I’d love to automate as much as possible and also get some great UIs along the way (Minority Report / Iron Man anyone?). An article I came across from How To Geek was a step closer to the dream. Using a bluetooth device to lock and unlock your computer.

Why Bluetooth

Bluetooth is a short distance radio communication so this makes it ideal for detecting the distance. Wifi is a medium range so if it was employed for locking and unlocking the computer it will never happen till your out of the house or even further (which may work for some people). Near Field Communication and RFID are possible candidates but this is even shorter range than Bluetooth. Also it means having to touch in and out so that doesn’t work.

BTProximity

BTProximity by Dave Amenta is a free (as in beer) software for Windows which allows a Bluetooth device to perform certain actions when a Bluetooth device comes and goes from range of the computer. Actions available include:

• Lock and Unlock
• Sleep
• Shutdown
• Hibernate

The software monitors for a specified MAC address of a Bluetooth device. This device can be paired or unpaired with the computer. There are settings to control how often it polls to check if the device is still in range and the number of tries and timeout in milliseconds before it performs an action. The latter setting allows for interferences or bad connections between the computer and the device.

The poll time allow for more frequent checks but at the detriment to more power use of the device but can detect the device a lot quicker.

One of the limitations with the software is that the Bluetooth adapter on the computer must use Microsoft’s Bluetooth software stack. I’m currently using a Belkin F8T012 without the Belkin software installed on a Windows 7 computer which works.

Settings

Drawbacks

One of the main cons for using this type of set up was the drain on the battery. I had tried to find a bluetooth device that was wearable and didn’t have to do much but connect to a computer. Alas there was hardly anything that existed.

Also sometimes the software failed to work and seems to not lock / unlock when the device is in range again. It constantly showed a red icon and I have only had it work once by selecting reset option from the right click menu of the tray icon.

Summary

The software works really well and does what it says. I’m fortunately enough to have a Bluetooth dongle which uses the Windows Bluetooth stack to enable the software to work. The icon in the task tray changes colour depending on if the device is detected within range or not. The only issue I have ran into, which may not be entirely the software’s problem is that it may unlock the computer when the Bluetooth device is within range but it does not wake my monitors up from standby. I know it has unlocked itself because Windows play the unlock sound and I can hear it through the speakers.

How To (Un)Lock Your PC By Being Nearby (With a Bluetooth Phone)

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The error at the bottom says Status: 0xc0000225
Info: An unexpected error has occurred.

The problem was APIC setting had to be turned on. To do this:

1. Select the VM from the list
2. Click Settings button on the toolbar
3. System category
4. Tick Enable IO APIC

Status 0xc0000225 Error When Installing Windows 8 Developer Preview on VirtualBox

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2. VirtualBox With Ubuntu Quick Review
3. Waking Windows 7 Controller Error

Our Asus EEE PC 701 SSD failed when I tried to upgrade it from Ubuntu 10.10 to 11.04. I was in the middle of an install when it failed to copy a file and then there after it could not even boot from the HDD. Time for a replacement!

Why Have A Laptop And Netbook?

This all happened at a bad time because I was going on holiday soon and I was planning to take it with me. The EEE PC was a great travel companion because it was small, light and cheap which meant I had access to a computer (and Internet where possible) on holiday whilst not too worried about having hundreds of pounds worth of computer being damaged or stolen.

Netbook Vs. Tablet

When this all occurred, I was thinking of the possibility of replacement the netbook with a tablet. They fulfil more or less the same purpose of the netbook with a few pros and cons. Yes there is no keyboard for quick and comfortable typing and nor does it have the full range of applications a traditional desktop can offer but the boot time / always on and the optimized applications seem to counter those arguments (in my mind).

The biggest factor when I had decided was the price. Currently, a netbook can be had for aorund £230 and upwards. Cheaper for older models but tablets are currently are around £400+ excluding the Samsung Galaxy Tab 1010 but that has a 7″ screen with possible no outlook of getting new Android OS updates. This pretty much meant netbook was the only choice.

Linux Powered Netbook

Being the Geek that I am, I almost always do research before purchasing anything more than in your weekly shop. For this replacement netbook it was no different. What I was surprised about was the lack of netbooks with Linux on them. All the recent ones were powered by Windows 7 Starter edition. WHAT WENT WRONG!? I remember when netbooks just started out and almost all of them had Linux on them due to Microsoft’s License restrictions and more importantly the resource hog (compare to Linux) it was.

Alas the days of Linux powered machines look like they have gone and even Asus, the innovaters in netbooks are only selling Windows 7 on their machines. I was looking for a Ubuntu compatible device and it seemed it was fairly hard to find a 100% compatible netbook. I did encounter a Ubuntu hardware wiki which has a list of netbooks and their compatibilities but it was out of date but a good starting point.

The Chromebook was even less of an appeal and it’s untested. I cannot rely on having an Internet connection and have yet to hear the reviews or stories of it’s use. Availability was also an issue.

Acer Aspire One D255E (Intel N455)

After a long and hard search to find a Linux compatible system, I had decided to get the Acer D255E in red. There are 5 variants of the D25x which are D250 which is the first and oldest of the D25x range. Then came D255 which had the Intel Atom N255 processor. Then came the D255E which has the Intel Atom N450, N455 and N555. The main difference between the N45X and the N555 was the battery it came with. The latter having the larger 8 cell battery rated at 8 hours where was the former 2 have the 3 cell, 4 hours. The other smaller differences included DDR3 instead of DDR2 and slightly faster Front Side Bus (FSB). All in all I decided to go for the cheaper N455 version to save what was £30 at the time and coming in on budget of £200. This was a good result considering the inflation between 2007 and 2011 when I got the EEE PC 701 at the time.

From here on out I will be describing the D255E N455 only.

Initial Setup

I wanted to backup the system prior to doing anything in case I needed to return it. As per the usual Acer (and now pretty much all manufactures) has a recovery partition on their drive. Also the package did not include any restore media so if you break your Windows 7 Starter and your recovery partition, your out of luck because Windows 7 Starter is not available for purchase over the counter. People say you can contact Acer to get one if your willing to pay for the packaging and shipping costs but I think this is an oversight. All computers should come with system restore media. The good thing is you can create your own restore DVDs (note the plural!).

In order to create restore DVDs you must first boot into Windows and go through the registration to get to the Desktop. From there the start menu under Acer is Acer eRecovery Management. Starting this program allows you to create and restore from discs. This does mean you need an external DVD writer plugged in. The program will guide you through creating the 3 recovery DVDs. Once it was done time to get the Ubuntu 11.04 ISO out.

Installing Ubuntu 11.04

I created a bootable Ubuntu 11.04 USB stick to install from rather than using an external drive. The install process was fairly painless although during the HDD partition stage, I had to quit and go back into Windows to make sure I was selecting the correct partition (and not over write the recover and Android partitions).

Everything worked out of the box with the exception of the microphone. It was not picking up any sound but I think this is a Pulse Audio issue. To fix this do the following:
$ sudo apt-get update

$ sudo apt-get install pavucontrol
This will update the repository and install the pulse audio control panel. Once the install is complete, start the pulse audio control panel from the menu or by running the commal pavucontrol
Then select Input and reduce the input volume for either right or left. As soon as you do this the input volume bar will suddenly become active.

Some multitouch features work on the touch pad such as the right click when tapping with 2 fingers but I was unable to get the 2 finger scrolling to work.

Ubuntu 11.04

I like the Unity shell and find it usable for day to day tasks. As with any new software it does need a bit of work. The Ubuntu Software Center is a vast improvement over the old

The AOD 255E has a height of 600 pixels which meant most of the minimal sized windows fix with the exception of the buttons at the bottom of windows (if any). This means it has only lost 178 pixels to make the lowest resolution of 768.

Summary

Overall I’m very happy with the setup. Although there are things that can be improved upon such as ability to update Android or even restore the Android partition. Also there is no way to enable the android dual boot feature without Windows. I hate the loss of space for the recovery partition and as I do not know what will be restored with the restore DVDs, I’ve decided to keep them there for the mean time but the combination of Android and recovery partition take up approximately 50GB!

The EEE PC SD card slot was a lot deeper than the Aspire One which meant the card would be more or less sit flush to the edge of the computer. On this machine it sticks up by around 1cm which means the card cannot be left in there as extra space. This is a design flaw in my opinion.

I’m also more sensitive to the fact that it’s using a traditional HDD instead of a solid state so no more throwing it around whilst it’s on. The size of the netbook is a big step up compared to the old original EEE PC. Also the extra screen size and resolution helps.

Acer Aspire One D255 microphone?

Ubuntu 11.04 GNU/Linux on Acer Aspire One D255E

Ubuntu Hardware Wiki

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It’s been a while since I have used a “stable” software which almost made me tear my hair out! As good as the concept of Synergy is the execution could have been better. All credit to the software and it’s contributors/team for making it usable.

Synergy is a software that allows more than one machine share a keyboard and mouse. Just like having multiple monitors the mouse cursor will scroll off the edge of one computer say the desktop and onto the other like a laptop.

Features

The best way to describe Synergy is the pictures from their website:

The software is cross platform so the keyboard and mouse can be shared with Windows, Linux and Mac computer all at the same time. In this post however I will be setting it up with 2 Windows machines.

Synergy also can share clipboards too so copying from computer A can be pasted on computer B.

The software uses the server-client model so the computer with the keyboard and mouse that is to be shared runs as the server and all remaining computers are classed as clients. If a client has a connected keyboard and mouse, it can still operate them independently of the server but the client keyboard and mouse cannot control the server – it’s a one way thing.

I will be using the Synergy setup as the example where The server is in the middle and 2 clients are either side of it.

Windows Server

Download and install the Synergy software. At the time I opted for the stable version which was 1.3.6. There are 32 and 64 bit versions so install the correct one for server. Clients can have different bit version to the software and vice-versa.

Once installed, start the software and a very basic window should appear. Change the selection option from Use another computer’s shared keyboard and mouse (client) to Share this computer’s keyboard and mouse (server).

Click on the Configure… button to open up a new dialogue box. This window sets the computers (monitors really) and their orientation. First, add the server computer to top list using the + button. It is recommended the Screen Name should be the same as the computer name found in (My) Computer > (right click) Properties and the Computer name: is the name of the computer.

Leave Aliases as blank (empty).

Leave Options as all unticked and only tick them if there are issues with the stated keys.

Leave Modifiers as is or change according to preference. This may be useful for different operating systems.

Dead Corners prevents the cursor from jumping from one screen to the next. This may happen when using features such as expose on the Mac where moving the mouse to a designated corner will trigger something. Leave this unticked for now.

The next step is to link the computers together. This tells Synergy how the computers are positioned and which computer to go to when the mouse moves to the edge. It can be confusing at first but it means the screens can be linked in a series or in a circle. Always leaving the % of the screen unless the screens are very different. Working from left to right Select right, Client1, Server in the dropdown boxes. The line should read something along the lines of “of the right (part of the screen) of Client1 goes to Server“ so the right edge on Client one links to the Server. Click the + button below to add the link and ready for a new link.

Add the following to join the server to client1, server to client2 and client 2 to server (see above screenshot).

Click OK to close the dialogue box.

Click on the Advanced… button. This is where you specify which screen belongs to this computer. In this case the screen name should be Server. Either change or note down the Port and ensure it is open on the computer. Click OK to save and close.

Next is to register the program to start automatically by clicking on the AutoStart… button. Read and chose the relevant startup option preferred. I would leave it turned off for now because enabling it stopped it from working. It can be uninstalled but it does required Synergy to be restarted (don’t know why it can’t start the server). Close the dialogue box after.

Don’t bother with Test because it was broken I tried it. Go straight to Start button and the server is up and running if there is the Synergy icon in the tray.

Windows Client

Startup Synergy but this time leave it on User another computer’s shared keyboard and mouse (client) and enter the IP or computer name of the server machine.

Click on the Advanced… button and enter the screen associated with the client. So on Client 1 enter Client1 and Client 2 should be Client2.

Next click Start and it should be connected to the server!

Limitations

It’s mainly nice to have features but it’s still worth noting that:

• Clipboard can only share text. I tried images to files but it did not work.
• Dragging files from one screen/computer to another fails. It prevents the cursor from jumping screens whilst dragging something.
• Synergy doesn’t work when the computer is locked. I don’t have a problem with this limitation on security grounds. This also applies to the first login of each computer.
• High system usage / process freezes prevents the mouse from moving to the other computers. This is reasonable limitation because Synergy does not have enough resources to process the mouse move.
• Network Dependent – If the network is down, then the software will not be able to communicate with each other. This may also apply to unstable networks.

Problems

The UI can be confusing. For example I created a link for a computer, pressed the + button to add another and then OK’d it only to find it does not added it to the list unless you press the + button. Trying to remove a computer screen from the list caused Synergy to crash only to find it restoring to the last successful state. I am now confused as to how to remove them! Also the computer the aliases must match the ones typed on the server or it will error out.

A major issue I had with it was the Test function. Every time I tried it, it would either crash or complain it could not connect depending if it was the server or client. This made me go round and round trying different things only to find pressing start on client and server just worked (more or less).

It still prints out a message stating it’s a unstable software even though I’m using the stable version listed their site (64bit only maybe?).

I have noticed a problem where the clipboard is not being passed back and forth at times. Also the scroll wheel only works intermittently (more often not) which is very frustrating!

On Windows 7 client, the cursor centers to the middle of the screen. In a full screen application such as Windows Media Player, the cursor stays hidden.

It’s an understatement to say there are polish needed. Currently it works for what I need and hopefully it will improve over time.

Summary

The motion is very smooth and seamless. The basic functionality is there but can be improved. It’s a good solution for controller 2 or more computers via one keyboard and mouse. The best part of it is the cross platform even if I do not use it.

Synergy

How to Control Multiple Computers with a Single Keyboard and Mouse

Synergy Troubleshooting

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What happens is I wake the computer up from sleep which starts up and shows the login screen. After logging in you can hear and eventually see error sounds and messages. Any running programs such as Messenger, Skype, etc that I have running in the background most of the time errors and exits. Then accessing any start menu programs or programs in the start bar shows an error message saying it can’t find the shortcut.

Trying to diagnose the problem I have found that logging off and on again didn’t fix the issue and loaded up a default profile from my first install. Digging deeper into Windows Event logs I found that it’s a hardware or driver issue. Looking in device manager I cannot see the HDD listed and also in Disk Management. The drive is connected to the x58′s 3Gbps SATA ports instead of the Marvell 6Gbps and I was using Asus’s 0603 BIOS for Sabertooth X58 which seems less stable than the 0505 it was shipped with.

Another theory is a problem with the chip / motherboard itself. I hope this is not the case…

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The 2 programs are not compatible with Windows 7.

G15 and Windows 7 Event log issue

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1. Right click on start bar > Toolbars > New toolbar...



2. A windows open dialogue appears. Type in the following:
   %userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch
   In the Folder: field.
3. Click on Select Folder button to finish

Place a Fully Functional Recycle Bin on your Windows 7 Taskbar

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WARNING: Use this article at your own risk!

Open the registry editor:
Start Menu > Run
Type in regedit and press OK button.
Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU

On my machine stopped at Windows so I created new keys for WindowsUpdate and AU

Create a new DWORD (32-bit) value by right clicking on the AU key and selecting new.

Name the new key NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers and set the value to 1 by double clicking on the new value.

Prevent Windows Update from Forcibly Rebooting Your Computer

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I wanted to have the Windows partition and the user partition on separate drives. I have done this in the past on a Linux computer and it was very painless.

The advantage to this setup is that most of the personal data such as things stored in My Documents, My Music, etc and the Windows specific stuff like installed programs, patches, etc are stored on a separate partition whether it’s on the same or different drive. This degree of separation allows the Windows partition to be wiped and started fresh without affecting the personal files.

I had time during my fresh install to play about with various setups and have listed the options in the following section.

Be aware that not all programs store settings/preferences in the user directory so this is no replacement

I am not responsible for any damage or problems caused by the below procedure.

Final note is that I tried many combinations but some how managed to get it to work. Whilst the steps may not be 100% correct it should be a good guideline to see the process through. I shall update it should I come across it again.

Prerequisites

Before starting ALWAYS ALWAYS back up all the necessary files. Even though this design is suppose to negate the need to back it is still advised to backup in case something goes wrong.

Have a Windows 7 Install CD and CD Key ready.

Time!

Mounting Options

1. Mounting a drive to a directory – I was very keen on using this technique when I saw in the Disk Management utility. It sounds like the method used in Linux and would make it fairly transparent to the user.
2. Separate sub directories within users – This option makes it very simple to do because Windows 7 has the option of moving all the directories under the users one such as Pictures, Music, Search, etc. Just specify the new location and Explorer will move the files creating the directory along the way and taking care of permissions.
3. Change the %UserProfile% in the registry so that it is pointing to another drive.

Mounting A Drive To A Directory

This was my first choice so I wiped my system and went about to do this. The steps described in the superuser website are as follows:

1. You boot with the install media.
2. At the screen with the “Install Now” choose “Repair your computer”
3. You will be asked if you want to “Repair and Restart” by the System Recovery options, choose “No”.
4. Then Make sure that Windows 7 is listed as one of the installed OS’s available for recovery, it’s selected and them press next.
5. You will be given a list of recovery tools, chose “Command Prompt”.
6. In the command prompt you will be using Robocopy to copy c:\Users to d:\Users
7. Type robocopy c:\Users d:\Users /mir /xj
8. /mir tells robocopy to mirror the directories, this will copy all files and permissions.
9. /xj is very important, this tells robocopy not to follow junction points. If you forget this, you will have a lot of trouble.
10. Make sure no files failed to copy (FAILED column = 0).
11. Remove the old Users Folder from the c: drive: rmdir /S /Q C:\Users
12. Create a NTFS Junction that points to the new Users folder: mklink /J C:\Users D:\Users

The problem with the above method is the drives letters in recovery mode may not be using the correct drive letters when in normal Windows. For example drive C: is the windows drive and drive Z: was the user drive. In recover mode it generally assigns drive letters incrementally so in order to get the drive to mount on Z: the user drive needs to be on the 24th SATA port. This is unrealistic.

Also after performing those steps you would find the user to be locked out because of the user mapping has changed. To fix this boot into safe mode and login and do the following steps outlined in Nigel’s blog

What now? Well I found additional registry entries with REGEDIT under

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

There was 1 line for each profile. Crucially if a profile is bad there are 3 things worth checking
a) Ensure the key name doesn’t end in “.bad”
b) Ensure the RefCount value is 0
c) Ensure the State value is 0

Having gone through all those steps it made the OS unstable. I’m not sure if it’s a hardware issue but there seemed to be long seek times or Windows was taking a lot longer to follow the symbolic link. Whilst it worked, it hangs and long load times was not acceptable to me.

Separate Sub Directories Within Users

This is the easiest setup and I started with using this as my solution when the above method did not work for me. The problem with this was that it left the user directory e.g C:\Users\Danny on the same drive as the Windows partition and I do use that directory (as well as my Desktop which can be mapped to another drive) as my dumping ground. Not totally satisfied I found a workable solution described below.

Change the %UserProfile%

This is the final approach I took. It worked in the end but there was a lot of confusion when I did it but I ended up with the result I wanted.

Before changing the variable the files must be copied to the new drive. To do this I used the above method of dropping into command line, copying the files to the new location. Follow steps the steps in Mounting A Drive To A Directory section. Before closing the registry edit the attribute ProfileImagePath in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList to the path of the new user directory. Reboot and it should be done.

Update 16-Nov-2010
I have just reinstalled Windows and used the Change Profile and there are few things to note:

1. Make a backup of your data.
2. Make sure you install the SATA drivers PRIOR to doing any copying
3. Copy user data to a new directory and delete the old one. Either copy the files onto the same HDD or to an external drive. This is a safer option than to simply rename the folder.
4. Use Robocopy to copy the newly created windows user directory. DO NOT use the old user directory as the permissions are wrong and the user data such as libraries and configuration files do not match any more.
5. Copy user files from step 3 in to the robocopied directory. E.g all your music, documents, etc. Do not copy all files blindly.

Summary

Whilst the last method worked. I’d like to go through it again to ensure the steps are correct but I’m sure it more or less sums it up. I’m happy I got the result I wanted but wished the symbolic link worked. I’m looking at separating the install directories as well such as the typical C:\Program Files directory so that the Windows partition only contains Windows related files.

Mount second drive as c:/Users in Windows 7.

Fixing User Profiles in Vista

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Network File Share (NFS) is a protocol for sharing storage. It is quite common in Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices and is a standard compared to Samba which is Microsoft specific but has been ported to Linux.

Install NFS Server

Install the relevant software:
sudo apt-get install nfs-kernel-server nfs-common portmap

Configure NFS Server

Configuring NFS server is relatively simply. Edit the file /etc/exports file and add all the directories available as a share. The format should be as follows

/media/cdrom 192.168.0.1/24(rw,async)

Using the above string this would share the CDROM to any computer with the IP range 192.168.0.1-192.168.0.254 that has read and write permissions and requests can be process asynchronously.

Specific IPs can be given to each share like this:

/media/cdrom 192.168.0.1(rw,async) 192.168.0.1(ro,async)

Computer 192.168.0.1 has the permissions described in the above example and the computer with 192.168.0.2 only has asynchronous requests and read only access to files for that share.

When specifying mount points note where the spaces are and are not because spaces are read by the system so

/media/cdrom 192.168.0.1 (rw,async)

is invalid because there is a space between the IP address and the parenthesis.

Once all the shares have been configured it is necessary to restart NFS to see the changes:
sudo /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server restart

Mount NFS Share On Linux

Install the NFS client if the computer does not have a NFS server itself:
sudo apt-get install portmap nfs-common

To mount the share manually from the terminal type the following:
sudo mount 192.168.0.1:/media/cdrom /media/share
First is super user command sudo then mount command, IP address of NFS server followed by the path to share. The last parameter is the local mount point so in the above example it will mount the CDROM drive from the server onto /media/share directory of the client computer.

To make the mount more permanent edit the /etc/fstab file and the following line, one for each NFS share.

192.168.0.1:/media/cdrom /media/share nfs rsize=8192,wsize=8192,timeo=14,intr

The only part that needs to be changed is the IP address, NFS share point and the mount point. This is highlighted in bold in the example above. The rest should be fine left as is. This change should mount the share when the computer is started.

Mount NFS Share On Windows 7 Ultimate Edition

NFS support does not come as standard with Windows so it has to be installed. Also I only found the feature in Windows 7 Ultimate Edition and not the Professional. I believe there is a Business Edition in between but do not know if it has the support for NFS.

Go to the Control Panel and on the left hand side click on Turn Windows features on or off hyper link. It will load a list of software in a tree / node structure. Find Services for NFS and tick Client for NFS as a minimum.

On the start menu right click on Network and select Map network drive. If this option is not in the start menu go to Computer and right click on Network from the left hand panel. A wizard will start for mapping a network drive.

Select the drive letter to be assigned to the NFS share and for the Folder enter the address [server]:[path] for example 192.168.0.1:/media/cdrom
Tick Reconnect at logon if you want it to connect on start up and click Finish to end the wizard.

The only problem with mounting the NFS on Windows is every time Computer it takes a longer to scan and load the drives because it scans the NFS to get the size and amount used on the NFS.

Summary

NFS between Linux machines is perfect and a good way to share files. Mounting a NFS makes the local share look as if it was it was local drive.

For Windows I’d stick to using Samba because it doesn’t take a while to scan the shared drive every time the drive is highlighted to get the drive information such as amount of space available. It’s not a nice to administer two services doing the same thing but it works.

NFS Server and Client Configuration in Ubuntu

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The network will go down during this process so it’s best to stop or wait till all downloads or any other network related activity has stopped.

Right click on Computer and select Manage.

Go to Device Manager on the left hand side list to display all the hardware usually categorised by type. Drill down into Network adapters and select the Network Interface to be changed.

Right click on the Network card and select Properties.

Go to the Advanced tab and look for Network Address in the Property: list. In some cases if this property is not listed it can be added in from the same window. Selecting the Network Address will change the right hand side to what can be changed. By default this is set to Not Present. To enter a custom MAC address select the Value radio button and enter in the MAC address with no spaces or colons in the textbox provided. OK all the windows to accept the changes. To undo this change simply change the selection of the radio buttons from Value to Not Present.

The optional steps below allows a reserved IP address to be re-assigned to the new MAC address.
Either restart of go to Start Menu > Run…. type in cmd and press enter. A DOS window should appear. type in ipconfig /release to disconnect all network adapters and ipconfig /renew to get a new IP.

How to Change or Spoof MAC Address in Windows XP, Vista, Server 2003/2008, Mac OS X, Unix and Linux

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Go to the command line as an administrator. This can be achived by going to Start Menu and typing cmd in the search bar. Search for cmd.exe under Programs, hold Shift key and right click on cmd.exe. At this point you can let go of the shift key and select Run as administrator.

A dialogue box may warn you when starting the the program but OK it to start the program. Type:
powercfg -energy
and press enter to start it. The program will monitor your computer for 1 minute. In this time do what you wish.

Once it has finished it will print out the location of the report which is in a HTML (web page) format. You may need to copy to a suitable folder for your browser to open it.

Tekzilla Daily Tip #511

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Win + Left / Right Arrow – Docks the active window to the left or right side of the screen.

Win + Up / Down Arrow – Maximise or minimise the active window.

Win + Tab – Activates the Aero task switcher.

Win + Shift + Left/Right Arrow – Moves the active program to the adjacent display.

Shift + Left Click Taskbar – Opens a new instance of the icon clicked.

New Keyboard Shortcut Keys (HotKeys) in Windows 7

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To start the utility go to Start Menu and type dccw and walk through the wizard.

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I have had a Dropbox account for a while now but never really used it till now. There have been really good tricks and uses to Dropbox posted on the Internet and I finally decided to try my hands at synchronising my emails.

Dropbox Setup

Install Dropbox and create an account. I am using the free 2GB as my total mail folder size is less than 2GB. Head over to https://www.getdropbox.com and follow the instructions for installing Dropbox. I will assume the Dropbox folder is set to default which is ~\username\My Dropbox in Windows or ~/username/Dropbox in Ubuntu Linux.

Mozilla Thunderbird Setup

I am assuming this already exists. If not go to http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/ and install it.

Sync Setup On Windows

Close down Mozilla Thunderbird program. I would recommend creating a directory for your emails within the Dropbox directory. I named mine Thunderbird e.g C:\Users\username\My Dropbox\Thunderbird

At a minimum the default profile needs to be copied to the Dropbox directory. Copy: C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles to C:\Users\username\My Dropbox\Thunderbird\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default

xxxxxxxx.default = a random filename with .default at the end of the folder name.

Other files may be copied under the My Dropbox\Thunderbird directory such as email notification sounds so it is always backed up and sync’d across.

Point Thunderbird to the new location of your profile by starting Thunderbird with the following arguments thunderbird.exe -ProfileManager This can be done by creating / editing a Thunderbird shortcut or Start Menu > Run dialog

Create a new profile and click Next > button on the wizard pop up window. Select Choose Folder… and locate the xxxxxxxx.default directory in My Dropbox directory and press finish.

You may delete the old user or select the new user and click on Start Thunderbird button.

Sync Setup On Ubuntu / Linux

All the steps are the same as Windows setup except for the different file paths and to start the profile manger user mozilla-thunderbird -ProfileManager in the command line.

The default profile directory in Ubuntu is located in /home/username/.thunderbird/xxxxxxxx.default

Summary

It's really easy and now it allows me to user Thunderbird from anywhere so long as the files have been sync'd to Dropbox. I generally take periodic copies of the profile directory in case something terribly goes wrong with the sync.

I have ran into problems using this setup including my Trash file size became larger than the 2GB allowed on my free account. I tried emptying it from within Thunderbird but it failed so I deleted the Trash.msf file and it solved my problems.

Dropbox

Mozilla Thunderbird

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