You can make money from your RSS feed, and I’ve discovered something very useful that will help you to do just that: -.

RSS Email 2.0

This is my unbiased review of Pawan Agrawal’s recent release of ‘RSS E-mail 2.0′

What is this all about..? What is RSS Email 2.0?

RSS E-mail 2.0 is a step-by-step tutorial kit containing 10 screen-capture VIDEO presentations on RSS e-mail subscription management for blog owners.

The feature I like most about it is the video tutorial format: Instead of reading a book, you could actually see how these "techie" stuff is done, right before your eyes as it were, with the result that it’s much easier to copy-cat the strategies revealed inside.

With RSS Email 2.0 you’ll be able to easily understand what you need to do in order to manage, monetise and profit from your RSS feed content . -

What that means is that once your blog is setup with these RSS settings, you could be making money pretty much on auto-pilot.

If you’re a bit lazy like me, and would prefer to just sit back while the money rolls in, then RSS E-mail 2.0 might provide you with the quick-fix solution,  although getting rich overnight will probably never happen. – That’s just far too much to expect from any single product, promotion, or effort.

What I like about this video package is the insider "secrets": For example, did you know you could get a new autoresponder account with AWEBER for just $1.00 [30-day trial]?

- Also, do you really know how to setup your first e-mail autoresponder list in 10 minutes or less?

- Or, do you know how to create a new blog broadcast so that your subscribers get free blog updates in their inbox?

RSS E-mail 2.0 explains that and more, walking you step-by-step throughout the entire process.

Believe it or not, an autoresponder list is even more powerful than a feed broadcast. Once you capture your visitor’s email address you can follow-up with your subscribers on a regular basis, thus increasing your clicks & sales…

You can send one-time broadcast messages and recycle traffic to whatever site or product you wish… day in day out!

On the down-side, one thing  I don’t like about this product is that they only share a few real-life RSS to Email case studies. I wish they’d included a lot more! But I guess beggars can’t be choosers all the time. – There’ll be a revision, no doubt.

It’s in your best interest to put your hands on RSS E-mail 2.0 today if your blog RSS feed content isn’t fully monetized yet. – You’re almost definitely leaving cash on the table and walking away if you don’t.

Check out the full product here http://www.maxblogpress.com/go.php?offer=shazoom101&pid=34 and download the videos today if it suits you!

‘Good question that “Yahooligan”: I think it deserves a post all of its own. I was looking at a list of recent visitors to my blog when I saw your Yahoo search enquiry. Don’t worry; I can’t personally identify you: I know you visited but I’ve no idea who you are. ‘Thanks all the same for leaving me a title to write about.

The answer is; in some cases yes, in other cases no. A very rough guide to some sort of an answer would be the question: -

How old is your computer? : -  More than 5 years old = Probably not. (1)

                                                          Less than 5 years old  = Maybe. (2)

                                                          Less than 3 years old  = Probably. (3)

That gives us some idea; but it has no more than a 75% chance of being the right answer, and even the 3 answers aren’t definite.

What I can say with a good degree of accuracy is that even if it’s possible to run Win 7 64-bit on a computer older than 5 years; it’s not really worth all of the hassle. Why not? Because at that age, hardware is getting past it, and it’s probably not going to see another 2 years in a good working condition. It might; but the odds are stacked against it doing so. – So if your old XP machine is that old then it’s best to consider buying new with Windows 7 pre-installed, or building a box and installing Win 7 on it.

If it’s less than 5 years old then what you really need to know is: Does it have a 64-bit-capable motherboard? – And does it have a 64-bit capable processor? If the answer is yes to both questions, then you can give installing Win 7 64-bit a try. If no to one or both questions then you’ll need to replace the motherboard, RAM, and processor, before you can install anything 64-bit. – That’s basically almost a total rebuild. Is it worth doing? You decide: It’s your box after all. The cost of doing so? If you’re lucky you can just do it for just under £100UKP using a cheap or secondhand dual-cored processor on a new motherboard; Intel Socket 775 or AMD Socket AM2.

How do you find out whether your processor and motherboard are 64-bit capable? You find the manufacturer’s mark and model number on both the mobo and CPU, (Look in Device Manager.) then you type them into the Google search-bar. (Google is your friend.) Read all the data you collect from the best links and see if there is any reference to them being 64-bit capable. If so in the case of both mobo and processor, then you’re in luck. If not; it’s time to buy/build a new computer.

If your computer is less than 3 years old then it would be safe to assume that it probably is 64-bit capable. Try installing a 64-bit operating system on it. If you haven’t bought your Windows 7 discs yet and don’t want to until you know for sure, try downloading a free 64-bit Ubuntu Linux distro from the internet, burning the ISO to disc, and dual-booting that with your existing OS, or test your box with a run of Linux 64-bit from the disc. If you find that you like Linux better than Windows then use Linux instead; it’s free after all. If you prefer Windows still then you can always uninstall Linux at any point in time.

If your old machine is older than 5 years old, it may just be possible to install Windows 7 32-bit. – In fact I know of someone who actually installed the 32-bit version on a non-upgraded computer of age 6 years and it ran with basic desktop selected. – So all may not be lost; although once again I do encourage people with computers that old to buy or build a new box to run 7 on, plus, of course, to run the 64-bit version on their new hardware.

I think that’s about all there is to say. – ‘Anybody else got anything they’d like to add to that?

My online friend, Lisa Jackson, who is a very good and talented You-Tube artiste’, and who makes some excellent and beautiful instructional and location-based videos, has made a rather humorous video for this Halloween.

I thought, that just this once, I’d go right off-topic for this blog and include it: It really is rather good.

Enjoy; and why not share your viewing with the local ghosts while you’re at it. – I’m sure they’d appreciate it. – My lot did.

Skeletons rule.

Make no bones about it.

I have been running Windows 7 64-bit RC since May on my other box. On the one I’m typing this on I’m running XP Professional 32-bit. Both boxes are capable of running Windows 7 64-bit and have multi-cored processors. – But I’m going to keep XP on this one for now; possibly right up to 2014 if the box lasts that long. – It should do as I built it, and the only ones I’ve ever had faults with that I built were a couple with a Shuttle mobo with a weak processor socket surround: Basically the AM2 cooler tensioniser lugs snapped off, and the cooler fell off the processor causing the machine to shut down when the CPU’s thermal trip activated. I RTM’d them and rebuilt. Also an AsRock mobo’s chipset died right in front of me as I booted up… This is going well off topic already.

There is a reason why I’m keeping XP for so long; which I’ll share with you further down.

For the time being; let’s take a look at Windows 7: -

When Windows 7 was subjected to benchmarking tests; the Office benchmark took more than 70% longer to complete with 7 than in Vista.

In the 2D multi-application test, this had a knock-on effect on the overall score. – Otherwise Windows 7 did prove faster than Vista – by around 2%. How, then, bearing that in mind, does this constitute a proper performance increase over Vista?

Windows Display Driver Model 1.1 is a new device in Windows 7 which allows multiple applications attempting to access screen-memory to draw and update their graphics at the same time. With the the 1.0 version in Vista only a single process could draw to the screen at any point in time, which was one of the reasons that Vista’s interface could sometimes seem uncooperative and sluggish.

Applications can update their windows as soon as you press a button in Windows 7,  Hence the system therefore appears to be much faster, while actual benchmarked performance is similar.

“But that doesn’t explain anything.”

In short, it’s all down to WDDM 1.1. : In Vista, display elements were stored in graphics RAM and system RAM at the same time. – Yet another waste of resources.

In Windows 7 with  WDDM 1.1 the data sets are stored in graphics RAM only. Therefore whilst this leaves more system memory free for applications, the down-side of it means that if the OS wants to draw graphics without going via the GPU, various data sets must be copied from video RAM to system RAM and back; thus wasting time.

This is the main downfall of Windows 7’s 2D performance in an office environment is actually worse than Vista’s, which we already know is slower than XP’s in that area. – Do you see where I’m going with this?

Everything else about Windows 7 is better, snappier, better laid-out and more functional with increased practicality. You’ll benefit from increased battery-life with 7 on your laptop or netbook. Yes even a netbook with 1GB RAM and a 1.6GHz Atom processor can run 7: It’s no gaming rig; but it does the business, and resuming from standby or hibernate is no longer a lottery as to whether it will actually start properly again when you do.

On your desktop, if you use 3D apps, games, memory-intensive processes, whatever, you’ll notice benefits immediately.. Office work, however, which I do a lot of on this particular box, pretty much to the exclusion of all else besides watching a video now and again, appears to have no benefits from 7, in fact quite the reverse by all accounts. – Which is way I’m keeping XP on this one.

What happens in 2014 when XPs extended product-lifecycle runs out? – Well if my calculations are correct we’re due another new OS around that time; so wait and see. I doubt this box will last that long in all honesty, talking from reality’s perspective: It’s in use one hell of a lot. – But even if it makes it to then; I’ll probably retire it on Linux, and build new for the next OS after 7.

Conclusion

So back to the question: Should I upgrade: –

Yes if possible; because Windows 7 has more snappiness and functionality than Vista or XP: It feels as if it’s working for and with you rather than begrudgingly for you as with XP, or against you as with Vista.

- But for your office computer; well there’s no rush. – Let’s leave it at that.

One thing for sure is that Microsoft have saved themselves from the looming pit of oblivion this time round.

Are you intending to upgrade to Windows 7? What machine do you have, and what is your current operating system?

Oh, and, when you upgrade, try to upgrade to the 64-bit version: There is just so much more to 64-bit computing – It really is “Life without walls”; such as not being restricted to 4GB RAM maximum for starters…

There’s no option to backup a Twitter, or Facebook inbox on site – So If your social network accounts should disappear overnight for any reason, then so does any and all data contained in them and you’ll never see it again.

Some of you might just ask “Who cares?” and not be bothered about it. Others, devotees of social media, may be extremely concerned about this. – To them this data is very important as they’ve devoted so much time and effort to it.

Were you aware that, although everything you send to social media is archived to at least some extent by third parties, that Twitter itself only stores your 3200 most recent tweets at any given time. As I said, everything is archived in some way by third parties such as search-engines like Google; but not always exactly as it was sent or presented on the social media site, not always completely either, and it can at times be rather difficult to find.

- Yet most people have no idea of this, and assume that their data will always be there should they need it, exactly as they first typed it, in full, forever. -This despite the numerous periods of downtime experienced by Twitter, and the bugs that Facebook is affected by at times too. There are always hackers to worry about, who could delete your account if they could get into it, or empty it and use it for spam.

Alternatively, you might want to be able to back up your social media accounts so that you can access the information when offline. Offline access to postings to social networks can be valuable, because it allows you to get hold of contact information, comments, photos, and anything else that may be important to you. Offline access also lets you sort and organize the data that’s contained in your social networking account for easier analysis and access. Having such backups will also allow you to find messages that have been deleted, should you need to do so. 

A social media backup tool can provide you with peace of mind, as well as save you a lot of aggravation and misery if you need to restore your account or remember what you once had after it’s gone: There is no guarantee that any free social networking site will still be there tomorrow. – So with that in mind, let’s look at two pieces of social media backup software:

Backup My Tweets

Backup My Tweets is a social media backup solution. It works with Twitter, and it’s free. With it you can back up all of your tweets. – remember, though, that Twitter only stores your latest 3200 tweets.which is a huge advantage since Twitter does not store more than 3200 tweets at a time. These backups will allow you to save your social media files in XML, JSON, or HTML format. The makers also do another program called BackupMyMail, which works with Gmail, Hotmail, and Windows Live accounts. Why not check it out too?

SocialSafe

Another of the backup options that you have for your Facebook account, among others,  is called SocialSafe. This one is not free, but it’ll only set you back $2.99 including add-ons and updates. It runs in Adobe Air; so you’ll need to download that if you don’t already have it installed Having done that you can then backup everything in your Facebook account, including photos, photos you were tagged in, posts, and profile information. SocialSafe works as a multiplatform tool for Windows or Mac. After you’ve backed up your Facebook account, you can access all the files offline with a text editor, word processor, or photo editing software.

(Backing up MySpace profiles etc is maybe the least straightforward of all. ( – As most of it is teenage-style low-quality graphics.) However do read this tutorial which explains how to backup your MySpace messages.)

Do you know of any others? If so then please do let us know in a comment.

What’s the future of computing? – What machine specs will we be running in 12 years time?

That’s rather difficult to answer, as developments in technology that will have occurred then haven’t happened yet. If I knew all the answers I’d probably be a leading research and development coordinator on some astronomically-high salary equal to the income of top pro-bloggers.

Based upon what I know, though, combined with my vision of where things are going, I’ll take a stab at making a few projections.

In 2020 I would imagine that 3 new versions of windows have been produced since Windows 7; one of them probably that year. I’ll even hazard a logical guess and predict that it’ll be named, aptly, Windows 2020.

By Andy Zain

If you have ever wished you could get rid of some of the tangled up wires that surround your work area, you will be happy to hear about wireless computer speakers. With these speakers, you can hook up a transmitter to your computer that sends a sound signal to the speakers. This allows the speakers to play your music without being connected to your computer.

The transmitter uses an FM radio signal to send the sound to the wireless speakers. The use of FM radio signals allows the speakers to be placed in a different room than the computer because the radio waves can travel through walls, floors and ceilings. The distance you can place your speakers from the computer depends on the strength of the signal. Depending on which wireless computer speakers you are using, you may be able to place the speakers anywhere from 100 to 300 feet from the computer.

Obviously, if you need the speakers to be further away from your computer, you are probably going to have to spend more money to get a model with a stronger transmitter. If you are using your speakers in the same room as your computer, you can settle for a more inexpensive model with a weaker transmitter.

It is possible to use some wireless stereo speakers with computers as well, but you may not be able to tell which models will work with a computer until you get them home to try them. Since it is sometimes difficult to return electronic items, it is probably best to stick with wireless speakers that are made specifically for computers unless you know for certain that the model of stereo speakers you are looking at can be used with your computer.

The frequency of most wireless speakers for computers is about 900 MHz. Some other common household items often operate in the same frequency range. These items may conflict with the wireless computer speakers, resulting in feedback. The items that are most likely to cause interference with the wireless speakers are cordless phones and baby monitors. If you use these items in your home, you should try to purchase a model of computer speakers that operates on a different frequency.

Most companies that make wireless speakers manufacture them so that they can use either batteries or an AC adaptor. If you are going to be using your speakers in a location where you will not be able to plug them in, it is important to make sure that the model of speakers you are buying can be operated from batteries.

Your wireless computer speakers can give you the flexibility of being able to use your computer to play music in another part of your home or even outdoors without dragging your computer to the location where you want the music. They can also help free up some of the cord mess that surrounds most computer stations.

For information and tips on wireless outdoor speakers , visit Wireless Speakers Blog.

I have to admit I laughed when I heard the name Norton mentioned in a video warning of fake antivirus products. (Norton’s makers were supposed to be the heroes; but whether or not you share this opinion, I was unaware that heroes could produce end products that were so bulky and ineffective.)

Sarcasm aside; criminals are infecting their victims’ PC with fake antivirus software which cons them into handing over their credit card details.

Symantec, producer of Norton, claims that  victims actually download the rogue security programs intentionally because they imagine that it will help keep their computers safe from viruses and other internet threats. The word “gullible” comes to mind. (If Norton was capable of keeping their computers safe from viruses and other internet threats they’d have no need to bother with replacements.)

(I truly am trying not to be sarcastic; but it just isn’t working.)

This type of malware can get onto your PC via anything from porn sites to online banking sites; probably all of which have been hacked, especially in the case of the latter. – But there are websites out there that are maliciously seeking to infect you nevertheless.

Symantec claims that it’s identified over 250 types of the rogue software. Believe it or not there are actually affiliate networks behind the distribution of this untimely crapware!: –

Con Mallon, Product Marketing Director for Symantec, told the UK’s Computer Shopper magazine: –

"We found a number of affiliate networks that we were able to monitor and see how they were operating. We know how much the affiliates are paid per installation. Some people earn $23,000 per week, which comes to over $1m dollars per year. People go looking for security software and end up on fake sites. Pop-ups fool them into thinking there’s a problem and they panic-buy the software."

While a lot of the legitimate affiliate networks pay you peanuts (Google Adsense) for results, and then try to take what little you’ve made back by some method or another in the form of “non-productivity fines” and the like; (Clickbank I’m talking about you now.) these illegal affiliate networks are paying decent commissions, so is it any wonder that people are distributing these pieces of crap everywhere by whatever means they can? In short it’s a situation created by the legalised greed and extortion of the corporate companies.

Fake anti-virus software looks incredibly convincing to the non-tech-savvy computer-user. – That’s part of the reason why I, and other tech-bloggers like me, run sites like this one: To try and educate the masses who haven’t yet bothered to learn, in addition to assisting those who are learning, and to create a homely place for those in the know to come and discuss all things tech interactively.

Computer Shopper magazine infected a system in its dedicated virus testing lab and created this video: - 

Have you personally fallen foul of any of this type of malware, through a compromised website, or other means?

Incidentally; if you use Windows and want a proven FREE anti-malware suite from Microsoft themselves that really does the business, tested and verified by me personally, then look no further: Click here. –Yes it’ll work on XP, Vista, and Windows 7 – 32 and 64-bit.

I feel like doing something unusual today; so what I’ve decided to do is to post a (slightly edited) copy of an email that I sent to people on my mailing list. It’s regarding a free report along with a course that Yaro Starak is launching next week; the Membership Site Mastermind course.

Perhaps you’ve already heard some of the chatter with regard to this; maybe not. Whatever the case, this course could -  and I speak quite sincerely here – be the answer to all of your financial worries at the end of the day. Why? Read more

Getting a good-looking date

The first thing I’m going to tell you in this Newsletter is why I always write the date, online, as above in the title: -

It’s all because of Americans. who make up around 1/4 to 1/3rd (0.25 to 0.34) of my readership. As you probably already know; Americans write the date differently compared to we Brits: Where an American would write the date above as

10.23.2009

Brits would write it as

23.10.2009

From the above it seems fairly obvious, provided that you are aware that they’re both the same day, that one is the date written by an American, and one is the date written by a Brit; particularly if you know that it’s the date related to an article published on 23rd October: There’s really no issue there; until it comes to a date like 08.09.2009, or 10.11.2010: One of those dates was written by an American, but which one?

- So rather than cause any confusion by writing the date as 08.09.2009; which to an American is 9th August, yet to a Brit is 8th September, I write it out so that it can be understood whichever way round you do it in your part of the world.

“Surely everybody knows what month it is!”  You retort.

Currently yes; but imagine you’re an American digging through archives, finding the post you’re looking for by date, loading it onto a USB stuck, driving to your next destination, and then finding that the post was written by a Brit and that you got the wrong post because you read the date in American format rather than British format.

Blog Contents Page

Next; I’ve automated the Blog Contents page: In doing so I’ve lost a number of the listings. Everything related to that is explained near the top of that page itself; but I’ll reproduce the important parts here also: -

“Previously I was hard-coding each post into the list manually. I actually devised a way of doing it fairly quickly and with little effort. – I just wasn’t happy with doing things that way though: It was something else that had to be done, costing more time, and I also didn’t always remember to do it after every post’s publication.

It is in the light of the above that I’ve configured an existing script to handle the matter of posting and updating this Blog Contents page. While the operation is almost perfect, the script is unable to handle [all the previously viewable entries in the list.] …I’ve just done the best I can for now.

…Approximately 7 months of posts are currently listed, in total. I’m seeking a solution that will allow me to list more posts: Please bear with me until that time.”

Changes to the Welcome Page

As you may have noticed, I’ve partially automated the Welcome Page by adding a display of a snippet of my latest post to the page, as well as adding a clickable listings link to any of the latest 20 posts. I’ve also amended and partially rewritten the “Objective of This Blog” text section, in addition to which I’ve made all fonts on the page Trebuchet MS, and all linked text is now standard-link-blue (0000FF hex value.).

Reduced input

As I stated in the last Public Newsletter, I might yet have to reign back on the frequency with which I post articles at some point. It’s not that I don’t like writing; it’s just that I don’t have a lot of time some days or weeks. If there’s no content added to this blog one day, don’t instantly assume that it’s died. – Anyway, I currently announce future content on the welcome Page, previous to publication, so I’ll announce any gaps too, or simply won’t announce when there’ll be no new material. – If it’s not announced then it won’t happen.

Yes I do hand-code that announcement; although if anybody knows of a plugin which will list articles scheduled for publication then I’d be most happy to know about it myself. – With WordPress there’s normally a plugin for it, whatever it is. – It’s just a matter of finding it.

I’m going to be producing a different type of content as well as free articles from this coming Monday onwards; that being paid-for premium content, which will be on sale in due course: Yes I’m beginning to step up a gear with monetising this blog. – Well something’s got to pay the rent.

As a result I’ll be unable to produce as many articles as I have recently been doing – I just don’t have an unlimited amount of time on my hands.

I can probably still produce a few per week for the forseeable future; but if you have something technical and factual that you’d like to post on this blog; be my guest, literally: Submit your prospective guest-posts in line with the contest Can Your Post Make it to The Number One Slot? You never know; you might win.

Are you lot all rolling in money?

If you’re not then I suggest that you enter my competition that I launched back in September: -

September 28, 2009 Can Your Post Make it to The Number One Slot?

- I’ve had 4 entries from 2 people so far: 2 were published and both made it into the kkomp Top 10, but sadly dropped out again without even making it to the No1 slot. Can you do better; or are you so stinking rich that you just turn your nose up at the cash prize? Just imagine if people like David Risley or John Chow entered the competition and your post beat theirs!

Speaking of John Chow, whilst on the subject of “rolling in money”: I thought I’d share this video he made with you. – You see blogging’s not actually as difficult as it may sound, and the common reason why people don’t blog is because they can’t be bothered. There is money to be made blogging; does that suddenly make it more appealing to you? John Chow is such a success story, and in this video he tells of why he blogs.

Not all blogs make money, however. Indeed some aren’t intended to make money; they’re just personal or hobby blogs. Others are intended to make money but don’t do so. – Unfortunately gone are the days when you could just start up a blog, throw up a load of banner advertising, and become rich overnight. These days a professional blog has to be run much more like any business would be run. I’ll be dealing further with this subject around the turn of the year, when I’ll be advertising and talking about David Risley’s Blog Masters Club when the doors open again. I’m currently on the course myself, and I can assure you that it’s well worth the cost, and some more. It’s not just a course that teaches you how to set up and run a blog like many of the others. On this course it’s assumed that you know the root basics, such as how to set up WordPress, etc. (If you don’t then there is a third-party instructional video available on the course’s site, and, if need be, David Risley himself will help you out too if you’re a paid-up member.) – More on that in due course. In the meantime, if you’d like more information on monetising your blog and making some money with it then click this link.

If you don’t currently blog but would be prepared to give it a go, then entering this competition by posting a guest-post could be the start of a new career moving in a new direction for you. – Whether or not you win the cash prize.

Membership Sites

If you’re not yet convinced about membership sites, despite my extra article with regard to the subject on Tuesday, then may I suggest that you click here and take a look at free video with regard to how Daniel Scocco built up his $10,000 membership site. – You could do just the same, or maybe better?

The Postings

So without further ado; let’s take a look at the posts since the last Public Newsletter: -

If it weren’t for the utterly amazing number of add-ons associated with FireFox, I’d use Safari as my default browser: It has a hugely superior amount of screen area. I do use it for watching video only; but unfortunately it’s crashed more than once in Windows 7 RC; yet seems fairly stable in XP.

Due to the add-ons; FireFox has the place of default browser on both my machines. One of the most invaluable add-ons I’ve discovered to date is MeasureIt.

Read more

In this out-of-schedule impromptu article I want to talk about membership sites.

I’ve already emailed my mailing list about this; but nevertheless I’d like to bring you a bit more on the subject.

Membership sites are THE BEST way to make money as a blogger. – Fact.

If you’re not a blogger then that’s not a problem: You have a blank slate to start from with your own blog and associated membership site: A membership site combined with a nice blog is practically a magic pill for income; and we’d all like some extra income.

Read more

Last Thursday came an acknowledgement from Microsoft that it had made an error when writing Windows, which had led to a security hole being left wide open in the code associated with its Server Message Block 2 file-and-print-sharing protocol which ships with Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008.
Read more

IN starting this article; I’m going to assume that you know what RAID is: If not then a click on the link on the word RAID in the previous sentence will take you to Wikipedia where you can ‘read about RAID’.

Using the RAID 0 (RAID zero) configuration requires the implementation 2 or more drives, on which data is shared across these drives in the array. This means that each drive gets roughly the same amount of data written to it, and therefore the drive-access speed is substantially increased. – So far it sounds like an excellent idea!

Read more

“Patch Tuesday” is the day every month when Microsoft released their Security Bulletin Summary for the respective month.

This month (October 2009) there are important updates for Windows 7 (RC) and Windows 7 64-bit (RC), as well as security patches for Windows XP and Vista (32 and 64-bit) – So whatever Windows operating system you’re running, you’ll need to download and install the relevant free updates ASAP, if you haven’t already done so.

Why should I patch my system?

Read more

What’s the difference between the chkdsk function in Windows XP and the chkdsk function in Windows 7?

Not a lot and quite a bit. I haven’t seen the chkdsk in Vista as I’ve never used Vista myself, and I don’t remember ever having run chkdsk in Vista on a customer’s machine either. – So if it’s exactly the same as it is in Vista then you’ll understand my ignorance of that fact.

To test this I installed 2 hard-drives, a Hitachi 150 GB and a Seagate 150GB, into a box on which I installed Windows 7 RC. I knew that there had to be errors on the Hitachi disc, which I’d installed as the C: drive. The type of MFT error that chkdsk found; free space allocated as used space, would send XP tits-up and make it BSOD. Not so with Windows 7, which appeared to object somewhat, inasmuch as it didn’t appear to run as smoothly as it should, but nothing borked nevertheless. This might be a further indication of the increased resilience of Windows 7 – ?

First I ran chkdsk on D: (The Seagate.) from inside Windows, and it reported no errors. I then asked for a full disc check for C:

As with XP, a chkdsk session was scheduled the next time I rebooted, which I did. A black screen with white text told me that a disc check had been scheduled, and it gave me a 10-second countdown in which to cancel. I ignored his and chkdsk started doing its stuff: -

I apologise for the lousy picture: I was using a CRT monitor, and the curved glass screen isn’t easy to photograph with a camera-phone.

The first thing you’ll notice is that the blue background of XP has been done away with, and replaced with plain black. This is good, as white text on a black background is much easier to read. Added to this was the fact that chkdsk, rather than just giving the user a basic idea of what it was doing, telling how far it had got with doing it in %, and making the user wait without much of a clue until it was finished, as it does in XP; actually specifies more precisely what it’s doing, gives a live textual readout of the process, and count of files processed. After each stage it’ll write details of any corrections that it’s made on the screen, rather than waiting until it’s finished, flashing up the report for a couple of seconds, blanking the screen, and booting into Windows. – It does, however still do this as its finale’, which I found a bit disconcerting after seeing all the improvements previously.

Another thing that I noticed was that the percentage-count covered the entire chkdsk operation, rather than just the stage’s progress. This isn’t a big problem, but the bloody thing is so inaccurate: Half way through Stage 4 (File data verification.) it was reading 22%, at the end of stage 4 it was reading 25%, and the disc was 75% full of files. During stage 5, (Free space verification.) as it processed nearly 17 million free clusters in just over 1/4 hour, it caught up and finished that stage on 99, 100%… And up scrolls the text. – The report is displayed, the user gets to read the first sentence, and it vanishes. – They really should get that fixed.

My verdict: A lot better than the XP chkdsk; but still virtually partially pointless if the user never gets a chance to read the end report.

Any opinions to add, anybody?

You may notice – if you don’t use ClearType in Windows XP – that you sometimes have to squint at the screen to read text; particularly if, like me, your vision isn’t perfect. This can be somewhat of a pain-in-the-ass and may even cause eye-strain with prolonged use of the computer.

There is a remedy, other than buying a pair of glasses: Microsoft have come running to the rescue with ClearType; which smoothes off the errant original font edges somewhat, and makes text easier to see. You, the user, tune it yourself to exactly how you’d like it. – Both during setup, and from the Windows XP Control-Panel afterwards if you like.

To set up Clear-Type, the best option is to go to the relevant Microsoft Typography page and download the ClearType Tuner Power Toy. Install and run the software, tuning it up so that everything’s good in your eyes as you do so. If you need to make further adjustments afterwards at any time; follow the instructions below which I snagged from Microsoft’s typography page: -

Related links

• ClearType Information page
• Online ClearType tuner
• Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP

At times you may find that you have a supply of DC (Direct Current) electricity that is too high a voltage for the circuit that you’re intending to power: While changing the value of resistors in the circuit in line with Ohm’s Law can be the answer to this problem; there is a simpler answer which, especially in the case of a large circuit requiring the supply of power, will cost less and use a lot less components: -

In a situation where you have, for instance, a 12 volt DC supply, and the circuit you intend to power has an optimal working voltage of 5 volts DC, you can add a little circuit in between the 12 volt supply rails from the power supply unit and the circuit’s + and – rails.

The active component in this little circuit, consisting of an integrated-circuit and two capacitors, is a voltage-regulator IC. This device is available in a number of different builds for the purpose of supplying different currents and voltages: from a few volts at only 10mA, (Milliamperes) right up to several tens of volts at 20 or more amperes.

The circuit diagram above shows this very simple circuit: Capacitor, C1, is a 10 microfarad electrolytic capacitor with a suitable working voltage-rating for the DC input voltage applied across the input terminals on the left of the circuit: In our example above this is 12 volts. – So C1 should, in that case, have a working voltage of between 15 and 25 volts, to be on the safe side. Capacitor C2 is any 0.1 microfarad (100 nanofarad.) capacitor, connected across the output terminals of the circuit.

The voltage regulator IC itself should be of the correct voltage output and should be able to handle the necessary current load flowing through it: Therefore if, in this case, the circuit you want to supply with 5 volts DC draws 450 milliamperes of current at peak load; you would be able to get away with a 5 volt, 500mA regulator.

- That’s how it’s done; ‘simple as that: There is one main limiting factor though; and that is that the input voltage must always be at least 3 volts higher than the required output voltage. This is the case with any regulator IC. – Therefore if you wanted the output voltage to be 10 volts, you’d fit a 10 volt regulator and supply it with at least 13 volts.

The circuit doesn’t work the other way round: So you can’t input 5 volts to the output and expect 12 volts to appear at the input. Conversely, there is no such device that will increase a DC voltage above the input voltage.

(– Don’t get me wrong here: Such devices do exist; but they work by sacrificing input current for the sake of output voltage. (I mean that, with such a type of device, which is a totally different and much more complex device than the voltage regulator that this article is about; you could input, say, 10 volts at 1 amp and get 12 volts at 100mA at the output… But that’s another article’s worth maybe.))

Mathematically; the function can be expressed as:

Vout = Vout(IC1) = Vin + =/> 3V

In plain English: The output voltage is equal to the designated output voltage of IC1, which is equal to the input voltage plus 3 or more volts.

If a certain amount of current is required at the output, then two conditions must be met: As I said earlier; IC1 must be rated to be able to handle that amount of current, and the required amount of current must also be present at the input, plus a few tens of milliamperes more, as the device itself will use some current in its operation.

It’s a simple little circuit which, provided that the current required at the output isn’t huge (By huge I mean 5A or more.), can be built in minutes on a 5 tag piece of tagstrip with a missed-tag between the poles of the capacitors, or by utilising 3 connector-blocks if you can’t get hold of a soldering-iron at the time. The total cost would be less than £2.00UKP including components, tagstrip, and solder used. If you want to encase it in a case of its own then that’ll add to the cost. – Maybe you could fit it inside the case of the circuit that you’d like to power through it?

‘Comments invited.

Pretty much all this year (2009); especially since March, I’ve been urging everybody to upgrade to a 64-bit operating system if at all possible when they upgrade to Windows 7: Be that with the acquisition of a new computer, or by means of upgrading the operating system in their existing machine.

There may be something holding some people back from doing that though: That being the matter of compatibility; of existing devices and of frequently used applications.

The question is this: Will devices that worked well in 32-bit operation still work in 64-bit operations?

The answer to that is: Normally, yes; although you’ll need to download and install a 64-bit driver for the device in question in the 64-bit version of Windows 7. If the device is an older device then there might not have been a 64-bit driver developed for it. If it’s a newer device then chances are that there are both 32 and 64-bit drivers available for the device, both of which can be downloaded from the internet.

In the majority of cases this will be true, but in a few cases, usually with regard to older devices, and I mean much older devices, it may not be so. I would assume, however, that if a device doesn’t have an available 64-bit driver to go with it, then it’s probably not capable of working with Windows 7; 32 or 64-bit anyway. I believe that this would be correct in at least 9 out of 10 cases.

Why do I assume this? Simply because of the following: When XP was released, everything was 32-bit. A few 64-bit-capable devices were around, with matching 64-bit drivers, but these were rather few and far between. In those days processors were single-cored, and while becoming faster and faster, they were nevertheless only 32-bit capable.

Eventually a 64-bit version of Windows XP was released – I’m not sure as to at what point in time this was, but even if devices were 64-bit capable, many lacked 64-bit driver support, and the manufacturers didn’t bother writing any 64-bit software to accompany their product because the demand was so tiny that it was hardly worth investing the money in research and development to do so. – Thus 64-bit XP never really took off, and everyone bar a few stuck to 32-bit, even after the development and commercial release of the first 64-bit processor.

In 2007 along came Windows Vista. This was meant to be a big thing; but Microsoft had developed it in total secrecy, and most manufacturers weren’t prepared for producing the new type of hardware that was required by Vista. The thing was that there was neither the proper hardware available for either the 32 or the 64-bit version of Vista, bar that from a number of Microsoft’s partner organisations which had been given advanced disclosure.

This, added to the fact that Vista was as buggy as a dead log in an Amazonian jungle, put a lot of people right off it; and it basically flopped. (As an example of this; there are to this day over 3 times as many people visiting this blog using XP as there are those that use Vista to do so.) – However a 64-bit version of Vista was available from the outset, and many of those who did take to using Vista over time actually bought and used it. Manufacturers developed both 32 and 64-bit drivers for their add-on peripherals and devices for running under Windows Vista as a rule, because there was a marked growth in 64-bit usage. The new type of hardware that was Vista-compatible was backwards-compatible with Windows XP, but a lot of the hardware that was originally built to run XP on wasn’t compatible with Vista, nor did it have any 64-bit drivers for it; neither for use with XP or with Vista. – Add to this the fact that most if not all drivers; both 32 and 64-bit, that were developed for XP, won’t work eith Vista or Windows 7 anyway.

Windows 7 uses exactly the same hardware technology as does Vista; so this time there’s no problem with device-compatibility between devices designed to run with Vista and those designed to run with Windows 7. – However, the devices designed to run under XP that won’t work in Vista also won’t work in Windows 7. – And there are many of those devices still around – because many people; myself included, never bothered to move to Vista from XP. I’ve scrapped and broken up my original XP computer, but many people still have theirs; and chances are that their machines won’t run Windows 7, or will run it so badly that they’ll be unusable to all intents and purposes. Whilst it may be the case that the existing XP-capable machines can be upgraded to run Windows 7, it’s hardly worth doing so: The hardware’s old and was never meant for today’s demands: To my mind it’s just throwing good money after bad.

- So my advice to anyone who’s currently running XP on their computer any older than 3 years old is to get a new computer that’s capable of running Windows 7 64-bit, and do so. You will appreciate the benefits of being able to use more than 3.5 gigabytes of RAM more and more as time goes by.

I have 2 Vista/Windows 7 64-bit-capable machines currently, both of which I built in the last year. On one of them, which has a dual-core AMD Athlon 64 x 2 processor, I’ve added a few parts from the old XP box which won’t run under Vista and/or a 64-bit operating system – because I run Windows XP 32-bit on that machine, and intend to continue doing so until 2014, after which I’ll probably retire it, maybe install some flavour of Linux on it perhaps, and use it as a spare machine. The other one currently runs Windows 7 Ultimate RC 64-bit, has an AMD Phenom 3-core processor, 8GB RAM, and is excellent.

So, speaking as a computer-builder, there’s really no reason why anyone shouldn’t run Windows 7 64-bit from a hardware-standpoint.

- There’s another question though: Will software that worked well in 32-bit operation still work in a 64-bit operating system?

The answer to that is: Most likely, yes. 64-bit Windows 7 includes backwards-compatibility for 32-bit programs. (Until Vista; 32-bit Windows included 16-bit backwards-compatibility. (There is a 16-bit Space Invaders game available from this blog that I still play occasionally under XP. (It won’t work in Vista or 7.))If you want it, type “Space Invaders” into the blog’s search-bar.)

If, for whatever reason, your 32-bit program won’t run under a 64-bit Windows 7 operating system, then install Sun Virtual Box, which is free, and run 32-bit Windows inside that. That way you can run your original applications in 32-bit within a 64-bit environment.

In conclusion, then, there really is no reason to install 32-bit Windows 7; certainly not on any new computer, and probably not on any older computer. If you have a machine that will only run XP 32-bit and can’t afford to upgrade both machine and operating system yet than don’t fret: You have until 2014 to save up for and buy a new box with Windows 7 64-bit pre-installed. – Microsoft aren’t planning to drop XP support yet. (- But your old box may give up the ghost before then though.)

What do you plan to do? – Upgrade an old or previously-used machine, or buy new? Do you plan to run a 64-bit operating system?

Windows XP, known by the overly-zealous Linux zealots as Ex Pee, has been around for what appears to be ages: In fact so long that many people who use a computer now have, fortunately for them, only heard of Windows ME, 2000, 98SE, etc. – In fact a few were still toddlers when XP was RTM’d. Although later in the month of writing this article, October 2009, Windows 7 is due to be RTM’d, there are no doubt those who will stick to XP – Home or Professional – as well as those who buy netbooks and have XP preinstalled on them even after Windows 7 is in full swing.

(Interestingly, an online associate of mine from Tampa, Florida, by the name of Rich Menga, installed Windows 7 RC onto a netbook he bought with XP preinstalled and it worked a treat… But that’s another story.)

We’ll be right back after this short commercial break: -

So, for those who are still using Old Faithful, there are ways to make XP better, faster, stronger than before; without having to spend six-million dollars on making technological improvements to it. (That loose reference to the “Six Million Dollar Man” shows my age again.) There are many XP tips and tweaks contained on this blog. In fact it would be useful if I were to index them all on a separate page. – I might get to starting that in due course. – For now, though, to add to the count, here’s another one for the record: -

In Windows XP, the Start Menu has been set by default to give a built-in delay between the time you click the start button and the point at which the Start Menu appears. It’s less than half a second; but time is money, and getting rid of the delay could save you a few bucks in the long run.

Here is how to increase the response time of your Start Menu. – In fact how to make it appear instantly when you click the Start button: – (This can’t be done (in this way) with Windows 7 by the way.)

This tweak does include editing the registry; and so, to be on the safe side of cautious, it would be a good idea to take a registry backup before attempting this, just in case.

Open a Command Prompt by clicking Start>Run. Type “regedit”, press OK, and navigate to the key

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop

Look for the substring

MenuShowDelay

and set its value to zero.

Exit the Registry Editor.

Now click the Start button. You’ll notice that the Start Menu appears instantly when you click it.

Target neutralised.

- Another time-saving XP tweak from Beyond at kkomp.com.

Oh yes: Just in case you’ve moused-over the Start-button image at the top of the page, and you’re wondering WTF the HmmXP theme is, click here for more info and installation instructions.

Please comment if you wish.

In an article that I wrote over on PC Mech we spoke of making a registry backup by using System Restore.

“System Restore backs up your registry. It also backs up some other things, but mainly it backs up the registry. If you’re installing a new driver, for instance, it’ll record the system state before the driver update was installed. If you get problems with the new software, it’ll revert you back to how things were if you ask it to.”

“If you are asked to back up your registry, set a new System Restore point. System Restore is an excellent tool for the job.”

- But although System Restore does back-up the registry, it’s not a simple registry backup in itself. Also, if you were to create a restore-point one week, then the following week restore your box to the last restore-point, you’d lose all the changes made in the last week; not just the one or two you want to get rid of.

What we need is an old-style registry backup; just like we used to make in Windows 9x. – And it’s not hard to make one either: -

The Process: -

Call up the run command: -

In Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7: Press Windows and R keys together.

Type “regedit” and press enter.

Select “Computer”.

Click “File” in the toolbar and select “Export”.

Type in the name you choose for the backup, also select the location at which you want it to be saved, and click “Save”.

That’s it: You have just made a fully accessible registry backup. I would suggest making one of these at least every week and storing it in a folder with all the previous ones you’ve made; for reference purposes. You might like to store this folder on a remote (NAS) server or external HDD, as each registry-backup you make will most likely be a few hundred megabytes in size, and after a month the gigabytes will start clocking up bigtime. It may be an idea to create a new folder every month to house that month’s registry-backups, and delete folders full of registry-backups that are more than 6 months old in order to save space.

If you want to restore your registry, you just click on the file that you’d like to restore from, and all the settings in that file will be copied to the registry.

If you’re altering the registry in any way; it would be an idea to take a backup in this way, so that you can save time by restoring the .reg file if you manage to screw up your registry in some way, rather than the long tedious process of using System Restore.

Do you edit your registry ever? (I do occasionally.) Do you back up your registry ever?

Was it just me, or were graphics cards once exciting? I remember clearly the day a number of years ago when I got my first graphics card. It was a Radeon, 128MBs, not sure which model exactly. I fitted it to my Intel 2.8GHz Pentium4  single-core-powered box that had previously been running the onboard 32MB graphics sharing a piece of the 500MBs DDR RAM. I’d just fitted a brand new Hauppauge analogue TV card, in advance of having cable TV installed, and the 32 megs wasn’t quite enough to produce a replica TV-like result. The installation engineer had suggested that I should upgrade the graphics, and I agreed.

There were a lot of graphics cards being used even then; mainly by the gamers and top-end builders, but a number were used in the “lower-echelons” too. I seem to have missed the tip of the wave but still been dragged near to the shore by the follow-up current on that one. Today, any machine that’s not an office-computer or a very old box probably has a graphics-card fitted. – Graphics cards seem to be the norm in most cases.

Gigabyte are getting the idea lately, and have produced a board without graphics capability. Why waste a graphics chip built into the chipset when you’re going to use a dedicated graphics card anyway? – But now Intel are getting ready to bring out a new range of processors with integrated graphics processors. It’ll make Intel motherboards cheaper perhaps? It might eventually become a way to save money, once the cost of the processors have come down from somewhere in orbit of the planet too.

- Graphics card have lost their fizz these days though. There is nothing really exciting about them any more.

It is partly this, perhaps, that has inspired ATI to produce the Radeon HD 5870: -

Almost twice the power of the HD 4870

2,150,000,000 (Two billion, one hundred and fifty million.) transistors provide 1,600 stream-processors, running at a clock-speed of 850 MHz; utilising the 1GB GDDR5 memory running at 1.2GHz. You’d think that with all that power it would double as a hot-plate and glow-in-the dark; however ATI have used a smaller die-size for the GPU, and it only uses 22 watts more than its half-powered predecessor at 188 watts maximum, idling at only 27 watts.

This card fully supports Direct X 11, as does Windows 7. (Vista users may well get an update too.) Although DX11 games are a bit thin on the ground right now, various sources expect them to make a mass-appearance soon. The bog-standard edition comes with 4 outputs: twin dual DVI ports, HDMI ports, and Display Port. The user can run up to 3 monitors at once and play games at high-resolution across all 3.

Eyefinity

ATI have thought up an amazing new way to utilise all that power; and have included outputs for up to six monitors on the Eyefinity6 edition of the card.

Lastly

At £350UKP or thereabouts currently it’s by no means cheap; but it’s a bit more worth-it than most new cards with their associated high-prices. Even if you don’t play DX11 games, this baby should allow you to play DX9 and 10 games across multiple monitors with all the settings on full.

More

Link

Link

I know I previously said that I’d only be doing a Public Newsletter fortnightly, but I decided to write this one as an extra in light of circumstances.

This week has been fraught with frights: Viruses have been the main bane of the week, as I’ve been plagued with infection. (My apologies to anyone who received spam from the email worm.) Yesterday, Thursday 8th October, I designated as malware day on kkomp.com, and published a couple of posts related to malware and its removal.

The first one of these was Is 64-bit Windows Less Prone to Malware Than 32-Bit?; an important question for those seeking extra security.

The second; Microsoft Security Essentials – Excellent Free Antivirus Solution,  tells my recent story with regard to a great piece of free software that is new, just out of beta, and totally effective. – With this guarding your Windows PC, malware has very little chance.

PC Mech:

As I write this newsletter, another great tech site; PC Mech, is having problems, and is temporarily unavailable. The problem appears to be linked to the site’s database from what little I can glean. Owner David Risley is frantically working to restore the prominent tech-site to its former glory by getting it back online.

The site’s server at Pair Networks responds to a ping, as does the database server; so it appears to be a php problem with WordPress installation itself.

This must come as a severe blow to David Risley himself, as he relies on PC Mech for a large proportion of his and his family’s livelihood. Every second the site’s not online is costing him money both in terms of lost income and time taken up in restoring the site or attempting to do so.

This situation is one of a blogger’s worst nightmares, particularly as far as an eminent problogger such as Risley himself is concerned. This site, the one you’re looking at right now, has also been down before; for the reason that the hosting company put the domain on a backroom scripting server because it was taking up too many resources on the shared-platform server that it was on until fairly recently, and following that there were a number of teething troubles following the move to a dedicated server, resulting in around 6 days downtime in total.

Unlike David Risley, I don’t rely totally on my online activities for my income and livelihood at this point in time; although that may one day change.

All I can do is express my hopes that PC Mech is up and running again as soon as possible, and that David and his family, which include his pregnant wife Malika, due to give birth to a boy in January, plus his little daughter Elyana, don’t suffer as a result of the issue.

Added later on: PC Mech is now back online.

Virus:

As I mentioned, I’ve spent the last few days cleaning my system repeatedly after two Trojan downloaders found their way onto a hard-drive. If you ever pick up a virus, a Trojan downloader or two is one of the last types you want: If your anti-malware programs fail to see the downloader then it makes no difference how many pieces of malware they remove; the downloader itself will simply replace them and add more.

I was using F-secure 2009 Internet Security Suite beta version, of which I hold a licence until later this month, as my anti-malware program on my 3-core Windows 7 64-bit box, on the hard-drive of which the downloaders resided. F-Secure didn’t see them, and Avast! free edition failed to spot a backdoor Trojan, an email worm, and a keylogger, on the networked dual-cored box running XP professional 32-bit. Microsoft’s new anti-malware solution did though, fortunately, and it cleaned the system totally.

Other Issues:

It appears that today is anti-malware-day on kkomp.com: So I’ve written a bonus article, because I really do recommend that you use this free software: -

As you may or may not know, I’ve been plagued with viruses over the last few days. Fortunately the infection has now been dealt with; thanks to Microsoft Security Essentials. When I became infected, my antivirus solution provided by Avast! simply didn’t see it. Malwarebytes was oblivious to it also. – Yet there was definitely an infection, as my system was spewing out spam emails to all on my contacts-list, as well as to non-existent addresses that the worm was probing by creating the address itself and seeing if the mail was delivered.

AdAware from Lavasoft managed to find a keylogger, a backdoor Trojan, and the worm itself. I thought that the problem was sorted at that point, and went merrily on my way singing joyfully and blogging crazily. The following day I activated my email client, then switched on the 64-bit box, as well as the external hard-drive. My email inbox was soon swamped by hundreds of “Message Undeliverable” emails. The worm was back!

How? I cleaned both boxes with AdAware, I formatted the external hard-drive, including all the backups, and made a fresh backup. Nevertheless I did it all again, and the system stopped sending spam. I ran 4 different programs on all drives of both machines. All reported that the system was clean. Imagine my horror when two days later the system started sending spam again!

I’d recently been reading an article on PC Mech.com, entitled “Free Anti-Virus From Microsoft Is Now Available”. This gave me an idea: Microsoft earlier dropped its Windows One-Care program, and promised to replace it with something a bit lighter. This was the promised product; just out of beta.

My thinking started to run along the lines of: “Well it’s a new antivirus solution, it’s from Microsoft, it works with Windows 7 64-bit as well as with Windows XP 32-bit; both of which I run, and it’s best of all FREE, which means that it won’t hurt to give it a try. – There’s definitely a problem somewhere on my system that everything I’ve tried so far is missing; so let’s give it a whirl.”

I isolated the box running XP 32-bit, removed Avast! free-edition from it, and installed Microsoft Security Essentials. I set it to auto scan in 1/2-hour . To cut a long story short it found 4 pieces of malware, which it rated as a severe threat, and removed them. Upon reconnection; after I’d isolated the Windows 7 box, having installed Microsoft Security Essential on it, no spam. Yay!

I ran it on the 64-bit Windows 7 box. – It found the culprits: Two instances of Trojan downloaders: ASX.Winmad.AN, and ASX.Winmad.CJ. It deleted the infected files, which had been downloading various malware infections and distributing them over my LAN. – Target neutralised: I’m now virus free.

I can’t speak too highly of Microsoft Security Essentials. It’s a glowingly-excellent piece of software from the softies. Microsoft Security Essentials was the only free antivirus solution that was able to both see and clear the entire virus-infection and fully clean my system. Most other solutions couldn’t see any infection at all, and those that did didn’t get to the root of the issue. Microsoft Security Essentials, however, did the business and completely solved the problem.

After that glowing report, let’s get back to reality with the nitty-gritty: -

Microsoft Security Essentials is extremely thorough: On its default setting it scans everything, and I mean everything. It looks inside zipped archives; personal, program, and system archives, byte by byte: .CAB files and the like are no longer safe places for malware to hide. If it does then it will die by being detected and eradicated bit-by-bit.

Being so thorough; there are obviously limiting factors.

The first of these is time: Microsoft Security Essentials is fast; there’s no doubt about that, but it does so much work that it’s no faster than any other antivirus solution of a similar type. I found that on my box running 64-bit Windows 7 with a 3-core AMD Phenom CPU running at 2.3GHz and 8GBs DDR2 800MHz RAM, Microsoft Security Essentials managed to scan about 50 GBs of data an hour.

The second is heat: With such a colossal amount of calculations being processed at a quite incredible speed, the processor would have a lot of work to do, and therefore produce heat. This antivirus solution, running a full scan, is no laughing matter. I have a feeling that a single-cored processor of 1.8GHz or less would have problems with it. Indeed, from personal experience, I had a lot of programs running at the same time as the full-scan was happening on my AMD Athlon 64×2-powered box, running 32-bit XP Professional at 2.3GHz with 2GBs DDR2 667MHz RAM, and the processor usage went so high for so long that the thermal-trip shut the CPU down before it fried. Running Microsoft Security Essentials on its own caused no such problem though, and the scan was slower than on the 3-core Phenom, but totally effective nevertheless.

As you’ll see from the white CPU-usage graph in the top-left corner of the picture of the readout from Glint system monitor, above, the processor usage can be quite large. This readout was from the Athlon 64×2 XP box with only Microsoft Security Essentials running.

One other thing: If you’re running 64-bit XP; and that’s probably not a lot of you, as 64-bit XP can be a nightmare as far as drivers are concerned, there’s no version of Microsoft Security Essentials for your operating system. Microsoft Security Essentials has versions for 32-bit XP, 32-bit Vista and Windows 7, and 64-bit Vista and Windows 7.

Have you tried out Microsoft Security Essentials yet? If so then what do you think of it?

‘No pictures in this article: If you miss them, just imagine them into it. There are ads though; so do click and buy to your heart’s content.

Having been fighting malware all weekend; which pissed me off no end as I was trying to concentrate on Izeafest, chat in the Izeafest chatroom, and clean a computer, all at once (I’ve incidentally now eradicated the malware.) I thought it fitting to write something about it: -

Recently…

You see, I was infected by three very nasty bits of malware: -

Win32.Backdoor.Poison, which will open up remote access to the user’s computer. Welcome to the botnet.

Win32.TrojanPWSAgent, which is a keylogger which records keystrokes and passwords, transmitting them to a remote server.

and a generic W32.worm that spammed my contacts lists.

Fortunately I had my email program open at the time I was infected, and realised that something was wrong when a load of message undeliverable emails started to appear in my inbox. (My contacts list is cluttered with many no-longer-used email addresses from years ago.) I opened a couple of these, which made it clear that my comp was sending out spam emails: They contained a random passage from a book followed by a line along the lines of “Give her more pleasure…”.

That was an indication that I’d been infected by something. My antivirus (Avast!) hadn’t noticed it though; which was strange, as it usually gives false-positives rather than missing anything. A full-scan by Malwarebytes showed that not even Malwarebytes could see any problem either. Lavasoft’s Ad-Aware to the rescue: It found and quarantined the three pieces of malware listed above after a scan. Avast! also found the W32 Generic worm; but by the time it had finished scanning it was already dealt with.

Was there an upshot from being infected by these viruses? In this case I don’t think so. During the short amount of time the comp was infected whilst online I hardly used the keyboard at all, and I definitely didn’t enter any passwords in that period either, nor afterwards until the machine was clean. (I watched Izeafest on the other comp; the 64-bit Windows 7 comp. (Interestingly, Safari crashed twice in 64-bit Windows 7 that weekend. I used Safari to watch as it has a larger viewing area than FireFox, IE8, and K-Meleon: The other browsers I have installed.)) I don’t think the botnet server actually connected before the malware was eliminated.

Did that 64-bit comp get infected? Yes; kind of: Each comp backs itself up onto the other via the LAN at an appointed time. The infected file; which I’ll tell you more about later, was copied over, but it didn’t activate on the 64-bit comp as soon as it did on the 32-bit comp. – For reason’s I’m unclear on. – Therefore the 64-bit comp had the malware dropper package installed, but it hadn’t activated yet. AdAware found and quarantined the malware package.

Get on with it

I’ll be getting to the point in a minute. First I want to warn you about free Ebooks on Facebook that are distributed by users: Unfortunately free (ancient) Ebooks aren’t all you get; there’s a hidden bonus in one of the files: A dropper, which activates after a certain length of time and infects your machine as it did mine.

I’ve reported the group; although the Facebook reporting system appears to intentionally avoid any method of easily reporting a malware-distributor, for whatever reason. If you’ve joined this group yourself, and have downloaded the free-Ebooks zip file, then I suggest that you scan it with AdAware immediately, whether or not you’ve unzipped it. If you’ve distributed any Ebooks from it then you’re unknowingly aiding in the spread of malware.

That was a long introduction. if you’re still awake, then let’s get into the main point of this post: -

The Main Point:

Notice that the malware’s names all have the prefix Win32 or W32. That means that it’s a 32-bit virus that targets Windows.

“So if I have a 64-bit version of Windows it won’t be targeted, right?”

Wrong: In the same way that it’s easily possible to run 32-bit Windows applications in a 64-bit Windows environment, so its possible for 32-bit malware to execute in a 64-bit environment as far as it goes with Windows. In short the backwards-compatibility of a 64-bit Windows operating system is its downfall, as well as being very handy.

“Why, then, didn’t the malware execute in 64-bit Windows 7, in the case above, at the same time as it activated in 32-bit Windows XP?”

‘Good question. I’m not sure. Possibly it might have something to do with the extra security of Windows 7? If it had attempted to execute in Windows 7 then a prompt would have appeared asking me whether I wanted to allow the process to run anyway. – But it didn’t; so I am as foxed as you are on this one.

Ramble

Finally then; although 64-bit is no more secure than 32-bit against 32-bit malware in itself, it’s still a better idea to install the 64-bit version of Windows 7 on your system if possible. The only thing that should stop you doing so is the fact that your motherboard isn’t 64-bit compatible and/or is running a 32-bit processor. Other than in such a case it would be advantageous to install the 64-bit version.

“Why? – You just said it makes no difference as far as malware is concerned.”

Indeed I did; but it makes a lot of difference as far as the amount of RAM you can use is concerned: A 32-bit operating system can use up to 4GB RAM. Whilst 4 GB RAM is currently enough for most people in general; and is totally adequate for running Windows 7 alone, there are, nevertheless, applications such as games and professional-quality imaging programs, that would thank you for the extra RAM above 4GB by working better, more efficiently, and faster.

In the future at some point, as all apps become more sophisticated, they’ll also become more memory-hungry, and 4GB will become an insubstantial amount of RAM to run them efficiently.

Ten years ago, in the era of Windows 98 dominance, it was common to have 32MB PC100 RAM in a computer. – And that was considered standard. (Yes, in the days of the Socket 7 32-bit single-cored processors, when AGP graphics cards were plentiful and still just about the norm. – When an upgrade from the 4 or 8MB onboard graphics to a 16MB AGP graphics card was considered to be a big thing.) These days you could hardly run an operating system alone with only 32MB RAM. 8MB graphics will just about display the screen in XP. – Badly.

Ten years from now it’ll be the norm to have a 64-bit operating system with 32GBs (Gigabytes, rather than megabytes.) or more of (DDR5?) RAM, and at least 1GB graphics capability. – You wait and see.

Your thoughts? – Please do comment.

 At first, Microsoft were going to sell Windows 7 in Europe without a browser, but with a browser-choice screen at setup, so that the user could choose which browser they wanted to use as the default browser, without having IE8 installed from the offing. This version of Windows 7 was to be sold only in Europe in accordance with the European Commission’s wishes, with an E suffix, as in Windows 7-E.

This may seem rather silly and much ado about nothing – But in Europe we pay millions of Euros to have a bunch of elected representatives who are elected in a mid-term-anti-governmental-protest-vote in each respective country to make crazily-overly-pedantic regulations to make everyone’s life as difficult as possible so that they can impose multi-billion-dollar fines on all and sundry to pay for their so-called “productivity-bonuses”.

Microsoft are one of this regime’s biggest victims: The European Commission targets them particularly because they have oodles of money, and can pay multiples of multi-million-dollar fines imposed upon them through EC victimisation.

Suddenly Microsoft have decided; in light of the EC’s sloth in deciding whether to accept or reject the proposal of an E-version of Windows 7, that they’re going to ship the same version of Windows 7 to Europe as they are to the rest of the world; at least initially.

Dropping the E-version is good news for the Softies: They can now give consumers more choice at launch, as they simply didn’t have enough time to remove IE8 from the Windows 7 discs that they intended to sell as E versions.

It’s not 100% clear what’s going to happen now by any means; and things could change overnight anyway. It appears that Internet Explorer 8 will now be incorporated into Windows 7 as the default browser, but there may or may not be a browser-ballot-screen included, similar to the original plans, so that the user can choose which browser they’d like as default on installation.

This does, nevertheless, seem fairly pointless: Computer manufacturers are going to choose IE8 as the default browser for the sake of simplicity when they pre-install Windows 7 on their machines. – So what’s the point? The point is to attempt to satisfy the whims of the grossly-overpaid European Commission who made the rules in the first place.

Remember; when you pay for Windows 7 in Europe, you’re paying partly towards payment of the huge fines imposed on Microsoft by the EC; and fine them they will, whatever they do: Heads the EC win; tails Microsoft lose. Do you agree? Please comment.

The page I’m going to link to has been around a while, and many tech people have probably already seen it; but for your information and edification I’ll present it again for the benefit of those who haven’t yet had the pleasure.

As we’ve already seen evidenced in the article “Hard-Drives Are Unreliable – Fact”, a hard-drive, any given hard-drive, could shuffle off this mortal coil to the great junkyard in the sky at any point in time from first usage onwards. The page linked to further on contains actual short recordings of the sounds made by various dead and dying hard-drives.

In line with all this talk of death; it might be an idea to ghost-copy your hard-drive if it’s started making noises that it didn’t used to make.

“Oh but mine’s been making funny noises for about six months now and it’s still working fine!”

- You probably have between 1 second and another six months before it fails catastrophically. Take my advice: Back up everything you want to keep on it and replace it as soon as possible; because it is already starting to fail, and it will totally fail without a doubt; at the most inconvenient time.

Here’s the link to the page I mentioned.

Enjoy.

AHCI stands for Advanced Host Controller Interface. Advanced Host Controller Interface was designed purposefully with SATA hard-discs in mind: The Advanced Host Controller Interface standard allows SATA discs to fully utilise their advanced features; such as hot-swapping and native command queuing.

I have no information about this subject with regard to Linux operating systems, and the same goes for a Mac and OS X, so I’ll stick with Windows only for now. Perhaps a Linux guru and/or a Mac user in the know would comment and fill me in on the blanks I’ve just outlined?

STOP PRESS: In fact, newer mainstream Linux kernels support AHCI natively… See here.

Staying with Windows… AHCI can be activated in the BIOS screen of newer motherboards by changing the SATA ports’ mode from ATA to AHCI; but this action alone may well cause your Windows installation to produce a BSOD on boot. – Simply changing the mode in the BIOS with a Windows operating system already installed on the hard-drive is that the correct storage driver isn’t installed – therefore the existing ATA driver is looking for ATA and finds AHCI; can’t make any sense of it, and crashes Windows.

The way to put this right is to set the BIOS for AHCI (Only if you’re using at least 1 relatively modern SATA drive, of course: The setting will have no effect on their PATA counterparts, as those use a totally separate controller.) and do a repair install, AKA maintenance reinstall, of Windows.

This will cause Windows to set itself up again, this time with the correct drivers. You won’t be able to simply switch back from AHCI to ATA again without performing the repair installation again.

This operation will work with Windows Vista, SP1, 2. It shouldn’t cause any problems in Windows 7 either. With Windows XP I’m not sure, as my sources of information on this subject appear to indicate that it will work in XP SP2 onwards, but possibly only with the inclusion of a vendor-specific driver. It’s probably best to leave the BIOS on a computer with an existing Windows XP installation set to ATA, unless you have a lot of time to experiment. It is possible that it’ll work in XP: Maybe; maybe not – ? Again I’d ask for expert comment on this.

“Windows Vista natively supports both AHCI and NCQ. FreeBSD fully supports AHCI and NCQ since version 8.0.” – Wikipedia.

Internet Explorer 6 Must Die

From time to time I like to blow off some steam from my semi-red(dish)-haired (Now grey but dyed.) head. This is one such occasion; and what better to take out my moanings of condemnation and displeasure on than my old friend Internet Explorer 6?

As you may know; I’m totally against Microsoft’s old and dysfunctional browser, Internet Explorer 6. Two out of five of my visitors running Windows are using IE6; so if you’re viewing this blog in IE6 right now, your viewing experience is, to say the least, limited. I once pulled up this blog on an ancient computer in a hospital I visited in Bournemouth, UK, which was running IE6: It didn’t even look like a blog in all honesty, let alone my blog. – OK, it was during 2008, when this blog had a strange theme and hadn’t been otherwise enhanced much at all, but nevertheless it looked like the blog had been attacked with a sledgehammer, and then thrown back on the screen.

Now this computer had probably never been updated since it arrived in the hospital: It had a sticker on it saying that it was built to run Windows 98, and was being used to run a prosthetic imaging program, slowly. – However it was internet connected; so while the consultant was out of the room I browsed with it while I waited.

In my opinion, computers as old as this simply shouldn’t be running, and I’m extremely surprised that any still are. Nevertheless this is indeed the case. Some of the computers in used at college when I was studying electronics in 2005/6 were so old that the case had been modded to hold a network interface card so that they could connect to the internet! (Joke – But they were ancient; AGP slots, 16MB graphics, etc.) (Yes, I’m talking early Pentium 1 or older.) – Somehow they’d managed to get them to run XP.

(Actually I once installed XP on a comp with a P1 processor, 256 MB PC133 RAM, and 16MB graphics: It did actually run, although slowly and badly. I ended up wiping the disc and putting it just outside my front door at night until somebody eventually stole it. (Good riddance.))

So there are old computers around; but that’s no excuse for running IE6.

It’s getting near that point in the lunar phase where I am likely to get disgruntled easily; and so, bearing this in mind, let’s proceed: -

Some users don’t even realise that they’re running IE6.

I’m not being funny here; but a lot of non-computer-savvy users are running an “old faithful” machine that’s had XP installed on it forever. They don’t know about the essentiality of Microsoft updates, neither do they care, and have the updates turned off. Why? Well they somehow think that the more that they have on their hard-drive, the slower their machine will run. – Therefore they’ve uninstalled such “unnecessary” programs as anti-virus, firewall, etc, and are very prudent about keeping as little on their 4GB HDD as possible. – Yet still their machine is ten-times slower than it was when it was new. – Any ideas why?

These people mentioned above are still, seemingly obviously, running IE6, just as it came with XP from the offing. It works, kind of, between crashes, so why fix it? They don’t know or care that it’s IE6 anyway. It works, even though they get voices and screens full of spammy adverts appearing unexpectedly all the time.

- And it’s much the same scenario with most of those still running Windows 9x: Why pay for a new operating system when the existing one works fine anyway, when all the screens from the malware have been cancelled out that is. I still see it today: Yes, today I saw a user in China who visited this blog was using Windows 98 with Internet Explorer 4! Does the phrase “malware nursery” spring to anyone’s mind?

We’re going off topic somewhat here: The thing is that IE6 is the default browser that ships with Windows XP. people who install XP generally don’t seem to worry so long as it works. Yes many XP users have already upgraded their browser, but many more haven’t bothered. I’ve used XP since 2002. When IE7 came out I upgraded, and again when IE8 RTM was out. After upgrading to IE7 I started using FireFox as my main browser. Many never even bothered whatsoever.

I’ve also seen people running Server 2003 using IE6 too: Probably the same goes for them.

Before we proceed further; let’s take a look at a few adverts: -

Corporate environments

One of this biggest offenders for not updating computers are corporate environments: At college I commented that the IT department were useless as none of the computers had been updated since they had XP installed. I was told that the computers wouldn’t work properly on the college’s massive LAN if they were updated; which was a lie, as I’d updated mine a week ago, as well as installed a firewall with which I could block the tutor from spying on what I was doing on my computer.

I was told that the college’s server had a software firewall installed, and that it acted as a hardware firewall, in addition to which they had a corporate contract with Sophos to update all their antivirus programs on each individual computer regularly.

Whilst the latter was true, and also the former to some extent, it still didn’t make the network secure: All it would take is for a single piece of malware to get in and suddenly the entire network is a massive crapware – incubator and distribution – network. I think someone, whether purposefully or unknowingly, brought a nasty in on a USB stick once (Not me.) which was why the internet was unavailable for a week afterwards.

Corporate environments tend to have IT departments who assume that they’re gods; despite the fact that most of them don’t have a clue; regardless of their training or qualifications. – Add to this the British worker’s attitude of “Do as little as possible for as much as possible”, and you’ll normally find that there’s glaring insecurities in most corporate networks.

IE6 remains there as IE6 works and is inconvenient to upgrade on all machines; corporate licence or not; because the IT department want to charge a fortune for doing it, while Management want to cut costs.

When Vista with IE7 came along; not many people upgraded, because Vista at the time was a heap of merde’. (In fact my blog’s statistics show that the three most popular browsers are, in this order, sadly: Internet Explorer 6, FireFox 3, Internet Explorer 7. IE8 is a little further down at No5.) – But here comes Windows 7: It’s good, it’s well-thought-out, it’s functional, and there’s nothing hidden about it this time. – So buy it. If your computer can’t run it then renew your computer. – And if you can; run the 64-bit version and help kill off RAM-restricted 32-bit computing along with IE6.

Reasons to be cheerful. – Temporarily: -

- But there is one legitimate reason in my mind for using IE6. – One only; and that’s only the case until October 22nd 2009: The user is using Windows 2000.

Windows 2000 won’t run IE7 or 8, so there’s a slither of an excuse for using it until Windows 7 is officially launched. – After which people should take their old computers offline in my opinion, anything that won’t run Vista or 7 should be disconnected from the internet and used as a stand-alone machine. Cost is really no longer much of an obstacle. – Stop drinking, smoking, taking drugs, gambling, whatever, and buy a new computer. (A decent computer is a million times more important.) – I’ve already showed you recently, in the article entitled “Build a Decent Budget PC for £225GBP”, how you can build your own well-specced machine for a couple of nicker plus.

“But I can’t…” Rubbish; “can’t” means “can’t be bothered to learn how”.

Yes you can build it yourself: As a child; did you ever fit Lego bricks together? Then you can build a computer: It’s an adult version of Lego, with wires, data, and electricity added to make it a bit more difficult than a Lego set.

To borrow a phrase from an online associate; if you run IE6 after October 2009, then you lose at life. – End of story. If you’re running it now then stop doing so and update your computer, or scrap it and buy/build another one + buy Windows 7 when it RTMs. If you don’t know whether you’re running it or not, then if you’re using XP, (Or Windows 9x – Which you shouldn’t be doing: You’re a security risk to yourself and all other internet users.) and haven’t updated your browser since installation, then you probably are. – Get it sorted.

- And so the novel ends here: Pressure between my ears has equalised with the air-pressure inside this room, and I’m happy again. Please keep me a happy bunny by not using Internet Explorer 6. By not doing so you’ll have a better browsing experience, and I won’t get so frustrated at seeing so much IE6 usage either. My suggestion is, whatever version of Internet Explorer you’re using, if running Windows, whether or not you’re aware what version it is, simply install FireFox and use that instead for browsing. If you don’t like FireFox then use Opera or Safari.

At the top of the page there are some browser logos, just under the words “This blog does not fully support Internet Explorer 6 or earlier. If you are using IE6, please download a decent browser. Click on a browser logo below: –“. If you hover over a logo it’ll identify itself to you. If you click it then you can download the respective browser and use it in place of IE6.

I’ll be nice, charitable even: I’ll bring the logos down here so that you IE6 users can click on them and get a decent browser. – Aren’t I kind? : -

There you are: Now you can browse the net with a decent browser and enjoy your experience. – Also I don’t want to see you browse onto this site using IE6 again. In fact, if I can find a piece of fully-reliable IE6 php detection software that never gives a false-positive, then I’m thinking of banning IE6 from this blog altogether in 2010. – I don’t care: IE6 will die; even if it means that I have to to lose some traffic in order to help put it in the grave once and for all.

That’s all.

And now; another advert: -

*A pinch and a punch; it’s the first of the month.*

- I used to know someone who always said that; although I’m not quite sure why, but I thought I’d use it to open this article anyway.

– Anyway; hello, and welcome to yet another public newsletter from kkomp.com.

Before I go into the drawl of what’s been posted on this blog in the last fortnight, I wanted to make mention of a processor that is shaking the world to some extent: That processor being the AMD ATHLON II X4 620: – Introducing the world’s first quad-core processor to hit the market at only $99 retail! Now that’s budget. – But you may imagine that such a low-priced 4-core processor would be vastly inferior to anything that Intel has to offer for more money. – A’la contraire’, it in fact has a lot to offer, even in comparison with some of the well-known Intel offerings.

For more information on this amazing little device, see this article from Anand Tech.

Now let’s take a butcher’s ‘ook at what’s been going down on this blog: -

Yesterday I posted a review of a very nice and not too pricey power-supply that performs well and is making headway towards getting itself a decent reputation: -

September 30, 2009 – Be Quiet! Dark Power. (Power Supply Review.)

Misca and I collaborated to produce a post outlining the process of partitioning in Windows 7. (What wasn’t mentioned was that this could have an adverse market effect on products such as Paragon Partition Manager and the like.)

September 29, 2009 – How to Create & Delete a Partition in Windows 7

We have a competition of sorts running on this blog; running, in fact, into 2010: Your mission; should you choose to accept it, is to create and submit for publication a post which is so good that it goes to and stays at the No1 spot in the kkomp.com Top 10 for three months. In return you could well get a free piece of internet real-estate, a free link back to your blog or website, and a chance to win some money too!

September 28, 2009 – Can Your Post Make it to The Number One Slot?

There’s something new lurking deep within Windows 7; Virtual-Wi-Fi: Misca explains.

September 25, 2009 – Virtual-Wi-Fi

To clear up any confusion as to where the power goes from the PSU onwards; I’ve written a piece on the electricity supply rails inside your computer, and what voltages you’ll find.

September 24, 2009 – Watt Volt Goes Where?

15 months; 500 posts, and counting: This blog reached this milestone, or thereabouts this September: It was fitting, then, to dedicate an article specially to that event, and take a look back too.

September 23, 2009 – Article 500

Unlike its predecessors; Windows 7 has a rather convenient way of allowing the user to easily upgrade to a higher version, and give more money to Microsoft. – It makes sense if you ask me.

September 22, 2009 – Anytime Upgrade in Windows 7 – AND UK Prices

The cost of hardware continues on its descent, and in this article we take a look around at some components with good overall performance that can be assembled into a decent, fully-working, Intel-dual-core-processor-driven, budget PC, that won’t even cost the arm part of an arm and a leg.

September 21, 2009 – Build a Decent Budget PC for £225GBP

Ironically, fasthosts.co.uk could be the slowest hosts in existence: My server kept crashing, so I paid a small fortune for an engineer’s report, and subsequently decided on a RAM upgrade. Fasthosts tied a RAM stick to a snail and sent it on its way to the server-room: -

September 19, 2009 – 5 Days to Fit RAM

- On that note; the recent server issues with regard to this blog seem to be remedied: I think that this is the twelfth day, if I recall correctly, of unhindered operation since Fasthosts’ attempt at daylight-robbery combined with their rather slothful efforts to upgrade my server as I’d requested, so that it actually worked properly.

(*Lesson 1: If you’re running a blog the size of this blog or bigger, 512MBs RAM in your (Ubuntu Linux) server simply isn’t enough, no matter how you try to avoid spending money on an upgrade etc. – Hiring a server with 1024MBs or more RAM from the outset is a better option; as it will save money in the long run, as well as avoiding downtime when the server repeatedly crashes with an “out_of_memory” error. The sales person who sells the deal may say otherwise; but they’re most likely just out to get some extra money from you when you’re forced to upgrade the RAM after daily crashes.)

Further, on the matter of finances’ again, I’ve projected that it’s going to cost me around £1000GBP, minimum, to run this blog during 2010. I have to recoup this sum from somewhere, plus hopefully more, to make it a commercially viable enterprise.

In the light of the above, please do expect to see the continued presence of advertising, affiliate-marketing, promotions, etc, on this blog; and most of all please do click on those links in such adverts and articles that you find to be of interest to you. While I’m not in 100% control of every type of advertising and its associated products that are being promoted, I will only knowingly promote products, services, and companies, that I know to be of good quality and from a reputable source. – In other words I will not knowingly promote crap and/or scams on this blog.

Finally, for this post, I wish you all well as we wave goodbye to another summer in Northern latitudes, and we prepare for the cold, dark, and somewhat lifeless winter to come. May your glass never be empty or your table ever be bare. – And may you keep acquiring knowledge from this blog and from others; for knowledge is power which leads to enlightenment.

Have a great weekend.

Namaste’

If, in an attempt to upgrade your computer’s hard-drive or add an extra drive, you open up your computer for the first time by removing the side-panel; you’ll see quite a large amount of baffling stuff inside. All the electronic components on the motherboard that you’ll probably see before anything else may look extremely intricate, delicate, and confusing.

You don’t, however, unless you understand a fair bit about electronics, have to worry about the components on the motherboard; especially if you just want to change or add a drive. What you need to look for are cables from plugs which are plugged into sockets on the motherboard that lead to the drive that you want to replace or add to.

I’ll just mention here that for the purposes of computer-building; there’s no need to know every detail of how everything works; although it could help if you do have that knowledge. – What you do need to know are the overall basics of how a computer works, and how to assemble the main pre-built components in any number of variations of a general rule-of-thumb, so that the finished product works and has the features and specifications that it’s intended to have.

In a little more detail: Forget capacitors, resistors, transistors, integrated circuits, voltage-regulators, diodes, etc, and all the tiny and not-so-tiny basic electronic components that go into the pre-built components of a computer, for the time being. – Think of a computer as a machine made from a number of pre-built components: Hard-drive(s), motherboard, processor, RAM stick(s), power supply unit (PSU), extension cards; PCI and PCIe, graphics card, connectors, leads, case, etc: Thinking in this way simplifies the job one heck of a lot for those people who are new to computer building/repair but have no previous experience of electronics.

- So we’re looking, in your box, for cables that connect drives to motherboard and/or motherboard to drive; whichever way you prefer to look at it: There are 3 main types of cable that connect your motherboard to drives; and these three are pictured below: -

The first is the floppy-ribbon: This multi-cored ribbon connector is the thinner of the two or maybe three ribbon-connectors that you’ll find inside a(n) (older) computer. This cable connects the floppy-drive, (Usually drive A:, or maybe drive B:) to the floppy controller on the motherboard.

Note the twist in a bit of the ribbon separated off just before the connector at one end: That end is the one that goes to the drive itself. When it comes to plugging the connector back into the drive; you’ll find that, unlike the motherboard end that only goes into the socket one way, the drive end will fit whichever way round you try to insert it. There is a right way and a wrong way; but I’ve never bothered to learn it to be honest: If your floppy-drive’s light is always on then you’ve plugged it in the wrong way round; simple as that. Doing so inadvertently won’t damage the drive or the motherboard; it just needs to be plugged in the right way before you can use the drive.

A lot of recently-built computers don’t have a floppy-drive fitted, (I don’t even bother with them anymore, despite being a bit of a retro-type.) as they are very uneconomical with the amount of storage on a single floppy-disc, combined with the fact that people just don’t write anything on a floppy-disc these days. – So it’s pretty pointless to have one now.

Next we come to the IDE or PATA ribbon cable: These are now mainly only found in older computers too; although you might find one or more in any computer built up to this time of writing.

(In my last build that I did for myself, I included an IDE ribbon to connect a secondhand PATA optical drive to the motherboard’s only IDE port.)

This ribbon cable can connect up to 2 PATA drives to the motherboard’s IDE controller: These drives can be all-optical-drives, all-hard-drives, or one of each. See the article entitled “How to Install/Change a Hard-Drive” for more information on this.

This cable is generally longer than a floppy cable, and is always wider.

Lastly out of the three we come to the SATA cable: The cable that you’ll most likely find in today’s computers, connecting both hard-drives and optical drives to the motherboard’s SATA controller.

SATA cables can be up to a metre long and take up a lot less room inside the case, therefore allowing better air-flow. Unlike IDE/PATA ribbons, though, they are a one-cable-per-drive cable.

That covers the main three types of drive-connector: But there is another type of drive cable, and that’s the USB cable to a multi-drive card-reader: It looks like a standard “cable”. – How you’d expect something labelled “cable” to look, and there are usually two of them permanently attached to a card-reader. They have multiple-strands of insulated wire inside each, and they connect to two USB ports on the motherboard.

These connectors on the motherboard, despite being USB ports, don’t look anything like the normal USB ports that you’d find on the back-panel of your computer though. (See picture above. The arrows point out the ends of the leads from the card-reader with connectors on the end plugged in to the motherboard’s USB ports.) The USB ports on the motherboard are, when unconnected, just a couple of rows of pins sticking up from a block, and probably marked USB. (Don’t confuse the USB pins with the FireWire pins from a nearby block though: The motherboard’s USB and FireWire ports will probably appear identical, apart from the markings of USB on the USB ports and IEEE1394 or FireWire near the FW pins on a separate block.)

- So that’s about it for this subject. Hopefully you’ll now know how to identify an internal drive cable so that you can follow it to the back of the relevant drive, should you need to do so.

Dare I say it; my favourite cliché’ of late: Target neutralised.

If you have anything to add or otherwise then please don’t forget to comment.