HM2K.com

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.

After many years of using Nero, I’m finally fed up with it.

I have been using Nero 6 for some time now, and refuse to upgrade to Nero 7 because when I did use it, I did not like it and I felt it used up far too much hard disk space for such a simple task.

Over 200mb of space is used by a standard installation of Nero 7, there must be another option.

I looked back, and remembered changing from Easy CD Creator to Nero because of this very issue, Easy CD Creator was simply excessive for what I required, Nero was very simple and straight forward.

I had a think and realised that there is very few functions I actually require from a piece of “Optical Disc Authoring Software”, which are as follows:

• Burn off files and folders (data) onto a CD/DVD
• Burn images/ISOs to a CD/DVD
• Copy one CD/DVD to another
• Create audio CDs from mp3s or wavs
• Ability to create ISO images is handy, but optional

I began a search to locate a piece of software that would provide me with these functions. Due to the simplicity of these functions I hoped to find free software that could offer them.

I looked in the following places:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_optical_disc_authoring_software
• http://www.download.com/sort/3150-2646_4-0-1-4.html
• http://www.google.com/search?q=free+burning+software

In terms of free software these are my findings:

Click ‘N Burn Free/Amazing CD & DVD Burning/Flash CD & DVD Burner

This software looked very good, however the problem I found with all of them was that it wanted to install WhenU Adware upon install, I refused and never completed the install.

DeepBurner (Free)

This is a very simple application offering a few very simple functions: Create data CD/DVD, Create audio CD, Burn ISO image, but no direct Disc to Disc copy.

Burn4Free

This software to be honest did not appeal to me, their whole premise was that they offered the software for free, it often strikes me as unusual when the name of the software has the word free in it. Upon trying to install it, it asked me to install a toolbar, I declined and did not complete the install.

Burn At Once

burnatonce is free for non-commercial use only, which in most cases is fantastic. burnatonce is a VERY basic program, not to be confused with simple, its lack of help can be confusing to regular users, but may appeal to advanced users.

CDBurnerXP Pro

From the outset this piece of software seems very good, for what it is, and that is of course free software. I successfully completed the install, and launched the software, where I was met by 3 options: Create a new (data) Disc, from files or an ISO image - also erase or convert an ISO; Create a new audio Disc; Rip Audio CDs.

ImgBurn

This looks pretty good, a nice all round application that can read, build and write images.  You could compare this to burnatonce, but its far nicer.

Conclusion

If you’re looking for something that does the job, is small, but basic and straight forward enough, ImgBurn is the answer, if not, you could try CDBurnerXP Pro, however this software does NOT do Disc to Disc copying at the moment. Its worth noting that burnatonce does do CD disc to disc copy.

The Problem:

By default when you try and export emails from Outlook, there are NO dates.

I wanted to export emails in a certain folder from outlook so I could then import the data into a database such as MySQL for further manipulation.

When I tried to export the emails, outlook would NOT export any of the header details or even something as simple as the date/time.

The Solution:

I spent a lot of time trying to find a solution to this.

After much searching I found this solution…

http://www.topxml.com/snippetcentral/main.asp?view=viewsnippet〈=xml&id=v20020414223234

Summary
A set of short code snippets that I developed using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) and MSXML4 that will export and import Microsoft Outlook objects including contacts, e-mail, notes, and task items. This is code snippet project still very much a work in progress and contributions are certainly welcome.

The code snippets I created here are written in the Visual Basic for Applications, or VBA, programming language included supported by all Microsoft Office applications. In this latest revision (as of February 2003), I updated the routines to include importing of certain Outlook objects such as appointments, contacts and notes. I have also improved the input error handling code. Next steps include more robust handling of fields containing no data. Having schemas associated with XML structured would also be good. Finally, if anyone has any ideas on how to do this reflectively, please let me know (maybe with C# in Outlook 11?).

If you are new to VBA, what you need to do first is read this.

Basically what you need to do is hit Alt+F11 to open up the Visual Basic Editor, then you need to use Tools | References to add a reference to the Microsoft XML library. You should be able to use whichever version is the latest.

All you do then is go down the tree to the left, and double click the “ThisOutlookSession”. Once this is complete, hopefully you should be able to simply hit Alt+F8 and choose the ExportEmailToXml.

Once this is complete, simply open the xml file into excel, and save as a CVS file, MySQL will easily be able to import CVS files.

No doubt at some point you will have experienced this error at one point or another:

“Cannot delete Folder: It is being used by another person or program”

AKA:
“Cannot delete file: Access is denied”
“There has been a sharing violation.”
“The source or destination file may be in use.”
“The file is in use by another program or user.”
“Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use.”

Before today I was aware of a number of solutions to this, both involve killing explorer.exe in one way or another.
1, Reboot the machine, upone restart it should delete no problem.
2, Kill explorer.exe in task manager, then run it again, deleting the folder along the way.

I have been looking for a solution that doesn’t involve rebooting or killing explorer.exe, but maybe just stopping access to that file some how…

At long last a solution to this god for saken problem!

• Download Unlocker

Virus free and it works!

1133743342.html

I have been looking for a good open source or free cross platform (windows/linux) editor that has php and html syntax highlighting.

A simple request I thought, I guess not…

Originally I was looking for an editor that did the above and had the ability to edit remote files, however after taking another look at FileZilla, I realised I can set it up to edit remote files, which download into a temp directory, which upon editing and closing FileZilla realises there has been a change and re-uploads the file. This is all very well, however it makes testing a little more delayed. Therefore an editor with a built in FTP option would be great.

I would like a cross platform version so that if I decide to change over to Linux I don’t have to find another one, but I am willing to settle for a good editor for windows.

Open source is great, I like open source projects, I like getting involved in them where possible, free is good also, companies that offer something free that is good are usually worth keeping an eye on, having said all this, if an application is the right price and does what I need, i’d be willing to settle for that and pay my dues.

Syntax highlighting is important to me when developing, so this is a must.

It must have the ability to open large files, and use a small amount of system resources.

Having said that I’m willing to give up some of my specification providing the software is good.

Editors I have tested so far:

• Notepad - Ya know, it comes with windows, don’t make me laugh.
• UltraEdit - I actually used this for years, however, over the years it has got a bit bulky. Features I did like are its ability to handle large files, its search list function, macro function, and its huge array of other functions I will probably never use. Its expensive though.
• Crimson Editor - This was okay, there was some reason why I didn’t like it though, its free, but doesn’t run on linux.
• Notepad++ - I liked the idea of this, its open source, but it just didn’t cut it for me.
• (g)VIM - I hate this with a passion. One thing I have never understood about VI is how can such a simple task of editing plain text so complicated.
• TextPad - A very boring and simply application, not what i’m looking for.
• NoteTab - Not tried this yet.
• Editeur - Ugly.
• EditPadPro - Expensive for what it is.
• Syn - Yet to try this.
• EditPlus - This is a fantastic application, it supports FTP, and has highlighting but it is neither free or open source, nor does it run on Linux. I really liked this application. Its quite good value for money though.

I ended up using EditPlus for a few months, however I have recently decided to go back to UltraEdit as its a much nicer application and offers some very nice features. Having said that, this application does not match the criteria i set myself, so I can’t stop here.

But even after looking at the Comparison of text editors in the wikipedia, the hunt continues…

Edit: PSpad editor is pretty cool considering its free. I’ve not tried this out much as of yet, but keep an eye on this one.
http://www.hm2k.org/news/1156171227.html

I have been on the lookout for a decent FTP Deamon/Server that runs on windows. Its not very often that I do require one, but every so often having one does come in handy.

I have tried the following software:

• Serv-U - Over the years I have used this quite a few times, I never really liked it, and it costs over $49.95. I’m going to look on…
• PureFTPD - Although there is a win32 release, its difficult to work with, no easy way to configure your server, it does not run in the background without 3rd party software, even though it does have a tray icon, but all in all its fairly useless — I couldn’t even locate the config file. This thing is designed on and for Unix, not Windows, as I found.
• warFTPD - After much clicking around their website, I managed to actually download this software, only to be faced with a load more screens of clicking in the installation. The software installs to places you don’t want it to, and it asks questions you don’t really want to answer during installation. I decided to give this one a miss before the installation was complete.
• Gene6 - Its good, the trial only lasts 30 days though and it costs over £30, I just don’t think its worth the price. Changing the port was difficult at first, but I figured you needed to add a domain first, and it worked, its a bit of an odd setup, but it worked.
• RaidenFTPd - Costs over $19.95, however it was really really easy to setup. The problem was that the shareware splash screen was so annoying I could not seem to rid of it, it would not let me continue only quit, so I uninstalled it.
• guildFTPd - This one was yet another dirty piece of software, hard to use and navigate, so much so you need to read their guide on it. I could not figure out how to change the port from 21 to another port. However it does turn out to uninstall very quickly and easily.
• BPFTPd - Apparently its based on the old Gene6, it has a 15 day trial. Costs $34.95.

…and after all that I still have not got a decent FTP server for windows.

http://www.hm2k.org/news/1136292279.html

I have been looking for a decent FTP client for years, and now I think I have finally found it!

Here are some other FTP clients I have tried over the years.

• LeechFTP was good, I used it for years, but they have stopped developing it, and bitbeamer that was suposed to replace it never happened.
• BulletProof FTP is good, I have used it for years, but I get the feeling its not worth $29.95, especially when its something that should be free.
• FlashFXP is a pain as they are ALWAYS updating it and there’s about a million different versions, it costs $25.
• SmartFTP is free, but it just doesn’t cut it in the real world, its useless at times and difficult to use.
• CuteFTP I never liked, its over priced (at $59.99) and over rated.

The answer is here at last…

FileZilla has the answer, its free, its open source, its up-to-date and it works. (Although it would be good if you could import settings from other clients)

Well its either that or using the ftp command provided with windows.

Note: Since I wrote this I have been told to check out SmartFTP v2, as I am told it is far better than v1, and its free!

http://www.hm2k.org/news/1133012808.html 

These days I find myself buying all sorts of things off of ebay.

The problem I have found in the past is that I cannot keep track of the items I am bidding on, and then forget about them, consequently ending up with nothing.
I set out to find a FREE method of tracking eBay auctions. An application that allows you to snipe would be good too.

My first port of call was freshmeat.net, where I found:

• BidNobble - This piece of software looked great, however I soon find out that it doesn’t actually work correctly.
• eBay Agent - This was a nice application written in Perl, which could be run from a server however with no decent frontend.
• bidwatcher - This application was okay, the problem was it was slow, and this didn’t work properly either.
• Bid Monkey - Written in python, I tried this, I didn’t like it at all.
• JBidwatcher - Another java based Bit watcher, that is very poorly designed, and difficult to work with.

I crawled the internet for other applications out there, only to find they don’t REALLY exist.

In the end the best thing I found was a Google Gadget for Google Desktop called eBay Auction Watch. This plug-in is fantastic, its just a shame you’re forced to use it with Google Desktop considering it uses so much system resources.