Tip of the day/General Tips etc

[dr_ml422]

I hear you. I forgot that's the HP PC you mostly work on. Isn't it unbelievable how in this day in age these morons and idiots as I call them myself never seize to amaze us.

You know HP was headed in a very solid direction when the woman was CEO. She saw they were too conservative and was really making moves that were paying off. Then the old fogies decided she was too modern or what not and fired her to go back to their old ways. Needless to say she sued and received a very large settlement.

That's why I won't bother wasting too much time anymore w/anything that starts acting up software or hardware wise. I spare myself the frustration of pointless troubleshooting. I'll just stick w/what works and uninstall and chuck what doesn't.

You could tell by some of my posts the aboveforementioned.

[MilesAhead]

I guess one of these days I should look into drive trays or whatever they call 'em. Many of the guys on DonationCoder.com have them. You can stick them in an unused optical drive tray for example, and a 3 1/2" HD just snaps into it. Of course you have to mess with the cabling and that's the part I don't know about at this point. USB 3.0 may be easier.

[dr_ml422]

If it's just a extra feature tray that snaps into a empty optical disc tray that's easy. Being your drive will be sata you just need a long enough sata data cable for the sata port on the mobo and a sata power cable from the psu. That's it. If your Prebuild only came w/a set amount of power sata cables that's nothing as you can either get a y-split sata adapter or a ide to sata y-split adapter. If you go the ide to sata y-split or even straight cable adapter just make sure it has the xtra orange wire so you'll get all feed from the PSU. Newegg has them. I have a y-split ide to sata I might use soon after my ide optical drives die if my PSU outlasts them. I had purchased a octopuss PSU way back for my 1st build and snipped just about every useless extra cable off.

On USB 3 you can go that rout as well although word is that it really isn't that much faster as stated than e-sata in real world usage. For future proofing it won't be a bad idea.

I installed this> http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...280&CatId=1455 and it is fast and hot swappable using a e-sata Docking station you can also get straight from Thermaltake. I bought 1 of my docking stations straight from them refurbished which was nothing more than someone prolly not wanting it or w/e. No problems whatsoever and they'll guarantee it as well for a time.

The above card is great as it has 2 sata ports. 1 external e-sata and 1 internal sata. Only can use 1 at a time and all it takes is moving the jumpers over. 7 will automatically install the drivers. I like it better than my integrated external e-sata port as for w/e reason it won't be recognised by my system unless I turn on the Docking station before booting. I found a fix though through device manager so it's good to go.

Data wise they zip. About 37 or so video files through my network from 1 pc to the other in 5hrs. n 45 mins. I don't think that's bad at all. Also since I only have 1 e-sata Docking Station it would of been faster had I had 2. I could only imagine regular data transfer. Matter of fact I think I'm getting another one of those cards to put in my new build.

You gave me a idea here w/that drive tray. Just remember that the higher the drive in the mobo the more heat as heat rises. I've also noticed that it matters immensely what drive you put into the Docking Station. I'm a WD guy. That aside some 16 MB cache drives will zip faster than 32 MB drives. They now have 64 MB cache drives at both 7200 RPM and 5400 at 1 TB and 2 TB capacities. That won't necessarily mean they'll be faster though.

[MilesAhead]

Just remember that the higher the drive in the mobo the more heat as heat rises.

I split this off to it's own thread so we don't hijack the sticky:

http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=93065

[MilesAhead]

I've found myself in this position a few times. I start a video mux going and then I remember I wanted to check something on the web. Oops!! Now I've got to wait(since I only have 1 internal HD) forever for Firefox to load up.

To remove this frustration I installed Firefox 3.6 portable. Also got a free Ramdisk from Dataram but you can use others.

One place to get Firefox 3.6 Portable

Whichever ramdisk program you use, see its directions for creating a ramdisk and assigning a drive letter. Also you want one that can save the contents of the ramdisk to an image file on your HD.

Once you have a ramdisk large enough to hold your Firefox Portable installation, copy it from HD to the ramdisk with this command:

XCOPY X:\PortableFirefox\*.* B:\firefox\ /E /Y /C

where 'X' is the drive letter where Firefox portable lives.
And 'B' is assumed to be the drive letter assigned the ramdisk.
It doesn't have to be B: .. usually you can use Disk Management
in the Windows administrative tools applet to assign the drive letter.

Now save the ramdisk to your HD image file.
The Dataram doesn't have an option to autostart with Windows, but
...

I need a Homer Simpson "Doh!" sound effect here. This DataRam ramdisk was so easy to use I couldn't figure it out. The config program only has to be run once. You kick off the ramdisk, then close the config program. For some reason because it has Start and Stop Buttons I thought you had to start and stop manually. If you don't use an image file it just throws the data away on system shutdown, and comes up empty on startup. Which is good for me. I put a shortcut to my xcopy batch file in the Startup folder, then used Startup Delay of 30 seconds in WinPatrol. No more manual intervention. On startup everything is there, and after 30 seconds delay, my batch file copies the Firefox folder into it. Nice and easy!!

[MilesAhead]

Search Scroogle using FF address bar

I got in the habit of typing in searches in Chrome using the address bar. Then when I open Firefox I do the same thing without the desired result. I ran across the setup for Firefox.

In Address Bar Type about:config

click button about voiding warrantee

in filter enter keyword.URL

double click it and paste in
"https://ssl.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/nbbwssl.cgi?Gw="

but without the quotes

now in filter just type keyword
without the URL on the end and make
sure it says Enabled(if it doesn't just
double-click to toggle it.)

Now you should be able to get scroogle results from address bar searches.

Alternatively you can just add a Scroogle search to your list of search engines from here:

http://mycroft.mozdev.org/search-engines.html?name=scroogle

[MilesAhead]

SendTo Menu Stall Network Drive Fix

I just found the solution to something that was driving me bonkers. I would right click a video to play with Splash Lite using the SendTo Menu. Sometimes it would react normally. Other times it would hang. After about 15 or 20 seconds it would respond normally again.

I finally realized the delay was due to networked drives being in the SendTo Menu. I have a shared folder on a drive in a docking station that spins down after 10 minutes of inactivity. If the drive was spun down, the SendTo Menu would hang waiting for it to spin up.



I found this .reg script on Vista Fourms to fix it up.
The same script should work in both Vista and Windows7.

You can save the script to a .reg file and double click it,
or just edit the registry by hand. Either way it's a good
idea to back up first with ERUNT or a Restore Point. I did
check the same tip on Windows7 forum and it showed the
same solution. Meaning the registry key in both OS is the
same.

The change takes effect on the next login.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer]
"NoDrivesInSendToMenu"=dword:00000001

[dr_ml422]

Thanks for this tip as I now think this might be happening w/other software as well. I've been experiencing more or less the same thing, and now that I think about it my dock's have been on most of the time also.

Do you have Vista Professional or something different? The registry editor in the Home Premium version is different if I'm not mistaken. I remember searching for some solutions on other things and when they posted the fix w/Vista I couldn't do it because Home had a different makeup. I think it's the GPEDIT. My Home Premium x64 7 has no GPEDIT just Regedit.

[MilesAhead]

Thanks for this tip as I now think this might be happening w/other software as well. I've been experiencing more or less the same thing, and now that I think about it my dock's have been on most of the time also.

Do you have Vista Professional or something different? The registry editor in the Home Premium version is different if I'm not mistaken. I remember searching for some solutions on other things and when they posted the fix w/Vista I couldn't do it because Home had a different makeup. I think it's the GPEDIT. My Home Premium x64 7 has no GPEDIT just Regedit.

Nope, I'm on Home Premium Vista 64 bit. You can use RegEdit. Before I ran the .reg script I went into RegEdit to make sure that category of keys was there. Just to make sure there wasn't an error in the script.

Here's the link I got it from if that helps:

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/144660-send-context-menu-remove-show-drive-letters.html

[MilesAhead]

Put Recent Items in File Open and Save Dialogs in Vista/W7

Somebody asked this in another forum and it looked a bit useful so..

If you open Start Menu in Vista or W7 there's a Recent Items icon on the Panel. The way I've found, just by playing around, to get it on File Open and Save Dialogs is right click it, then use SendTo => Desktop. It will make a shortcut on the Desktop. Now use any program that uses the enhanced File Open dialog to try to Open a file. Drag the shortcut from the Desktop to the Dialog under the Favorites area. You can rename it to get rid of the "shortcut" and just leave Recent Items.

Any recent files or folders that get updated to the Start Menu Recent Items should be echoed there. Might be handy to avoid drilling down for the same file over and over.

Once you verify it works, you can delete the shortcut from the Desktop.

[palebrand]

btw I updated the Tray gizmo so it remembers the screen position when closed. I don't have a multiple monitor setup to do anything fancy. Just saves Left and Top of the form to and from an .ini file in the install folder.

[MilesAhead]

Windows Seven "blank page icon" work-around

I've noticed in some cases Windows Seven has the "blank page" icon problem that I remember from Win9x days. Sometimes you could get around it by opening the shortcut and selecting Change Icon, selecting a different icon, then putting the setting back to the original exe file to use the icon from the program.

Kind of a variation on the same theme. Sometimes the above trick doesn't work. So to use the original icon in tough cases, I extract the icon from the exe file using an icon extraction program.

This free icon editor has an icon extraction tool in File menu but you can use any icon grabber:

http://icofx.ro/

I copy the extracted icon to my custom icon folder. Now go into the shortcut and do Change Icon and browse to the extracted icon in the folder. It should "stick" and show the original icon instead of the blank page.

At least it seems to work for me in Windows Seven 32 bit. Your mileage may vary.

[happylily]

it is really a good idea for sharing info.

with more and more people share info, it becomes so messed and difficult to find needed one.

[MilesAhead]

Chrome/Chromium has built in "deskCut"

When I used Firefox as my main browser I liked the deskCut AddOn where you could instantly create a desktop shortcut for the current page. Double click the shortcut and the default browser opens to the page.

I was looking around for a similar extension for Chromium. There wasn't one because the functionality is built in.

Just highlight the url in the Address Bar, then drag the round thingie on the left end of the Address Bar to the desktop using the Left Mouse Button. You should get a shortcut that browses to the page you were on when double clicked.

I ran across this article when searching for the extension. Chromium has this soccer ball looking thingy on the left of the Address Bar instead of a star but it works just the same:

http://www.tothepc.com/archives/make-desktop-shortcut-of-url-in-chrome-by-drag-drop/

[dr_ml422]

Miles how u doing? Were you more concerned for finding that shortcut for Chromium specifically or just plain in general? Win 7's been having that function, or rather IE 8/9. You just copy the URL shortcut to the supposedly new quick launch at the bottom of the Desktop and it'll open up the page also.