clean up your system

[7/30/05] Windows automatically files great amounts of data on your hard drive that document your work and your usage of the internet. In time this data gets to be so large that it influences the efficiency of your system. Additionally, this data can be used by spyware programs to document your internet history and to accede to your personal data. Sweepi will help you find the unnecessary data quickly and safely destroy it.

I tried it and it sure wipes out a lot of stuff. It not only deletes temporary files, but old shortcuts, and cookies (hope you remember your passwords). So far I've found no problems after running it, but if you have trouble with your computer after using it, forget where you read this.

[10/5/05] Here's another one that sounds less drastic. And I like the sound of its name: Crap Cleaner (haven't tried it yet).

PC Wizard

PC WIZARD 2005 is a powerful utility designed especially for detection of hardware.

PC WIZARD 2005 is also an utility designed to analyze and benchmark your computer system. It can analyze and benchmark many kinds of hardware, such as CPU performance, Cache performance, RAM performance, Hard Disk performance, CD/DVD-ROM performance, Removable/FLASH Media performance, Video performance, MP3 compression performance.

The Ultimate Solution to Spyware

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/technology/17spy.html?8bl

On a recent Sunday morning when Lew Tucker's Dell desktop computer was overrun by spyware and adware - stealth software that delivers intrusive advertising messages and even gathers data from the user's machine - he did not simply get rid of the offending programs. He threw out the whole computer.

How to remotely control another PC

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freeware-news/message/4571

Apparently the article originated from PC Magazine.

Beware of Anti-Spyware

Not only do you have to worry about spyware these days, you can now worry about anti-spyware!

- from Robin C via freeware-news

resetting a BIOS password

WXPNews has a link, but this site has much more

PrintMaster Express

PrintMaster Express is a Print Shop type program available free from Broderbund. (The link was from freeware news.)

I haven't actually tried it but it must be pretty good since the folks at Broderbund are known for high quality software. They were the original publishers of the Print Shop program I used to use on my Apple II. They are now the publishers of both the Print Shop and PrintMaster (I think they bought it from somebody else). I guess that's one way to corner the market.

Introduction to JavaScript (and Java too)

This was from a link given in freeware news. But it looks like fortunecity has taken down CosmoSoft's page. (Or maybe Cosmo himself took it off.)

Anyway, the text is here at another site on fortune city. And also here.

And while I'm at it, here's a free online textbook, Introduction to Programming Using Java.

[7/16/05] more at tech books for free

ActiveX

What do you need ActiveX for?

Programming Jobs Losing Luster in U.S.

As an eager freshman in the fall of 2001, Andrew Mo's career trajectory seemed preordained: He'd learn C++ and Java languages while earning a computer science degree at Stanford University, then land a Silicon Valley technology job.

The 22-year-old Shanghai native graduated this month with a major in computer science and a minor in economics. But he no longer plans to write code for a living, or even work at a tech company.

holographic data storage

What's after Blu-Ray? It could be holographic data storage.

It promises to store up to 1.5 terabytes (equivalent to 320 DVDs). But here's the problem, "data storage times for most materials available for HDS have ranged from a few thousandths of a second to a few days -- at most".

configure gmail to work with Outlook Express

http://www.winxpnews.com/?id=178

free auctions at Yahoo!

Yahoo will no longer charge fees for people auctioning off stuff at their site. What does this mean? This means eBay was trouncing them and they hope this will drive traffic up at their portal.

For the consumer this is good news for the buyer. More people will put stuff up for sale so the buyer should be able to find more of what they were looking for. And they will should getting items at a better price than at eBay since they will still have far fewer bidders driving up the prices.

Here's more.

Fujitsu M2682TAU

Hard drive specifications:

cylinders: 992
heads: 11
sectors: 63
WPcom: 0
LZone: 0

This is a 351.98 MB hard drive. The one I have was manufactured in Thailand in 1995-05.

Star Wars: Revelations

The "homemade" Star Wars movie

The question now is how can I see it?

elitum.elitebar

This was a annoying virus/trojan which kept coming back despite removing it with spybot and ad-aware.

It was finally eradicated by going to google and finding this post which referred to the EliteToolbar Remover.

After running it in safe mode, ran ad-aware, spybot, and NAV (three times) to remover the last vestiges of it.

[9/4/06 frwr-news] Here's another one, El.Toolbar Killer

The Digital Packrat

A project by Microsoft, MyLifeBits, aims to digitally capture a lifetime of stuff.

resetting TCP/IP

WinXPNews passes on this tip in case the TCP/IP stack gets corrupted in XP.

I think I may have tried this before though and it didn't work. I wound up using some utility I found on the internet to reset it.

[5/5/05] Here it is on my hard drive. The utility is called WinsockXPFix and can be found here.

[8/19/05] LSP-Fix is another one to try

Mini Arcade

An online museum of handheld video games

- from Tricks and Trinkets #340

connecting to "invisible" computers

How to Connect to a Computer on your Network that you can't "See" in My Network Places

You're probably used to connecting to shares on other computers on your local network by opening the "browse list" in My Network Places and clicking on the name of the computer to which you want to connect. But did you know that you can still connect to shares on a computer that doesn't show up in My Network Places? You do this using the UNC (Universal Naming Convention) path. Here's how:

Click Start, Run.
In the Run box, type the following: \\[computer]\[share]
In this example, "[computer]" should be the computer name or IP address of the computer to which you want to connect, and "[share]" should be the name of the shared folder on that computer that you want to access.

- from WinXP News 149

Usenet Timeline

20 years of Usenet

more google options

google is also a calculator, dictionary, phonebook,

The Evolution of a Programmer

http://www.ariel.com.au/jokes/The_Evolution_of_a_Programmer.html

- from Cool Tricks and Trinkets #332

Glenn's HP 360n

This one has been a pain.

The thing wouldn't boot. It would get to the screen where you could choose to enter safe mode, but then would lock no matter which option was tried.

So I tried doing a non-destructive system recovery. It didn't work. I think it would lock too.

So I tried putting in another hard disk and recovering from the system CDs. After running for many hours it would get an error. I thought it might be due to the EZ-BIOS ingrained on the hard drive (see previous message). So I tried another drive. It also got an error.

Since there were 7 CDs, I thought the new hard drive might be too small to hold all the files. So I installed Windows ME on the new drive. That kind of worked, though it didn't recognize the video card (among many other things).

From here, I put in the original drive (which is much bigger) as a slave and ran Partition Magic on it to create a new partition and hid the old partition.

Then I tried to install to the original drive. After many hours, it got some kind of memory violation. So I tried again with the same (or similar screen).

So I took out one of the memory chips and ran again. It went to the end after a couple false starts. But it still wouldn't boot.

So I put back the ME drive and ran partition magic to see what was going on. There was a small XP partition and a larger unused partition (in addition to the recovery partition). I converted the NTFS on the parition to FAT32 to see what was going on. And it looked like a clean XP install. So along the way, the old data got wiped even though I had hidden the partition. Or maybe it got wiped in my first attempts at system recovery.

Forget it. I wiped out the whole partition (except for the hidden HP recovery partition) and formatted with NTFS. Then I ran the recovery from the CDs again. It copied all the CDs to the hard drive and then started copying from hard drive to hard drive. After a few hours it stalled again. So I rebooted and restarted the recovery. Luckily it didn't have to copy the CDs again. After running overnight (maybe about 12 hours) it finally finished.

But when I rebooted I got that same screen that I got when I first got the computer (the safe mode screen) and it would lock up again no matter which option I tried.

Back to square one.

Now I find I could have tried system recovery from the hard drive (instead of the CDs) by pressing F10 upon bootup. So that's where I am now. I am wondering though whether recovering from the CDs just creates that hidden partition from the drive after which it begins the recovery?

I'm starting to not like HPs.

* * *

OK, that didn't work. After restoring from the recovery partition, it did the same thing. Locked up on boot. Then got to the Safe Mode option screen from where it would lock up when the option was chosen

Next step. Reboot back to ME. Run Partition Magic. Wipe the drive clean (remove all partitions including the recovery partition). Set back to master. Restore with CDs. Maybe the recovery partition was somehow corrupted. So I think the CDs will make a fresh one.

(if this don't work, I'll try loading in ME from my system CDs for my HP. after that, I think I'll give up)

OK, finally finished loading up the CDs and the file copy (which took like 12 or more hours), but the thing still went to that safe mode screen.

I decided to reset the BIOS to default and this time when I went to the safe mode option the hard disk started being accessed. After a while (I just went away while it was doing it), I got a message that setup was completely installed and to try again (or something like that).

So I rebooted and after a while (I went away again) it went into the Welcome to Window XP screen. There's hope.

The sound doesn't work, but maybe it needs powered speakers.

* * *

OK, the sounds works after plugging it into the amp.

Installed AVG, ZoneAlarm, Ad-Aware. Updated to SP2 (had trouble at first - got an error message and had to rename then recreate a folder). It took a while, but I think it's finally ready to go.

* * *

Wait a minute, the floppy drive doesn't work. No problem, I'll put in another drive. Hold on, the cable is keyed. OK, I'll put in a regular cable. Neva work.

Good thing I had another out-of-service HP around. After pulling the floppy drive and installing, I think everything is now ready to go (again).

HD DVD

A new DVD format is coming next year.

Here's the investing angle.

How to get rid of EZ-BIOS

Use EZ-Drive. The problem is where to find it.

Stay tuned. This is a work in progress.

my new DVR

With the volleyball regionals coming up on CSTV and my HP Media Center still not able to access the DVD drives, I decided to go for it and get a DVD-recorder. It was a Panasonic DMR-E55 on sale at CompUSA. (I bought it there since I had several unused giftcards still lying around.) It must be a fairly new model, judging from the dates of the epinions reviews.

Overall I'm satisfied though I'm still not totally sold on the video quality. It looks a little blocky on close view.

One problem I'm having turns is that when I'm recording something from my DVR it goes into power-save mode thus ruining the recording. I had this happen on my very first recording of the American Idol finale when the message occurred toward the end of the show. I thought I had fixed it by turning off the power off in the DVD-recorder, but it happened again when recording a volleyball game.

It turns out not to be a problem with the DVD recorder, but with the Scientific Atlanta DVR cable box! The box automatically goes into power save mode between the hours of 1 am and 6 am if you don't press a button on the remote within two hours. From what I read, I think the solution is to power off the cable box when recording something unattended between the hours of 1 am and 6 am. (It can't go into power-save mode if it's already off. I would guess.)

OK try again. Good things these DVD-R discs are cheap. 25 for $10 on sale at CompUSA (Memorex).

looking for EZ-Drive

I found it from a lead from the Hardware Junkies MSN Group

Mossberg likes Apple

Walter Mossberg is on CNBC bemoaning the state of the Windows platform and alternatively praising the Mac. In particular he likes the iMac G5.

Ruggles likes it too.

AI Demos

http://www.premise.org/main/demos.html

- from Cool Tricks And Trinkets #318

backing up Outlook Express

How Can I Back Up the Outlook Express Address Book?

QUESTION: What is the easiest way to back up the address book in Outlook Express? - Henry P.

ANSWER: Outlook Express v6 uses the Windows Address Book (a .WAB file) to store address information. If there is more than one identity set up, the info for all identities is stored within the same .WAB file. If you want to save just the address book information for your identity, you can do so by exporting it to a file. See this site for instructions:http://www.winxpnews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=041116QC-Backup

The easiest way is to back up the entire .WAB file for all identities. Just copy it to an alternate location. Here's how:

1. In OE, click the Address Book button on the main tool bar or click Tools, Address Book
   
2. In the Address Book window, click Help, About Address Book to see the full path to your .WAB file
   
3. Navigate to the .WAB file in Windows Explorer
   
4. Copy the .WAB file to your backup location
   

To restore the data, in OE click File, Import and select the backup .WAB file to import.

-- WinXPnews #151

[9/28/05] I couldn't find the WAB file location today when trying to transfer the address book to a new computer (I should have looked here). But I found all I had to do is import the WAB file into the address book. So now that I think about it, it seems the easiest way to transfer an address file might be to export from the old computer to a file, then import it into the Outlook Express on the new computer.

[12/19/05] Checking my computer (Windows ME), the address book is at
C:\Windows\application data\microsoft\address book.

The email is at
C:\Windows\application data\identities\{someoddballnumber}\microsoft\Outlook Express.

Hint: do a search for *.wab to find the address book. Do a search for *.dbx to find the email.

[9/20/07 frwr-news] Outlook Express Backup is the most popular backup software to create backup copies of Outlook Express email database. This tool can save emails, address book, settings, mail and news accounts, message rules, blocked senders lists, signatures, IE Settings and Outlook Express Settings to a single, compact, encrypted, compressed backup file that can be easily restored when necessary. The email database can be saved on one computer and restored to another, thus making Outlook Express Backup not just a backup utility but also a synchronization tool.

[10/23/07 frwr-news] Genie Outlook Express Backup is designed to easily create a backup or archive file of your Mail folders from Microsoft Outlook Express which may easily be restored when necessary.

[11/18/08 frwr-news] KLS Mail Backup is an easy to use backup program that allows you to back up and restore your Windows Mail, Outlook Express, Mozilla Thunderbird, Firefox profile files.

Icon Wars

What happens on your computer when you are away

-- from John Kessel

Microsoft's Worst Nightmare

Blake Ross and FireFox

I got gmail!

Finally got my gmail account from my cousin. And I got some invitations too. If anybody wants a gmail account, email me at kulasoft@gmail.com.

Walla Me

Don't have gmail yet? Try Walla while you wait.

Courtesy of Roy again.

Computer Chronicles

Roy sent me this link. The old Computer Chronicles TV shows are on archive.org.

Keep It Simple

Cut the clutter on your PC and you can stop aggravations before they begin. PC World's 50 tips show you how to simplify Windows and your system from startup to shutdown.

-- from Cool Tricks and Trinkets #319

SpaceShipOne captures X Prize

Private rocket plane flies into space.

The Video Game Revolution

This website accompanies the PBS series

- from Cool Tricks and Trinkets #316