Archive for June, 2008
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_
AOL Instant Messenger Beta for Windows Mobile 5, 6 and 6.1
Jun 23rd
Apparently after all the bitching and moaning it’s users were doing 3 years ago has finally gone over well with the AOL guys and they have a brand spanking new beta version of their popular chat application for the Windows Mobile Platform! I used the PocketPc version until I was on Windows Mobile 5 but now it is totally unusable…
I am installing my AOL IM Mobile beta right now and you can do the same here. To do the right thing and sign up for the beta hit this link.
I will let you know how it goes over the week. If any AtA readers gives it a test drive please post your impressions in the comments.
_TheAimingAdmiN_
Outlook 2002 and earlier have a 2gb limit I exceeded… Now What?
Jun 23rd
Johnathan from Minnesota writes in:
My IT manager uses Office XP aka 2002. His outlook pst just touched over 2gb. It happened while Outlook was opened and it closed. He couldn’t open it again. I looked up the error message on Microsoft and they said Outlook XP (and outlook 2000) can not recognize a pst larger than 2gb. There is a truncate tool and FIXPST tool. I tried using the first and cut it down about 50mb. This says it kills stuff from the end of the file – but what can i do?
I then ran FIXPST and it fails at the last step. HELP!! I read this from a Microsoft KB here.
Errors have been detected in the file. Quit all mail-enabled applications, and then use the Inbox Repair Tool.
So for our final answer: You can upgrade to any newer version of Outlook to fix your problem (big Surprise!) or crop your pst and then run fixpst. It is very time consuming and will eat some of your messages (Hence Croping). And then there is that 3rd party app that Billy Gates suggested called RecoveryToolbox if you can not deal with losing data.
So Remember OUTLOOK 2002/XP BAD!! 2GB PST FILE LIMIT!
How to stop someone blabbing on their cell phone. Cell Phone Jammers.
Jun 22nd
We read the following article in the New York Times a while back and decided to present it to you guys. The people who can really appreciate it. We will show you how to make/buy/alter your own Cell Phone Jammer!
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 2 — One afternoon in early September, an architect boarded his commuter train and became a cellphone vigilante. He sat down next to a 20-something woman who he said was “blabbing away” into her phone.
“She was using the word ‘like’ all the time. She sounded like a Valley Girl,” said the architect, Andrew, who declined to give his last name because what he did next was illegal.
Andrew reached into his shirt pocket and pushed a button on a black device the size of a cigarette pack. It sent out a powerful radio signal that cut off the chatterer’s cellphone transmission — and any others in a 30-foot radius.
“She kept talking into her phone for about 30 seconds before she realized there was no one listening on the other end,” he said. His reaction when he first discovered he could wield such power? “Oh, holy moly! Deliverance. [Continue reading this article..]
We read this and went searching for how to make our own… You know for times when you want to either:
- Feel like a demi-god
- Want to piss off or annoy the shit out of someone
- Want to pretend you are on A team like missions daily.
Even though all three of those options sound AWESOME this project was sadly beyond our expertise. But we found a link to a jammer for $48 that can be slightly modified to work in the US of A. Note it is illegal to jam frequencies in America so we are not advocating or recommending you do this… But IF you DO we would LOVE to hear about it in the comments!
With that aside here is the link to the make article…The product page for the $48 jammer…
and because you know Free is For Me…
Wait for it… wait for it…
The open source project called Wave Bubble...
I don’t know if you can build it out (Edit: take time in to consideration) (edit: its actually over $150 in parts) for under $48 but hey
A geek wants to build what a geek wants to build!
How can I find out what my Windows error really means?
Jun 21st
We get a lot of requests for deciphering Windows error messages.
Today we will show you how I find out what an error means that I have not seen before.
Yes that is correct I do not know EVERY single error code and source by heart.
I am so sorry if I let you down… It’s just the way it is.
Lets say you had some sort of problem, like the error on your left pops up on your screen. Like a good Admin you wind up in your Event Viewer (Right click my computer – Manage and then Event Viewer).
You see some red X’s that denote an Error. You decide to see what’s up with your Service Control Manager error – Event ID 7023. A lot of our readers know this is a normal error (normal error?? Only in Windows!) created by disabling the Windows Firewall and can be ignored. But if you didn’t you can click the hyperlink to see more (minimal) information about your issue.
Microsoft tells us:
Explanation:
The specified service stopped unexpectedly with the error
indicated in the message. The service closed safely.User Action:
To troubleshoot the error:
Review the error information displayed in the message.To display the WIN32_EXIT_CODE error that SCM encountered, at the command prompt, typesc query service nameThe information displayed can help you troubleshoot possible causes for the error.
This is all that Microsoft cares to share with you. Even though you sent your complete error message to them it only gives this generic response.
Hmm that link tells us nothing! Thanks a lot Microsoft!
So now you roll up your sleeve and go to hit up Google.
But Wait!
I can save you a step. Check out http://eventid.net/ It is not free but can be used as a free tool. They want a few dollars from you a month for all of their Event ID goodness but AtA has been using this site before they charged for it and we will continue using it until they lock it down with a credit card.
(Edit: If it is worth the few buckeroos to you by all mean support them!)
Go to their site and enter your Event ID and Source. The real deal answer at the top and solution will be unavailable to you without subscription BUT you can search that page for comments and we see some one posted:
Service: Computer Browser – In a Windows XP SP2 environment, if you have disabled Windows Firewall/ICS service trough services manager this behavior is normal. Just enable this service and turn the firewall off from Control Panel -> Windows Firewall. That is if you need the Computer Browser service at all. They are also a great free resource for finding out what a service or port is here. Does anyone have a better (Free-er), quicker or easier solution?
Awesome there is the problem and solution! Right to the point! Why wouldn’t Billy Gates have added this to MS’s website? Now you know how to be self sufficent in your quest for answers to the cryptic error messages…. Anyone out there paying for this?
