of the benefits with Workflow Foundation for the overall processing because it gives you constructs not available in MSBuild such as parallel tasks, better control flow constructs, and a slightly better customization story. The first customization I had to make to the build process was to version the assemblies of my solution. This is not new. In fact, I’d recommend reading Mike Fourie’s well known post on Versioning Code in TFS before you get started. This post describes several foundational aspects of versioning assemblies regardless of your version of TFS. The main points are: 1) don’t use source control operations for your version file, 2) use a schema like <Major>.<Minor>.<IncrementalNumber>.0, and 3) do not keep AssemblyVersion and AssemblyFileVersion in sync. To do this in TFS 2010, the best post I’ve found has been Jim Lamb’s post of building a custom TFS 2010 workflow activity. Overall, this post is excellent but the primary issue I have with it is that the assembly version numbers produced are based in a date and look like this: “2010.5.15.1”. This is definitely not what I want. I want to be able to communicate to the developers and stakeholders that we are producing the “1.1 release” or “1.2 release” – which would have an assembly version number of “1.1.317.0” for example. In this post, I’ll walk through the process of customizing the assembly version number based on this method – customizing the concepts in Lamb’s post to suit my needs. I’ll also be combining this with the concepts of Fourie’s post – particularly with regards to the standards around how to version the assemblies. The first thing I’ll do is add a file called SolutionAssemblyVersionInfo.cs to the root of my solution that looks like this: 1: using System; 2: using System.Reflection; 3: [assembly: AssemblyVersion("1.1.0.0")] 4: [assembly: AssemblyFileVersion("1.1.0.0")] I’ll then add that file as a Visual Studio link file to each project in my solution by right-clicking the project, “Add – Existing Item…” then when I click the SolutionAssemblyVersionInfo.cs file, making sure I “Add As Link”: Now the Solution Explorer will show our file. We can see that it’s a “link” file because of the black arrow in the icon within all our projects. Of course you’ll need to remove the AssemblyVersion and AssemblyFileVersion attributes from the AssemblyInfo.cs files to avoid the duplicate attributes since they now leave in the SolutionAssemblyVersionInfo.cs file. This is an extremely common technique so that all the projects in our solution can be versioned as a unit. At this point, we’re ready to write our custom activity. The primary consideration is that I want the developer and/or tech lead to be able to easily be in control of the Major.Minor and then I want the CI process to add the third number with a unique incremental number. We’ll leave the fourth position always “0” for now – it’s held in reserve in case the day ever comes where we need to do an emergency patch to Production based on a branched version.   Writing the Custom Workflow Activity Similar to Lamb’s post, I’m going to write two custom workflow activities. The “outer” activity (a xaml activity) will be pretty straight forward. It will check if the solution version file exists in the solution root and, if so, delegate the replacement of version to the AssemblyVersionInfo activity which is a CodeActivity highlighted in red below:   Notice that the arguments of this activity are the “solutionVersionFile” and “tfsBuildNumber” which will be passed in. The tfsBuildNumber passed in will look something like this: “CI_MyApplication.4” and we’ll need to grab the “4” (i.e., the incremental revision number) and put that in the third position. Then we’ll need to honor whatever was specified for Major.Minor in the SolutionAssemblyVersionInfo.cs file. For example, if the SolutionAssemblyVersionInfo.cs file had “1.1.0.0” for the AssemblyVersion (as shown in the first code block near the beginning of this post), then we want to resulting file to have “1.1.4.0”. Before we do anything, let’s put together a unit test for all this so we can know if we get it right: 1: [TestMethod] 2: public void Assembly_version_should_be_parsed_correctly_from_build_name() 3: { 4: // arrange 5: const string versionFile = "SolutionAssemblyVersionInfo.cs"; 6: WriteTestVersionFile(versionFile); 7: var activity = new VersionAssemblies(); 8: var arguments = new Dictionary<string, object> { 9: { "tfsBuildNumber", "CI_MyApplication.4"}, 10: { "solutionVersionFile", versionFile} 11: }; 12:   13: // act 14: var result = WorkflowInvoker.Invoke(activity, arguments); 15:   16: // assert 17: Assert.AreEqual("1.2.4.0", (string)result["newAssemblyFileVersion"]); 18: var lines = File.ReadAllLines(versionFile); 19: Assert.IsTrue(lines.Contains("[assembly: AssemblyVersion(\"1.2.0.0\")]")); 20: Assert.IsTrue(lines.Contains("[assembly: AssemblyFileVersion(\"1.2.4.0\")]")); 21: } 22: 23: private void WriteTestVersionFile(string versionFile) 24: { 25: var fileContents = "using System.Reflection;\n" + 26: "[assembly: AssemblyVersion(\"1.2.0.0\")]\n" + 27: "[assembly: AssemblyFileVersion(\"1.2.0.0\")]"; 28: File.WriteAllText(versionFile, fileContents); 29: }   At this point, the code for our AssemblyVersion activity is pretty straight forward: 1: [BuildActivity(HostEnvironmentOption.Agent)] 2: public class AssemblyVersionInfo : CodeActivity 3: { 4: [RequiredArgument] 5: public InArgument<string> FileName { get; set; } 6:   7: [RequiredArgument] 8: public InArgument<string> TfsBuildNumber { get; set; } 9:   10: public OutArgument<string> NewAssemblyFileVersion { get; set; } 11:   12: protected override void Execute(CodeActivityContext context) 13: { 14: var solutionVersionFile = this.FileName.Get(context); 15: 16: // Ensure that the file is writeable 17: var fileAttributes = File.GetAttributes(solutionVersionFile); 18: File.SetAttributes(solutionVersionFile, fileAttributes & ~FileAttributes.ReadOnly); 19:   20: // Prepare assembly versions 21: var majorMinor = GetAssemblyMajorMinorVersionBasedOnExisting(solutionVersionFile); 22: var newBuildNumber = GetNewBuildNumber(this.TfsBuildNumber.Get(context)); 23: var newAssemblyVersion = string.Format("{0}.{1}.0.0", majorMinor.Item1, majorMinor.Item2); 24: var newAssemblyFileVersion = string.Format("{0}.{1}.{2}.0", majorMinor.Item1, majorMinor.Item2, newBuildNumber); 25: this.NewAssemblyFileVersion.Set(context, newAssemblyFileVersion); 26:   27: // Perform the actual replacement 28: var contents = this.GetFileContents(newAssemblyVersion, newAssemblyFileVersion); 29: File.WriteAllText(solutionVersionFile, contents); 30:   31: // Restore the file's original attributes 32: File.SetAttributes(solutionVersionFile, fileAttributes); 33: } 34:   35: #region Private Methods 36:   37: private string GetFileContents(string newAssemblyVersion, string newAssemblyFileVersion) 38: { 39: var cs = new StringBuilder(); 40: cs.AppendLine("using System.Reflection;"); 41: cs.AppendFormat("[assembly: AssemblyVersion(\"{0}\")]", newAssemblyVersion); 42: cs.AppendLine(); 43: cs.AppendFormat("[assembly: AssemblyFileVersion(\"{0}\")]", newAssemblyFileVersion); 44: return cs.ToString(); 45: } 46:   47: private Tuple<string, string> GetAssemblyMajorMinorVersionBasedOnExisting(string filePath) 48: { 49: var lines = File.ReadAllLines(filePath); 50: var versionLine = lines.Where(x => x.Contains("AssemblyVersion")).FirstOrDefault(); 51:   52: if (versionLine == null) 53: { 54: throw new InvalidOperationException("File does not contain [assembly: AssemblyVersion] attribute"); 55: } 56:   57: return ExtractMajorMinor(versionLine); 58: } 59:   60: private static Tuple<string, string> ExtractMajorMinor(string versionLine) 61: { 62: var firstQuote = versionLine.IndexOf('"') + 1; 63: var secondQuote = versionLine.IndexOf('"', firstQuote); 64: var version = versionLine.Substring(firstQuote, secondQuote - firstQuote); 65: var versionParts = version.Split('.'); 66: return new Tuple<string, string>(versionParts[0], versionParts[1]); 67: } 68:   69: private string GetNewBuildNumber(string buildName) 70: { 71: return buildName.Substring(buildName.LastIndexOf(".") + 1); 72: } 73:   74: #endregion 75: }   At this point the final step is to incorporate this activity into the overall build template. Make a copy of the DefaultTempate.xaml – we’ll call it DefaultTemplateWithVersioning.xaml. Before the build and labeling happens, drag the VersionAssemblies activity in. Then set the LabelName variable to “BuildDetail.BuildDefinition.Name + "-" + newAssemblyFileVersion since the newAssemblyFileVersion was produced by our activity.   Configuring CI Once you add your solution to source control, you can configure CI with the build definition window as shown here. The main difference is that we’ll change the Process tab to reflect a different build number format and choose our custom build process file:   When the build completes, we’ll see the name of our project with the unique revision number:   If we look at the detailed build log for the latest build, we’ll see the label being created with our custom task:     We can now look at the history labels in TFS and see the project name with the labels (the Assignment activity I added to the workflow):   Finally, if we look at the physical assemblies that are produced, we can right-click on any assembly in Windows Explorer and see the assembly version in its properties:   Full Traceability We now have full traceability for our code. There will never be a question of what code was deployed to Production. You can always see the assembly version in the properties of the physical assembly. That can be traced back to a label in TFS where the unique revision number matches. The label in TFS gives you the complete snapshot of the code in your source control repository at the time the code was built. This type of process for full traceability has been used for many years for CI – in fact, I’ve done similar things with CCNet and SVN for quite some time. This is simply the TFS implementation of that pattern. The new features that TFS 2010 give you to make these types of customizations in your build process are quite easy once you get over the initial curve.

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• Installing UCMA 3.0 and Creating a Communications Server "14"Trusted Application Pool

  A lot of setup and administration tasks have gotten a lot easier in Communications Server 14; one of them is building an application server to develop and run your UCMA 3.0 applications on. In this post, Ill walk you through installing the UCMA 3.0 Core SDK and creating a Trusted Application Pool on the server, thus adding it to the Communications Server 14 topology and allowing you to host and run UCMA 3.0 applications on it. Note: These instructions will change slightly as the bits get updated for the eventual Beta release I will update this post as soon as I get a chance to run this setup on a more recent build. Im doing the install on a simple Communications Server 14 topology consisting of the following Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V images: DC Domain Controller ExchangeUM Exchange Server 2010 CS-SE Microsoft Communications Server 2010 Standard Edition TS Development machine Ill walk through setting up UCMA 3.0 on the TS VM, which is a fully patched Windows Server 2008 R2 machine that is joined to the Fabrikam domain.   Im also running Visual Studio 2010 on this VM because I intend to use it as a development machine.  In a future post, Ill walk through installing just the UCMA 3.0 run time to build a true production UCMA application server. Im making a couple of assumptions here: You have an existing CS 2010 site and cluster configured(well look at this in a future post) Youre starting with a fully patched Windows Server 2008 R2 machine The machine is joined to your domain This walkthrough was done in my Fabrikam VM environment but can easily be modified for your own environment. Installing the UCMA 3.0 SDK Lets start by installing the UCMA 3.0 SDK.  Run UcmaSdkWebDownload.msi to kick off the SDK installer package extract process. The installed package is extracted to C: >> Program Files >> Microsoft UCMA 3.0 >> SDK Installer Package.  Browse there and run setup.exe. Click Install to install the UCMA 3.0 Core SDK and Workflow SDK. Install Communications Server Core Components UCMA 3.0 introduces a new concept called Auto-provisioning, which is most easily explained from the developer point of view.  Remember what your app.config looked it in UCMA 2.0?  You had to store the application GRUU, the trusted contact SIP Uri, the port for your application, and the name of the certificate authority. Thats all gone with auto-provisioning all you need in your app.config is your ApplicationId, e.g.: urn:application:MyApplication. How does CS 2010 do this? All of the applications configuration data is associated with the applications id.  UCMA also queries a replicated copy of the Central Management Database to retrieve the applications configuration data and also the configuration data for any endpoints. In this step, well run Bootstrapper.exe to install the CS Core components, this checked for the following components and installs them if they are not already present: VcRedist Sqlexpress Sqlnativeclient Sqlbackcompat Ucmaredist OcsCore.msi Open a command window at C: >> Program Files >> Microsoft Communications Server 2010 >> Deployment and run the following command: Bootstrapper.exe /BootstrapReplica /MinCache /SourceDirectory:"%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft UCMA 3.0\SDK Installer Package\Prereq\BootstrapperCache" Create a New Trusted Application Pool The next step is to create a new trusted application pool for the new server.  Fire up the Communications Server Management Shell from Start >> Microsoft Communications Server 2010 >> Communications Server Management Shell and enter the following PowerShell command: New-CsTrustedApplicationPool -Identity <FQDN of Server> -Registrar <FQDN of CS Server> -Site <CS Site Name> Verify that the new server was added to the CS topology by running the following PowerShell command: (Get-CsTopology -AsXml).ToString() > Topology.xml This created a file called Topology.xml in the directory that you ran the command from.  Open the file and find the Clusters section and look for a node for the new server. The Cluster Fqdn is the name of your server, and note the name of the Site that this Cluster is a part of. <Cluster Fqdn="appsrv.fabrikam.com" RequiresReplication="true" RequiresSetup="true"> <ClusterId SiteId="UcMarketing2" Number="5" /> <Machine OrdinalInCluster="1" Fqdn="appsrv.fabrikam.com"> <NetInterface InterfaceSide="Primary" InterfaceNumber="1" IPAddress="0.0.0.0" /> </Machine> </Cluster> Configure CS Management Store Replication At this point, we have the CS Core components installed and the server configured as a trusted application pool.  We now need to set up replication so that the Central Management Store replicates down to the new server. From the Communications Server Management Shell, run the following PowerShell command to enable the Replica service on the new server: Enable-CSReplica The Replica service is enabled, but hasn't done anything yet. This can be verified by running the following PowerShell command to check the replication status for the various servers in the topology: Get-CSManagementStoreReplicationStatus You can see in the screenshot below that the UpToDate property of the new server is still False Run the following PowerShell command to force the replication to run: Invoke-CSManagementStoreReplicationStatus Run Get-CSManagementStoreReplicationStatus again to verify that the new service is now up to date Request and Set a New Certificate The last step in the process is to request a new certificate from the certificate authority on the domain and assign it to the new server. From the Communications Server Management Shell, run the following PowerShell command to request a new certificate: Request-CSCertificate -Action new -Type default -CA <Domain Controller FQDN>\<Certificate Authority> Setting the -Verbose switch on the cmdlet creates an Xml file with its output. Open the Xml file and copy the thumbprint of the generated certificate. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <Action Name="Request-CsCertificate" Time="20100512T212258"> <Action Name="Request-CsCertificate" Time="20100512T212258"> <Info Title="Connection" Time="20100512T212258">Data Source=(local)\rtclocal;Initial Catalog=xds;Integrated Security=True</Info> <Action Time="20100512T212258"> <Info Title="Certificate use" Time="20100512T212258">urn:certref:default</Info> <Info Title="Subject distinguished name" Time="20100512T212258">CN="appsrv2.fabrikam.com"</Info> <Info Time="20100512T212259">The certificate request is submitted to the Certification Authority dc.fabrikam.com\FabrikamCA.</Info> <Info Time="20100512T212259">The certificate was issued.</Info> <Info Time="20100512T212259">The certificate was imported with thumbprint AFC3C46E459C1A39AD06247676F3555826DBF705.</Info> <Complete Time="20100512T212259" /> </Action> <Info Title="command status" Time="20100512T212259">Command execution processing completed</Info> <Action Name="DeploymentXdsCmdlet.SaveCachedItems" Time="20100512T212259"> <Info Time="20100512T212259">0 updates</Info> <Complete Time="20100512T212259" /> </Action> <Info Title="command status" Time="20100512T212259">Command has completed</Info> </Action> </Action> Run the following PowerShell command to set the certificate: Set-CsCertificate -Type Default -Thumbprint <Thumbprint> Wrapping Up You now have a new UCMA 3.0 application server in your Communications Server 2010 server topology.  You can provision trusted applications and trusted application endpoints on the new server using the Communications Server 2010 Management Shell.  Well take a look at how to do that in another post. Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Add keyboard languages to XP, Vista, and Windows 7

  - by Matthew Guay

  Do you regularly need to type in multiple languages in Windows?  Here we’ll show you the easy way to add and change input languages to your keyboard in XP, Vista, and Windows 7. Windows Vista and 7 come preinstalled with support for viewing a wide variety of languages, so adding an input language is fairly simply.  Adding an input language is slightly more difficult in XP, and requires installing additional files if you need an Asian or Complex script language.  First we show how to add an input language in Windows Vista and 7; it’s basically the same in both versions.  Then, we show how to add a language to XP, and also how to add Complex Script support.  Please note that this is only for adding an input language, which will allow you to type in the language you select.  This does not change your user interface language. Change keyboard language in Windows 7 and Vista It is fairly simple to add or change a keyboard language in Windows 7 or Vista.  In Windows 7, enter “keyboard language” in the Start menu search box, and select “Change keyboards or other input methods”. In Windows Vista, open Control Panel and enter “input language” in the search box and select “Change keyboards or other input methods”.  This also works in Windows 7. Now, click Change Keyboards to add another keyboard language or change your default one. Our default input language is US English, and our default keyboard is the US keyboard layout.  Click Add to insert another input language while still leaving your default input language installed. Here we selected the standard Thai keyboard language (Thai Kedmanee), but you can select any language you want.  Windows offers almost any language you can imagine, so just look for the language you want, select it, and click Ok. Alternately, if you want, you can click Preview to see your layout choice before accepting it.  This is only the default characters, not ones that will be activated with Shift or other keys (many Asian languages use many more characters than English, and require the use of Shift and other keys to access them all).  Once your finished previewing, click close and then press Ok on the previous dialog. Now you will see both of your keyboard languages in the Installed services box.  You can click Add to go back and get more, or move your selected language up or down (to change its priority), or simply click Apply to add the new language. Also, you can now change the default input language from the top menu.  This is the language that your keyboard will start with when you boot your computer.  So, if you mainly use English but also use another language, usually it is best to leave English as your default input language. Once you’ve pressed Apply or Ok, you will see a new icon beside your system tray with the initials of your default input language. If you click it, you can switch between input languages.  Alternately you can switch input languages by pressing Alt+Shift on your keyboard. Some complex languages, such as Chinese, may have extra buttons to change input modes to accommodate their large alphabet. If you would like to change the keyboard shortcut for changing languages, go back to the Input Languages dialog, and select the “Advanced Key Settings” tab.  Here you can change settings for Caps Lock and change or add key sequences to change between languages. Also, the On-Screen keyboard will display the correct keyboard language (here the keyboard is displaying Thai), which can be a helpful reference if your physical keyboard doesn’t have your preferred input language printed on it.  To open this, simply enter “On-Screen keyboard” in the start menu search, or click All Programs>Accessories>On-Screen keyboard. Change keyboard language in Windows XP The process for changing the keyboard language in Windows XP is slightly different.  Open Control Panel, and select “Date, Time, Language, and Regional Options”.   Select “Add other languages”. Now, click Details to add another language.  XP does not include support for Asian and complex languages by default, so if you need to add one of those languages we have details for that below. Click Add to add an input language. Select your desired language from the list, and choose your desired keyboard layout if your language offers multiple layouts.  Here we selected Canadian French with the default layout. Now you will see both of your keyboard languages in the Installed services box.  You can click Add to go back and add more, or move your selected language up or down (to change its priority), or simply click Apply to add the new language. Once you’ve pressed Apply or Ok, you will see a new icon beside your system tray with the initials of your default input language. If you click it, you can switch between input languages.  Alternately you can switch input languages by pressing Alt+Shift on your keyboard. If you would like to change the keyboard shortcut for changing languages, go back to the Input Languages dialog, and click the “Key Settings” button on the bottom of the dialog.  Here you can change settings for Caps Lock and change or add key sequences to change between languages. Add support to XP for Asian and Complex script languages Windows XP does not include support for Asian and Complex script languages by default, but you can easily add them to your computer.  This is useful if you wish to type in one of these languages, or simply want to read text written in these languages, since XP will not display these languages correctly if they are not installed.  If you wish to install Chinese, Japanese, and/or Korean, check the “Install files for East Asian languages” box.  Or, if you need to install a complex script language (including Arabic, Armenian, Georgian, Hebrew, the Indic languages, Thai, and Vietnamese), check the “Install files for complex script and right-to-left languages” box.   Choosing either of these options will open a prompt reminding you that this option will take up more disk space.  Support for complex languages will require around 10Mb of hard drive space, but East Asian language support may require 230 Mb or more free disk space.  Click Ok, and click apply to install your language files. You may have to insert your XP CD into your CD drive to install these files.  Insert the disk, and then click Ok. Windows will automatically copy the files, including fonts for these languages… …and then will ask you to reboot your computer to finalize the settings.  Click Yes, and then reopen the “Add other languages” dialog when your computer is rebooted, and add a language as before.     Now you can add Complex and/or Asian languages to XP, just as above.  Here is the XP taskbar language selector with Thai installed. Conclusion Unfortunately we haven’t found a way to add Asian and complex languages in XP without having an XP disc. If you know of a way, let us know in the comments. (No downloading the XP disc from torrent site answers please) Adding an input language is very important for bilingual individuals, and can also be useful if you simply need to occasionally view Asian or Complex languages in XP.  And by following the correct instructions for your version of Windows, it should be very easy to add, change, and remove input languages. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Show Keyboard Shortcut Access Keys in Windows VistaKeyboard Ninja: 21 Keyboard Shortcut ArticlesAnother Desktop Cube for Windows XP/VistaThe "Up" Keyboard Shortcut for Windows 7 or Vista ExplorerWhat is ctfmon.exe And Why Is It Running? 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 Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier Design Your Web Pages Using the Golden Ratio Worldwide Growth of the Internet How to Find Your Mac Address Use My TextTools to Edit and Organize Text

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• How to Upgrade Your Netbook to Windows 7 Home Premium

  - by Matthew Guay

  Would you like more features and flash in Windows on your netbook?  Here’s how you can easily upgrade your netbook to Windows 7 Home Premium the easy way. Most new netbooks today ship with Windows 7 Starter, which is the cheapest edition of Windows 7.  It is fine for many computing tasks, and will run all your favorite programs great, but it lacks many customization, multimedia, and business features found in higher editions.  Here we’ll show you how you can quickly upgrade your netbook to more full-featured edition of Windows 7 using Windows Anytime Upgrade.  Also, if you want to upgrade your laptop or desktop to another edition of Windows 7, say Professional, you can follow these same steps to upgrade it, too. Please note: This is only for computers already running Windows 7.  If your netbook is running XP or Vista, you will have to run a traditional upgrade to install Windows 7. Upgrade Advisor First, let’s make sure your netbook can support the extra features, such as Aero Glass, in Windows 7 Home Premium.  Most modern netbooks that ship with Windows 7 Starter can run the advanced features in Windows 7 Home Premium, but let’s check just in case.  Download the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor (link below), and install as normal. Once it’s installed, run it and click Start Check.   Make sure you’re connected to the internet before you run the check, or otherwise you may see this error message.  If you see it, click Ok and then connect to the internet and start the check again. It will now scan all of your programs and hardware to make sure they’re compatible with Windows 7.  Since you’re already running Windows 7 Starter, it will also tell you if your computer will support the features in other editions of Windows 7. After a few moments, the Upgrade Advisor will show you want it found.  Here we see that our netbook, a Samsung N150, can be upgraded to Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, or Ultimate. We also see that we had one issue, but this was because a driver we had installed was not recognized.  Click “See all system requirements” to see what your netbook can do with the new edition. This shows you which of the requirements, including support for Windows Aero, your netbook meets.  Here our netbook supports Aero, so we’re ready to go upgrade. For more, check out our article on how to make sure your computer can run Windows 7 with Upgrade Advisor. Upgrade with Anytime Upgrade Now, we’re ready to upgrade our netbook to Windows 7 Home Premium.  Enter “Anytime Upgrade” in the Start menu search,and select Windows Anytime Upgrade. Windows Anytime Upgrade lets you upgrade using product key you already have or one you purchase during the upgrade process.  And, it installs without any downloads or Windows disks, so it works great even for netbooks without DVD drives. Anytime Upgrades are cheaper than a standard upgrade, and for a limited time, select retailers in the US are offering Anytime Upgrades to Windows 7 Home Premium for only $49.99 if purchased with a new netbook.  If you already have a netbook running Windows 7 Starter, you can either purchase an Anytime Upgrade package at a retail store or purchase a key online during the upgrade process for $79.95.  Or, if you have a standard Windows 7 product key (full or upgrade), you can use it in Anytime upgrade.  This is especially nice if you can purchase Windows 7 cheaper through your school, university, or office. Purchase an upgrade online To purchase an upgrade online, click “Go online to choose the edition of Windows 7 that’s best for you”.   Here you can see a comparison of the features of each edition of Windows 7.  Note that you can upgrade to either Home Premium, Professional, or Ultimate.  We chose home Premium because it has most of the features that home users want, including Media Center and Aero Glass effects.  Also note that the price of each upgrade is cheaper than the respective upgrade from Windows XP or Vista.  Click buy under the edition you want.   Enter your billing information, then your payment information.  Once you confirm your purchase, you will directly be taken to the Upgrade screen.  Make sure to save your receipt, as you will need the product key if you ever need to reinstall Windows on your computer. Upgrade with an existing product key If you purchased an Anytime Upgrade kit from a retailer, or already have a Full or Upgrade key for another edition of Windows 7, choose “Enter an upgrade key”. Enter your product key, and click Next.  If you purchased an Anytime Upgrade kit, the product key will be located on the inside of the case on a yellow sticker. The key will be verified as a valid key, and Anytime Upgrade will automatically choose the correct edition of Windows 7 based on your product key.  Click Next when this is finished. Continuing the Upgrade process Whether you entered a key or purchased a key online, the process is the same from here on.  Click “I accept” to accept the license agreement. Now, you’re ready to install your upgrade.  Make sure to save all open files and close any programs, and then click Upgrade. The upgrade only takes about 10 minutes in our experience but your mileage may vary.  Any available Microsoft updates, including ones for Office, Security Essentials, and other products, will be installed before the upgrade takes place. After a couple minutes, your computer will automatically reboot and finish the installation.  It will then reboot once more, and your computer will be ready to use!  Welcome to your new edition of Windows 7! Here’s a before and after shot of our desktop.  When you do an Anytime Upgrade, all of your programs, files, and settings will be just as they were before you upgraded.  The only change we noticed was that our pinned taskbar icons were slightly rearranged to the default order of Internet Explorer, Explorer, and Media Player.  Here’s a shot of our desktop before the upgrade.  Notice that all of our pinned programs and desktop icons are still there, as well as our taskbar customization (we are using small icons on the taskbar instead of the default large icons). Before, with the Windows 7 Starter background and the Aero Basic theme: And after, with Aero Glass and the more colorful default Windows 7 background.   All of the features of Windows 7 Home Premium are now ready to use.  The Aero theme was activate by default, but you can now customize your netbook theme, background, and more with the Personalization pane.  To open it, right-click on your desktop and select Personalize. You can also now use Windows Media Center, and can play-back DVD movies using an external drive. One of our favorite tools, the Snipping Tool, is also now available for easy screenshots and clips. Activating you new edition of Windows 7 You will still need to activate your new edition of Windows 7.  To do this right away, open the start menu, right-click on Computer, and select Properties.   Scroll to the bottom, and click “Activate Windows Now”. Make sure you’re connected to the internet, and then select “Activate Windows online now”. Activation may take a few minutes, depending on your internet connection speed. When it is done, the Activation wizard will let you know that Windows is activated and genuine.  Your upgrade is all finished! Conclusion Windows Anytime Upgrade makes it easy, and somewhat cheaper, to upgrade to another edition of Windows 7.  It’s useful for desktop and laptop owners who want to upgrade to Professional or Ultimate, but many more netbook owners will want to upgrade from Starter to Home Premium or another edition.  Links Download the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor Windows Team Blog: Anytime Upgrade Special with new PC purchase Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How To Upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 Home Premium EditionAnother Blog You Should Subscribe ToMysticgeek Blog: Turn Vista Home Premium Into Ultimate (Part 3) – Shadow CopyUpgrade Ubuntu from Breezy to DapperHow to Upgrade the Windows 7 RC to RTM (Final Release) 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 Get Your Delicious Bookmarks In Firefox’s Awesome Bar Manage Photos Across Different Social Sites With Dropico Test Drive Windows 7 Online Download Wallpapers From National Geographic Site Spyware Blaster v4.3 Yes, it’s Patch Tuesday

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