Managing PC games has become and issue for some of us the past few years. As games become more and more taxing on hardware and require more space some gamers feel limited by what they can play. If you wanted to stay current you would be forced to buy new hardware every few months. Continue reading »
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New IE9 Taskbar feature
One of the nice new features of Internet Explorer 9 is that you can drag tabs to the taskbar to create a dedicated shortcut to a website. In addition it works with the taskbar features of Windows 7. I dragged my tab from Twitter.com to the taskbar and it placed an icon with the twitter logo, when I right click I get options for a New Tweet, Direct Messages, Mentions, Favorites and Search.
When I dragged the Facebook tab I got options for News, Messages, Events and Friends. The icon will also get a notification icon whenever I get new notifications.
Disable Top Search Result in IE9 Beta
Are you annoyed when you try to perform a search in the new single input form and you our forwarded to the top result instead of the search results? You can disable it by clicking on the gear icon in the upper right and choose Internet Options. Then click the Settings button in the “Search” section. Right-click your default search provider and select “Disable top result in Address bar”. Now you will be directed to a search results page instead.
Mysterious Drive Q:
I was browsing my computer last night when I noticed a new Q:\ drive. Since I don’t actually have a hard drive with the letter Q assigned and the fact the drive was inaccessible and had 0 bytes of o bytes available, I was a little concerned. A quick Google search led me to a post over on Microsoft TechNet (http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-IE/w7itprogeneral/thread/cad9b216-28b0-4bca-b0e6-e6594e59c7b2) revealing that the drive is the result of me installing Microsoft’s new Office 2010 beta. I still don’t know why the drive appears my computer or what its intention is, but I am relieved it was not something else.
Microsoft Word Paragraph Symbol
I am often asked how to remove the paragraph symbol from Microsoft Word, more commonly someone will notice it when creating a new email in Outlook.
If you are using Microsoft Word 2007 you can find the button highlighted with an orange background as shown below, simply click the button to make the symbols disappear.
If you use Microsoft Word 2003 you can find the button highlighted in orange as shown below, again just simply click the button to make the symbols disappear. If you do not see the button on your Word 2003 toolbar you can click View > Toolbars and make sure Standard is selected.
If you are using Microsoft Outlook create a new message then click View
> Toolbars and make sure Standard is selected. Then you should see the paragraph symbol.
Western Digital 1TB My World Book Edition Update
Western Digital’s 1.00.28 update for the My World Book Edition drives adds Time Machine capability. At first I had problems trying to get it to work with my MacBook Pro. When I went into the Time Machine configuration on my MacBook I could instantly see the Western Digital Drive as an option but when I selected the drive it prompted me for my credentials, after trying to supply my username and password I was denied access. I decided to try and see if maybe there was a feature I needed to turn on so I logged into the configuration web page. I looked through the setup and everything seemed fine until I looked at the user accounts, I noticed there was a user account called WD_Backup and the full name was labeled Time Machine User. After changing the password to the WD_Backup account I was able to setup the WD drive successfully. The next day I went to log into my WD drive from work using FTP which has worked great before but now it will not fully connect. The ftp client will authenticate and get a list of supported command and then it does not list the drives contents. If you are wondering I use CuteFTP Professional as my client. I think tomorrow I will try the Windows XP command line FTP to connect.
October 14, 2009 Update – I was able to get FTP working again by changing my data connection type to PORT from PASV.
Windows 7 / Vista Shared Printer
This week I was generously given a Samsung CLP-510 color laserjet printer. This printer happens to be USB only so I decided to hook it up in the basement to my Windows 7 Media Center computer. The computer I am sharing the printer with happens to be Windows Vista Ultimate. I had a few problems getting it to work so if you have the same problem I hope this will help you.
Assuming you have already shared your printer on Windows 7 but are not able to see it on you Vista computer follow these instructions to see the printer.
- Open the Control
- Click Network and Internet > Network and Sharing Center > Advanced sharing settings
- Select “Turn off password protected sharing” and “Use user accounts and passwords to connect to other computers”
Once I was able to see the printer I selected it but it took almost 5 minutes just to install. It even took several minutes just to print the test page. For some reason when I tried to open Microsoft Word 2007 it would take several minutes to open too. If I removed the printer it was fine, re-install the printer it would be slow again. I ended up finding my solution on vistaheads.com forum; you can see the post here. To get the printer to print normally do the following on the Vista machine:
- Remove the problem printer
- Add a new printer
- Select Add a local printer
- Choose create a new port
- Select local port
- Type the network path to the printer for the port name e.g. : \\server\printerName
- Select the driver for your printer
You should now be able to print to your shared printer without it taking several minutes.
Windows 7 Media Center Impressions
Microsoft has really improved Media Center significantly from Vista. The overall look and feel is a major improvement from Vista. I am not sure they could even improve between now and final release. The extender built into my HP Media Smart tv seems to respond to the Windows 7 Media Center much better. I have noticed that I do not have random troubles connecting to the Media Center computer. On Vista I would get an icon saying I was having network issued even though I had it connected using ethernet, I have not seen this yet on the new install either. I plan on using Windows 7 from now on for my Media Center it is truly a much better experience.
How-To Hard Reset your Blackberry
I was having some problems with my Blackberry Pearl 8130 and decided to wipe the device. If for some reason you need to wipe your BlackBerry to factory reset also, you can do so by following these instructions:
- Go to Options
- Click Security Options
- Click General Settings
- Click the BlackBerry button and select Wipe Handheld
- Optionally you can select to remove third party applications
- Select Continue
- Type “blackberry” to confirm the wipe.
Make sure your battery has a decent charge and do not remove it during this process. The reset should not take more then 10 minutes. After the phone reboots you should be prompted with the setup wizard and you can now setup your phone.
Upgrading an ASUS 901 eeePC
Last year I purchased an ASUS 901 eeePC netbook for my wife, Brook needed something that was lightweight and easy to carry and something that could last the day. When we first purchased it all she really needed was Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and the occasional web browsing. The web browsing experience was a little slow and trying to watch videos on HULU could produce stuttering.
Her model was a very early model that came with a 12GB SSD (Solid State Disk). Well when I ordered it I did not realize that it came with actually two SSD’s a 4GB embedded on the motherboard and an 8GB mini-PCIe card accessible by a panel on the bottom of the netbook. So I started doing some research and came across a product made by RunCore. RunCore had several models specifically for the ASUS 901 eeePC. I decided to get the 32GB SATA mini-PCIe card. Continue reading »