Items filtered by date: December 2015

Sunday, 16 November 2008 14:50

Vista no longer has Hibernation option

This problem occurs when the Disk Cleanup Tool disables the hibernation file. The hibernation file must be enabled to access the hybrid sleep feature and the hibernation feature in Windows Vista.

When the hibernation file is disabled, and the hybrid sleep feature is enabled, a backup of open programs and open files will not be saved to the disk when you use the sleep feature in Windows Vista. Additionally, if the computer loses power while the Windows is in sleep mode, open programs and open files will not be recovered, and any unsaved work will be lost.

Also You cannot see the Hibernate option in Power Options.

Solution

access the command prompt and type the text below to turn hibernation back on.

powercfg -h on
Published in Windows XP

1. Click on Start button, then select Control Panel.

2. Click on Network and Internet link, and then click on Network and Sharing Center.

3. You will see that network discovery is off. Click on the corresponding 'Drop Dowb Arrow' button to expand the section.

4. Click “Turn on network discovery”, and then click Apply. Administrator permission required. If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.


Note that network policy settings might prevent you from completing these steps if your computer is connected to a network.

Published in Windows Vista
Sunday, 16 November 2008 14:48

Spread Spectrum

Common Options : 0.25%, 0.5%, Smart Clock, Disabled


When the motherboard's clock generator pulses, the extreme values (spikes) of the pulses create EMI (Electromagnetic Interference). The Spead Spectrum feature reduces the EMI by modulating the pulses so that the spikes of the pulses are reduced to flatter curves. It does so by varying the frequency slightly so that the signal doesn't use any particular frequency for more than a moment. This reduces the amount of interference that will affect the other electronics in the area.


The BIOS usually offers two different levels of modulation - 0.25% or 0.5%. That's the amount of modulation (or jitter) from the baseline signal. The greater the modulation, the greater the reduction of EMI. Therefore, if you need to significantly reduce EMI in the surrounding area, a modulation of 0.5% is recommended.


In most conditions, frequency modulation via this feature shouldn't cause any problems. However, system stability may be slightly compromised in certain situations. For example, enabling Spread Spectrum may cause improper functioning of timing-critical devices like clock-sensitive SCSI devices.

Spread Spectrum can also cause problems with overclocked systems, especially those that have been taken to extremes. The slight modulation of frequency may cause the processor or any other overclocked components of the system to fail, leading to very predictable consequences. Of course, this depends on the amount of modulation, the extent of overclocking and other factors like temperature variation, etc... As such, the problem may not readily manifest itself instantly.


Therefore, it is recommended that you disable this feature if you are overclocking your system. The risk of crashing your system isn't worth the reduction in EMI. Of course, if EMI reduction is important to you, enable this feature by all means but reduce the clock speed a little to give this feature some "space" to modulate safely. If you are not overclocking, the decision to enable or disable this feature is really up to you. But if you ask me, unless you have EMI problems, it's best to disable this feature to remove the possibility of stability issues.


Some BIOSes also offer a Smart Clock option. Instead of modulating the frequency of the pulses over time, Smart Clock turns off the AGP, PCI and SDRAM clock signals that are not in use. Thus, EMI can be reduced without compromising system stability. As a bonus, using Smart Clock also help to reduce power consumption. The degree of EMI and power reduction will depend on the number of free (empty) AGP, PCI and SDRAM slots. But generally, Smart Clock won't be able to reduce EMI as effectively as simple frequency modulation.


Still, if your BIOS comes with this Smart Clock option, you should select it over the 0.25% or 0.5% options if you need some EMI reduction. It will allow you to reduce EMI without any risk of compromising stability.

Published in Windows Vista
Sunday, 16 November 2008 14:47

SBCMSYNC.DLL is not a valid Office Add-In

Usually after an upgrade form Office 2000 to Office 2003 this problem occurs because of the bussiness contacts manager Add-in. Other Add-ins might cause a similiar issue, The error message will be similiar to:

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\ApplicationData\Microsoft\AddIns\C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office 11\SBCMSYNC.DLL is not a valid Add-In.

Also, a client after moving a hard drive from an older Windows 98 PC to a newer Windows XP PC receives this error message whenever he opens Microsoft Outlook 2003. However, he can close the messages by clicking OK and carry on using Outlook.

Cause

The file in question, Sbcmsync.dll, is affiliated with SBCM (Small Business Customer Manager), an information management tool that comes bundled with Microsoft Office. It appears that Outlook 2003 is attempting to access the SBCM but can’t find it, probably because of coding confusion that relates back to the user-initiated drive migration.

Solution 1 - Quick

  1. Navigate to the following registry key:
    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Addins\SBCM.ADDIN.1
  2. Delete the Key

Solution 2

Disable the offending add-in(s)

The key to resolving this issue is eliminating all references to the SBCM, which means accessing Outlook's Options dialog box. The can be done by:

  1. Opening the Tools menu
  2. Click Options
  3. Choosing the Other tab
  4. Select Advanced Options.
  5. click the Add-In Manager button and deselect any reference to SBCM or Outlook Sync in the resulting dialog box.
  6. Click OK
  7. Return to the Options dialog box, and repeat the process with the COM Add-Ins option.

Delete the Extend.dat file because it’s involved in the deployment of Office add-ins, and this error may occur if that file is corrupted:

  1. Using WinXP’s Search utility  find the file the system
  2. Rename to extend.old
  3. Reboot PC
  4. After system restarts, delete the extend.old file.

Clean the registry:

Backup your registry Registry (as a safety precaution in case something goes wrong)

Remove any references to SBCM that remain there. You can do that by:

  1. Open regedit
  2. Locate the following keys
    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\OFFICE\OUTLOOK\ADDINS

    and

    HKEY_CURRENT_ USER\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\OFFICE\11.0\OUTLOOK\ADDINS
  3. Delete any value or subkey referring to SBCM.

That ought to take care of the issue. The last resort would be to uninstall Microsoft Outlook and reinstall it from scratch.

Published in Outlook

This is caused by a via chipset problem where all the drivers are not loaded, you cannot reinstall the drivers because the PC crashes and they can not be installed in safe mode.

You will also note the use of Microsoft's VGAsafe driver in 'hidden devices', this is a failsafe by microsoft and is normal. It occurs when a basic VGA driver cannot be loaded.

 

The solution

Download the latest drivers for the motherboard chipset and graphics card.

Boot in safe mode.

extract the drivers out of the archive, sometimes running themm does this.

remove the via chipset drivers in device manager, right click and delete.

restart and reboot in safe mode.

the pc will now reinstall the drivers, you will probably find it asks for a file for 'agp to cpu', point it to the right directory for the extracted motherboard chipset drivers.

I updated the graphics card manually here before reboot.

reboot normally and then install both driver packeages to make sure all files are installed correctely.

problem fixed

Published in Windows Family
Sunday, 16 November 2008 14:44

Making Clean/Short URLs in MediaWiki

Given that Meta does a poor job making elegant URLs (several things, like ampersands and periods will no longer work in titles), here’s the method I’m using:

In .htaccess, add the following:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^[^:]*\.(php|src|jpg|png|gif|css|js|inc|swf|pl|ico|html|shtml|zip|mp3)$ - [L,NC]
RewriteRule ^index.php?title - [L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)\&(.*)$ $1\%26$2
RewriteRule ^(.+)$ /index.php?title=$1 [L,QSA]

In the listing of various extensions, you’ll want to put up whatever extension of file you plan on using on the site: for Retro, we also have a lot of hacking-specific extensions like bin, gen, smd, etc.

Then, open up LocalSettings.php, and use the following:

$wgScriptPath = “”;
$wgScript = “$wgScriptPath/index.php”;
$wgRedirectScript = “$wgScriptPath/redirect.php”;

$wgArticlePath = “/$1″;

From there, you should be set!

Article 2

This is a link to the official mediawiki short URL page.

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Short_url

Published in Windows XP
Sunday, 16 November 2008 14:44

How to reset activation timer in Vista

If you are running a copy of Vista that is not activated, you can see how much time is remaining by using this command:

slmgr -dli

To see the actual date and time that Vista will expire, run this command:

slmgr -xpr

You can reset that timer by running this command (as admin if you're using UAC) and rebooting:

slmgr -rearm

According to Microsoft's website, that rearm command will only work three times. So basically, you can extend your trial period up to 120 days.

Published in Windows Vista
Sunday, 16 November 2008 14:43

How to make a Transparent iframe

I assume you have basic html skills and you know all about iframes.

Step 1

Insert your iframe code between body tags.

<iframe src="/yourpage.html" name="myframe" width="250" height="250" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true"></iframe>

Step 2

Now copy the code below, and paste it between <head> tags of the page you are linking to.

In this example this page is yourpage.html

<style type="text/css">
Body { Background: transparent; }
</style>
Published in Windows Vista
Sunday, 16 November 2008 14:43

How to fix a blank capture of a movie player

Screen captures of movie players, such as Windows Media Player, sometimes turn out blank because the movie is projected onto what is called a hardware overlay surface. Capturing this surface results in a blank spot that's usually black, but can be any color.


The solution is to tell the player not to use hardware overlay by turning off "hardware acceleration".

Published in Windows XP
Sunday, 16 November 2008 14:42

How to backup a MySQL database?

The following PHP Script will backup the content of a MySQL Database in a GZip file:

{code class="brush: php"}{/code}

If your database is too big and the script times out, here is another PHP script that gives you the opportunity to backup separate Tables.

You will need to create the folder called "DB_backup".

{code class="php"}Database Server could not be reached"); MYSQL_SELECT_DB($db) or die ( "

Database not Available

"); $path = getenv('DOCUMENT_ROOT')."/DB_backup"; $result = MYSQL_QUERY("SHOW TABLES"); $numrow = MYSQL_NUM_ROWS($result); for($i = 0;$i < $numrow;$i++) { $table = MYSQL_RESULT($result,$i); echo "$table ... "; system(sprintf("mysqldump --opt -h $host -u $dbuser -p$dbpw $db $table | gzip > %s/$table.sql.gz",$path)); echo "DONE\n\n"; } MYSQL_CLOSE(); ?>{/code}

Backup by SSH (untested but works on 1and1)

1. Using the Secure Shell interface to log in and run the following commands.

2. use the following command to dump the database to your web space:

mysqldump -h [hostname] -u [username] -p[password] [databasename] > [outputfile])

After pressing [Enter] the system will prompt you for the password of your database.

Once the dump has been completed you will find the outputfile in your web space.

Having filled in all the information the command will look like this:

mysqldump -h db73.oneandone.co.uk -u dbo42764332 -p XXXXXXXX db42764332 > db42764332.dump
Published in Windows Family
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