I work as a computer repair tech and i’ve noticed a recurring problem with cd/dvd drives in Windows XP and Vista disappearing from the my computer menu. Now rather than to restore the OS, wasting time hunting down drivers, or replace the drive you can try to fix the problem by editing the registry keys.

1. In XP just go to start run and type in “regedit” and in Vista just type “regedit” in the search box.

2. From there maximize the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINES

3. SYSTEM

4. CurrentControlSet

5. Control

6. Class

7. {4D36E965-E325-11­CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

Now look in the right panel and find “Upperfilter” and “Lowerfilter”, click on each “filter” and hit the delete key. You will be prompted after each filter to confirm, just hit yes and then restart the computer after both filters have been successfully removed.

If after doing this the drive is still not working you’re either looking at a bad cd/dvd drive or possible a bad motherboard. One way to test this is when the BIOS screen comes up on the computer select the option to load the boot menu and attempt to boot from the cd/dvd drive. You’ll need a bootable cd such as a Windows installation disk or you could use something like Memtest or Hitachi Drive Fitness Test

Tags: General Tech Info, Windows Tweaks, tutorials by dustin
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Would you like to try out Linux, but haven’t a clue how to create a dual boot system? VirtualBox allows you to do just that. This is a software based virtualization platform that runs in Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and Solaris that supports guests (virtual machines) of the same. Now you can easily roll out a Windows install on your Mac or Linux PC, or any other combination. As seen here, this is one of the coolest Linux demonstration videos I’ve had the chance to view, you’ll notice a Windows XP system running in the opposing desktop view in full screen even. The desktop effects you see are Compiz which I will discuss in a later post.

Tags: General Tech Info, Linux by Tim
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Were you aware that Microsoft Windows reserves 20% of your available bandwidth for updates etc? This is not a problem for most, but for those of us who like to tweak and customize here is how to change that.

Click Start
Click Run
Type gpedit.msc in the space provided
Click OK or press enter on your keyboard to run that command. This will open the group policy editor

Double click on Local Computer Policy
Double click on Computer Configuration
Double click on Administrative Templates
Double click on Network
Double click on QOS Packet Scheduler
Double click on Limit Reservable Bandwidth
Click the “Enable” radius button
Set the value in the “Bandwidth limit %” field to zero
Lastly click OK and you are done.

if you would like to do some additional reading on this particular mod please click here.

Tags: Windows Tweaks by BrettW
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Last week, I went over the basics of strace and some very simple examples of it’s use. So this week I thought I would demonstrate a very useful use of strace in problematically duplicating the functions of cpanel’s WHM web interface. This will allow you to do anything WHM does through the browser via the command line or in a daemon.
[Read more →]

Tags: Linux, Perl, Programming, tutorials by jay
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Tech Tree is reporting there are (estimated) over one billion PCs installed around the globe.  The Gartner Group called them ‘installed’ PCs as their estimation is for personal computers in use - not just shipped ones or machines sold.  They factor in not only new machines, but second hand PCs as well.   That’s over 1,000,000,000 PCs in use folks!  The growth rate of installed base PCs is estimated to grow roughly 12% each year as more and more countries develop.  They’ve also figured in “churning” and figure some 16% of installed machines will be replace this year alone.  If you’re planning on being a part of that 16% who replaces an older PC, there are many donation and recycling options available for your old hardware.

Tags: General Tech Info by jakob
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Looking for a way to listen to your music collection from a friends house, the office or anywhere you can get your laptop connected without eating up space on your hard drive? Mp3tunes has a pretty sweet deal for you then, allowing you to store up to 25 GB of music for free or you can sign up for several different options if you need more storage room. Once you’ve signed up download Lockersync 3.0 and it will sync up your music collection to your online collection. This also offers a fall back plan in case of hard drive failures since you can down load your music collection back to your computer later.

Once you’ve gotten Mp3tunes setup you can download Orb and start streaming music to your Nintendo Wii, iPhone or many other supported gadgets. With Orb you can set up your pc as a media server steaming photos, videos, music even tv to almost any web connected device.

Tags: General Tech Info, tutorials by dustin
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Have you had enough of Windows faulty features yet? After 15 years of development and testing, WINE has finally reached v1.0 this week. Think of WINE as a gateway program to break free from the Microsoft operating system and still be able to run Windows programs in Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, and Solaris. This will give software companies an incentive to embrace Linux with their products without having to rewrite their entire code to get compatibility. It will also allow consumers and business alike the ability to make use of the huge assortment of Open Source Software while still holding onto their beloved Windows program they cannot live without.

Tags: Linux by Tim
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Here are 3 free programs that you can download from www.download.com that will go a long way to protecting your data and your computer.

Grisoft AVG free edition - This antivirus program has been around for a number of years now. Its fast and is kind to your system resources allowing you to surf the net or play solitare while it’s running in the background.

Spybot S&D - I can not say enough good things about this lightweight anti malware tool. Originally designed to kill spyware, it has expanded to also hunting trojans and rootkits. The advanced feature also provide tools for cleaning the registry, configuring your start-up programs, and securing your hosts file. The only bad thing I can say about it is that it does not scan automatically.

Comodo Pro firewall - This firewall quickly became my favorite replacement for windows firewall on both XP and Vista machines. It has a pretty intuative interface that allows you to very specifically control what network traffic travels to and from your machine. It also has a nice leaning mode that protects your system while it learns what you use and what programs need to be able to talk to locations on the internet.

These three aplications should block most malware on the internet. Of course there is no substitute for a little caution on your part, so be careful where you visit.

Tags: General Tech Info, tutorials by BrettW
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 A few years ago, I was taking a few classes from a very up and coming computer science university and during the course of one projects class came to discuss with the instructor the differences between the average students and those excelling. We determined the main differences to be, three in number:

1. Time and dedication
2. The ability to tinker and figure things out on one’s own
3. The art of debugging.

 The art of debugging is really quite simple, it is mostly knowing the tools available and how to use them. On the linux platform, surely one of the most powerful and certainly most thorough debugging tool one can use is strace.
[Read more →]

Tags: Linux, Programming, tutorials by jay
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It’s no big secret that our current numbering scheme for internet protocol addressing is limited, but some sources are reporting its demise as soon as 2010. IPV6 has been adopted as the solution for many, many years now because it’s a virtually limitless numbering scheme. The down-side? IPV6 is rather tricky to understand and implement. Instead of receiving an ip address like 69.51.xx.xx, you’ll now be issued one like 2008:0db8:85a3:08d3:1319:8a2e:0370:7334 once ipv6 is implemented. There’s really no need to panic, though, your operating system more than likely supports IPV6 already and IPV4 will not just disappear over night. Instead, I think we’ll see a gradual decline in the use of IPV4 as IPV6 begins to become more and more of an industry standard. I believe by 2010 there will be more of a hybrid use of IPV4 and IPV6 and not just the flat-out demise of IPV4.

Also, don’t forget to grab your copy of Firefox 3 today!

Tags: Networking by jakob
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