Tech Tip Daily

Almost 1 year to the day of my last posting, we’re finally back up and running with a new design and on a new host! All of the major events of my life have finally passed and I’m rearing to get back in front of the keyboard. Stay tuned in the coming weeks as we get up to full speed.

No I haven’t died…

No I haven’t been kidnapped…

And no, I most definitely have not lost interest.  It’s been a crazy past few months, with my engagement/proposal coming just around the corner, a career change coming soon, and general chaos at work.  I still check the site from time to time and I’m trying to respond to questions and comments.  I do plan on bringing things back up to full speed in the near future, I’m just looking for time.  I plan on moving things from wordpress to a managed hosting solution when I get back on the ball.

Stay tuned, and before long, “Tech tip periodically” will be back to “Tech tip daily”

I can’t recall how many times I’ve been on a customer site and needed to print something, only to find that the printer was some obscure model that used a driver only obtainable from some password protected website in China, that just so happened to be down.  After talking with a coworker, he brought me in on a little secret – the HP LaserJet 4 driver will almost always work (and it’s included by default in all recent versions of Windows)!

Reluctantly, I tried it.  To my surprise, it really did work.  While using this “universal print driver” doesn’t always yield the best and most correct formatting options, it almost always prints a readable page and can be very useful in a pinch.

To select the HP LaserJet 4

• When given the option to select a model for your printer, choose ‘HP’ in the manufacturer window and then select ‘HP LaserJet 4′ in the printers window.

In my experience, the HP printers tend to do a better job with this trick (obviously) but I’ve had success with Konica Minolta, Canon, Dell, and a host of other brands.  I wouldn’t recommend doing this for anything too important, because as mentioned, formatting and margins can sometimes become an issue.  But for that quick print of a reference document, it sure comes in handy.

That’s all!  Thanks, and happy computing!

Who doesn’t love Excel?  On top of all of the great things it can do, it does a heck of a job of looking neat and organized.  While you can create gridlines of certain styles and thicknesses around each cell, sometimes the standard thin-gray ones do the trick.  But by default, these aren’t printed on the spreadsheet.  How do you get excel to print these?

To print gridlines in Excel 2007:

1. Go to the page layout tab at the top of the window
2. Click the “expand” icon to the right of the “Page Setup” group heading.  This will bring up the page setup window.
3. Click the sheet tab
4. Place a check next to “Gridlines” in the print section and click Ok.
5. Alternatively, within the page layout tab, you can check the “Print” box under Gridlines in the Sheet Options group.

In all other versions of Excel:

1. Go to File -> Page Setup
2. Click the sheet tab
3. Check the box next to “Gridlines” in the Print area.
4. Click Ok

That does it!  Thanks, and happy computing!

Microsoft has long been criticized for it’s lack of attention to security.  For a long time, the majority of its products have not only had some major holes, but has done little to prevent the end user from jeopardizing their well-being.  Fortunately, this trend has changed in the past few years.  Microsoft has been taking some very large steps in security not only their operating systems, but their applications as well.

Finally, people are beginning to get the point that you shouldn’t open file attachments.  Just in case a few didn’t get that memo, Microsoft blocks some of the more dangerous attachment types (.exe, .vbs, .bat, etc.).  You’ll know that Outlook is blocking the attachments by the message “Outlook blocked access to the following potentially unsafe attachments:” that appears where the attachments usually do.  That way, Aunt Sally doesn’t accidentally open an email “from Uncle George” with the file “virus.exe” included.  Despite this security feature, I and a few others insist on being stubborn and having complete and unrestricted access to the capability of a program.  If I want to download and infect my computer, let me do it.

Although it isn’t easily accessible through the file menu (probably a good thing), Microsoft has outlined steps to disable attachment blocking for specific file types on their support knowledge base.  I’ll outline these steps below.

It’s important to emphasize that this really is a good thing.  Microsoft made the right choice in doing this because, well, it protects you.  In my case, I had an .exe file that I HAD to retrieve from my exchange email, and I had no choice but to follow these steps to access it.  And remember, when opening file attachments (never), you should only open those that are from someone you know, AND that you are expecting.  Grandma Johnson sends you pictures.zip?  Call her up and make sure she sent it.  Then, scan it with antivirus software just to be safe.  My papa always said, “Scan twice, open once.”  Do the following at your own risk.

To unblock a particular file type within Outlook:

1. These steps will involve modifying the registry.  As is always good practice when modifying the registry, be sure to back it up.
2. Exit Outlook if it’s running
3. Click Start -> Run, type ‘regedit’ and hit enter
4. In the window that appears, navigate to the following registry keys, depending on your version of Outlook (clicking the ‘+’ next to each section heading)

   Outlook 2007
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\Security

   Outlook 2003
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Security

   Outlook 2002
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\10.0\Outlook\Security

   Outlook 2000
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\9.0\Outlook\Security

5. If these keys don’t exist for your version, create them.  Otherwise, proceed to step 6.  Navigate to the ‘HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft’ and right click in the right on the Office Folder in the left pane.  Select New->Key and then title the new key as the corresponding version number depending on your version (look above – 12.0 for 2007, 11.0 for 2003, etc.).  Then click on the key you just created and create a new key titled ‘Outlook’ and then a new key within that one titled ‘Security’
6. Select the ‘Security’ key/folder and then right click in the right pane, selecting New->String Value.  Give the new value a name of ‘Level1Remove’
7. Once created, right click ‘Level1Remove’ and select ‘Modify’.  In the text field, type the file extensions (including the period) that you wish to unblock within Outlook, separated by a semicolon.  For example, I have…

   .exe;.bat;.vbs

8. Click Ok and close all windows.  Restart your computer

Outlook will now allow you to download these previously-blocked attachments.  Again, I caution you on doing this, and always make sure that you scan anything that you receive as a file attachment.

That’s all!  Thanks, and happy computing!

Almost everyone has heard about the digital TV switch of 2009.  If you haven’t heard of it yet, do a google search to learn all about it.  Ever since the word started to spread, there has been a big push for people to take steps to receive “Over the air” (OTA) HD channels.  While many of us know that you can pick up the local stations with the rabbit ears on top of the TV set (until 2009), most don’t know that you can get free high definition channels using a simple homemade antenna (works great, by the way).

TVFool.com provides a valuable resource of coverage maps of channel reception for most areas in the US.  Just enter your address and you’ll have access to a complete listing of the channels you should be capable of receiving along with likely signal strengths.

TVFool.com

• http://www.tvfool.com

That’s all!  Thanks, and happy computing!

Yesterday, I talked about how you could convert your copy protected TV shows on Windows Media Center to another, less restrictive file format.  But who has time to sit down at their computer and watch TV shows?  What we really want is to watch these files on our portable devices on the go.  Meet Handbrake, “an open source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform multithreaded DVD to MPEG-4 converter, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows” (From the website).  In all reality, handbrake is marketed as a DVD-to-ipod converter, although it can support a wide array of input file types.  And the great thing is, it’s easy to use.

To convert video files (and DVDs) using Handbrake:

1. Download Handbrake from http://handbrake.fr and install it (GUI and command line versions available – I’ll be working with the GUI version).
2. Open the application, and you’ll see the beautifully intuitive interface.  In the source field, you’ll want to select Folder or File, depending on whether you want to convert a DVD or other media type, respectively.
3. Once you’ve selected your source, you’ll want to give Handbrake a destination.  Click browse and navigate to wherever you’d like your transcoded files to be stored (giving a file name, of course).
4. In the bottom section, you’ll find detailed conversion settings for all aspects of the files.  In all practicality, you’ll most likely be ok just selecting a preset from the list on the right of the screen.
5. Once you’ve chosen your preset, you’re all set.  Click Start to begin conversion OR you can select “Add to Queue” to queue up this conversion in a batch list of other conversions.  This is nice if you want to convert a few shows all at once without having to babysit the software.  For each conversion, click “Add to Queue” and then select the “Show Queue” button to display the queue.  Once finished, click “Encode” to start the process.
6. Depending on the input file type, size, and length, this could take some time.  Go do something else for a while (like reading the rest of my articles) and then check back later on.

That’s all!  Thanks, and happy computing!

If I had unlimited space on my Media Center computer, I would never stop recording.  Unfortunately, that’s not very feasible (yet).  While I do have quite a bit of storage space between all of my machines and devices, because of Microsoft’s DVR-MS copy protection, I’m only able to watch recorded shows on my Media Center.

Fortunately, there’s a piece of software that can remove this protection so that files can be freely moved (and played) on different machines, as well as the Media Center.  Before I go into detail, however, I am obligated to inform you that removing copy-protection is a violation of applicable law and is punishable by hefty fines and jail time.  These following instructions are for educational purposes only and should not be tried.  Also, I am in no way connected to the individual who has developed this piece of software; I found him after a simple Google search.  He deserves all credit (and punishment) for this application.

Now, legalities aside, here’s the dirt.  The software application is called DVRMSToolbox and it can take any dvrms file type and convert it to a wide variety of file formats, including mpeg, avi, and wmv.  It’s not the absolute easiest piece of software to use, but anyone with even a little bit of PC know how should have no problems figuring it out.

To transcode your Media Center recorded shows:

1. Go to the homepage here and download the latest installation package (at the time of this article, it’s 1.2.1.3).  After downloading, run the installation package and install the software.
2. You can open the software from the start menu under DVRMSToolbox.  The application you want is titled DVRMSToolboxGUI.
3. Here’s the slightly complicated part.  There happens to be no browse button for targeting files, so you’ll need to manually enter the path for the file you would like to convert.  By default, at least in my version, files are stored at C:\Recorded TV.  This is configurable in the settings and might be different based on your system.  For example, in the input file field, you would put “C:\Recorded TV\ShowXXXXX.dvrms”.
4. Before you put a target name for the file, in the “Profile” field, drop down the menu and select any one of the convert options (avi, mpeg, wmv, etc.).  This is personal preference, and a google search will explain the difference between each.
5. Now, place the file path in the output file field.  Example – C:\Converted TV\ShowXXXXX.avi (make sure to put the appropriate file extension for whatever conversion option you selected in step 4).
6. Hit Run and you should be good to go.

There are some other things you can do with the software, such as batch conversion and directory monitoring, but I’ll leave that to you to experiment with.

That’s all!  Thanks, and happy computing!

So I’ve postponed today’s article for a different one.  Yesterday, Google released it’s new browser, coined “Chrome”, to compete with Firefox, IE, Opera, and Safari.  So far, it’s not having any problems doing this.  Preliminary tests show that Chrome is nearly 10 times faster than the other browsers on the market (at least with javascript).  I’ve tried it myself and it blows firefox out of the water in terms of speed.  While, I haven’t played with it too much as of yet, the only downside seems to be the absence of extensions.  But being that this is the main selling point of Firefox, and Google aims to single handedly rule the world, I figure it’s only a matter of time.

Oh, and make note that the tabs all appear in the menu bar at the top of the window.

Download Chrome at:

• http://www.google.com/chrome

I got a call from my Mother the other day, stating that her computer was having problems.  When she opened ‘My computer’, it would often take 30 seconds to a minute to load up and display all of her network drives.  During this time, the window was blank and the entire computer would hang.  While you could move the mouse, nothing would respond until after ‘My Computer’ finished loading.  While I had seen this before on other machines, it was never a big enough issue for me to warrant fixing it.

Like all problems, I started by searching google.  I quickly came up with a few solutions, none of which seemed to help the problem.  In an attempt to self-diagnose, I tried the process again, opening ‘My Computer’, while immediately opening ‘Task Manager’ to monitor network and CPU performance.  Surprisingly, neither was working exceptionally hard.  I had figured all along that this issue had something to do with the 7 network drives she had mapped, but I wasn’t sure quite what.  She said that her coworkers had the same drives but had no problems.  In addition, she was experiencing the same problem on all of her machines.

Given these circumstances, it seemed that the culprit lay somewhere within her user profile for the network or in her scheme for mapping drives.  Before having her System Admin rebuild her user profile, I decided to try a few more things.  I began opening the network drives to check the contents, and found that 3 of the drives were not available (receiving errors when attempting to open them).  On a hunch, I disconnected those 3 drives and restarted.  After logging back in, opening ‘My Computer’ displayed the drives almost instantly, and additional attempts yielded the same results.  So Apparently, having a “dead” drive mapping can cause ‘My Computer’ to be slow to respond.  At any rate, if you’re having the same problem, here are a few things to try.  Keep in mind that this symptom usually occurs on a workplace computer, and it may be against your organization’s policy to make changes to the system.  Check with your System Administrator prior to performing any of the below steps.  And if it’s your personal machine, then by all means, go nuts.

Note: I should mention, I have no idea what the two services mentioned below actually do; I’ve not ever taken the time to figure it out.  As it’s usually my personal policy to try anything, and then fix any problems as they arise, I don’t recommend this for everyone.  Disable these services at your own risk.

To speed up ‘My Computer’:

1. Verify the connection to each of your mapped network drives.  If you receive an unwarranted error connecting to the drive, right click and select ‘disconnect’.  Repeat this for each erroneous drive.
2. Disable the “Windows Image Acquisition (WIA)” service (Start->Run, type “Services.msc” and hit enter.  Scroll down to the aforementioned service and right-click -> disable)
3. Disable the “WebClient” service.  Follow the directions from step 2

Hopefully, this fixes your problem.  If not, comment.

That’s all!  Thanks, and happy computing!