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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I was looking for a replacement to Dropbox after the EULA / T&C changes and found SpiderOak to be a very attractive alternative. It’s a backup and folder sharing / sync software which runs on all 3 major platforms (Windows, Mac and Linux). In this article I will compare the differences between Dropbox and SpiderOak.

Signup

Registering for an account was fairly simply. Not much different to other sites around today. Entering the usual details of username, password and email address with a confirmation email after. The service provides 2GB for free which is the same as Dropbox but there is no possibility of extending this without paying. Dropbox has a referral feature which adds 250mb to your account. I have accumulated a few referrals in my time so I have more than the 2GB space but I use less than this currently (but close to the limit).

Dropbox only required a login for each client to access the same account but SpiderOak required more.

Desktop Software

The user interface is not as user friendly as Dropbox but it is also a lot more powerful. Consider SpiderOak a power user tool. It splits items up by category of what you want it to do. There are:

• Status – What SpiderOak is currently doing on the machine
• Backup – Used to manage backup of local directories
• View – Look at items in the “cloud” (backups). The browser also includes revision of each file if multiple backups exist
• Sync – Allow backups to be synchronized across multiple devices
• Share – Allow other people access to files or upload to your SpiderOak

Starting with the Status tab, there are multiple tabs within this page. The first one is overview. This is a good indicator as to what is happening with the 3 main features of Spideroak: Backup, Sync and Share. There are small details within each status such as how many files are currently being upload and the remaining amount in backup, Number of “Syncers” in Sync and the number of sharers in Share. Moving to the Queue sub tab within the Status page shows the files that are waiting to be processed.
Actions
Logs show what happened in the past such as files being uploaded and downloaded, shared or sync’d and Stats just gives a summary of what the program has done.

Unlike Dropbox where a directory is placed on your computer where everything is sync SpiderOak uses the more traditional method of allowing users to choose the folders to be uploaded. This is the job of the Backup tab.

The View tab shows a list of files in a tree node structure similar to Microsoft Windows classic sidebar view. It’s quick and efficient but does not allow multiselect (to delete multiple backup files for example) nor any preview of the file. The view also shows the amount of space free and used by the backup in graphic form (where as the Status page show it in numeric format).

Sync allows multiple computers to share and keep files up to date with each other. This is the core of what Dropbox does.

SpiderOak also allows users to share access to other users. The difference with SpiderOak is that they allow other uses to login without a passwork. Also the public area is designated by yourself instead of SpiderOak where as Dropbox have public folders where files are shared and stored.

Initial Upload

As with any online backup systems there largest and longest part of process is the initial upload of the files. Fortunately SpiderOak compresses the files prior to upload making this process quicker. Dropbox does not do this making the initial upload longer. For some reason after every upload the files took a long to in the “finalizing” stage. Even if the file size was marked as 0 bytes? This occurred through the time I was using it.

Subsequent Uploads

Updating existing files for both services are fairly similar. Whilst Dropbox doesn’t compress the files to be uploaded it does upload only the changed bytes.

Sync

One disadvantage of SpiderOak is the the lack of LAN Sync. This greatly increases the speed of synchronization because the files are transfer over the network instead of out through the Internet and back again.

I encountered a server error 500 when I was adding a device which was running on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. It quit automatically but when I went to add it again the device had been added to the list. I then had to go back and select reinstalling device so that I could select the device from a list instead creating one. There was about 1-2 minutes while it was doing a 10 step process but eventually loaded the normal SpiderOak interface.

Once the second computer was up and running I had to set up a new backup directory. This directory would be where files are synchronized to. I used my Dropbox directory as a test. I disabled Dropbox on both computers but ensuring they were both synchronized. Once that was done my Windows computer already had a backup set up of the directory and everything was uploaded. When I tried to add the second Linux computer’s Dropbox directory it kept complaining I didn’t have enough space and kept popping up with a message to buy more space. I thought the “advanced de-duplication” would see it was the same directory with the same stuff in it as the Windows computer! Alas it didn’t. To get it to work I renamed the Dropbox directory and created an empty folder, added it to be backed up and then I was able to select the 2 Dropbox directories from each computer for synchronizing.

Couple hours later and it has managed to create the folders on the second computer but still no files. This is unacceptable!

Pricing

As of 13/09/2011

• 2GB – Free
• 100GB – $10 per month or $100 per year for each 100GB

In comparison Dropbox charges $9.99 per month for 50GB which makes SpiderOak cheaper.

Summary

Security perspective it’s great but the trade off for that is recovery. The version backup is a major bonus but again the trade off is space. The latter isn’t an issue because you can turn off versioning to keep the space down.

The biggest issue I had with it was the Sync. The fact that adding the second computer’s directory as a backup with existing files in it causes it to spontaneously show the popup is unacceptable. Whilst I believe the merge tool was built for this situation I think it’s a flawed model. Also the time it took to Sync the files across was too slow. It was during peak time so my bandwidth was throttled by Virgin Media it should at least start to synchronize files across. In the end I gave up and went back to Dropbox.

Dropbox vs. the Alternatives: Which Online Syncing Service Is Right for You?

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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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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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The 2 programs are not compatible with Windows 7.

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

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Valve has done a great work integration Steam with Windows 7. The icon in the taskbar shows the download status of all the currently downloading items. This was demos in my case. I have the Steam icon in my start menu list and it has an extended menu allowing you to change status on Steam Friends.

This is a fine example of good OS integration from a third part software vendor.

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This method did work however my system failed to come back to life and I had to restart it manually.

Fix Windows Vista/7 Sleep mode from waking up by itself

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I gave up and resorted to the on-board sound card which was the old AC97 hardware. It only supported 2.1 speakers and couldn’t get the other pairs working.

A few days ago I did some research into it where I found one person stating it was the IRQ. Changing of a PCI slot later and it was working (once I figured out which gold jack was for which speaker cable).

In my case the sound card had a conflicting IRQ with the graphic card. To check go to “Computer Management” by:
Start Menu > Right click on Computer > Manage
or
Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management

Select Device Manager from the left hand tree and navigate to “Sound, video and game controllers” and expand it to reveal “Creative SB X-Fi”. Right click and select properties > “Resources” tab.

Scroll down the “Resources settings” table till you see “IRQ” in the “Resource type” column. The “Setting” column will tell you what the IRQ number is in the brackets. For example my one is 19.

Click the Cancel button and find go to “Display adapters” in the Computer Management window. Under this node should be your graphics card. Go through the same process to get the IRQ number:
Right click > Properties > Resources Tab

If the IRQ number is the same then you need to dive into the BIOS and re-assign either one to a new IRQ number. If you cannot do that then try changing the slot your sound card is plugged into. Failing that try a different graphics card slot.

If the there is no conflict with the graphics card check the hard drive IRQ’s too as it’s been reported to do the same. Hard drives are listed under “IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers” and check the IRQ number for each.

It can also be the luck of the computer assigning the IRQ’s if your BIOS does not have manual IRQ assignment. In this case you best hope is to turn off as many ports / interconnected devices such as serial / parallel ports and other legacy ports you do not use. To try and force the the computer to change IRQ assignment you may try pulling the card out, boot the computer so it can see the card has been taken out, turn it off and plug it back it. Again this is all pot luck. An “IRQ Map” which may be in the motherboard manual may help you identify a free IRQ slot as it my tell you PCI slot 1 has IRQ 10, PCI 2 is IRQ 13 for example.

Technet Post

Original post on problem

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Here are my picks for free software on Windows (currently Windows 7). Free and open source (two different licenses applied to software) have come a long way and have come to replace my ageing proprietary and non-free applications. I list my choices below in this post.

Multimedia Player

VLC – stands for Video Lan Client is an open source player that runs on all 3 major platforms (Windows, Linux and Mac). It supports a very wide varity of codecs and video formats. The player has plugins for web browsers and can be used to play music and videos.

I use it as my video player as it does not have a library component to manage my music and videos but does have a playlist feature.

Web Browser

Mozilla Firefox – I have been using Netscape 6 browser back in the day when the company still existed. Even though it was slow and crashed every so often it did not deter me from trying a different browser to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. I leapt straight onto Firefox (what was called Phoenix at the time of it’s alpha launch) version 0.6 and stuck with it since. Whilst Safari and Opera has improved over the years along with Firefox moving to 3.5 very quickly.

Email

Mozilla Thunderbird – An open source using standard design I have used it for well over 2 years now. Whilst it feels lacking in terms of polish and that bit of TLC compared to Mozilla’s web browser offering it still forefills the task as a good email client. I do find it lacking development and features sometimes for example the lack of naitive calendar integration so I’m less likely to hold onto the software if a new and better software came out.

File Compression

7Zip – This is a free and open source software (FOSS) which handles a lot of different compression protocols from 7zip (it’s own format) to zip and rars. The UI could do with some work but it does have context menu built into Windows.

Drawing

Paint.net – Initially developed to replace paint in Windows it uses the .net framework and is free. The software does a lot of effects and enhancements to images all for no fee (but please donate to the project). It does all the simple things like cropping drawing to slightly more advanced tools like, layers, lots of undo levels and controls with good fine controls.

CD/DVD Burning

CDBurnerXP – Despite it’s name it does handle DVDs too. The software is not as good as Nero but does the job well enough. The software UI flow needs a bit of work but the burning part is faultless. When creating a project it detects the current media in the drive to determin the size. In my opinion I prefer to set what type of media I am going to burn because I don’t always take out pre-burnt or non writable media in the drive which means it will always say you don’t have enough space. Despite this it is free so I’m not going to complain – too much. It does not support any cover editing or light scribe burning.

PDF Reader

Foxit Reader – A much lighter version than Adobe’s PDF reader. It has all the features I use in Adobe Reader so it’s a perfect drop in replacement. The reader has plugins for web browsers so you can view PDF from within the browesr. It does have a tiny advertisment in the top right corner below the windows border.

FTP Client

Filezilla – A free and open source FTP program. It has a lot of options and clever download / upload queue which you can specify what you want to do with file conflicts. Transfer limites can be set by the user from number of simultaneous file downs to the speed at which it down / upload files.

Remote Desktop

RealVNC – It’s one of the stable tools in Linux but it is available on cross platform. The server application isn’t as secure but if you hide it behind a firewall and tunnel in it should be safe. It’s very basic but it works and quicker than Remote Desktop on slow connections. There is a free and paid version depending on your needs.

TODO

I still have use non-free software because I have yet to find an alternative to fill it’s place. A good site to search for alternative software is at AlternativeTo.net

These are the following programs I need to find a good replacement for:

• Text editor – I would love Notepad++ to be 100% compatible with Windows 7 but it’s not quite there yet.
• RSS Reader – I’m using Feed Daemon but I would like an RSS reader than supports Google Reader and on all 3 major platforms including the iPhone.
• UPNP Player – Not quite figured out what I need or how it will work but I want to move all my video and music collection to one central place and accessible on my computers for personal use.
• Podcatcher / Podcast Aggregator – I’m still using Juice but there has been no updates to it since early 2000 but I have yet to find a replacement.
• Music Player – A good all round music player with library support. I also want to be able to play podcasts in accelerated mode.
• Diagram Tool – A good FOSS alternative to Microsoft Visio. It seems I’m alone on this one as there are hardly any out there and the Linux Dia program is too basic. Dia also shows it’s age.
• Office Suite – I’m using Microsoft Office and have used Open Office in the past but found it lacking in terms of stability or usability.

I would like to use agile light weight applications where it does not require say Mono on Windows but keeping them as independent as possible. Any suggestions or recommendations are welcome. I will try and update the list in the future.

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I upgraded my RAM from 2GB (4x512mb) to 4GB (2x2GB). It worked flawlessly and I turned on “Memory Remap” because I was using Windows 7 64 bit. The only issue I had was the water cooling pipes got in the way and still not too keen stressing them but it will have to do for now.

I put the sticks in the second slot so there was slightly less stress put on the tubing / RAM stick. It’s worth noting that the old sticks of RAM did not have this problem and it’s caused by the tall heat sinks on the DHX RAM. I went for them because of their timings (CL4) where as XMMS (CL5) are not have this tall heat sink.

I did try 5GB (2x2GB & 2x521mb) but it BSOD’d as soon as Windows booted. I did not try further as I had planned my old sticks to go into a new build. I only tried the Patriot RAM and not the Corsair pair.

I’m using a matched pair Corsair TWIN2X4096-6400C4DHX.

Upgrading from 2GB to 4GB has caused my Creative X-FI sound card problems. It has hissing/crackling sound which is constant when sound comes out of the speakers. Doing some searches I have found some people have had this problem because of the 4GB RAM where as some others have it working with 4GB. I narrowed down the problem between the nForce nVidia chipset, Creative drivers or Windows itself but have not found a fix. My work around at the moment is using the on board sound card which doesn’t support my surround sound speakers very well. Maybe a fresh install with the 4GB will cure it.

In terms of performance I see RAM usage around 50% with normal desktop apps and Eve-Online running in window mode. Before with 2GB the RAM would be around 80%. I have no other real benchmark to go by.

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I had conceived an idea to automatically login and lock the screen. A Google later and I found that I wasn’t the only one.

An advantage of this set up is it allows you to login and start up all the programs like IM, G15 manager, Email Client, etc and lock the screen so people can’t get into your account.

I also had a problem with MythTV backend service which starts but the front end could never connect to it. However starting it manually using the command mythbackend starts fine and the front end is happy. In the end I added the command as a start up item when I log in. The problem is if Ubuntu restarts and not logged into my account then MythTV is not running and won’t record anything let alone watch / schedule programs.

Linux (Gnome)

Setup Auto Login

Type this command (Alt+F2) in Gnome to bring up the Gnome Login Manager:
gksu /usr/sbin/gdmsetup

Go to “Security” tab and tick “Enable Automatic Login” and select the user account in the drop down box below it. Click OK to save the settings.

Lock On Login

Run the command:
gnome-session-properties
Or System > Preferences > Sessions from the menu

In “Startup Programs” Tab click “Add” button.
Enter a name and optionally a description. The command is:
gnome-screensaver-command --lock
Click OK to save the start up item.

Windows

I did have a problem with the locking part on the Windows side so I abandoned the idea. The Task Scheduler kept reporting failure to start the task and the lowest value for a retry was 1 minute. In my opinion 1 minute is too long and allows any physically at the computer enough time to disable the locking task. That being said the concept should work but it has baffled me.

The auto login still works for those interested.

Setup Auto Login

Start User Accounts settings:
Start Menu > Run
Enter control userpasswords2 and press O.K

Un-tick “Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer.” and press OK button. It should ask you for a user name and password of the account you want to automatically log into.

Lock On Login

Start Task Scheduler:
Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Task Scheduler

Click “Create Task” and enter the program / script as rundll32.exe with the arguments user32.dll,LockWorkStation

The trigger is “At startup” You can optionally add a start up delay. This might be a good idea because it allows the system to login and load some stuff before starting another process to lock the computer. The downside to this method is that it leaves your system vulnerable for few seconds / however long you set it to.

lock screen – command? Ubuntu Forum Post

Auto login MSDN Article

Create quick launch shortcuts to lock, restart, and shutdown computer Article

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