Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Seagate discwizard fails to detect drives

Sunday, April 6th, 2008

Seagate discwizard 10 (Acronis) appears to be incompatible with Dell Vostro 200 SATA drives. The program aborts after an error indicating it cannot detect any drives.
Thsis model uses the Foxconn G33M motherboard with Intel G33 chipset.

Extract Windows Product Key from scrambled drive..key “recovery”tools fail

Thursday, January 17th, 2008

The new version of Magic Jellybean Keyfinder 2.0 beta (not 1.5) supposedly allows one to recover the Product Key from a hard drive that is no longer bootable.
The test was done when a 1.5ghz PIV 845 chipset motherboard died. The computer had been running a Nobilis XP Home.

The hard drive would not boot into windows on any of the three new motherboards tried. It would just BSOD briefly and reboot.

Initial tests were done using a Windows 2000 machine as a host. It didn’t work. The host machine OS version must match (at least to some degree) the OS on the drive from which you are attempt to retrieve the key else you get an error something like “Hive Load Failed”. When tested on another XP Home machine the MJBKF worked for installation however activation failed and Microsoft refused to activate the product installation.

Update Jan 19 2007: I found the original key for the install described above and it does not match the keys generated by MJBKF or Dagon. Maybe these guys are not “recovering” the keys but are generating new keys that will allow installation but not activation.

DagonDesign.com has a similar technique for “recovery” of the Product Key. The technique described there created a different Product Key which Microsoft also refused to activate.

compaq srx5210sx

Monday, December 3rd, 2007

Brand new from Wal Mart.
Slow celeron 1.6 and 1 gig ram with Vista Home Premium.
Lots of crapware HP/Yahoo search, Norton Security trialware.
Cannot access internet through dial up modem. Cannot remove Norton crapware. Norton will not uninstall because AV is running, but AV is turned off in Norton. You have to reboot after turning off.
Got rid of Norton. Modem connection now works.
Pretty  slow computer.

Wintv-hvr-1600

Thursday, November 22nd, 2007

Tested out WinTV=HVR-1600 today.
Using Gigabyte GA-M61P-31 motherboard with built in 6150 graphics 256 motherboard video ram allocated to video, 1gig DDR2 RAM on motherboard, AMD XP+ 4600 cpu chip.
Quality of reception  varies greatly with aiming of my little  Radio Shack indoor  UHF  antenna that I got on closeout for $2.
I am getting 1041 WDAF, 1051 KCTV, 1061 KTAJD1, 1062 KTAJD2, 1063 KTAJD3, 1064 KTAJD4,  1291 KCWE , 1501 ION, 1502 qubo, 1503 IONLife, 1504 ION Worship, 1621 KSMO using the ATSC antenna in.

Reception on none of these is flawless but all are BETTER than the corresponding  analog channels with the same location, antenna and tuner.

Would like to add KCPT and KMBC and I am not sure why I cannot receive these.

The idea that over-the-air digital reception is all-or-nothing is misleading. It is true that in any one instant of time you either get reception or not. You will get a momentary freeze or audio loss if the signal is lost briefly.

Easy way to fill in a .PDF or other form using OFFICE

Tuesday, November 20th, 2007

“Print” the PDF file to the MDI (Microsoft Office Document Image Writeer) virtual printer that installed when you installed Microsoft Office.
The resulting file will be a .MDI or .TIF file. Open the file with the Microsoft Office Document Imaging application. Use “Tools”, “Annotations”, “Insert Text Box” and fill in the text boxes to complete the form.
To add a  signature just scan a copy of you signature and save it as a  .jpg or other format and insert it using “Tools” “Annotations”, “Insert Picture Box”

DDR2 667 not downward compatible with DDR2 533

Friday, November 16th, 2007

I tried to upgrade the RAM on an A105 series Toshiba laptop using a DDR2 667 memory module. These are incompatible and I had to use a 533 chip instead.

Don’t use Windows Update for Nvidia GeForce2 driver

Friday, November 16th, 2007

Window Update wants to downgrade your Nvidia GeForce2 MX 400 drivers to 4.5.2.3 dated 7/23/2003. Don’t do it. This bad driver causes the display to revert to 640×480 16 color mode.
You can use Driver Rollback if you have problems with the 4.5.2.3.

The default driver on the XP SP2  CD (5.6.7.3 04/07/2004) works. MS must think there is something wrong with it but they don’t want to share that information.

Why hasn’t Microsoft fixed this problem in the last three years?

NIS kills connectivity

Wednesday, November 14th, 2007

Compaq AMD 3800 running Vista Home Premium lost connectivity. The box would not acquire a DHCP  address but would only default to a Windows 169 address. I suspected Norton Internet Security. Turning off NIS did not fix the problem. In fact I found it impossible to turn off the Anti-Scam portion of the software.

Uninstalling NIS fixed the problem.
I replaced the functionality with AVG free and Windows Defender.

Seagate diags bug shows error

Friday, November 9th, 2007

Seagate Seatools diagnostics shows an error on many Maxtor DiamondMax drives.
The temperature shows at 254 degrees which is an improbably high value. The diagnostics will then warn you that the temperature has been to high and ask you to continue or abort.
Seagate has verified that their own diagnostics is incompatible with the drives.

SDTrayApp.exe-Application error

Wednesday, November 7th, 2007

Ugh….Google Pack bundleware/crapware/trick_user_into_loading_with_Firefox-ware error. Uninstall all the Google crap and the tricky gimmick crippled version of Spyware Doctor to get rid of this error.  Ironic that Google makes its money spying on users and bundles an “anti-spyware” app that crashes.