Archive for June, 2008
Plugged in not charging 0% remaining
Jun 27th
No seriously… WTF???I saw this for the first time today… TWICE! Two almost brand new laptops one HP and one ACER had the same symptoms. They were both plugged in and NOT charging! On $2000 toys office resources this is serious!
I looked on-line and could not find an answer anywhere. It seemed lots of people were complaining of the same issue. Some of them did bios updates, uninstalled Microsoft power drivers, went out and bought new batteries, chargers or sent their machine in for servicing.
I tried the not charging batteries on other machines and they were charging!
I popped them back one back into the Vista machine and it still was not charging. The other laptop was XP. But the machine was not even charging when it was shut down. So how could that be possible?
I have NO IDEA! But all I know is how I finally fixed the problem on one of the machines and then on the second. Is it some voo-do shit? Did I wish them better somehow?
I was convinced that it was not a hardware problem after reading people having the problem on their Mac Book Pro’s running Boot Camp.
I really don’t know what I did fixed it. All I did was this:
- Shut down the laptop with the battery in and plugged in.
- Remove the battery.
- Reboot the machine.
- I waited for Vista to come up and show the power icon.
- I then reinstalled the battery.
It still said Plugged in Not charging. Then I turned away to my desktop for a second to hit up Google a little more and I saw it change out of the corner of my eye…
Plugged in. Charging 1%
SWEET! I then replicated my steps for the other machine and just like that I was back in business. Anyone care to explain this Technology Voo-Do? Does this make sense to you? Am I missing something? No really hit me up in the comments because I am flabbergasted!
Can I uninstall MSN Messenger from my XP install?
Jun 25th
A lot of users don’t use MSN Messenger but it comes pre-installed and runing on most new machines. It can annoy the hell out of people who want to have control over their machine.
GO figure – you own the machine, the software and everything else but M$ dictates how everything is supposed to work!
Here is a quick way to get MSN Messenger to show up in Add/Remove programs. But note before you do this – if you use Outlook or Outlook Express it will slow down their load times as they try to start up MSN Messenger. (Maybe we can find a fix for this as well!) (Edit See below for the fix!)
- Locate SYSOC.INF in the \Windows\INF folder (hidden file and folder)
- Open it in Notepad
- Locate the line: msmsgs=msgrocm.dll,OcEntry,msmsgs.inf,hide,7
- Remove the word “hide” from the line and save the file.
Now if you check your Add/Remove Windows components inside Add/Remove programs under your control panel.
MSN Messenger will now appear as two objects and allow you to remove them ! As always editing your registry or system files can do permanent harm to your machine. Back up before doing anything and Don’t make other changes just to make changes :)
(Edit: After removing it here is the registry key to prevent the outlook express or outlook delay:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Outlook Express
Right click in the right pane and select New, Dword value. Give it the name Hide Messenger Double click this new entry and set the value to 2.)
_TheHatesMsnAdmiN_
Play NES games in FireFox. Tuesdays Time Waster.
Jun 24th
Do you want me to give you a minute to read the title again? This sweet find from WalYou points us to a Spanish website called FireNes. This plug in puts a multitude of NES titles in your Firefox.
Even for our friends who don’t hablo the Espanolo it is real easy to install. navigate over to their website and click the link that says Instalar FireNes… Guess what that means?
Wow you guessed it on the first shot? Yes it means install fireNes… Click it and you are off.
When the install is complete you will be prompted to restart The Fox. Now you will see a FireNes option under your FireFox tools menu like you see below:
Now you will see hundreds of old school retro NES goodness in your right bar. The buttons are also intuitive A and B is actually A and B on the keyboard and the arrows control the direction. After a few minutes I was pulling my old school Super Mario Brothers tricks… [Via WalYou]
Lets hear what you got players…
_TheTimeWastingAdmiN_
Can I zip a file within Vista / XP with out installing a 3rd party application?
Jun 24th
If you are like us you HATE having to install unnecessary software on your personal machine. I try and find what 3rd party apps I can live without by pushing the OS to the limits. In this for instance we are looking at WinZip, WinRar or something along those lines. I have managed to escape installing these applications on my production workstation.
If I HAVE to zip or unzip a compressed file I can without doing anything special. Check it out. Select a bunch of files or folders by control selecting them or even hitting control-A to select all. Then Right click and choose send to Compressed zipped folder as show below…
To remove the files from their container simply right click and choose Extract all or double click on the archive and you will be able to see what’s in it and move stuff around. Did you know about this? Do you have a tip to share with The Admin? Hit us up in the comments!!
_TheZipThisAdmiN_
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