Core Data Recovery

Archive for the ‘General Computer Knowledge’ Category

This is a quick instructional video on how to insert a youtube video into a wordpress post.

Hardware Causes of a slow computer:

External media unable to read:

unplug all external sources from the computer (Eject all cd’s,Thumb drives, external hard disks, Printers, etc and see if your boot is quicker) You’d be surprised  how often a disk in a cd-rom drive will make the computer take 4 min or longer to even  display a boot screen.)

Not enough memory:

Check how much memory you have in the unit, if it’s less than 1 gigabyte for xp or 2 gigabytes for vista or windows 7 get some more ram.

Failing hard drive:

You can check your windows system logs to check for hard disk errors reading or writing to c:\

You can download hdsentinel.com hard disk sentinel is a program that will read the smart status of your computer’s hard disk, bad sectors etc from windows.

You can download an Ubuntu.com Ubuntu cd-rom 32bit version and boot the computer with it, try out linux, system, administration, disk utility, click on the disk in question and check the smart status is green.

Software issues:

Viruses/Malware:

Download bitdefender’s rescue cd and make a cd-rom to check the computer. http://download.bitdefender.com/ and click on rescue cd.

Instructions, make the cd. connect the computer to a network cable with internet access (while the unit is turned off) and boot the cd-rom you made and allow it to scan for bugs, then do a root kit scan as well (double click it)

Malware, plug in the external adapter into a computer with a good malware scanner and anti-virus and attach your hard disk for scanning. scan it for bugs with the scanning programs.

Anti-virus conflicts:

Often more than one anti-virus program will argue with each other bringing your computer to it’s knees.

Toolbars:

Remove all toolbars and desktop searches and the like, you can reinstall them once you are done if you need them.

use Ccleaner (http://www.ccleaner.com) to clean up all the http cache files/cookies/junk, then run a registry scan and save what you are deleting  so if it screws up you have a way to get it back.

Browsers:

To reset internet explorer to defaults, right click the desktop icon, properties, far right tab (advanced), reset, check the box to delete personal junk (not your favorites) and ok.

Firefox, you can uninstall and reinstall if need be.

available memory:

CTRL-ALT-DEL and click task manager and then performance, physical memory available is what you want to look at and swap file in use.

If the light is constantly on on the hard disk, there’s a good chance you don’t have enough physical memory in the unit to run windows and your software.

You can also check to see what memory hogs are in here as well.

You can also download malware bytes and do a full scan for malware, it’s a good thing if everything else checks out.

I’ve had need to install the Crossloop Remote support agent into my Linux box, I’m running 64 Bit Ubuntu 10.10.10 for what it’s worth.

Requirements:

Wine must be installed

To install wine in ubuntu, click applications, Ubuntu software center, Install Wine

Download the CrossLoop setup for windows (This is easier to download from a windows computer)

Put the file in your downloads directory and make it executable.

Right click the setup program open it with the wine windows program loader.

run the installer ignoring errors.

The application will be in the applications, wine,programs.

control drag it to the desktop and drop it.

right click properties, permissions,allow excecution.

double click the icon and you’re in. You need to sign into the agent to be “logged in.

2 Gigabytes of free Cloud Storage for personal files. If you sign up by clicking the logo to the left, I will get credit for the referral.

They have an app for android as well so if you use the same username/password after you sign up on your computer, your dropbox files will show on your phone for easy recall.

The Android app is really cool as well because you can drop photos, videos etc right to dropbox using the share button.

I used this the other day to get rid of malware on a client’s computer by downloading a removal tool to my phone and dropping the exe from my phone in my drop box account and then opening the link to the file on the client’s computer and removing the pesky malware.

I really recommend this for people on the go as you can install it on your desktop and actively work on your files in the dropbox folder and then when you pop the laptop open later, they are in my documents where you expect them to be. Really a cool service.

How To Install to Windows

How to Install to Linux/Ubuntu/Mint/Debian:

For those of you using android, shoot the screen with your qrcode/barcode reader or print this page out and shoot it later, here’s the code.

Once you’ve signed up, here’s the link to the android app.

How to add a schedule bid button for phantom bidder in google chrome.
This works on OSX, Linux, and Windows platforms.

In Firefox, right click this add bid button and copy link location:

Schedule Bid

Open your bookmarks manager, right click, add a new page.

On the left input box put in “phantombid” in the right box, paste the javascript link for the popup.

Here’s the video I recorded in Linux on how to do it.

In firefox, simply drag the text you were going to right click and drop it in your bookmark bar.

For those of you who don’t know what phantombidder.com is click here to visit the site.

Phantom bidder is a bid sniping site, they charge 1 bid credit (about a quarter $0.25) for every auction you with with their service, you can schedule multiple bids on the same time of item by grouping them in a group and the rest of the bids will be cancelled as soon as you win the first item.

Phantom Bidder works well to win auctions by placing the bid at the last few seconds for you when you sleep or are busy so that you win or lose the item without driving your cost on the item up by allowing others to outbid you because the time on the auction runs out before others can see you have even bid. The service works great and I highly recommend using the service if you are going to bid on Ebay for any item.

Just click on the quick scan above to scan with Bitdefender’s malware city tool takes about 30 seconds.

If you are having this problem installing service pack 3,  Here’s how to fix it.

Windows key-R (or start, run)

Type notepad and press enter

Copy the following by highlighting it with your mouse:

File, Save As, select the type as all, name it fixit.bat, Save it on the desktop, click save.

Now double click the batch file fixit.bat on your desktop (windows – D will get the windows out of the way)

It should say  DllRegisterServer in xxxxx.dll succeeded with an OK for each line of the batch file.

Reboot and reinstall service pack 3

A few of you have asked me what I’m doing when I snag a card with my droid so,

for what it’s worth here’s what I use and how to get a version:

under market, search for card scanner,

select BusinessCard Recognition (choose the one that’s NOT Japanese.)

The free version is limited by the number of cards per week, the paid version is $8.99.

This app works well for most cards, will capture email, phone, title, twitter and more.

I’ve tried 6 of these apps, but this has been the best of the 6.

I recommend BusinessCard Recognition by HotCard Tech.

Want to know how to install Tweetdeck for linux in an x64 environment?

Ran into a problem today and asked geekgiant (www.thegeekgiant.com) for some help, he recommended talking with a contact with adobe to help me get the solution for how to get adobe air installed in my x64 ubuntu 10.10 install I run on my laptop.  He recommended I contact @duanechaos and he sent me back this link to how to get adobe air reconfigured for an x64 environment.

He directed me to James Ward’s blog RIA Cowboy.

Here’s the link to how to install the i386 .deb package into a x64 environment so you can get the adobe air environment working.

http://www.jamesward.com/2010/10/14/install-adobe-air-on-64-bit-ubuntu-10-10/

After you go there, you can load TweetDeck, click the pc/windows/linux button in the bottom right of the screen and click install, and run the downloaded file to install tweetdeck.

Have a SC101 raid box? need to access it from linux?

http://code.google.com/p/sc101-nbd/downloads/detail?name=sc101-nbd_0.03_i386.deb&can=2&q=

Really a nifty installer to get block level access to the SC101 Netgear RAID box.

Links for .deb package i386 only.

QR Tag above (2 dimensional barcode) for saving the link on the iphone.

Links for other methods of installing this device in ubuntu:

http://forum1.netgear.com/showthread.php?t=29788