Tech Tip Daily

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!

Of all of my most frustrating problems, this one is in the top 5.  On numerous occasions, I’ve started my computer for the day only to show “local only” for my connectivity.  I would try the usual troubleshooting steps, such as refreshing my IP address, ending up empty handed.  Upon closer inspection, I would find my default gateway to have two entries; the first of these was ‘0.0.0.0′, and the second being my true default gateway (my router).  The quick solution to this was to open a command prompt window (Start Menu -> type ‘CMD’ and hit enter in the ‘Start Search’ window.  Typing ‘route delete 0.0.0.0′ would remove the faulty gateway.  Despite the quick solution, it never fully resolved the problem.

One day, I had enough.  I spent some time researching to find out exactly what the problem was.  Come to find out, it’s an error in Vista with the IPv6 protocol.  The solution is to disable IPv6 functionality in Vista, which in most circumstances isn’t too much of a problem as IPv6 isn’t widespread (of course, solving a problem by disabling functionality never seems like a valid solution to me).

To disable IPv6 in Vista:

1. Open Network Connections from the Control Panel
2. Right-click on your active, Local Area Connection and select ‘Properties’
3. Un-check “Internet Protocol Version 6 (TCP/IPv6)”, “Link-Layer Topology Discovery Mapper I/O Driver”, and “Link-Layer Topology Discovery Responder” in the list.  Click OK
4. Restart the computer

Hopefully that fixes your problem.

That’s all!  Thanks, and happy computing!

Skype is great.  I’ve been using it for over a year now and I love it.  With the SkypeOut package, I can conveniently place calls to land line phones for a flat (cheap) monthly charge.  One of the things I’ve used Skype for is podcasting.  A group of buddies and I have a weekly podcast (a link to follow – once we get the site up).  Skype is a stable, robust platform to host podcast sessions over.  Of course, we need a way to record our ramblings, so how does 1 go about doing this?

The science of PC audio is a complex one.  Aside from just “playing” sound, your audio card is capable of (sometimes) multiple outputs and inputs.  While most people are familiar with the traditional “speaker” output and “microphone” input, you might also have separate outputs for each channel of sound in a surround sound system and a line in input.  And that’s just on the hardware side.  Within the sound card, it has the capability to take all inputs and outputs and mix them together into one accessible channel.  This is referred to as the “Stereo Mix”.  While the only required input for Skype is your microphone, your recording software will need to hear more than just your voice.  What we’ll want to do is record the “stereo mix” channel from the sound card.

Now that we have that accomplished, all we need is a recording program.  While there are many available, the best I’ve found is audacity.  It’s free, lightweight, and easy to use.  Once you download and install audacity, we’ll want to tell it to record audio from your stereo mix.  All done, right?   Not quite.  Because of the nature of the “stereo mix” channel, Microsoft often times disables it by default within the audio properties (assuming your sound card supports it).  The reason for this is due to the fact that stereo mix greatly increases your chances of producing a feedback loop – where your audio input is sent back through your audio ouput, and in turn back through your input (and so on).  Before you tell audacity to record your stereo mix, we’ll need to be sure to enable it from within windows.

To enable stereo mix in Windows:

1. Go to Start -> Control Panel
2. In Vista, go to the recording tab and find “Stereo Mix”.  Right click and select enable.  Once enabled, right click it again and select “Set as Default Device”
3. In XP, go to “Sounds and Audio Devices” (If you don’t have classic view enabled, you’ll need to go to “Sounds, Speech, and Audio Devices” first, then the former).  Click the “Advanced” button in the volume tab to bring up the “volume control” mixer (alternatively, if enabled, you can always get here by double-clicking the volume icon in the icon tray).  If you see a “Stereo Mix” section in the mixer, ensure that Mute is unchecked and the volume is turned up.  If it isn’t there, go to Options -> Properties, and ensure that there is a check next to Stereo Mix.
4. Dell, in their ever-increasing attempt to capitalize, decided they would charge users for the ability to stereo mix, so these instructions won’t work.  However, follow the instructions here to enable it.

Once you’ve enabled stereo mix, Audacity should record from it (since we set it as default).  Try placing a few test calls and recording them from Audacity.  If you’ve done things correctly, it should work.  As usual, comment with questions or problems.

That’s all!  Thanks, and happy computing!

So after taking a few days for a break, I’m finally back (hey, it’s hard work running this site by myself).  I’ve talked in quite a few posts about my experiences with Vista.  Overall, it’s been fairly pleasant, especially after reformatting.  I’ve had few compatibility issues.  One that’s really bugged me though is the inability to easily print to a Netgear PS121 print server from Vista.  With the many machines I’ve got in my house, I’ve always preferred direct network printers instead of sharing them from a single machine.  Besides, my Vista desktop is doing enough as it is, the last thing it needs is to share a printer.

The software included with the print server includes an installation package for Windows XP.  This sets up a network printer connection to print to the server.  Unfortunately, the install file is incompatible with Vista.  In addition, adding the printer like most network printers doesn’t work…exactly.  While this is how you begin the process to install the printer, there are a few additional tweaks required to get it to work.  I’ll start from the beginning. Before you begin, ensure that the print server is powered on and connected to both the printer and the network.  You may wish to do some preliminary configuration on the print server, such as setting an IP address and name for the device.  The default IP address is obtained from DHCP, most likely from a router if this is installed at home.  Check the documentation that came with your router or modem for instructions on checking the DCHP allocation.  Alternatively, you can download Angry IP Scanner and do a port scan on your local subnet for all machines with port 80 (http) open (essentially, this checks for all devices on your network that have a web page – the PS121 does).  Despite all of this information, you will need the ip address for your print server to set up printing.

To print to a PS121 print server with Vista:

1. Go to Start->Control Panel
2. Open “printers”
3. Right click and choose “Add printer…”
4. Select “Add a local printer”
5. Select the bubble next to “Create a new port:” and then choose “Standard TCP/IP Port” from the dropdown.  Click Next
6. On the next page, enter the ip address of your printer (e.g. – 192.168.1.20) in the “Hostname or IP address” field.  The port name will be automatically generated (you’ll need to remember this for step 14).  Choose “Autodetect” for the device type.  Click Next
7. Windows will now attempt to find the device.  In all likelihood, it won’t find anything and you’ll have to wait a minute or two while it searches.  This might be avoided by selecting something different instead of “Autodetect” in the previous page, but I haven’t tested this.  When it finishes searching, ensure that the bubble next to “Standard” is selected and “Generic Network Card” is displayed in the drop down.  Depending on the make and model of your machine, this might display something different.  It’s probably a safe bet just to click Next at this point
8. On the next page, select the manufacturer of your printer, then choose the printer model from the box on the right.  There are a wide variety of different models available in Vista.  If yours isn’t listed, choose “Have Disk” and browse to the location of your print drivers.  These can be obtianed from the manufacturer’s website.  Once selected, choose next
9. If it asks which version of the driver to use, select “Use the driver that is currently installed (recommended)”.  Click Next
10. Type a name for your printer (you can probably leave it as the default).  Also, check the box if you would like it to be set as the default printer.  Click Next
11. Select whether you would like to share the printer on your network
12. Click Finish (don’t print a test page just yet, we’re not done)
13. In the printers window (which should still be open), right click on your newly installed printer and select properties
14. In the window that appears, click the “Ports” tab and select the port with the name consisting of the IP address of the PS121 (or whatever you named the port to in step 6).  Click “Configure Port”
15. In the “Protocol” box, select “LPR”
16. In the “LPR Settings” box, enter a queue name of “P1″ and check the box next to “LPR Byte Counting Enabled”.  Click OK

And you’re set.  With as lengthy of a process as this is, I would recommend printing a test page to check your settings.  To do this, go back to the printer properties (step 13) but instead of going to the ports tab, click “Print a test page”.  I’ve not had a problem getting this to work.  If you have any issues, leave a comment, and I or someone else will try to help you out.  Alternatively, you can try searching around on the internet, although I’ve found very little coverage on this little topic.

That’s all!  Thanks, and happy computing!

One of the more common problems I’ve seen people come across has to do with “disappearing” thumb drives.  Often times, users have put their USB key into the front port of their computer, only for nothing to happen.  When they go to “My Computer” their drive is nowhere to found.  Puzzled, most of them assume their drive has broken or become corrupted, and they purchase a new one.

It just so happens that this happens most often in office environments; Office environments with network drives; Many network drives.  Contrary to popular belief, this situation isn’t really a big deal.  Amongst other things, Windows doesn’t always do a fantastic job at disk management.  When a drive is connected to the computer, Windows assumes you want to access it (of course).  So to give it a unique identity that sets it apart from the other drives on the system, it chooses a drive letter assignment.  Once assigned, you can access the drive and its files.

Unfortunately, it’s not that easy.  For some unknown (to me) reason, Windows doesn’t always pick the next free drive letter to assign to a new drive.  Perhaps it has a “preference” based on size and file system type, or perhaps it’s just a matter of what letter the drive had previously.  Say you get a brand new laptop with a standard hard drive and DVD burner (most commonly drives ‘C’ and ‘D’).  You plug your USB drive into the machine and it’s given a drive letter of ‘E’.  You work off of it for a while and then disconnect it.  The next day, you take your laptop to work and decide to place it on the company network.  The network assigns it 5 brand new network drives so that you can access your company resources (it just so happens to pick letters E,F,G,H, and I).  Later on, you remember you need a file off of your thumb drive, so you plug it in.  Only nothing happens.  Most likely, the computer attempted to assign it the same letter it had before (’E') but couldn’t.  But instead of trying other letters that are free, it just plain quit trying.

Ok, so enough yapping.  How do you fix this?  Easy…

To reassign a drive letter to your external drive:

1. Open the Start Menu
2. Go to Control Panel
3. Open “Administrative Tools”
4. Click “Computer Management”
5. On the left panel of the window that opens, click on the “Disk Management”
6. After a few seconds of loading, the window will populate with all of the different Volumes (fancy for drives…kinda).  Here’s the tricky part.  One of those is your external drive.  In the list at the top of the window, look for a drive that doesn’t have a drive letter assigned to it (Each drive letter is placed in parenthesis after the name of the volume.
7. Right click that drive and select “Change drive letter and paths”
8. In the window that appears, click “Add”
9. Make sure that “Assign the following drive letter” is selected and then click the dropdown box on the right, selecting a letter to assign to the drive.
10. Hit Ok (You might need to restart the machine)

And that’s all there is to it.  This usually isnt’ a recurring problem on a machine.  But if it is, you now know the steps to fix it.

That’s all!  Thanks, and happy computing!

The other day, I was researching hacking my wireless router. After I began, it became clear that I needed to telnet into it (as it appeared that I had bricked the thing). I opened up a command prompt and typed “telnet”, only to receive an error that “‘telnet’ is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file”. After some research, I found out that by default, telnet isn’t enabled in Vista. As to why this is the case, I’m not quite sure as the binaries for telnet can’t possible take up more than a few hundred KB. Enabling telnet is simply a matter of going into Vista’s “Programs and Features” within the control panel and checking a box.

To enable telnet and other disabled features in Vista:

1. Open the “Start” menu and select the control panel
2. Click “Programs and Features”
3. On the left side of the window, choose “Turn Windows features on or off”
4. Scroll down in the list until you find “Telnet Client” and place a check in the box (I would also recommend installing the TFTP client as well)
5. Click Ok and close the window.

It’s also important to note that this is the same process to enable IIS (Internet Information Services) applications, such as the FTP and Web servers.

That’s all!  Thanks, and happy computing!

Out of all of my recent acquisitions, my “coolest”, by far, is the 8gb flash drive.  Aside from high-definition DVD rips and a few “miscellaneous” files on P2P sites, I now have the capability to store at least 1 of the largest files in existence; a DVD rip (Ok, so I realize this statement consists of very little truth).  But still, 8gb of data is pretty cool.  And almost right away, I had use for it.  I needed to get a video file from computer A to computer B.  This file just so happened to be a 5.3gb, 720p version of the opening ceremonies for the 2008 Olympics (legally obtained, of course).

When I went to move the file from my PC to the thumb drive, I received an error stating that the file size had exceeded the available space on the destination.  “What?”  For a short time, I was completely confused, checking the properties of the drive to make sure that they hadn’t mislabeled/mispackaged a smaller drive in an 8gb container.  Suddenly, I remembered that the drive was formatted with the FAT32 file system.  Silly me…

In reality, it was by complete chance that I had remembered this, let alone learned it in the first place.  The quick “down and dirty” is that while this thumb drive was formatted in FAT32, it was unable to store files larger than 4 gigabytes, as this is a limitation of the FAT32 file system.  The science behind this is largely irrelevant but you may still find it through a simple google search.  Basically, the solution entails reformatting the thumb drive to the NTFS file system so that you can store larger files.

To format a drive as a different file system:

1. Open “My Computer”
2. Find the drive in question and right click it, selecting “format”.
3. Under the “File system” section, click the arrow in the drop down box and select your desired file system (NTFS, in this case).
4. Click “Start” at the bottom of the window.
5. A window will notify you that the operation has completed successfully.  Following, you may close the windows and copy your file.

It’s important to note that there are a few disadvantages to NTFS.  By nature, NTFS requires more “write” operations to the drive.  This results in slower performance of the drive, and in the long term, minimizes the life of the drive (Flash memory can only be written to a limited number of times).  The other disadvantage is that other operating systems don’t natively support the NTFS file system as much as Microsoft (some can only read but are unable to write).  Best practice would be to reformat the drive as FAT32 once you have used it for it’s large-file purpose.  Otherwise, with the price of flash memory as it is, you could probably leave it without any major problems.

That’s all!  Thanks, and happy computing!

One of the more highly praised features of Vista is the “User Access Control”.  Part of the reason why some people have always criticized Microsoft is because of it’s lack of attention to security.  Windows is the most virus-ridden operating system in history (probably because it’s also the most widely used).  But another reason is that Microsoft hasn’t really taken strong measures to avoid malware.

Everything changed in Vista.  By nature, most of the things virii (viruses) have always wanted to requires administrative rights.  In XP, most users were assigned as “administrators” by default.  When a malicious file was ran, it was able to do it’s damage with no major complications.  Operating systems like OS X and Linux have always made a separate administrator account and made it a bit more difficult for standard users to perform administrative tasks.  Vista decided to follow suit and implemented “User Access Control”, which is a special dialogue box that appears whenever an administrative task is being performed.  This grants the process rights to operate.  If the box appears out of nowhere, chances are that some malware is attempting to execute and you should exit the prompt and run a virus scan.

In all, I would advise the standard user to leave UAC enabled.  While a bit of a nuisance at first, it will get gradually better over time and will become less tedious.  However, for those “more savvy” out there, or those who would rather trade the annoyance at the cost of security, it isn’t too difficult to disable UAC.

To disable user access control (UAC):

1. Go to the Start Menu and click run
2. Type “msconfig” and hit enter
3. Click the “Tools” tab
4. Scroll down towards the bottom of the list and find “Disable UAC”.  Select it, and click the “Launch” button
5. A command prompt window (black with white text) will appear shortly, then disappear.  You can then close the window and restart.

Again, it is HIGHLY recommended that you leave UAC on.  As many times as Microsoft has made some errors, this was actually a very good move in the right direction.  Don’t disable it unless you have a need to (don’t say I didn’t warn you).

That’s all!  Thanks, and happy computing!

Sometimes, those of us who are a bit less than organized have problems losing things, especially digital media.  To this day, I have over 25 discs that I’ve lost/misplaced.  In many cases, the loss isn’t too painful as many companies are beginning to offer methods of digital downloads in addition to the physical medium.  However, good ole’ Microsoft chooses to stand by the tried and true standard of CDs and DVDs.  What does that mean for you?  If you lose your installation disk, you can consider yourself out of luck as you’ll be unable to reinstall the operating system.

Unless, you decide to order a replacement disc.  With Vista, Microsoft finally answered the need to order discs, without paying for a brand new license as well.  They have set up a site here where you can go through the order process.  The disc will run you about $13 for shipping and you will be required to provide your cd key, which can be a problem if you’ve lost your entire DVD package, as the license key is printed on a label affixed inside.  If this is the case and your Vista installation is still somewhat intact, on the machine in question, download Magic Jelly Bean’s Keyfinder to retrieve your installation key.  Then go through the process outlined on Microsoft’s site, ordering your brand new disc.

Link: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/1033/ordermedia/default.mspx

That’s all!  Thanks, and happy computing!

Most of the new features in Vista are great.  One of them isn’t.  Vista intruduced the ability to have an embedded checkbox within your icons to aid in multiple selection.  To be honest, I wasn’t a big fan of this.  I’m still a fan of shift/ctrl click and the checkboxes just seemed to cramp things.  So naturally, I looked for a way to turn this off.

Luckily, this is a pretty easy fix (a matter of a simple setting).

To disable icon check boxes:

1. Open “My Computer”
2. Select the “Tools” menu from the top of the window and then click “Folder Options” (Edit 8/4/08: If the “tools” menu doesn’t appear, click the “Organize” button, click “Layout”, and then click “Menu Bar”.  This will place the menu bar at the top of the window.)
3. Click the “View” tab from the top.
4. Scroll down in the list until you reach “Use check boxes to select items” and un-check the box.
5. Hit Ok

Enjoy your checkbox-free icons.

That’s all!  Thanks, and happy computing!