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Analysis of Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Read the rest of this entry »

I added a word to my Mozilla Firefox spell check personal dictionary by mistake the other day, and could not figure out how to remove it. Firefox seriously lacks custom dictionary management.

To open your profile directory do the following or use the “Open Profile Folder Firefox Add-on“…

Simply go to Start -> Run, enter:

%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\

Locate the profile you’re using (usually default.something).

Then, inside the folder you will find a file named “persdict.dat”.

Open that, and there you have it, your custom list of words.

Edit it how you like save, and restart Firefox.

All done!

Despite my problems with purchasing mp4 players in the past I decided to purchase a new one.

This time I found a good one from a reputable website that sold items from China across the world, instead of eBay.

This device is also known as the Black Hawk MP4 Digital Player or mini Play Station Portable or IHTOOM personal media player.

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I bought this on the 20/08/04 for £179.99, which actually seems quite a lot for such a phone, but it was not bad at the time for a brand new unlocked phone.

I decided to get this phone as I had a Siemens ME45 before and that was great for it’s time.

In my opinion, this phone had a very stylish design. It was one of few non-flip phones on the market as they appeared to be becoming the norm. I have always been under the impression that like small convertibles, they are girlie.

The features I particularly liked when I purchased this phone were the custom polyphonic ring tones, vibrate, IRDA, build-in camera for photos and video, navigation joystick, integrated antenna, loudspeaker, “dynamic lights” for alerts, full colour display, video playback, silent mode and the ability to sync with Microsoft Outlook.

At the time of it’s release cameras were begining to become established in phones and were now the standard, as such this phone even came with an optional flash which plugged into the bottom. Quality of photos and video is reasonable.

Obviously it also came with standard features such as SMS, MMS and Internet/WAP, oh and of course the ability to make and receive calls.

As you can tell, this phone is pretty feature-tastic, the only thing it is missing from it’s elegant design is bluetooth. To begin with this didn’t matter as no one had bluetooth either, but as more and more phones came with bluetooth as standard, this phone got left behind.

Regardless, this is a fantastic phone. One of the best things is the navigation. Finding anything was easy, and once you were in it, it was easy to use. Text messages supported T9, which was really simple to work with, compared to other phones.

I also loved the management options such as copy and paste, and the phone number highlighting so you can dial a number you are sent with ease.

One of my favorite features was the dynamic lights. These are used when you receive a missed call or a text message to continually alert you that you have to attend to it, without continuously releasing a distressing noise like other phones, otherwise known as silent alerts. You are able to turn off the dynamic lights feature.

This phone also comes with some useful applications such as calculator (which is difficult to use), calendar, notes, task, dictating, stop watch, count down, unit converter, alarm clock, media player and all sorts of other software functions I would probably never get around to using, but at least I know they are there.

Another great feature of this phone was its ability to run java. This meant you could easily get hold of, and install new applications and new games to extend the possibilities of this phone.

Although this phone has quite a bit of storage space, for some strange reason, it could only seem to manage 100 text messages on the phone, and the standard 10 on the sim card. I never worked that out.

One thing I did find useful, was the ability to sync with outlook. Although to begin with the software that came with the phone wasn’t very good, Siemens released new software which was far better. Also the data connection was serial not USB, this meant your power was drained very quickly.

The benefit of this though was that I was able to use SCMxx, which is command line based communication software which I used for sending text messages from my computer without having to type with my thumb on my phone or use bulky software.

However, I think this is going to be the last Siemens I buy, and is almost definately the last of its kind, as on 07/06/05 Siemens AG (Siemens Mobile) announced it was being bought by BenQ (formerly Acer), but it all spells trouble for me, and as far as I can see it is a struggling company, and is having difficulty competing in today’s market. It is only a matter of time before its is bankrupt.

Conclusion: This was a great phone and simply lacked bluetooth, it’s time to move on.

More: Siemens CX65

First of all I’d like to say thanks to everyone who has visited my website since I began at the start of last month.

So far I have been going pretty much full steam ahead with this, releasing all my articles and posts I could think of, at a rate of 1 per day.

Over the next few months my other projects are pretty much going to take a front seat, which will mean I will have less time for this website.

I am going to attempt to make a post every few days or so. You can keep track of my posts by adding the RSS feed to Firefox or your RSS reader.

If you use any of my projects, scripts, or found any of my information useful, please provide me with feedback by leaving a comment in the relevant place or contacting me via IRC or by email.

Thanks and Enjoy!

Possibly one of the most annoying and confusing issues on windows is dealing with and understanding which codecs you need to do what.

There are a number of solutions to ensure all of your music, videos and other media will play on your version of windows.

I’ve recently experienced a problem where Windows Media Center returns a decoder error.

This was stopping me from setting up the audio within the wizard, so the plan of action was to locate an all in one codec pack which then meant I didn’t have to worry about which codecs I need to do what, it just includes them all, or so I thought.

Okay, so the codec pack got the sound working, great. However when I come to play DVD’s there’s a decoder error yet again, which means I require DVD decoder software.

There are a few options with this…

• Purchase the software Microsoft recommend
  
• Purchase or download and try for 30 days the nVidia PureVideo Decoder - it would match the chipset
• Purchase InterVideo DVD XPack for $14.95
• Purchase or download and try for 30 days CyberLink PowerDVD SE or v7.0 - i’ve used this in the past
• Purchase the Roxio solution which is CinePlayer for $14.95 - never used it, don’t like roxio
• Download a free or open source DVD decoder - near impossible or does not exist

Not to worry though I can use the Microsoft Windows XP Video Decoder Checkup Utility to make sure any I do choose is compatible.

To be fair although it should be a crime to have to pay to watch DVDs on your computer considering you have purchased a piece of hardware that is essentially a DVD reader, you do still need a DVD player, and $14.95 (just over £8) is not a bad price for a legit piece of DVD playing software, and its a damn sight cheaper than purchasing a separate DVD player unit to do the same job.

However, more often than not, if you purchase your PC from a large retailer, or you purchase a retail optical drive, you will receive a copy of one of the Microsoft approved DVD decoders listed above, so it might be worth considering that before you make your next purchase.

Yet with all that in mind, I’m still looking for that free or open source DVD decoder that will work with Windows Media Center or approved by Microsoft. We can all dream can’t we?

You may ALSO require DivX, QuickTime and Real Player (or their alternatives) to name a few to play certain types of videos, and I would also suggest taking a look at Winamp if you haven’t got it already as its a brilliant piece of software for playing music and video clips.

Additional Notes: Recently I have been looking at both VideoLan’s VLC and Media Player Classic which are either free or open source alternatives. I’ve yet to test their ability to play DVDs, how compatible they are with different video types or how other software (such as browsers and other media players) utilise their codecs.

What should I do? Reinstall? NO!

So how do you recover it? You can’t, BUT you can reset it…

There’s a nifty utility called Offline NT Password & Registry Editor (aka ntpasswd) that will reset Windows NT/2K/XP passwords. It runs from self-booting diskette or CD. Please note that it will not recover AD passwords, and may render EFS encrypted files permanently unreadable.

To save wasting CD’s with small applications you can actually find this utility and a whole range of other useful recovery tools together on the Ultimate Boot CD (aka UBCD).

As if that isn’t enough Winternals (the same people who make Sysinternals Freeware) offer a peice of software called Administrator’s Pak which you can purchase from them. This software creates a bootable CD called ERD Commander which contains a utility called Locksmith which allows you to reset lost passwords.

Today I had the joy of fixing an Epson Stylus C46 UX printer.

It had the following error: “Parts inside your printer are at the end of their service life. See your printer documentation.”

After a little searching I discovered that most people were saying that “It is simply not worth repairing”, however, I took that as a challange, and decided that if I was going to throw it away anyway I might as well try to fix it first.

Before long I located a page on fixyourownprinter.com’s forum, which had plenty of details about similar issues.

This is the process I used after reading details on that page:

1. Unplug the power and USB cables from the printer.
2. Prepare your work area by putting scrap paper down. Have some spare, just incase. You may also require tissue paper. It is also recommended you use protective gloves as the ink will stain your skin for quite some time.
3. Unscrew the screw at the back of the printer.
4. There are two or three tabs at the back and two at the front. Gently push them in, and then using a bit of force pry apart the cover.
5. At the back of the unit you need to locate some white pads, or sponge type things, initially they will seem fine, but they will infact be full of ink. You need to grab a pair of pliers and pull them out one by one, there should be four, put them on your scrap paper.
6. Take the scrap paper with the pads on to your sink, turn on the hot tap and hold each one under the tap using the pliers until the water runs clear. If you have protective gloves on it may be worth squeezing the water out also.
7. It is recommended that once you have done this, you let them dry.
8. Now return the pads back into the printer.
9. Put the printer back together, (mind out for the paper alignment, and give it some force), not forgetting the screw at the back.
10. Plug in the USB and power cable and turned it ON. (Yes the lights will still flash)
11. Download and install the SSC Service Utility for Epson Stylus Printers.
12. Select your printer and model number (There is no Stylus C42 UX, so select Stylus C4x), then close the window.
13. If it asks if you replaced with the pads; say “YES”. Then close the window.
14. You will see a SSC Service Utilitiy icon (it looks like a printer) in the system tray (next to your click), and LEFT click.
15. A menu will appear, from here you can click on “Protection counter” (its a red cross), then “reset protection counter”.
16. Turn the printer power OFF, wait 10 seconds and then turn it back ON.

Done!

Additional troubleshooting…

If you have problems with paper feed, take it apart again, check everything is in place correctly, push things together tightly, and put it together again.

If you have trouble with print quality, open the lid, clean any ink residue, use the SSC Service Utilitiy to clean the heads.

Here’s a quick guide on what to do if your “Safely remove hardware” icon has disappeared from your system tray.

This is a troublesome issue as it means that you cannot stop your USB devices therefore meaning you could cause corruption on your USB device.

How to always bring up the dialog (without the icon)

1. Go to Start -> Run,
2. Enter: %windir%\system32\RUNDLL32 shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll
3. The “Safely remove hardware” dialog windows should appear.

How to control the “Safley remove hardware” icon behavior

1. Right-Click on the Task Bar
2. Select Properties
3. Under the taskbar tab, click the Customize button
4. Select the program you wish to hide
5. Under the drop down box, select Always Hide, Always Show, or Hide when inactive.
6. Click OK

How to restore the icon to your system tray

1. Open “My Computer”
2. Right click on a drive and click Properties
3. Click on the Hardware tab
4. Select the removable drive from the list
5. Click the “Properties” button
6. Click on the Policies tab
7. Change it from “Optimize for quick removal” to “Optimize for performance”

Note: If you don’t plan on hot-swapping your USB device very often, and you will ALWAYS make sure you use the “Safely remove hardware” dialog to remove your hardware, then use “Optimize for performance”, otherwise in most cases it is best to use “Optimize for quick removal”, this will allow you to unplug your USB device without worrying about corruption.

Further details are mentioned here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/828012

You’d be surprised the amount of times I get people asking me this question, therefore this is a guide on what to do to try and work out what the problem might be or completly solve the problem all together.

Check for resource intensive applications

Go to Start -> Run -> type: taskmgr -> Press OK

Windows Task Manager will appear, from here you will have tabs at the top, you are looking specifically at the “Processes” tab, click that.

From there, you need to first sort the list by “Mem Usage”, you can do this by clicking on the writing twice, which will sort this list with the most at the top, you will then notice to the left “CPU” which is how much of the CPU it is using, and then further left “Image Name” which is the raw name of the application.

If there is a particular application that appears to be using a lot of memory and using a lot of CPU you need to select it and click “End Process” at the bottom. It is particularly noted that if you have no idea what this application relates to you inspect it further by searching for the Image Name on google, this should bring up a site that will tell you want the application is, what it does and most importantly if it is a threat or not.

If you restart your computer and the application still runs anyway you will need to look at your System Configuration.

Go to Start -> Run -> type: msconfig

From there you can select exactly which applications you wish to run (or not run) at start up.

If you suspect an application may be a threat to your computer I recommend you take steps to remove malware.

Recently installed software

Have you recently installed some new software?

Try uninstalling it by going into safe mode.

You can get into safe mode by hitting F8 BEFORE the windows logo appears at boot up, and select SAFE MODE from the menu.

Once in safe mode, simply go to the Control Panel, open Add/Remove Programs, from there uninstall the recently installed software.

Restart your system.

Contact the author of the software for a fix.

Check your hard drive(s) for errors

Go to Start -> Run -> type: cmd -> Press OK

Command prompt will appear, type: chkdsk /f

It will most likely tell you that it will run next time you boot up, at this point you will need to restart your computer.

If bad sectors appear on your hard disk you need to purchase a new hard disk as soon as possible.

Always contact your manufacturer and check warranties.

Defragment your hard drive(s)

What it does: If you imagine the hard drive in a physical sense there are usually between 2 and 4 circular discs inside, at the top of the hard disk there is a motor and reader head. What happens is as you store data onto the hard disk it gets distributed across the hard drive as it is used. The idea of defragmentation is to move your most used files (such as programs) to the edge of the discs, so as the head physically moves across them, it does not have as far to travel.

How to run: Go to Start -> Run -> type: dfrg.msc -> Press OK

Remove Spyware or other Malware

• Make sure have a firewall and it is running.
• Update your anti-virus software and run a full system scan.
• Make sure your copy of windows is up-to-date.
• Ensure you are running anti spyware software and it is up-to-date.

Faulty memory

If the RAM in the computer is faulty any data read or written from the memory is potentially going to error.

There are a number of applications that can test if your RAM is faulty or not.

• MemTest for windows
• MemTest86 boot disc
• UBCD (with MemTest86)

If the RAM turns out to be faulty you need to work out what kind of RAM you have in your computer, there are three methods of discovery:

• CPU-Z is a freeware that gathers information on some of the main devices of your system.
• Use SiSoftware Sandra, hardware testing and reporting software.
• Physically open your computer’s case (when its turned off) take out the memory sticks and make a note of any significant information that is labelled on the sticks.

Once you know which memory you have, you will need to purchase a replacement. With any luck you can purchase older ram from eBay or cex, alternativly newer ram can be purchased from eBuyer or your favorite retailer.

Bad Capacitors

Although it’s not very common, it is possible that your motherboard can have bad capacitors. To identify bad capacitors, badcaps.net exists to help you.

If in fact you do discover that you have bad capacitors you need to either manually replace the capacitors (which takes much skill), or get a replacement motherboard (under warranty or purchase from a retailer or website).

Other Hardware

Have you tried swapping the hardware out with an alternative?

Unplug all non-vital devices externally and internally. Try that, otherwise…

Locate an alternative graphics card, PSU or other suspicious hardware. You could try asking a friend to borrow theirs, ask your local computer store, an IT expert or a supplier.

Last Resort - Format
I don’t like to recommend it, as it can get very complicated, and data can be lost. However it may be worth doing a clean install of your operating system using the original disc.

Make sure you backup all your important data, then insert your operating system disc, reboot and make sure the CD-ROM driver has priority in the boot sequence in BIOS.

From there simply follow the on-screen instructions, making sure you do a new install (not repair), and do format the hard drive.

None of the above

If none of the above works, contact your local IT expert or supplier.