Wednesday, June 10, 2009

For those Techie Gray Cells - III

10 Reasons why PCs crash

5-Fatal OE exceptions and VXD errors

Fatal OE exception errors and VXD errors are often caused by video card problems.

These can often be resolved easily by reducing the resolution of the video display. Go to

* Start-Settings-Control Panel-Display-Settings

Here you should slide the screen area bar to the left. Take a look at the colour settings on the left of that window. For most desktops, high colour 16-bit depth is adequate.

If the screen freezes or you experience system lockups it might be due to the video card. Make sure it does not have a hardware conflict. Go to

* Start-Settings-Control Panel-System-Device Manager

Here, select the + beside Display Adapter. A line of text describing your video card should appear. Select it (make it blue) and press properties. Then select Resources and select each line in the window. Look for a message that says No Conflicts.

If you have video card hardware conflict, you will see it here. Be careful at this point and make a note of everything you do in case you make things worse.

The way to resolve a hardware conflict is to uncheck the Use Automatic Settings box and hit the Change Settings button. You are searching for a setting that will display a No Conflicts message.

Another useful way to resolve video problems is to go to

* Start-Settings-Control Panel-System-Performance-Graphics

Here you should move the Hardware Acceleration slider to the left. As ever, the most common cause of problems relating to graphics cards is old or faulty drivers (a driver is a small piece of software used by a computer to communicate with a device).

Look up your video card's manufacturer on the internet and search for the most recent drivers for it.

6-Viruses

Often the first sign of a virus infection is instability. Some viruses erase the boot sector of a hard drive, making it impossible to start. This is why it is a good idea to create a Windows start-up disk. Go to

* Start-Settings-Control Panel-Add/Remove Programs

Here, look for the Start Up Disk tab. Virus protection requires constant vigilance.

A virus scanner requires a list of virus signatures in order to be able to identify viruses. These signatures are stored in a DAT file. DAT files should be updated weekly from the website of your antivirus software manufacturer.

Some excellent antivirus programmes are McAfee VirusScan-2009, Norton AntiVirus-2009, Kaspersky-2009, ESET NOD 32 4.0.68.0 Beta, BitDefender-2009 etc.

More reasons in my later posts.........

Want to learn Maya?

Check out the tutorials here.

How to make your own Radio Station

Want to start your own radio station and host it on LAN? Check this out-

Must HAVE Winamp (Any Version)
First, things First your speed has to be at least 256/64 kbps (which means Dial-up users, will have alot of latency, just dnt bother)
Second, your going to have to have a domain, an updated one with the current i.p active. (Could be anything e.g. My sig)

Now, You have to download the Shoutcast Files.

Go to www.shoutcast.com to get the files.

You have to download 2 shoutcast softwares namely Shoutcast DNAS and Shoutcast DSP.

Ok After downloading these, installing Both of them in any order i dnt care. Go to START>PROGRAM FILES>SHOUTcast DNAS>EDIT SHOUTCAST DNS CONFIG.

Ok your gonna have to Configure it:
Go Down and where it says password: change (that means your gonna have to change it to whatever, make sure u remember)
The Portbase: change it to whatever port you want it
Maxusers: (lets be realistic here, dnt put in 10000, like NXS's radio station) your bandwidth has to be extremely good, if your cable, 50 user max is ok, ADSL should stay below 10 users, and T1 connections should do whatever tickles there fantasy.

Open winamp, RIGHT CLICK>OPTIONS>PREFRENCES>DSP EFFECT> and choose the NULLSOFT SHOUTCAST.

Go to OUTPUT, and then click on Connection, Through the ADDRESS, type your address which you have done through www.no-ip.com, PORT NUMBER, whatever u did in the EDIT.txt, and your password.

Then go to Encoder, and choose your quality of your music. Go back to OUTPU>OUTPUT CONFIG> YELLOW PAGES. this is your advertisemant information. dow hatever you like there.

Now Connect. to check that your Radio os on-line go to http://(your address that you added in the prefrence)

Delete an "Undeletable" File

Method-1
Open a Command Prompt window and leave it open.
Close all open programs.
Click Start, Run and enter TASKMGR.EXE
Go to the Processes tab and End Process on Explorer.exe.
Leave Task Manager open.
Go back to the Command Prompt window and change to the directory the AVI (or other undeletable file) is located in.
At the command prompt type DEL where is the file you wish to delete.
Go back to Task Manager, click File, New Task and enter EXPLORER.EXE to restart the GUI shell.
Close Task Manager.

Method-2

Open Notepad.exe

Click File>Save As..>

locate the folder where ur undeletable file is

Choose 'All files' from the file type box

click once on the file u wanna delete so its name appears in the 'filename' box

put a " at the start and end of the filename
(the filename should have the extension of the undeletable file so it will overwrite it)

click save,

It should ask u to overwrite the existing file, choose yes and u can delete it as normal

Method-3
Here's a manual way of doing it. I'll take this off once you put into your first post zain.

1. Start
2. Run
3. Type: command
4. To move into a directory type: cd c:\*** (The stars stand for your folder)
5. If you cannot access the folder because it has spaces for example Program Files or Kazaa Lite folder you have to do the following. instead of typing in the full folder name only take the first 6 letters then put a ~ and then 1 without spaces. Example: cd c:\progra~1\kazaal~1
6. Once your in the folder the non-deletable file it in type in dir - a list will come up with everything inside.
7. Now to delete the file type in del ***.bmp, txt, jpg, avi, etc... And if the file name has spaces you would use the special 1st 6 letters followed by a ~ and a 1 rule. Example: if your file name was bad file.bmp you would type once in the specific folder thorugh command, del badfil~1.bmp and your file should be gone. Make sure to type in the correct extension.

Monday, June 1, 2009

For those techie Gray Cells - II

10 Reasons why PCs crash

3-BIOS settings

Every motherboard is supplied with a range of chipset settings that are decided in the factory. A common way to access these settings is to press the F2 or delete button during the first few seconds of a boot-up.

Once inside the BIOS, great care should be taken. It is a good idea to write down on a piece of paper all the settings that appear on the screen. That way, if you change something and the computer becomes more unstable, you will know what settings to revert to.

A common BIOS error concerns the CAS latency. This refers to the Ram. Older EDO (extended data out) Ram has a CAS latency of 3. Newer SDRam has a CAS latency of 2. Setting the wrong figure can cause the Ram to lock up and freeze the computer's display.

Mcft Windows is better at allocating IRQ numbers than any BIOS. If possible set the IRQ numbers to Auto in the BIOS. This will allow Windows to allocate the IRQ numbers (make sure the BIOS setting for Plug and Play OS is switched to 'yes' to allow Windows to do this.).

4-Hard disk drives

After a few weeks, the information on a hard disk drive starts to become piecemeal or fragmented. It is a good idea to defragment the hard disk every week or so, to prevent the disk from causing a screen freeze. Go to

* Start-Programs-Accessories-System Tools-Disk Defragmenter

This will start the procedure. You will be unable to write data to the hard drive (to save it) while the disk is defragmenting, so it is a good idea to schedule the procedure for a period of inactivity using the Task Scheduler.

The Task Scheduler should be one of the small icons on the bottom right of the Windows opening page (the desktop).

Some lockups and screen freezes caused by hard disk problems can be solved by reducing the read-ahead optimisation. This can be adjusted by going to

* Start-Settings-Control Panel-System Icon-Performance-File System-Hard Disk.

Hard disks will slow down and crash if they are too full. Do some housekeeping on your hard drive every few months and free some space on it. Open the Windows folder on the C drive and find the Temporary Internet Files folder. Deleting the contents (not the folder) can free a lot of space.

Empty the Recycle Bin every week to free more space. Hard disk drives should be scanned every week for errors or bad sectors. Go to

* Start-Programs-Accessories-System Tools-ScanDisk

Otherwise assign the Task Scheduler to perform this operation at night when the computer is not in use.

More reasons in my later posts......

How to search on Google

Google is undoubtedly the best search engine out there but not if you can't exploit it properly and use it to get whatever you want. I am gonna help you find stuff on google. :D

Getting movies,MP3,Games...

You want movies, mp3 and games and don't know where to get them, well, there is google.com.
Goto www.google.com and put this string in

"parent directory " /appz/ -xxx -html -htm -php -shtml -opendivx -md5 -md5sums

"parent directory " DVDRip -xxx -html -htm -php -shtml -opendivx -md5 -md5sums

"parent directory "Xvid -xxx -html -htm -php -shtml -opendivx -md5 -md5sums

"parent directory " Gamez -xxx -html -htm -php -shtml -opendivx -md5 -md5sums

"parent directory " Name of Singer or album -xxx -html -htm -php -shtml -opendivx -md5 -md5sums

Notice that I am only changing the word after the parent directory, change it to whatever you want and you will get lots of goods.

Another way to find MP3 really quickly

Another good way of finding MP3s (or other formats) is using Google and typing the following:

parent + directory + mp3 + OR + wma+ #dido#

Replace #dido# by whatever artist you wish to find, for example:

parent + directory + mp3 + OR + wma+ #Lamb#

You should get plenty of dirs with MP3s or WMA files (you could add OGG, etc. to the query).

To find serial numbers/CD keys using Google

If you are looking for a serial number for nero (for example) goto google.com and type
nero 94FBR
and it'll bring it up

this works great in google

HOW DOES THIS WORK?

Quite simple really. 94FBR is part of a Office 2000 Pro cd key that is widely distributed as it bypasses the activation requirements of Office 2K Pro. By searching for the product name and 94FBR, you guarantee two things.

1)The pages that are returned are pages dealing specifically with the product you want a serial for.

2)Because 94FBR is part of a serial number, and only part of a serial number, you guarantee that any page being returned is a serial number list page.

I hope this trick helps you in finding your cd keys easily. :)

More useful stuff in my future posts. :D