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NOTE: You may have gotten here via a mirror, but you should bookmark PenguinBlog.com
Click here If you're looking for My Spyware Removal Procedure.
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I'm an IT Tech with my own computer consultation business. I'm also a moderator at PC Abusers Forums and answer a lot of technical questions there (my forum nick is FlyingPenguin). PCAbusers is a great place to post technical questions. There's a nice bunch of people there who are happy and eager to help. If you have any questions or remarks you can contact me here.
1/31/07: Dell only selling WinXP on "Business" PCs as of Today I was just on Dell's website pricing a system for a customer and there's no option for XP at all on Dell Dimensions or Inspirons. You will only be able to get XP as an OS option for their Latitude Notebooks and Optiplex and Precision Desktops. Probably Microsoft is forcing all OEM vendors to only install Vista on "Home Class" PCs but I'm not thrilled that they're forcing it down your throat. Lots of small businesses and people who are self employed buy off the shelf OEM PCs, and compatibility is going to be hell for the next few months. The Vista fun begins... GRRRR!
11/1/06: How to fix Autoplay when it stops working Sometimes Autoplay just stops working
for no reason. Most annoying it will work for one type of media (CDs
maybe) and stop working for another (Flash drives for instance).
10/30/06: Fix for "Restricted Content" blue screen in Windows Media Center 2005 Microsoft updated the DRM in MCE 2005
in Rollup 2. This allows content providers to restrict playback of their
programs. You are USUALLY allowed to record or time shift on one MCE
system, you just can't watch that file on another PC or you get a blue
screen that says "Restricted Content".
10/11/06: Are you using DEP (Data Execution Prevention)? DEP was added in WinXP SP2 as a way to prevent buffer overrun exploits. Hardware support for this was added in all processors a few years ago so unless you're running very old hardware, your rig should support it. What it does is prevent a program from running on the stack, which is exactly what a buffer overrun does. Programs are not supposed to run on the stack, but some legit apps do make use of this trick to improve performance in certain routines. However, DEP handles this elegantly. With DEP enabled, if a program tries to run on the stack, Windows will close it with an error and a dialog box will come up offering you the option - if you believe this is a legit app - to add that app to an exception list. I've avoided using it until now because I was concerned that I would have issues with some software. However, DEP has been in use for quite some time now and few people have had problems with it. Considering the number of buffer overrun exploits that keep being discovered, I thought it was time to turn it on. After having it enabled for 2 weeks, so far I've come across only two apps that needed exceptions, and once that was done they ran fine: Alcohol 120 and FEAR. Seems to be a no-brainer at this point. I suspect DEP will probably be enabled by default in Vista. To enable it right click My Computer->Properties->Performance Settings button->Data Execution Prevention Tab. Click the radio button called "Turn on DEP for all programs and services except those I select".
9/16/06: Using the HOSTS file to Block Ads Well I used to rail against the idea of
using the HOSTS file as a filter mechanism to block dangerous sites and
annoying ads. My reasons were two-fold: I use a utility called HOSTER to
replace or edit the HOSTS file, and it also easily allows you to set it to
read-only (yeah, you can also use notepad but this is easier): The MVPS HOSTS file is updated every
month. I've subscribed to their mailing list and they left me know every
time a new one is released.
6/18/06: Identifying Unknown Devices We've all been there. Performing a new install of Windows and you have a couple of unidentified devices listed in Device Manager. Now you have to pull the card and hope there's a manufacturer name and model on it - usually there isn't. It's also a pain pulling the card. Wouldn't it be nice to ID the card from within Windows? Here's a couple of nifty utilities that do just that, both recommended by friends on PCAbusers Forums. One is called Unknown Devices by Halfdone Development. It's a small (300K) standalone EXE you can run from a flash drive. There's a text file you need to download regularly with updates. The other is Unknown Device Identifier by Huntersoft. This one has to be installed and also places an annoying HTML link to Huntersoft's website on your desktop.
6/8/06: How Security Wiping (zeroing) a Hard Drive Works Most people are probably aware by now that to ensure that no one can read data from your old hard drive, it's prudent to perform a security wipe before selling it or giving it away, or even before throwing it in the trash. Anyone with a $50 disk recovery app could potentially read all your files. So you dutifully pop a security eraser like DBAN into your floppy drive and then let it do a security wipe which involves writing all zeroes to every byte in every sector of the drive. At a minimum you want to do three passes, but for better piece of mind you can do more (3 is enough for the average home owner, 7 is more than adequate for anything less than government or bank info). This takes a long time (a few hours on a big drive). That's fine, but I'm sure some of you have asked WHY? Why isn't a single pass sufficient to erase your drive? Why are more passes better? Okay, I had someone on PCAbusers ask me the following question, and I typed up what I thought was a pretty good layman's explanation, and I thought that I'd share it here. BTW: I don't pretend to be a hard drive engineer, but I'm fairly confident that the following layman's explanation is accurate. If someone who IS a hard drive engineer wants to critique my post, please email me and I'll update it.
"QUESTION: Guess I'll never understand the multiple pass thing.. Shouldn't
once do it if its all zeros? I mean its all on and off right? What did it
miss? Tracks, sectors or is there a faint 1 where there was a zero and
brought back? I'll never understand this."
5/10/06: Cut and Paste Bug in Firefox 1.5.0.2 & 1.5.0.3 Will Be Fixed in 1.5.0.4 This bug is somewhat rare, but many Firefox users are suffering with it (me included). You can't reliably copy and paste or drag and drop from/to Firefox. There was apparently a key logger trojan that was causing this on SOME systems, but others (including me) were getting the problem on clean systems. Mozilla has tracked it down to a bug, and it'll be fixed in Firefox 1.5.0.4 which will be released in a couple of weeks. There's a thread on this problem here
on the Mozilla forums, with a post from the moderator at stating that the
fix will be included in 1.5.0.4:
5/8/06: My Favorite Podcasts I usually listen to a lot of books on tape in the car since my business keeps me on the road a lot, and I get bored just listening to music. Need to keep the mind active. Music is fine for mowing the lawn, but I crave information when I'm driving. I've recently discovered podcasts even though I've had an MP3 player for years. Since I got into listening to podcasts I hardly ever turn on the radio in the car anymore and I may stop paying for my XM Radio subscription when it expires next year since I rarely turn it on. The biggest find, for me, was that many of my favorite NPR (National Public Radio) programs like "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" and "Science Friday" are now available on podcasts. I live in a rural area where public radio station reception is terrible, and this is a God-send. I also love to listen to Car Talk which, unfortunately, is not available via podcast without a hefty annual fee, but I've been recording them to MP3 using Total Recorder. My friends have also turned me on to a lot of interesting free podcast sites, and I'll list my favorites here: - Escape Pod - Excellent monthly short fiction (sci/fi & fantasy). This site actually PAYS their authors and the stories are often top-notch stories that have been published in leading magazine venues. They pay their authors entirely through YOUR Paypal donations, so if you http://slashdotreview.com/ke what you hear, send them a few bucks. - SlashDot Review - If you're a fan of Slashdot.org, this is a daily 10 minute audio summary of all the news items on SlashDot. - SecurityNow! - Hosted by TechTV's Leo Laporte and security expert Steve Gibson, this is a weekly show that mostly revolves around security issues in Windows and Windows based products. Very informative for IT people. I'd recommend listening to episode #38 on Browser Security - especially if you're an IE user. - Rev Up Review - UK Science Fiction podcast - Podiobooks.com - Free audiobooks - Voices of Tomorrow - Edgy flash fiction - a new story each day - GeeksOn.com - Nerdy science & science fiction round table. Sometimes a bit long, and the quality can be poor, but they have some good topics on occasion. As for my MP3 player, I've gone through several before finding one that works best for me. I'm using a 512Mb Samsung YP-MT6X (although I'm shopping around for the 1Gb version now). This is a nice, affordable MP3 player, with a LOT of volume (I can listen to it on my riding mower wearing cheap $30 noise canceling headphones), plenty of features, both preset EQs and a manual 5 band equalizer (I much prefer to set my EQ manually - being a former sound engineer I never seem to like the presets). The biggest plus is that it runs for a whopping 40 hours on a AA alkaline battery. I highly recommend it. It doesn't have bookmarks but it remembers where you stopped playing, and it has a very easy and intuitive file navigation system. The only complaint I've ever heard about this player is that it will lose it's place if the battery runs too low. Once you understand this you just learn to replace the battery when it starts acting up.
2/7/06: Dramatic improvement in performance in DoD Source and CS Source by switching to a PCI add-on sound card. This is interesting. I was having a debate with someone at PCAbusers. He said he'd read on a lot of forums that people were finding that Valve's Source games really chugged on systems with on-board audio. The source engine does a lot of environmental processing and apparently it helps performance to use a dedicated sound card I didn't totally buy this, but my LAN rig (AMD 3200+ Athlon32, 1Gb, Radeon x800 Pro, AC'97 onboard audio) does stutter a lot, like it's dropping frames, in Dod Source so I dropped an SBLive 5.1 card in there that I had lying around and sure enough, it dramatically reduced the stuttering in the game. The game plays a lot smoother now on that system than it ever did. So if you're getting poor performance in DoD Source or CS Source and you think your rig should be running better than that, try temporarily disabling your sound card in device manager and see if it improves performance a lot. If so, try installing a PCI sound card.
1/12/06: Windows Powertoy Alt-Tab Replacement Interferes with Games This has been driving me crazy for months. On my main gaming rig I was getting a terrible keyboard sliding problem in Day of Defeat. It was almost as if I had a sticky keyboard - very often my character would continue moving in the direction I had last been moving in for a second after I let go of the key. Very annoying. I was on the verge of performing a clean install when, out of desperation, I started disabling all kinds off background processes in the hope of getting lucky - and I did. The problem turned out to be a Microsoft PowerToy called Alt-Tab Replacement (also called Task Switcher or Cool Switch). It improves on the normal Alt-Tab feature of WindowsXP by showing you a miniature screenshot of each Window that's open instead of just an icon. Very cool BUT not if it screws up my gaming experience. There's no uninstaller that I could find for this, so I just disabled in in my Startups using MSCONFIG.
12/4/05: Improving Performance in DOD Source I'm a long time Day of Defeat player and I'm loving DOD Source, but performance can be laggy when there's a lot of action, and load times are horrible even on my fairly studly gaming system (AMD 3200+, 1Gb, Radeon x800 Pro). Well people, I found the simple solution to DOD Source joy: DISABLE HDR. HDR is nice eyecandy, but frankly it serves little practical purpose in a fast-paced FPS game. HDR, along with FSAA and complex reflections is enabled automatically if DOD Source believes your card can handle it. These three items are totally unneccesary eye-candy. I have never been a believer in FSAA, and now I feel the same about HDR. I'd much rather trade off the minor visual improvements for higher framerates and higher resolution. With HDR and FSAA disabled, and reflections set to "simple" the game runs silky smooth at 1600x1280 on my rig, and I'm a happy camper. Disabling HDR also DRAMATICALLY reduces load times (enabling HDR requires a very large HDR map to be loaded). Just try disabling HDR and see what I mean. You'll never miss it. Save HDR for single player games. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10/20/05: Converting MCE 2005 .DVR-MS Video Files TO DivX or WMV Media Center uses a proprietary codec for the TV recording files it makes with the DVR-MS extension. It's based on the WMV codec, but it's not the same. You can't edit DVR-MS files directly and they're VERY large (at best quality 30 mins = 1.2Gb). You have to convert them to something else to be able to edit them, or just to efficiently store them on optical media. Only app that I've found that works well is DeskShare's Digital Media Converter: http://www.deskshare.com/dmc.aspx I've converted MCE recordings to WMV and to Divx. You can convert it to WMV and then use movie maker. You can also convert to other formats such as MPEG2. After some trial and error I came up with the following settings: I use the following settings for WMV
conversions: This results in 30 Min = 200Mb For DivX I use: This results in 30min = 300Mb To keep from having audio sync problems I don't use MP3 as the audio codec for DivX. Using MP3 would make the video file smaller, but I gave up on it. Every other video would have sync issues and it's just not worth the aggravation. Using the settings above you'll never have sync problems. Be aware that it takes (depending on your processor) at least 1-1/2 times the run time of the video to convert it so I do my conversions over night. The nice thing is that Digital Media Converter does batch conversions so you can specify multiple files to convert and then let it run all night. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10/9/05: Hotfix Released For Performance Issue with WinXP SP2 and AMD Dual Core Processors http://support.microsoft.com/?id=896256 Microsoft has released a hotfix to for systems running AMD dual core processors. It fixes a possible decrease in performance during demand based switching with Cool 'n Quiet enabled. Microsoft will only send you the hot fix if you have been experiencing the problem - although I'd assume this hotfix will be available on torrents eventually. NOTE: This problem only affects machines that have Cool N Quiet enabled. If you have it disabled it won't affect you. It's caused by the CPU changing speeds in Cool N Quiet mode. I've already had a couple of client's with systems that had unusually poor performance and figured out it was because of this. I've just been disabling Cool N Quiet until now. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9/17/05: Older Antec Power Supplies And Leaking Capacitors! I have been - and continue to be - a big fan of Antec. They make great cases and PSUs. However it looks like they purchased a bad batch of capacitors a few years ago, and they're starting to show up now in failed PSUs as the capacitors start leaking. I had an issue with an Antec True 430 PSU causing voltage spikes on shutdown or power up that killed 3 hard drives in my main workstation a few months ago. Someone on Anand's told me that it appears that Antec bought a bad batch of capacitors from a supplier a while back and they've been having problems with leaking caps. This guy suggested I do a Google search for "antec capacitors leaking". I did and I came up with a lot of interesting links. This link deals with a True 430 (same model PSU I had the problem with) and has a photo of leaking caps: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,14116577 Well I still have my old Antec True 430 PSU sitting on the floor here waiting to get thrown out. So I opened it up tonight and guess what I found? LEAKING CAPS!!!!!! Exactly the same as the photo in that link. The same four caps shown in the photo in the link above are all bulging and oozing brown goop from the top. Hmmm. Glad I replaced both my Antec PSUs (Main workstation and LAN party rig) with new Enermax NoiseTakers PSUs a couple of months ago. I'm going to open the True 480 that was in my LAN rig and see if there's any leaking caps in it (that PSU was causing no problems but I changed it anyway and put it on the shelf for now). Those of you with Antec PSUs that are more than a year old and are having any unusual problems may want to check for leaking caps - if you don't mind potentially violating any warranty that's left on it. Or at least swap out the PSU to see if that fixes your problem. I was going to toss out the PSU but since Antec has a 3 year warranty I decided to file for an RMA. I'm also requesting info from Antec about what models are may be affected by this defect. I'm not aware of any official statement by Antec on the problem. From my Google searches it seems that most of the PSUs that have turned up with bad caps are were built around 2 - 3 years ago. This was a time when a LOT of bad capacitors were manufactured due to a chemical supplier making poor electrolytic. I've seen a lot of bad cap and mobos from that era, but I'm surprised to find out that Antec got burned in that deal as well. UPDATE 9/20/05: Well they won't RMA the PSU because I opened it. I can understand that. However they are also completely denying that they have any issues with bad caps. I also got some sort of wise ass tech who told me that there's no way to tell if a PSU is bad by opening it. I should use MotherBoard Monitor instead. Real bright one this guy. Yeah, brown goo oozing out of four capacitors doesn't mean anything as long as motherboard monitor says my voltages are good... sure. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but to deny any problems what so ever when the whole industry was affected seems absurd. The good thing is that from doing a lot of research it appears that although Antec did get stuck with some defective caps, they seem to have caught it quickly. There a LOT of other manufacturers that seem to have far worse problems. Some more threads if you're interested
here: Matter of fact that badcaps.net forum
has a LOT of interesting info on the bad capacitor problem in general. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5/26/05: Simple Hack To Add 10-band Equalizer And Environmental Audio Control Panel To C-Media 8739 Audio Hardware My MediaPC has an onboard C-Media 8739 audio chipset. This is a great chipset, and it's found in many motherboards as the onboard audio hardware. The problem is that it lacks any kind of equalizer controls (not even a treble and bass control in the audio mixer) HOWEVER the ability is there with the right software. I did some Googling and found this interesting hack for the C-Media 9739 drivers that allows them to work with any C-Media 8739 chipset hardware, and it works well for me. It adds an SB Live-type environmental control panel with surround settings, environmental audio controls, and a full 10 band equalizer with a dozen presets, plus you can add your own presets. The only thing I did differently than the following instructions was that AFTER I installed the driver using the Device Manager wizard, as recommended, I rebooted and then installed the driver and apps using the SETUP.EXE file that comes with the drivers (just installing the driver alone doesn't give you the EQ and environmental audio controls). After rebooting again, you have a taskbar icon that opens the audio control panel. I modified the CMVIA.INF file as instructed below, because my mobo uses a VIA chipset.
INSTRUCTIONS: Download the new CMEDIA 9739 drivers from the following link : http://www.cmedia.com.tw/download/e_UDA039.htm After the installation , reboot your computer and enjoy the new drivers
with built in equalizer with alot sound themes to choose from , new 5.1
virtual mode and God knows what else ... ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4/28/05: Zen And The Art of Data Backup I do not recommend tape backups for small businesses
anymore. They are best used for large corporate LANS with very large data
backup requirements. Otherwise tape is not cost effective anymore, and
it's terribly slow. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4/21/05: If You're Having Problems Installing A Newer DVD Burner, It's Time to Upgrade To SP2 It's time. You won't be able to avoid WinXP Service
Pack 2 much longer. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4/20/05: Why You Should Partition A Large Hard Drive Into Several Smaller Partitions This question comes up often on tech
forums: "One big partition or several smaller ones?" -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4/15/05: Comcast In It's
8th day of DNS Issues (Attacks?) Comcast is having DNS server outages. No one knows for sure, but people are beginning to suspect it's some kind of DNS server attack since it happens at practically the same time of day. Some info available on Broadband Reports forums here. A temporary work-around is to manually change the DNS server settings on your computer or router to something else. Broadband Reports has a list of suggested DNS servers here. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3/27/05: Avoiding Video Codec Hassles With Divx & XVid Files I was having problems playing back some XVid and Divx videos (stuttering, slow frame rates) and after a lot of research I found that the problem is invariably from having too many codecs installed. Sometimes they interfere with each other. What seemed to work best for a while was to ONLY install XVid (XVid can decode Divx without installing Divx) and the AC3 audio filter (to handle XVid audio streams with surround - you need it even if you aren't using surround). HOWEVER I still occasionally had problems and had to play swap the codecs, Two invaluable tools for this are GSpot and DXMan. GSpot is a Codec Information utility. You drag and drop a video file onto it and it tells you EXACTLY what codecs (audio and video) the video file requires to playback, and whether you have compatible codecs installed. DXMan allows you to selectively uninstall Codecs. I have recently found the best all-around codec though. It's called FFDShow (NOTE: use the 20041012 alpha version). It handles XVid, Divx, WMV, MPEG1 and MPEG2 and seems to play everything stably without a problem. Only snag I ran into is that it's support for AC3 isn't good (on my 2 speaker system it tries to play 5 speaker audio and I don't hear everything). Even if you have the AC3 filter installed seperately, FFDShow still overrides it by default, so you have to disable AC3 support in FFDShow. Run the FFDShow Audio Filter Configuration app and in the drop-down box next to AC3, select disabled (mine was originally set to "liba52"). If you have the AC3 filter installed then it just takes over and all is well. NOTE: Do NOT download newer versions of AC3 and FFDShow you might find somewhere else! Many of these are hacked versions that may contain spyware!!! Get them from SourceForge.net or the author's home page only. I also HIGHLY recommend you DO NOT use Microsoft's crappy code-bloated Windows Media Player. Instead, I use BSPlayer which is far superior and it's FREE! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3/27/05: XBox Power Cable Recall a farce. Doesn't fix the problem Microsoft's XBox power cable recall is apparently a farce. It doesn't address the REAL problem which is, apparently, caused by the solder pads on the power socket inside the unit breaking loose. The fix is absurdly simple for anyone who knows how to solder. You could probably take the unit to any TV repair shop and get it fixed in 5 minutes, if you show them what to do. The article on this page explains it in detail along
with photos: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3/18/05: All CD/DVD Media Not Created Equal Interesting article I came across that describes the
difference in quality among different brands of CD and DVD media. I've
always heard that Taiyo Yuden was good and according to this article it's
the best you can buy. From now on I'm going to buy them from NewEgg.com
(which I order 95% of all my parts from, and I can highly recommend). ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3/12/05: MY SPYWARE REMOVAL PROCEDURE In order to save space on this blog,
I've moved my spyware removal procedure to this page:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3/1/05 Adjusting Video Card PCI Latency To Dramatically Improve 3D Game Performance! Gotta share
this. Someone at PCAbusers told me about it.
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