Archive for September, 2008
Vista Tip: Mount ISO (DVD, BIN, IMG,CCD, ETC.) images in Vista for free
Sep 22nd
Have you been a busy little bit-torrenter lately?
Do you have tons of ISO’s laying around? Trying to mount them in Vista like you were used to in XP and not having any luck?
Our reader Tom in Wisconsin is and this sounds like a job for dum dum dum (key theme music)… AskTheAdmin!
Well it turns out the freeware utility offered from Microsoft to mount ISO Images doesn’t work in Windows Vista. Thankfully there’s another free utility that does work.
The utility that we will use is called Virtual Clone Drive. This utility will let you mount .ISO, .CCD, .DVD, .IMG, .UDF and .BIN files. Download the utility and start the setup process.
Select Yes or OK at the hardware prompt and continue. You might have to restart your computer. Now you should be able to mount any ISO image by just double-clicking on the file.
Note: If you are going to reinstall this utility, make sure you uninstall it first, or you’ll BSOD yourself repeatedly.
Double Note: This utility does not work on Windows Vista 64 bit edition.
_TheIsoLovinAdmiN_
The Ultimate Guys Tool! I just had to post this one..All you need is this couch, and some camouflage to match
Sep 20th
This guy’s got the right idea, I hope everyone gets the same laugh out of this one that I got, I mean c’mon, this can’t all be about computers! This is a solution to a common problem for any male, married computer geek. Just get a laptop sleeve to match!
Check out the solution we found from WallStreetJackass.com.
A practical, readily available solution to most nagging housework problems…
Peace
Commodore64 (The one you used to play Bruce Lee on)
NTFS File Compression: Why Blue?
Sep 19th
Man-o-man, I love getting funny questions working in the I.T. field. I don’t blame users for not knowing certain things, so don’t get me wrong, but many problems are caused just because people don’t know. Anyway, I got this ticket in (I have omitted the name of course), with a very interesting question:
“Why is the font color of our S drive now blue? It is difficult to read. Can we change it back to black?”
Sounds like a pretty straight forward question right? Well for those of you who do not know, when Microsoft moved from the FAT32 file systems to NTFS, they added a feature called File Compression. It is kind of like a built in ZIP, and is used to save space on the disk. To enable it, right click on your hard drive and select properties, and check the box that says “Compress drive to save disk space.” If you only want one folder compressed, then right click on that folder, and select properties. on the general tab click on the advanced button. You will see two boxes at the bottom, check the box that says “Compress contents to save disk space.” Once enabled, Windows will change the font color of everything in the compressed folders to blue to indicate that compression is turned on.
You may also notice when you go into advanced attributes on the folder that there is another check box that says “Encrypt contents to secure data.” You cannot have that selected while file compression is turned on, and vice versa. If you decide to use that, it will encrypt all of the contents in that folder and only you will be able to access them. It will also change the font to green. If you knew that, great! If you didn’t, then now you know…and knowing is half the battle!
Now, if you do not wish to view these colors, you can open that folder then click on Tools> Folder Options> View Tab. Scroll to the bottom of the list. un-check the third box up from the bottom that says “Show encrypted or compressed NTFS files in color.”
Originally Posted on Bauer-Power By El Di Pablo
AskTheAdmin takes a minute to breathe…
Sep 16th
I have been super busy with all of my projects lately – not to mention my day job and my family! But here is the round-up you have all been waiting for.
I finally got to put some faces with the good people over at HP at the Sheraton in Mid-town. They were showing some of their new lineup including touch screen pc’s, affordable digital picture frames and some awesome new machines. There were a couple of NDA’ed machines as well.
I also got to see the revised HP 2710P Tablet that is now the 2730P Elitebook – let’s just say it has ALL the things in it that we were missing in the 2710p. It now has a touch pad and a scroll wheel! FTW!
These HP products keep getting better and better… Do you know why? Because they listen to the people that actually use and recommend their machines unlike some other companies. Yes we are looking at you DELL. We still don’t have that tablet you were going to send us to review – it has been over a year hasn’t it??
Oh well back to the daily grind but if someone wants to grab me a birthday present (Oct. 4th) I will not refuse the 2730p! :)
Can I create simple shortcuts to enable or disable the screensaver?
Sep 16th
AskTheAdmin has covered third party applications that create similar shortcuts. But we know you guys want to be able to do this stuff from scratch with out no stinking tools. It is simple as pie (pie is actually not that simple, nor is PI). Simply fire up a text editor and type in the following information:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
"ScreenSaveActive"="0"
Your text document should look like the above picture. Save it as something clever like SaverOff.reg. The .reg is the magic that makes this happen. It is interpreted as a registry backup file and by activating it with regedit - it gets imported into your registry making the change instantly for your impatient self!
Don't close that text file yet. Change the ="0" to ="1" and re-save the file as SaverOn.reg - Yes you guessed it that registry entry will turn the ScreenSaver on!
And now creating the shortcuts to enable and disable screensaver is just as easy. All you need to do is create a shortcut by right clicking on your desktop and selecting New -- Shortcut. You will get a screen like the one below:
In the location field simply type in regedit.exe /s "and the location of each of the .reg files you saved before. If it is on your desktop it would look SOMETHING like this for the SaverOff shortcut:
regedit.exe /s "C:\Documents And Settings\User\Desktop\SaverOff.reg
And SOMETHING like this for the SaverOn Shortcut:
regedit.exe /s "C:\Documents And Settings\User\Desktop\SaverOn.reg
Next time you are watching Porn a movie with that special someone A hooker don't have your Smurfs screen saver kick in and ruin your experience.
[Via PcWorld]
Running Windows applications on Mac OS X without Windows.
Sep 14th
For people who have to live in both PC and Mac world or who migrated to a Mac after several years with a PC – this article can help you.
Although it’s “cool” to have a PC and a Mac on your desk but it’s not practical unless you just want to boot both the machines but work on one and keep the other running to show how sophisticated you are.
There are several ways of running Windows applications on Mac OS X. Let’s focus on them one at a time:
