This being the ‘Season of Goodwill’ and all that fakery mumbo-jumbo; I decided that it was time that I showed some goodwill myself, and did so by making massive reductions; and I mean as massive as I can make in some cases.

Not all of the products in the arcade are mine; but everything that is created by myself is heavily discounted in bulk: The more you purchase, the more you’ll save. – And you may be rather surprised… But I don’t want to tell you everything about it before it opens.

I’m hoping to open it on Monday 14th – and then in only a limited capacity: You see, to be perfectly honest with you I’ve made a rather crucial timing-error again. -  My inexperience is still evident. – I should have started preparing for this time of year around August/September time; but due to circumstances to some extent beyond my control I found myself ill-prepared at the beginning of December: -

Learning Curve

I had to prioritise either the learning-curve, from which I would gain experience now and in the future; or go into the season with only very limited vision of the marketplace as I almost attempted to do last year with only a bit more than a clue, but realised by foresight that I was not clued up enough to even be able to attempt doing so at that time and ended up not attempting the exercise.

Of course, the learning curve, in tech-matters, in writing, and also in marketing, is a lifelong thing and is ongoing. However a crash-course was needed, as I found, at one point, that I was almost half-way through the year, with a little more tech-experience to add to my lifelong-experience, a writing-style that was progressing, but a marketing-strategy that was still sadly lacking in many of the necessities required to be successful.

Lucky me: I found BMC

It was just after that that I heard of the BlogMaster’s Club Course which was being run for its first time by internet entrepreneur David Risley. Without hesitation I enrolled; and to be honest at first it appeared to be very similar to other courses I’d previously enrolled on, despite seemingly having a bit more depth in some regards.

As time went by, however, I found that the depth and quality of the tuition (USA = tutelage.) including the live personal instruction and totally constructive criticism that I requested from David; ‘The Professor’, was making things happen and I was learning things with regard to addressing certain areas which had been almost totally neglected through my lack of experience in blogging.

Turbo-boost

The course came to its half-way point; and suddenly everything appeared to step up a gear. Now not only had we all constructed a solid framework to begin using as a platform for the future – which appears to be the aim of all blogger-courses – but this course goes even further; more than twice as far as other courses of a similar nature: This course not only builds a solid framework, but it also builds the permanent-structure upon the framework; it puts the meat on the bones, if you like.

Is this a sales-pitch? No; the doors aren’t open yet to new admissions – I hear a rumour, though, that they may be open as soon as January 2010; so I’m just laying the groundwork for what is to come: I’m on the course still, and so far I recommend it to anyone who’s serious about anything from getting a little money from their blog to make it self-financing; right through to making a fortune from it and retiring early.

There is just so much material; good material, and although I’m keeping up with study, I’m finding that there’s so much to put into action from what I’m now learning that it’s just too much for me personally to accomplish all at once.

Continuing in a positive vein, there are a number of other good points yet to be spoken of with regard to the course: -

In your own time

Firstly; there is no rush: We have six-months to do the course and have the Professor’s attention. After that we have lifetime access to the course material; and I, for one, intend to study a lot of it all over again, which could end up taking a few more months as there’s just so much information and so much to gain. The standard of teaching is excellent: David Risley’s a born-communicator and a hidden genius if the truth be known. – But it’s just not possible, in my case anyway, to have access to all that much beneficial information, and then take it all in and apply it all within six-months.

Do I think the course should be longer than? No; because its not information overload: It’s quality teaching that is straight to the point, informative, in-depth, and going further and deeper into the subject than any other course that I’m aware of does. Stretching the course out any longer would just water it down and lose people’s attention. The course has been well-thought-out in advance, so that the natural progressive rhythm of the content presented holds the pupil’s attention, yet isn’t too much nor is it too little over too long a time; which would be boring: Instead it’s just right. – Spot on.

As soon as I know when things are opening up to a new intake I’ll be straight on the case; so stay tuned and I’ll be sure to give you a chance to see for yourself if you’re interested.

Oh yeah; as I was saying…

Now; back to the shopping arcade: -

I did say that it’d be opening in a limited capacity. Why? Well the last thing I want to do is to rush it: Rome wasn’t built in a day. I’m building a tiny village at the moment, rather than an empire. I want it to be good, even if that means good only in the sense of a small establishment for now; rather than a massive empire.

What can you expect when you have a look inside, then?

Like any shopping arcade, you can roam around at will, and choose what you want to purchase. While the deals on offer are cumulative-discount-purchases, they are sure to at least make you raise an eyelid if nothing else. Unlike many such online retail-centres; the funnel-effect doesn’t drag you deeper and deeper into enforced multiple-purchasing before you are presented with the next offer; rather you are welcome to come on in and look at what’s on offer on all levels, then make your purchase-choice or leave empty-handed and return again another time: Think of it as a trip to your local supermarket, rather than a visit from a high-pressure double-glazing salesperson.

Procrastination could be a thief of savings

There is just one thing, though, that you should know: The arcade is only, at present, temporary: It’s closing its doors on 5th January 2010 unless notified otherwise at the last minute, and will re-open at a later date with different discount-offers. – So if you want something on offer inside, don’t procrastinate and leave empty-handed too many times, or you’ll miss out.

As I said before, it’ll be opening on this blog next week; probably Monday 14th unless a last-minute snag crops up.

Be prepared for a bargain or two.

There are two main things this week: -

Firstly I’m reigning back on free-content-creation; at least for the time-being: I’ve been writing and writing and writing; and the result of that is that the creation of new (pillar) content has begun taking over totally; leaving very little room for anything else. – That means that development and enhancement had, basically, gone out of the window.

Whilst it’s true that this blog has had rather a lot of work done on it with regard to design-enhancement of late; I found that this plus creating all that daily-or-more new-content was wearing me out: I worked two 36-hour-days in one week just to get the design bettered, on top of content-creation. I still have the dark-rings under my eyes to prove it too.

So until at least a couple of weeks into January 2010 I’ll be producing maybe considerably less free content than I have been recently doing. – Although having said that if the writing-bug takes over, as it does from time to time, there may be the odd sporadic burst of increased-output.

Shop via Kkomp.com – Beyond.

The thing is that I don’t want to be producing free-content at the expense of things that could make this blog-venture a self-financing or profitable exercise: My current project, which is already delayed due to various circumstances, is my shopping-arcade, which is hopefully going to be open- at least in a limited sense – for the post-Christmas-sale-period and hopefully from then onwards. – However I may well run into further snags and not be able to open until later into 2010. – I’ll have to see how things go on that before making any promises.

Whether this project is going to actually work as intended, or just look like a mini-mall in Times Square, is what I’m going to find out when I get it up and running. – However the project is underway, and more will be revealed as and when. I’m hoping that the next revelation will be its opening, but I know that if I rush it then it’ll just fail, crash, and burn – So I’m taking my time with it to bring value and a decent product which will give the customer a good experience to the table, rather than something that looks like it’s been bodged in a rush. – So maybe I’ll end up missing the deadline, but at the end of the day I’ll have something that’ll last. – Christmas 2010 is only 52 weeks away after Christmas 2009 anyway, and by that time I’ll be hoping to have become an established online affiliate-and-otherwise-retail-outlet, in addition to being a technology-information-and-reference-library. – Those are the current plans anyway.

I’m quite serious about the monetisation of this blog; as a self-financing or profitable blog is a blog that it going to last the test of time, rather than going under and vanishing or not being updated due to financial-pressures brought about by x-circumstance(s).

- There will still be free-content here then, as there is now, and some more. There will also be paid-for content of a higher-quality nature, and in a different type of format to that already available, such as maybe membership-site sections providing coursework on a paid-for basis, etc.

Moving on…

Moving on: The next main issue in the spotlight with regard to this blog recently is the move of the mailing-list; hereinafter known as the ‘Kkomp.com – Beyond community’ from FeedBlitz to AWeber. As you’ll no doubt have noticed; the mini-forms displayed to join the community have already been switched to AWeber ’s forms from FeedBlitz, and as a result all new entrants into the community, having confirmed their wish by clicking on the confirmation URL in the email sent by AWeber, will instantly go onto the AWeber list rather than the original FeedBlitz list.

As for those already on the original FeedBlitz list; well the FeedBlitz list is still operational and those concerned will continue to get the usual level of service that they’re used to for the time-being. When, in the near-future, I’ve ensured that the new AWeber system is configured properly and working optimally, I’ll be importing the FeedBlitz membership to AWeber, and they’ll probably receive a confirmation email from AWeber, before going onto the AWeber list, having thus clicked the confirmation URL.

Following on from that the FeedBlitz list will remain open, although I’m unsure how long for, but any new people joining the community will go onto the AWeber list from the outset.

IF anyone currently on the FeedBlitz list wishes to get onto the AWeber list in advance , then they are welcome to fill in the currently-displayed AWeber mini-forms now. – However they should expect glitches, etc, on the AWeber side, until I get the new list configured exactly as it should be and confirm that. – Therefore it may be an idea if people switching to AWeber in this way also remain on the FeedBlitz list for the time-being.

In short; everything is a little behind-schedule, but it’s all happening.

21 Days to Christmas

It’s 3 weeks that can’t go fast enough to me. I’ve been hearing about bleemin’ Christmas since the end of September. I find it sad that most of the Human Race dedicate at least 1/4 of their lives, or more in some cases, towards 1/365th of their life; which at the end of the day only brings them debt, poverty, a hangover, bellyache, and lots of other negative things which take up to a year to recover from. – How sad!

So it’s a sorry-time for consumers, in reality. As far as manufacturer’s, retailers and a lot of businesses are concerned, however, the massive amount of consumer-glut brings massive bonuses: So in a way the gullibility of the consumer partially-drives the world economy to a large extent. – That can’t be bad then: It’s a balance of yin and yang: From negativity comes positivity; from inertia springs productivity, and, as always, someone’s loss is someone else’s gain.

But wasn’t there meant to be some religious significance to Christmas?

From a Christian perspective, it can’t possibly, for a number of reasons which I won’t go into here, be the time of year that Jesus (Latin) (Hebrew=Yeshua.) was born. Also the 4 differing records available in the well-known Gospels are fairly dubious and contradict one another in a number of places. Even the other Gospels from the Nag Hammadi Library  cannot in any way unite the separate accounts, and in many ways further contradict one another. The fact is that they were written well after the events by people with their own differing political agendas and mostly in varying states of consciousness; courtesy of wine, myrrh, and whatever other potent concoctions were available at the time.

From a Pagan perspective, it’s the date of the Feast of Mithras; the Legend of Mithras as taught by the Roman all-male Cult of Mithras is in fact the source of most of the Biblical New Testament teachings, with Jesus substituted for Mithras in a lot of cases. There is no longer a Cult of Mithras, and there hasn’t been for well over 1000 years. (At least I’m unaware of there being any, although it was a very secret cult from its inception.)

Christmas is also very near the Yule sabbat, marking the return of the sun and rebirth of the Mother Goddess. – But that’s the 21st December, the darkest day with the least sun, rather than Christmas Day itself.

- So from whichever religious perspective you look at it, whether you see Jesus as the Son of God, a Witch, or just a political insurgent using religion to get his message across, as all political insurgents did at the time, it’s a blank, a farce, a dud: Something invented to fill a void in otherwise empty lives.

To me; living as I do in England, this time of year is just darkness, cold, short days and long nights. Barren and lifeless soil and bare trees and shrubs, devoid of any foliage and in a state of growth-suspense.

Next year I’ll be hoping to cash-in on the consumer-glut though, I hope, if things go according to plan. That, in itself, will hopefully pay for my heating and lighting bills; although as far as lighting economy is concerned you might like this article from a while back.

While we’re at it; let’s take a customary look back at the articles published since the last Public Newsletter, in reverse-chronological-order: -

Hello and welcome to another public newsletter.

In this newsletter I’ll mention some changes I’ve made to this blog, we’ll take the usual look at and quick review of the last fortnight’s posts, and I’ll include some general small talk.

Ch-ch-ch-changes…

Ok, so to turn and face the strain, and get the ball rolling, I’ll mention that the last thing I’ve done, as far as this blog’s layout is concerned, is to have the latest post displayed in its entirety on the Welcome (home) page. This may change to having excerpts of the last few posts displayed with a “read more” link for each post. – I’m still fighting with php along with the assistance of some paid help, in order to get this optimised. – Bear with me on that. Time may change me; but I won’t change time.

I’ve also changed the logo again, as you may notice: Whilst the simple black-text on a blue background was easy to download and possibly sufficient, it wasn’t exactly particularly eye-catching, and failed to initially capture the reader’s vision.

I apologise to anyone still using dial-up, for the fact that the logo now takes about ten-times the amount of time to download; but such is progress. – In the same way that people no longer spend hours to optimise their blogs in order that any readers still using Internet Explorer 6 (spit) can gain maximum viewing pleasure, so I see no reason to use a minimalistic theme any longer for those still using dial-up. Internet Explorer 6 is yesterday’s browser, despite being the default browser which loads with XP; it’s horrible with a capital H, and these days webmasters expect people to use other browsers, which is easy to do. – Just download and run another browser; it cost nothing and it’s easy. – In the same way, if anyone’s still using dial-up, then I suggest that they start using a decent internet connection: Dial-up is yesteryear’s internet-connection, and should, in the light of necessity, be upgraded.

I’ll carry on making small changes to the logo over time, as I have been doing.

Another thing is that I’ve changed the name of this blog from “Beyond” to “kkomp.com – Beyond”. “Beyond”, by itself, says not-a-lot: Yes; it does convey a sense of being at the forefront or even ahead of that; but as a brand it sucks. kkomp.com says even less than that, true, but the two together are a definite brand-name ( See PC Mech.com: PC Mech is a linguistic invention in itself; although maybe rather more appropriate for a tech blog..): That’s something which will be important as this blog becomes more and more business-oriented and commercialised over time. – Don’t worry; I’m not going to start charging for every article: There’ll always be free content on this blog, but I can’t continue indefinitely to run this blog for no-profit or at a loss. – It’s just totally unrealistic to expect me to do so. – So I will be slowly and gently turning the blog into a moneymaking-venture in addition to hosting much free content.

I do hope that you like the improving layout. Whilst layout is only a part of the whole; it is nevertheless something that contributes to the overall attractiveness of a blog, and a good layout is therefore equally as important as producing great-value content. I’ll be doing another reader-satisfaction-survey in the foreseeable future, and I hope that I get a decent response to this one with regard to numbers participating: The turnout in the case of the last one was worse than that of a British local election.

Promotion

At this point; I’d like to remind you that I’m giving away a free report; “Some Things to Try if XP Crashes During Boot”. Windows XP can, and in certain cases, does, crash during boot-up. This 25-page report in pdf format will give you many tips and ideas for getting your XP computer restarted so that you can diagnose the problem.

You’ll see the purple text at the top of the sidebar on almost every page. Simply insert your email address in the space provided, and click on “Get the Free Report”. You’ll get a confirmation email from FeedBlitz with both a confirmation-link for my email list, as well as a download location for the free report. I ask you to download the free report as well as clicking the confirmation-link.

On The Move

On that note; I’ll be moving my mailing-list from FeedBlitz over to Aweber fairly soon; so at some point those already on my mailing list will receive a confirmation email from Aweber with a link to click to indicate that you still want to receive emails from this blog. I’d ask you to simply click that confirmation-link when you get the email from Aweber, and that’ll be all you’ll need to do. If you’re not on my mailing list then you’re missing out on a free report, insider information, notification of blog updates, the whole shebang. I suggest that if you’re not on the mailing list, you get your free report as well as click the confirmation – link so that you’ll be a part of it and you’ll stop missing out.

Let David Risley teach you the basics of a six-figure problogger business in only 3 days. The course includes 14 videos, and has a 92 page transcript, checklist, and audio podcasts of all modules included. Download my FREE 5-page .pdf report on 3-Day Money

Reviews

And now; a review of the posts that have been posted since the last Public Newsletter: -

A question for you computer repair people and builders: How long does it take you to fit a stick of RAM? 2 minutes? Less than that?

My web-hosts; fasthosts.co.uk, probably the slowest hosts in the known universe, must hold the record for the longest time ever taken to fit a stick of RAM, with the assistance of some red tape: -

(Actual times are approximate and recalled from memory to the best of my ability.)

Monday 14th September 2009 – Day 1

After a weekend of repeated sudden server crashes I hire an engineer at fasthosts.co.uk – my web-hosting company – to look into the matter and try and sort it out. He reports back that my blog is overtaxing the server with its current resources, and says that although he has managed to suppress the Apache’ server’s processes somewhat, he recommends that I either reduce the complexity of the blog, or have the server upgraded.

My experience with servers, prior to hiring this dedicated Linux server, is nil. My experience with Ubuntu Linux prior to hiring this Ubuntu Linux server is not a lot to say the least.

As a Fasthosts customer; a Google for “fasthosts are crap” will terrify you more than the first time you watched the film “The Evil Dead” as a teenager back in the 1980s, and then walked home alone across a dark deserted heathland in the early hours of the morning straight afterwards. (– Yes, I did exactly that, and ruined a pair of knickers doing it.)

Monday 14th September 2009 – Day 1 22:00 HRS: 

Having given the engineer’s report a lot of thought, combined with my own findings, I decide to have the server upgraded. Having just shelled out one hell of a lot for the engineer’s fee, I contact Fasthosts, and  as I arrange to have the server’s RAM upgraded I am told that the fee for doing so is more than it would cost me to buy 3GB of DDR2 1200MHz.

The upgrade is seemingly a necessity, and is agreed upon anyway eventually after negotiations. I am told that the job is queued.

Tuesday 15th September 2009 – Day 2 11:39 HRS:

I notice that the server has crashed again. I reboot the server from my remote control panel and phone Fasthosts to enquire when the RAM upgrade is scheduled for. Their answer is vague; only that it is queued and will be carried out ASAP.

Wednesday 16th September 2009 – Day 3: Time relative

An uneventful day as such, where the server behaves itself and doesn’t crash. Visitor numbers are back to normal due to the absence of downtime. I notice that the RAM upgrade still hasn’t been carried out, and so I chase it up. I am informed that the matter has been referred to a manager to give final approval to the result of the earlier negotiations over the exorbitant cost of the operation. I am told that it’s almost a certainty that this will be approved; though I feel a little uncertainty due to this extra unexpected piece of red tape.

Thursday 17th September 2009 – Day 4: Time unspecified.

Another server crash in the early morning goes unnoticed by myself until around 14:00 hours. I reboot the server and once again phone Fasthosts; who assure me that the upgrade operation has been given the green light and is queued. I phone again at around 18:00 HRS: The result of this call being that the upgrade itself is scheduled by negotiation between myself and their dedicated server support representative to take place at 23:00HRS BST, and should take no more than 1/2 hour. I write a post informing my readers of this and publish it.

Thursday 17th September 2009 – Day 4 22:21HRS:

The server goes offline while I am uploading files. I am unable to gain access to the controls to reboot. I phone Fasthosts asking if they have started the upgrade operation early. I am told that the Ubuntu server went into a kernel panic and that everything has now been restored.

I begin to monitor the server, expecting to be taken offline, as agreed, for the upgrade to take place at 23:00HRS. This doesn’t happen.

Thursday 17th September 2009 – Day 4 23:55HRS:

I phone Fasthosts and ask why the schedule has not been kept to. I am informed that the engineer is behind schedule as he had to do unexpected maintenance on some of the shared-platform servers. I am assured that my server will be taken offline and the upgrade carried out within the next 15 minutes.

Friday 18th September 2009 – Day 5 00:36 HRS:

The server; which I am monitoring at 5-second intervals using a FireFox add-on which refreshes the page automatically, is taken offline, the upgrade performed, the server reconnected and rebooted. An email arrives almost instantly confirming this; along with another from around 18:00HRS asking me to confirm that I am willing to accept the extra server-hire charges incurred due to the increased amount of RAM, which I’ve already agreed anyway.

British business – the leading force of the economy: Part of the reason the UK is in billions of dollars of debt.

Some computer users go overboard in trying to save money: Fact.

- ‘Not that there’s anything wrong with trying to save money: After all, why should you pay more than you need to with one retailer if you can get exactly the same product cheaper elsewhere? I myself am always looking for ways to reduce costs; especially when it comes to building computers, both for myself and for my customers. Let’s be realistic about this; whatever it costs me will be passed on to the customer.

I’m starting to wander off the point here; so back on track: There’s saving money and there’s theft. Running pirated software, which is a common way of saving money, is theft. – There it is in black and white. – But hey I’m no moralist or divine authority who has any right to tell you not to do what you may or may not be doing. That’s your choice and your responsibility if you wish to run illegal pirated software: You accept the consequences if you get caught. that’s between you and the law-enforcement authorities. – ‘Not my concern; ‘not my problem.

I’ll tender a little advice on the matter, though, from my own experiences: -

Somebody contacted me because their computer wasn’t working properly and wanted me to overhaul their software. They said that someone had upgraded their box to Vista during a hardware upgrade, in which this person had fitted a dual-cored processor and changed the graphics card. Since then their box had never been right and was getting progressively worse.

I took their box in and had a look at it: Firstly I noticed that they didn’t have a graphics card. – The machine was running on the motherboard’s onboard graphics. They also still had the original single-core processor fitted which had never  been replaced since the DDR motherboard was new.

To cut a long story short I got the order to rebuild the box and install XP in place of Vista. Using the original case, PSU, and hard-drive, I rebuilt the box; fitting a new and better motherboard with a better onboard graphics capability, new dual-core processor, DDR2 RAM, all professionally put together and delivered. Normally I don’t do rebuilds – I usually only build new. Normally I don’t do software overhauls either; but in this case I did. – Well I completely wiped the hard-disc and installed XP. – As this box was the worst bodge-job of pirated-software I’d ever seen and I wanted the chance to examine it. – Yes the Vista installation was pirated, as was almost every installed program bar the free software.

The hard-drive was crawling with viruses and malware too. – Because they were unable to install any patches and updates. They were actually running as an active member of at least two botnets, and I was surprised that they still had any identity or bank balance to themselves. Antivirus was installed, numerous times, all of which had reported thousands of malware incidences in various coloured boxes at the foot of the screen, and were asking ridiculous sums in payment to clean up the damage caused. Vista crashed regularly, behaved slowly and oddly, and half of the programs either didn’t run at all, or only partially worked.

What flabbergasted me most, though, was the fact that they’d payed some “technician” (hacker) to set up their computer so that they could have free computing: Several hundred pounds for a graphics card that didn’t exist, a dual-core processor that was the original single-core processor, and installation of pirated software which put their machine, their bank balance, and their identity, in danger of being stolen. – Also the privilege of being recruited into a number of botnets so that they could participate in a distributed-computing initiative too! If they’d paid for their software rather than tried to get something for nothing then they’d probably never have had to pay me to put the damage right in the first place. They now run a legitimate copy of XP, purchased via myself. I installed free and open-source alternatives to most of their pirated software, and I now have another happy customer.

Look at it this way: You buy a car; a diesel. It’s new. Would you top up the engine oil with used cooking fat to save money? Would you fill up the tank with cheap red diesel (Illegal in the UK for road vehicles, as well as corrosive on the engine.)? When the time came to service it; would you take it to a notorious criminal firm who run a breaker’s yard?

If you answered “Yes” to any or all of the questions in the last paragraph above, then you’re either insane, a redneck, or a fugitive from justice.

- So why would you want to run hacked software on the computer you payed for that instantly renders your computer unsafe? Hacked and cracked software is supposedly free; but it’s full of security holes, unpatched vulnerabilities and known exploits, added to which it’s illegal and you run the risk of prosecution. It’s full of unresolved bugs that will affect the running of your machine; plus the fact that poorly-written malware routines are often used to defeat the keycode on installation.

It’s just not worth the hassle; yet people are doing it nevertheless. Perhaps you’re one of those people? Here’s the bottom line: If you run pirate software it’ll save you money in the short term; but in the long run it’ll end up costing you more than if you’d bought legitimate software in the first place. – And if you get busted and fined for running pirate software it’ll cost you even more than that.

Is it really worth it? You decide.

We start this newsletter with a favourite subject of Brits: The weather. – And has it been a scorcher in the UK this week! Record temperatures, the like of which we haven’t seen since 2006; bringing back memories for me of sitting in that baking college classroom in front of a computer, sweltering hot with my blouse soaking wet from perspiration. Fortunately that blistering heat has moved into central Europe, and England has returned to average temperatures or just above for the time of year.

It’s with this hot weather in mind that I wrote the following article: -

Keep A Cool Box – Let It Breathe

I imagined computers left running 24/7 in hot airless rooms while their owner was out.

If only solid-state drives were cheaper and had more data-storage capacity: If that were the case I’d never use a standard spinning-platter disc again. I wrote an article about solid-state drives: –

About Solid State Drives

If you’ve not enrolled on the Become A Blogger course then you’ve probably missed your chance by the time you read this. – However, if this is the case then there’s always a chance of being first in the queue next time round; so do click on the link anyway: You’ll find that the 10 free videos are still available, plus you can also register your interest in joining up next time.

Become A Blogger Admission Window: Only 5 Days

There is, however, another course in the offing: David Risley’s Blog Masters Club will be launching on the 7th July 2009: Whilst this course is a little more advanced than Become A Blogger, in that it assumes, I believe, that you already have a blog set up and running; it will nevertheless enhance your blogging efforts, and teach you things that will give you the ability to blow your blog’s earning potential sky-high.

David is one of my long-term online associates whom I have a lot of respect for. I know for a fact that he’s been compiling this course and getting it ready to run pretty much full-time for well over 6 months. – That tells you that this is no rush-job from David; and based upon the success of the sensational 3-Day-Money course, I know that this will not only be a winner in itself, but will also put you onto a winner if you enrol in it.

One thing I hope is that you’re not running Windows 7 beta software on the computer you’re reading this on. If you are then prepare to watch it automatically shut down before your eyes at some point within the next two hours. Also if you want to get a free copy of Windows 7 RC you’d better be quick, as there are only around 6 weeks left for you to do so: -

Windows 7 Release Candidate Program Nears the End of the Line

Microsoft are naughty: They’ve strategically positioned an advert aimed at the UK consumer on their website in order to increase the sales numbers for Vista. Whatever you do don’t buy Vista: Wait until 15th July and you can order Windows 7 for £50: -

Microsoft and the Massive 7 UK Con

On rare occasions the event of Windows XP crashing as it boots is due to hardware failure. This part of the series looks at the death of a motherboard: -

Something to Try if Windows XP Crashes During Boot – Part 13

That’s it for this newsletter. If you missed any of the week’s articles then they’re all linked from here as you can see. If you didn’t or couldn’t make it for Become A Blogger then I do seriously suggest that you take a look at Blog Masters Club by clicking the link above.

Enjoy the weekend.

Namaste’

Sharron Field

Author and Creator of kkomp.com

Is this an early Halloween / technical post?

Maybe?

This is Part 13 of the series. It should be part 5; but for the negatively superstitious amongst us I’ve named it part 13. Why? Well I tried to start to go into the whys and wherefores of that; but I just ended up opening up the subjects of religion and superstition, which I don’t want to do right now. – So we’ll just say OK – Part 13 it is.

In Part 1 we tried opening up the Windows Advanced Options pre-boot menu and selecting the option “Last Known Good Configuration (your most recent settings that worked)”

In Part 2 we looked at removing a driver by booting into Safe Mode.

In Part 3 we looked at how corruption could be the cause of the problem, and how to get rid of it using chkdsk and sfc. This can be taken further by using a program by GRC Corp called “SpinRite”: See this article for more information.

In Part 4 we spoke about the awesome power of the Windows Recovery Console and how this might help as a last resort.

- On very rare occasions, though, none of this is accessible: The computer’s BIOS screen appears at or just after power up; and then another black screen with white text appears saying that the CPU was not found, or the RAM isn’t present, or something similar. This has happened to me just the once with an AsRock K7—-VSTA board with DDR RAM which had an AMD Sempron 2.2GHz CPU running on it. Exactly what happened, why did it happen, and what can be done about it?

Exactly what happened? : -

The machine started to crash with a frequent BSOD, which seemed to be for random reasons. I did almost everything suggested in Parts 1 to 3 to try to solve the problem. I didn’t get as far as the Windows Recovery Console, as the machine crashed with another BSOD and refused to start. It started with the usual BIOS screen and then went straight on to a screen telling me that it couldn’t find a processor.. I tried restarting it several times by using the reset button, but the same happened each time.

Why did it happen? : -

When the BIOS starts up it instantly asks all of the fundamental components to declare themselves present and identify themselves. The BIOS knows what basic components should always be present in a computer in order for it to be able to operate; such as a processor, RAM, hard-drive, etc, and it makes request of those components to register their presence and then identify themselves by type and serial number. One of the first components, if not the first component, it looks for to be present is a processor. For some reason the BIOS asked for a processor to identify itself and no reply registered with it. This could be for a number of reasons: -

   1) The processor is fried: It’s dead and can’t respond.

    2) The processor isn’t getting any power; therefore it’s effectively dead and can’t respond.

    3) The processor is alive but isn’t hearing the request from the BIOS because some component between the two is fried, dead, or faulty, and is not allowing communication between the BIOS and processor.

 

    4) The BIOS is faulty and isn’t issuing the request, or isn’t issuing the request properly, to the processor.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

    1) Is obviously a hardware fault: The processor has died, and probably so has any number of other components.

Remedy: Replace the processor and the motherboard.

    2) Might be due to a loose power plug, a PSU fault, or a motherboard fault.

Remedy: Diagnose the fault by checking all plugs on wires from the PSU; ensuring that they are all plugged in correctly and are secure. Check the PSU’s outputs (See this article.) and replace the PSU if it’s faulty.

    3) Is a motherboard fault.

Remedy: Replace the motherboard.

    4) Is a BIOS fault or failure.

Remedy: Replace the motherboard.

I checked the power plugs: They were all plugged in securely and tightly. I checked the PSU and it seemed OK. That was all I needed to know. A 32-bit single-cored Sempron CPU wasn’t worth replacing if it was dead, and if I was going to buy a new motherboard I’d have at least a dual-core Athlon 64 x 2 on it. I stripped out the motherboard, CPU, and RAM. (The DDR RAM still worked when I used it in an old PC.) The CPU I gave away marked as possibly faulty. The motherboard was binned and recycled.

I bought a new Gigabyte socket AM2 motherboard with a new Athlon 64 x 2 2.2GHz CPU and 2GB DDR2 667MHz RAM. The rebuilt computer is what I’m writing this post on.

In short, then, Part 13 is the Death Card: It indicates death of old substandard parts; and replacement with new, more functional and better components, bringing rebirth to a computer. (I bet you never thought of the concept of cyber-reincarnation before!?)

Part 13 is unlucky for some: Those who can’t or won’t learn how to rebuild or repair a computer. – But Part 13 is lucky for others – who end up with a similar or identical looking computer which has enhanced performance, having rebuilt it insdie using new companents.

In conclusion, then; if Windows XP crashes during boot and the BIOS says that it can’t find… then basically your box is dead. – But it can be reborn if you’re prepared to spend time and money on it.

Namaste’.

You’re going to start again with a new setup. Your old faithful machine is too old and is wearing out. Perhaps you’ve been running Windows XP on it for years. Maybe you tried to upgrade it to Vista a couple of years ago, but the hardware wouldn’t have it and something crashed; so you reinstalled XP and stuck with that. Now the machine’s showing intense signs of old age: It’s slow and it BSODs too much, the hard-drive is making funny noises, the PSU fan is so noisy it sounds like a prop-plane, the capacitors on the motherboard are bulging, the DVD drive stopped working months ago, the processor is an old 32-bit single-core chip… It’s just far too much hassle to renovate. There’s a new operating system coming out soon; Windows 7, which it won’t run but which you want to use.  It’s time for a whole new setup.

Out goes the old machine onto the driveway, ready for the trash collectors to take away… STOP!

You’ve just discarded your entire identity onto your driveway for anyone who wants to steal it to use. All the data on the hard-drive is accessible by anyone who knows how to get it. – And that’s a surprisingly large number of people, incidentally. All they need to do is remove the hard-drive from the computer, or, even easier than that, pick up the whole machine while nobody’s watching; take it back to their pad, remove the hard-drive, connect it up to another machine, and your identity is theirs.

“Oh no, I’m cleverer than you think: My user account is password-protected and I’m using the NTFS file system.”

Password protection? That’s an easy one to deal with: Here’s one way to get past it. Who was it that said that “A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing”?

You need to erase your hard-drive for your own security’s sake.

- Or maybe you’ve just been given a new setup for your birthday, so you’re going to sell your old one on eBay, or see if someone locally will buy it off you.

You need to erase your hard-drive for your own security’s sake.

Maybe you’re just replacing the hard-drive itself: Removing the old drive and replacing it with a larger drive, then selling the old hard-drive on eBay?

You need to erase your hard-drive for your own security’s sake.

-So how do I do that?

A reformat of the drive before you remove it, (Having first backed up any data you want to keep.) is the most basic way to do it; but you might not be entirely satisfied that this operation alone is secure enough. Often; although the drive can’t be instantly inserted into another computer and read as if you hadn’t bothered, it’s sometimes not that hard to recover at least some of the previous data using very basic freeware data recovery tools after a reformat.

There are a number of programs out there that will overwrite the data on your drive repeatedly with random characters. This can make the data virtually impossible to recover using even the most sophisticated data-recovery techniques. Personally I use Webroot System Eraser. This is a handy dos utility that I have a copy of on floppy disc as well as a copy burned to CD. It’s bootable, so you can simply boot from floppy or CD and set it to overwrite everything on as many discs as you like with random data which is generated by the program a number of times. There are many other similar programs; some free, which operate in a similar fashion.

Don’t deliver your sensitive data into the hands of criminals. Erase your hard-drive(s) before you dump or sell it / them.

I don’t steal people’s identities – fortunately for several people who’ve given or sold me their old hard-drive; neither do I blackmail companies or sell their sensitive data to scammers and spammers – fortunately for a company who sold me a batch of their old hard-drives on eBay.

I’m a tech; so I’m bound to have more opportunity to get hold of a hard-drive that somebody forgot to erase, surely? True, but I don’t generally use old hard-drives these days. I bought an old 10GB  IDE drive on eBay 3 years ago to replace the 1.2 GB IDE drive in someone’s ancient computer that was on its way out. (Surprisingly the computer, which was originally built for Windows 95 or 98 I believe, (It had had its AGP graphics card upgraded to 16MB and its PC133 RAM increased to 250MB at some point.) did run Windows XP Home, and fairly well too.) I also purchased a lot of redundant 40GB SATA hard-drives back in 2007 on the cheap to use in test-machines that I quickly knocked up for trialling software. I still have at least 1 of the SATA HDDs left; probably with an installation of Windows 2000 on it too, just like most of the others in that job lot I bought.

- What I’m saying is that if I get the odd live one now and again, then so, probably, does anyone else who’s bought secondhand hard-drives. …And people wonder why there’s so much crime! For some of the more unscrupulous types of people it would be like a red rag to a bull! – And there’s no bull in saying that either.

Have you ever found that your computer won’t do what you tell it to do; at least not properly? Maybe it tells you that it is unable to do things that it’s always done before? Maybe it finds errors both on the hard-drive and also online which just don’t seem to make sense. When you run a program there may be certain aspects of that program that don’t run properly. Perhaps program icons and toolbars are missing, or possibly the program crashes for no sensible reason half-way through? More than likely you’re finding that the problem is worsening over time too?

This type of behaviour, along with others, could quite easily mean that your hard-drive is on its way out. If you don’t have a backup made by this point then it may be that it’s not possible to make one as the hard-disk-drive is too far gone. It’s worth a try though, if nothing else. – This is yet another reason why you should always have a recent backup on hand, which is updated regularly. If you don’t bother to back up your data then the question isn’t whether you’ll lose it or not; the question is when you’ll lose it.

The type of behaviour I stated above is only one type of behaviour resultant from a hard-drive starting to fail; and whatever the symptoms, they can creep up on you over hours, days, weeks or months – or they can happen suddenly.

All may be far from lost, however: There are a number of courses of action you can take. They may work, they may not, depending upon the state of your disc: -

There are different kinds of data error that can occur on a hard-drive:

1) Errors in the data written to the disk. The disk itself is fine: The data on it has somehow become corrupt.

2) Data errors caused by errors in the magnetic media of the hard disk itself. These errors can usually be repaired by software. These types of errors can manifest in exactly the same manner as the data errors described above and below.

3) Errors caused by physical failure of the magnetic coating on the disc platters, collapse of the platters and/or their bearings, or electrical failure of some sort. These errors would normally in most cases require you to replace the drive.

All three of these types of error can result in data corruption, an operating system that won’t boot, or a file that reports some kind of error(s). – So how do you know which kind of errors they are? Initially you don’t know one way or the other; but there are diagnostic processes you can run which might well fix the error(s); from which you can ascertain what sort of errors they were.

Use Windows Tools First

From Windows 2000 onwards, every Windows installation has the CHKDSK command line utility. – So open a command prompt, (Start>Run, and type “cmd” ¬) and type “chkdsk /r”

CHKDSK is verifying .…..

The primary function of chkdsk is to check for problems in the file system. – It checks for errors in the data on the disk. If there’s a problem in the file system then chkdsk /r will attempt to remedy it.

C:\Documents and Settings\<user name>chkdsk<drive letter>: /r
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is <volume label>.CHKDSK is verifying …

The "/r" parameter tells chkdsk to "Locate bad sectors and recover readable information". "Bad Sectors" can happen for a number of reasons, and chkdsk will attempt to identify them, mark them as bad so that they don’t get used again, and move any data that has not been corrupted to other sectors.

Chkdsk /r can take a while to complete. – Quite a long time in many cases.

If problems persist having run "chkdsk /r" then I suggest running a program called SpinRite.

SpinRite is a paid-for program by Gibson Research Corporation, owned and operated by Steve Gibson. It focuses upon all the areas of the disc’s magnetic surface that are able to be recovered by software processing, rather than the file system itself and any corresponding errors. SpinRite won’t fix file system errors; which is why we ran chkdsk first.

SpinRite isn’t interested in what type of file system is being used. It looks at the individual disc sectors and checks that each particular sector is readable. If it isn’t then there is a good chance that SpinRite can fix it. It runs intense data analytical routines in order to recover data from dodgy sectors, before attempting to repair that sector. It’s not infallible; and in some cases certain sectors are nevertheless irretrievable despite SpinRite’ s best efforts. – In which case that sector is doomed. – All the same, that’s only a single sector of an entire disk; so although the sector in question may be a write-off, the rest of the hard-disk may be still usable. – At least in parts, in a very worst-case scenario.

If SpinRite reports that a large number of sectors are unrecoverable; whether or not the drive appears to be otherwise working properly; it may be time to replace that hard-drive completely. If you’ve committed the carnal sin of not backing up beforehand then I pity you, but every source of computer information worth it’s salt, particularly on the internet, will have been nagging you to do so since time immemorial. – Therefore if you ignored that advice regardless then you only have yourself to blame. You’ll have to just recover what data you can and replace the drive.

It may be an idea, having recovered as much data as is possible, to ghost the drive image and replace the drive with a fresh one before restoring the image to the new drive.

Chkdsk and SpinRite in combination will greatly increase your chances of recovering data; but even then they’re not infallible – Which is why, and I’ll say it again, it’s always of paramount importance to have a recent backup to hand.

I was going to end this series at Part 3; but having thought further about it, I feel that the Windows Recovery Console is worth a mention: -

First; what exactly is the Windows Recovery Console?

It’s a pre-boot repair tool that allows you to recover from and repair system issues that affect the machine’s ability to boot up.

It’s very powerful and is certainly not to be sniffed at. I encourage users to only use the Recovery Console as a last resort: In fact in some cases a repair reinstallation may be just as, if not more, effective. It has diagnostic as well as repair uses though; so it might be a useful commodity at times.

So how do I access the Windows Recovery Console?

To access the Recovery Console you have to boot from the XP CD. Having done so you’ll eventually arrive at a screen that looks like this: -

Press “R”, as per the instruction on screen, and the Recovery Console starts.

The Recovery Console will check for Windows installations, and list any that are on the hard-drive. Unless the computer has been set up to multi-boot, there will only be one.

Select the operating system you want to repair and press Enter. Windows will then ask you for the administrator password: -

Enter the administrator password, et voila; you’re into the Recovery Console.

It’s a glorified Windows Command Prompt which allows access to the root folder (%systemroot%) and the Windows folder + its respective tree. Once you’ve done the major repair you can boot into Windows, (Safe Mode or normally.) and continue any repair work needed.

Details of how to use fully, and also the commands available for use within the Recovery Console, are available within the following Microsoft Knowledge Base Article: –

Article ID: 314058 – Last Review: September 22, 2008 – Revision: 5.2

Description of the Windows XP Recovery Console for advanced users

You can access this article by clicking here.

I think I’ve just about touched on everything in this and the other three articles. If your Windows XP installation ever screws up at boot in future; I hope that these articles will give you some ideas as to what to do and how to resolve the issue.

If you’d like to comment then the comment forms are open for around six months from the date of writing.

Enjoy XP; even of you’re soon moving on to Windows Seven. (You could actually run Windows XP inside a virtual environment within Windows Seven…That’s an idea for another article perhaps?)

Warning: The Recovery Console is a powerful tool; and if used incorrectly can further screw up your installation just as much as it can repair it; so use it with extreme care.

This is part 2 of the series. I’m assuming you’ve already read Part 1.

In Part 1 we brought up the Windows Advanced Options Menu:

We selected the option “Last Known Good Configuration (your most recent settings that worked)”, but that still hasn’t worked and your Windows XP computer still won’t boot: Either it’s crashing with a BSOD as it boots up, or it’s just not working at all well when it has apparently booted up fully. – The screen is scrambled, there are things missing, whatever.

This time we’re going to try something else. Does your computer crash and restart or go to a BSOD? Does your computer automatically restart when it crashes? There’s nothing wrong about that in itself, but if it does so then you don’t get the chance to read the data presented on the BSOD. The first thing we need to do is to stop the computer from automatically restarting every time it crashes, in order that you can study the BSOD.

If the computer doesn’t go to a BSOD or automatically restart, but just doesn’t work properly when it’s fully booted for whatever reason then see Part Three of this series. (Still to be written at time of writing: It won’t be long before it’s produced though.)

Go to the Windows Advanced Options Menu and use the up and down arrow keys to select “Disable automatic restart on system failure”. Press Enter¬. Allow the computer to reboot and to crash again. You should now be able to study the blue screen. (BSOD)

On the blue screen you’ll see the reason why the computer crashed, some tips which might or might not help, and some “Technical Information”, aka gibberish. The gibberish is probably the most important part of it all. First, though, try following the stated tips to whatever extent possible. I suggest photographing the blue screen with a digital camera: You might need the information later on, and the screen might not be accessible at the time you need it.

If that particular computer is the only one you have then you’ll need to use a neighbour’s computer, or an internet cafe’, public library computer, whatever, for the next bit: –

Type the stop error code into Google.

You’ll find the stop error code in “Technical Information” on the blue screen. In the example above the stop error code is the alphanumerical sequence 0x000000D1 : -

***  STOP  0x000000D1   (0×000…

Type that code into Google and it’ll return reams of information on the error; exactly what it is, what it might be, what causes it, what people think, …

You might even find a solution there. If it’s a driver issue, however, you need to identify which driver it is that’s causing the BSOD to occur. When you’ve done that we need to remove that driver before we can restart the machine and boot into Windows proper. To do this we go into the Windows Advanced Options Menu, and use the up and down arrow keys to select “Safe Mode”. Press Enter¬.

Safe Mode is a mode where Windows runs without loading all the drivers. Essentially it loads a minimal set of drivers that are essential for it to operate, and no more. On the basis of that, ‘chances are that the driver causing the BSOD won’t be loaded, and therefore Windows will boot into Safe Mode.

Whilst in Safe Mode, having identified the driver that’s causing the issue; go into Device Manager and remove that driver. Having done so, restart the computer.

Depending upon which driver it is; Windows will either reinstall one that works from the i386 folder on the hard drive and load it at boot, or it’ll start without it and let you know. If it starts without it then the piece of hardware that the driver pertained to will be severely limited in function if it works at all. It’ll be using any default driver that comes with the OS. You’ll need to manually reinstall a driver in this case – But I do suggest that you go to the device manufacturer’s website and download/install the latest driver for the device in question.

If the driver was a specialised keyboard or mouse driver then you may have to do a repair reinstallation of Windows before you can load the new driver.

A graphics card should still work in a very limited fashion using the default drivers that come with the OS. To get it working properly again you should install the latest driver from the manufacturer’s website.

Windows XP can be a funny old sod at times:

Sometimes and for no apparent reason it’ll go wonky even while you boot it up; even if your last session appeared flawless. In a lot of cases this is because it failed to load a driver properly. The result can be a number of things: It could fail to boot with a BSOD during boot-up, it could give you a mal-formed or scrambled picture on the monitor due to having loaded the graphics driver incorrectly, it might boot but not work properly – sometimes followed by a BSOD, or numerous other things.

If this happens then shut it down again in the normal manner, if you can, and try booting it up again. In numerous cases it’ll boot-up properly the next time, and everything will be fine. – But what if the same problem occurs again when you try to boot it again? Well, if it’s happened twice then the probability is that it’ll occur a third time; so it’s time to take action.

This solution works sometimes; other times it doesn’t; but it’s the easiest solution of all, so it’s worth a try before you try anything else: -

Press your computer’s power button to switch it on, and as soon as you do that repeatedly press the F8 key. One of two things should happen after the initial BIOS screen appears, depending upon the motherboard you have fitted inside your box: – (If anyone tries this and gets something else happening then I’d ask you to comment below. Please give details of the motherboard you have fitted, as well as other system spec.s (Including age of system.), and as good a description as you can of what happens.)

Either it’ll open up a boot-menu screen, or it’ll bypass this step and go straight to the next step. If it does open a boot-menu screen, (Primary Hard drive, CD-ROM, Floppy, etc.) we don’t need that, so don’t change anything there, just hit the Esc key, and as soon as you press the Esc key, repeatedly hit F8 again.

The Windows Advanced Options Menu should appear. This is white text on a dark-grey background. The options open to you are: -

In this case we want “Last Known Good Configuration (your most recent settings that worked)”, so use the down and up arrow keys to highlight this line. Press enter¬.

Forget the other options for the time being. In this article we’ll deal with that one only.

On the next screen you’ll see “Please select the operating system to start.”

If you’ve only installed a single installation of Windows XP then your choice will already be highlighted and you just press Enter¬ again. It your machine has on a dual-boot and/or you see more than a single operating system; use the up and down arrow keys to select the operating system that you were just trying to boot into, (Windows XP.) and then press Enter¬.

Windows will start to boot; except this time it looks in the System Volume Information folders on your hard-drive for a setting it used before when that driver loaded correctly. If it finds it then it’ll load it into the boot sequence and proceed with boot. If it doesn’t and still encounters the problem then the crash that happened before will probably happen again. – But that’s another article’s reading from that point.

**In light of the paragraph above I’m going to make this a series: This post being Part 1, Parts 2 onward to be written soon.**

- This operation thus far may solve your problem, and then again it might not.

If it does solve the problem then I suggest that you allow the computer to fully boot, and then restart it again, just so that the new settings that work are written to the registry before you do anything else.

Coming up in Part 2: If that didn’t work then we’ll use the Windows Advanced Options Menu to do something else. – Coming soon.

Today I had a rather strange experience with Windows Seven: -

Before I ever powered up my Windows 7 64-bit machine today I remembered that I’d bought a new graphics card and another 4GB DDR2 RAM for it yesterday, so I thought I’d install it all today and get that out of the way.

I’ve set up a temporary guest computer; my old main computer, built on a barebones box, that I had a lot of problems with earlier in the year. – Which prompted me to build my Windows 7 box in April and substitute it for the troublesome box. I was going to give the old box away, or scrap it, but since I found a new PSU that I didn’t think I had, I fitted it to the box of trouble and it’s now working fine.

That left me with 3 computers; and I only really need 2 normally, so I decided that I’d set it up in my bedroom so that I could work on it if I was ever so ill I found it almost impossible to sit at this desk and work again, as I have been once already this year for a single day when I had the mega-cold earlier.

Just before I did so my friend used it from the test-bench one day when she dropped round. I found this rather handy, as I didn’t have to stop what I was doing, give up my swivel-chair, and lose my train of thought, while she worked on one of the comps on my desk. (Yes I have a rather large desk. It has a work-space amidst 2 computers, a VHS video recorder, digi-box, small filing unit, Fergusson stereo tuner unit from the 1970s, my old TV that died last year due to age (I use it as a shelf.), 2 monitors (1 CRT and 1 TFT.), 7 speakers, 2 telephones, a router…) Rather she just switched it on and used it without disturbing me at all. – So it’s still set up on the test bench; but It’ll have to be moved into the bedroom soon as it’s taking up space that I could do otherwise with.

- The point of telling you all this is, before I go totally off track and lose the thread, is that my guest computer needed a graphics card. It had been running the 64MB onboard graphics dealt with by the chipset, and was a bit lame on some applications picture-wise. The plan was to use the existing graphics card from the Windows 7 setup in the guest-box, as it was keeping my base score down to 3.0. It had been used in more machines than I care to remember, and was like the “I need a graphics card…I know; I’ll use…” card. – Which was exactly what happened when I built the Windows 7 box.

There was nothing wrong with it, and it would have stayed in the Windows 7 box had it not pulled the overall performance-score down: When I’m scoring 6.3 with an AMD Phenom processor, 7.1 with the RAM, and 5.7 with the primary hard-drive, it’s a let-down when the nVidia GeForce 6200LE graphics card scores 3.1 for graphics and 3.1 for gaming graphics.

I’d bought a new card with 256 MB dedicated DDR2 onboard, rather than it having to pinch it from system RAM like the old one did. It wasn’t a particularly expensive card, a GeForce 7200GS, and like the old one it had VGA, DVI, and TV outputs. The reason why I chose that card specifically was because it was cheap but better than what I had, and it bore the Gigabyte trademark, as did the motherboard. I thought that was fitting.

To cut a long story short, or should I say to cut an even longer story short, it bumped my base score up to 3.5 after I’d fitted it and got the machine back in action: Scoring 3.5 for gaming graphics and 4.0 for graphics. – It’s not brilliant but it’ll do. The only games I’ve ever played on that box are chess and solitaire anyway since I built it; so no worries.

I fitted the RAM; using up the 2 remaining RAM slots by installing 2 x 2GB DDR2 800MHz. I was a bit peeved that it wasn’t exactly the same manufacturer as the first two sticks I’d installed; but the specs were identical anyway, and it worked well alongside the existing fitted RAM too. – Eventually.

‘Reams of text and not even a single mention of the Windows 7 system recovery disk. Don’t worry; I’m coming to that: -

First, a short commercial break:

I can’t fully explain why or how this happened; but when I powered up I got the message “NTLDR is missing. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart.” I did, and same message. How could NTLDR vanish from my primary hard-drive while the power was turned off? It beats me; but nevertheless it did, and as a result Windows wouldn’t boot.

So now the question at hand, and the circumstance that led me to start writing this article: -

What do you do if your installation of Windows 7 Beta (Build 7000) and/or Windows 7 RC (Build 7100) won’t start?

Answer: You use a system repair disc.

Where do I get hold of one of those?

Answer: You make one. Here’s how: -

Load a blank writable CD into your DVD-ROM drive. Click Start>Control Panel>Backup and Restore. In the sidebar on the left you’ll see “Create a system repair disk”. Click on it. Select the drive with the blank writable CD in it and click “Create disk”.

Windows 7 writes the disk; it took just over a minute on my system, and tells you how to label it. – That’s all there is to it. Keep this disk safe and undamaged, as it could be very useful later on. If you don’t have one and your Windows 7 system crashes and/or won’t boot then you could have a few nasty problems.

Fortunately I had made one earlier in good girl-guides/Blue Peter fashion; and it saved my system from a reinstall etc: -

Insert the system repair disc into the optical drive on power up and before the BIOS screen appears, select the boot order to boot from CD-ROM. (This can be done by pressing F12 as soon as possible and then selecting CD-ROM in the boot menu that appears with most not-too-ancient motherboards.) You may have to press any key to boot from CD after you select F12 and press enter. Windows takes a while to load files and to boot into repair mode.

Select language, (Default is English (United States) and keyboard input method. (I use United Kingdom for obvious reasons.)

System Recovery scans for Windows 7 installations that are already installed. You then have the option to “Use recovery tools that help fix problems starting Windows, or to “Restore your computer using a system image that you created earlier.” (Using the backup feature.)

I haven’t yet tried the second option; but if you select the first option, you’ll be presented with several system recovery options: -

1) Startup Repair. Automatically fix problems that are preventing Windows from starting. – I ran this twice, and suddenly NTLDR was back and the system booted without a problem.

This is simply amazing. I don’t know exactly what it does; I only know that it works. – Like a miracle-startup-pill.

2) System Restore. Restore Windows to an earlier point in time.

Good thinking Microsoft! System Restore is now available pre-boot.

3) System Image Recovery. Restore your computer using a system image you created earlier. (From backup- again)

More good thinking Microsoft!

4) Windows Memory Diagnostic. Check your computer for memory hardware errors.

Brilliant idea!

5) Command Prompt. Open a command prompt window.

Now why couldn’t they have made the system repair process this user-friendly in the first place?

‘Better late than never. – And this is quite awesome compared to how it used to be.

The only drawback I see is having another disk. What if your system repair disc gets lost or damaged? It won’t hurt to make two I suppose.

I wonder if it’s possible to store the data on a USB device and boot from that? Maybe someone will eventually come up with a hack.

- It’s still not perfect, but it’s vastly more user-friendly than it was with XP.

Finally then: If you’re running Windows 7 and haven’t made a system repair disc; now is the time to do so.

If you have any more information on this matter, or anything you’d like to add, then please do so by commenting. We’re all Windows 7 newbies to some extent right now (May 2009), so the more information at hand the better.

(Remember to use safe computing practices at all times; and if you can, get the 64-bit version of Windows 7 when it RTMs. Let’s lead the world into the 64-bit age. See my previous post.)

An electrical  resistor is an electronic component that offers resistance to electrical current. Electrical resistance is measured in ohms, symbolised by the Greek letter omega, and named after physicist Georg Simon Ohm who discovered electrical resistance hundreds of years ago. There is metric terminology involved with the term’s usage, such as 1000 ohms = 1 kilohm, 1000,000 ohms = 1 megohm, and also 1/1000th of an ohm = 1 milliohm, et al.

The measurement of a single ohm was devised such that it is the amount of resistance that drops a single volt at a single amp. (See the first part of Basic Ohms’ Law/Electronic Circuit Design – Crash Course to make things a bit clearer.)

In recent times the resistor has been miniaturised down to a tiny component that is even hard to pick up with tweezers. (The amount of electrical current that the resistor can handle as a result has also been vastly reduced; although in applications and gadgetry where such tiny resistors are used, the wattages flowing through them are indeed very tiny, sometimes amounting to only a fraction of a milliwatt. (1/1000th of a watt.)

You may have seen resistors on your motherboard even and not known they were there because they’re so tiny. There are usually quite a lot of resistors on a motherboard.

The “standard” sized resistors, built to handle 1/16th, 1/8th, 1/4, 1/2, and 1 watt, which are more clearly recognisable to the untrained eye of someone that is familiar with the sight of resistors, are all still available. You might see 1 or 3 of these on your motherboard also. There are definitely a number of them inside your power-supply unit, as well as probably a few higher rated resistors capable of handling up to 10 watts perhaps.

*Note: If you go and examine your motherboard after reading this; make sure you do so while the computer’s shut down and the power is off. Also I advise you to look but don’t touch; even if you do wear an electrically-earthed anti-static wristband. (See Protect Your Parts  and  Static is Your Enemy.)

So what exactly is a resistor? How is it made? What’s it made of?

In a word; carbon. – Carbon is the principle ingredient. Carbon, in its raw state, is a rather poor electrical conductor. The more it’s compressed the better it conducts electricity. Industry has managed to compress carbon to a point where it has virtually zero electrical resistance. – Then they powder it.

The carbon that has almost no electrical resistance is powdered into an extremely fine powder of highly pure carbon, with virtually no impurities of any kind in it. Impurities, in the form of a fine clay powder, are then added to it (Clay is non-conductive.) in pre-determined amounts in order to give it electrical resistance. The final electrical resistance in ohms of a given quantity of the carbon/clay mix will depend upon two factors. 

Those being: -

1) The ratio of carbon to clay in the “powder” mix. (The amount of impurities present.)

2) The amount of compression applied to the “powder” mix.

With the right combination of these two factors, precision resistors of any resistance from a fraction of an ohm right up to around 10 megohms can be made.

In recent times, different chemicals have been used which increase the tolerance, (i.e. the variation of the component’s actual resistance with the heat generated by itself and surrounding components, as well as drift by changing chemical composition with time, et al.) considerably right down to a factor of a tiny fraction of a percentage point. Nevertheless the basic idea that I have outlined to you is still in essence the method used to this day. The process happens on a level where much smaller components are manufactured on an extremely miniature level; thus using up far less resources but being of a highly precision and exact nature using the latest machinery to mass-produce millions of tiny resistors only 4mm long in some cases.

Then we come to the subject of microelectronics; including building resistors into chips: At the microelectronic level a different method of producing electrical resistance is used, which involves incorporating highly-doped MOSFETs connected as an always-open-circuit device at the point in the circuit where the resistance is required. The extra doping of the semiconductor material provides the required electrical resistance, rather than the “doping” of carbon powder.

Going back to the resistor as a discrete component: Once the desired resistance has been achieved, the resistive chemicals are sealed inside a container of some kind, (Usually roughly cylindrical.) or on a tiny non-conductive slab of material, with an electrical connection fitted at each end of the device. The resistance value is then marked on the component’s outer casing, or a thin non-conductive protective layer sprayed on to it and the relevant markings applied to that, usually by means of a resistor colour-code, standard to the electronics industry. After final testing the resistors are shipped to industry and retailers in their millions.

The Resistor Colour Code

Some high-wattage resistors are made by winding coils of resistive wire on a non-conductive heat-resistant tube. This avoids damage to the resistor’s internal structure due to the heat produced by the resistance to the high wattages flowing through the component.

You’ll learn something new every day here; that’s why it’s always a good idea to read this blog often. Why not subscribe to the RSS feed and mailing list, and be notified by RSS and email when new content is produced?

Something you’ll be aware of if you follow Star Trek is that the Borg say that resistance is futile. Clearly on the evidence of the above it’s quite the opposite!

I look forward to your comments.

“System File Checker?” You possibly repeat, inquisitively.

“Wasn’t that something in Windows 98?”

Yes it was; and I’m not encouraging you to use Windows 98 either. (Far from it: Windows 98 is now a significant security risk.) It still exists in Windows XP, and even in Windows Vista too.

“It is? I’ve never seen it in XP or Vista…”

Oh it’s there; ‘just that Microsoft buried it deep in the operating system.

We’ll talk about how to get it going in a while. First I wanted to explain a little bit about it:

There are certain files in Windows that are critical components of the operating system. If they weren’t there or they became corrupted, (As they might do from time to time.) then Windows doesn’t function properly; usually with the result that it crashes with a BSOD. These files are known as ‘protected’ files, and are hidden by default from all users. (They’re easy-peasy to unhide; but that’s for a different article perhaps.) At times if you inadvertently attempt to replace one of the protected system files; by installing crappy software maybe, or accidental deletion, Windows may respond with an “Are you sure you want to do that? You’re attempting to replace a protected system file.” type-message, and/or will put the original file back in place afterwards on some occasions.

- But as I said; these files can get corrupted; causing Windows to behave strangely, to malfunction, and even crash in a resultant blue-screen. Also – And even I’ve done it in the past; so there’s no need to feel ashamed of it – if you click ‘Yes’ when Windows asks ‘Are you sure you want to do that? You’re replacing a protected system file…’ – Because you’ve just paid for the piece of software you’re installing, so there’s surely nothing wrong with it or harmful to your computer. – and a protected system file gets replaced with one that’s almost identical, but probably has spyware in it too: Windows doesn’t always notice the difference at first, if it’s well coded.

System File Checker reads the digital signatures of all the protected files and checks their parity. If it finds something not quite right it replaces the file with a new copy. System File Checker will use the on-disk i386/cache if possible; but it prefers to take the relevant files straight from the installation disk if it can; and in some cases it might have no alternative anyway.

How to start System File Checker:

In Windows 98 you just clicked on a sub-menu item on the start menu.

– But in XP it’s easier to do it from a command-prompt. Click Start and type sfc /scannow.

In Vista; according to  Microsoft Help and Support: -

Type the following command, and then press ENTER:

sfc /scannow

 

If you don’t have an installation disk but you need to run the System File Checker, and the System File Checker asks you for the installation disk, don’t panic. There should be a partial disk-image on your C: drive containing all the files you need. It’s called i386. There are probably several; but the one we’re looking for here has close to 7,000 files in it and contains the files winnt.exe and winnt32.exe. (You won’t actually need these files for System File Checker; but if you find them in the i386 directory then you’re looking at the right one.)(C:\Windows\ServicePackFiles may be a good location to start looking for it.)

When the System File Checker tells you to insert the installation disk, just click OK. It’ll bring up a dialog box asking you to provide the location of the installation disk. Just browse to the i386 folder you’ve located or type in the path to it.

Not only will Windows use that directory at the time; but it’ll also remember it and it’ll be the first place it looks in a similar situation. ‘Handy eh? – Especially if your installation disk has been chewed up by the dog or accidentally used as a coaster when you forgot to put it away safely.

It doesn’t say this in any Microsoft documentation; but I’ve heard it from MVPs and others in the know, and I agree that it’s a good idea: After running SFC; reboot. It’ll set any file replacements in stone as it were.

There’s more on SFC in more detail here at Microsoft’s knowledgebase; so if you think I’ve missed something out; click this link for Windows XP and Server 2003, or this link for Windows Vista.

And that’s yer lot. Please comment.

You what? – You want pictures with it too? Do you want me to come over and run the thing for you too? Jeez!

Scroll down…

            

Here:

‘Satisfied?

 

According to all available sources; Microsoft are giving Windows Vista SP1 users an easy upgrade option to Windows 7 when they release it. kkomp.com’s prediction is that Windows 7 will be available later this year (2009): probably in late August.

The hardware required to run 7 will be no different to that which Vista runs on; but some XP users with older computers may not be able to meet the minimum specification set out for running Win. 7. The minimum hardware requirements for Windows 7 are as follows:

1 GHz CPU 

1 GB RAM 

  At least 16 GB free hard drive space

Graphics card or onboard graphics with support for Direct X 9 graphics and 128 MB memory.

XP users with older computers may find that they have to upgrade their RAM to 1GB and fit a graphics card or a better graphics card. XP users who use computers with a processor that is less than 1GHz should, in my opinion, keep using XP on it for now, relegate it to a second machine or give it to the kids, or use it as a server, and buy a new machine with Windows 7 pre-installed after it is released.

What I mean here is that if your machine has a processor less than 1 GHz, then your machine is getting very old and may not last much longer anyway. Upgrading to a faster processor will probably entail replacing the motherboard for a newer model capable of running a modern processor, which might also mean replacing the PSU too. Unless you want a retro-look machine with today’s standard capabilities; plus you have the money, time, and expertise to fully rebuild it, it’s simply not worth bothering with.

So let’s assume that you do have a machine capable of running Windows 7, but which you’re currently running XP on. What are the options? Many users didn’t bother with Vista due to rumours, mostly true; of driver incompatibilities, software issues, performance problems, and hardware dysfunctions. I’m one of those users myself.

Microsoft will allow us XP users to purchase an install Windows 7 at a discount; but the upgrade option is seemingly a no-no. Unless you’re a Vista user it’s a backup your important data, reformat, and install Windows 7. – No easy upgrade option for us traitors who failed to follow Microsoft’s every move to the letter. Oh no; we dared to disagree with the almighty software-giant and we must now accept our punishment.

Would it have been so much easier if we’d moved up to Vista when we were commanded to do so? In short no: in my opinion the extra hassles, problems, toils, crashes, downtime, confusion, etc, that moving to Vista pre-SP1 would have involved would far outweigh a simple backup, reformat, and install.

- And then there’s a matter of crap: Crap builds up on any disk from the moment it’s first used with a Windows operating system: Bits of deleted files, broken links, data and file-system corruption, registry errors, unseen malware; it all increases with time and starts to slow your system down, cause crashes, errors, and further data corruption. Upgrading your operating system from, in this case, Vista to Windows 7, brings all that crap with you into your new installation, causing problems right from the start.

I suggest taking the XP user’s route anyway, whether or not you’re running Vista right now: Backup anything important, reformat, install Windows 7.

In fact I’ll go one further than that and say if your hard-drive is more than 2 years old: No matter which company manufactured it and how great it appears to currently perform; replace it with a new and  larger one.

Why? The average working life of a hard-drive; depending upon manufacturer, is 2 to 4 years; more commonly 3. If yours is 2 years old or more it has probably at most another 2 years of life in it. Also when you purchased it; whether preinstalled in your new machine or as a replacement for the old one, it seemed huge and you thought you’d never use all that available disk-space. (I remember thinking that when I purchased a new machine with an 80GB HDD in 2001. By 2007 when I built myself a new machine I’d almost used all the available space and had fitted a second, larger, hard-drive also.)

Think big, think forward: 250GB – or whatever the capacity of your current hard-disk – may sound reasonable today, but in 2 years time you’ll probably be replacing your almost worn-out and full 250 GB drive with a much larger one, if you haven’t experienced a disk-crash by then.

Go buy a 1.5 terabyte disk and install it as your main drive, your C: drive. By all means use your existing drive as a second hard-disk, a data-store for little-used files perhaps, but as I said; think forward. Format your new 1.5 terabyte drive in NTFS and install Windows 7 on it. Delete any junk on your old disk; subject it to every security scan imaginable just to be on the safe side, and use it while it lasts.

Maybe Microsoft’s in the light of reality done us XP users a favour? What’s your opinion?

I am still working on this and another blog right at this moment as promised. The changes will be largely unseen as regards this one. The other blog is my new second blog called Shazza-Live – which you can view now if you like. It’s still in its infancy at the moment and is extremely light on content. Even the pages and posts that exist are in most cases only half-built and need further attention. Nevertheless, if you’d like to check out the proceedings then please feel free to mosey on over using this link.

Although the blog has a dot co dot UK URL, you can also use the dot com URL as an alternative, which redirects to the former.

“OK; so what’s going down then?” You ask. “In the last post you made on this site you said that you were working hard and wouldn’t be posting anything until Monday. You’re not very consistent at sticking to your decisions are you?”

You may have a point there, to some extent. The reason I’m making this post is due to a number of circumstances. I thought it prudent at this point, although it may be a little late in the day for some, to post the following: –

Part of the work that I was intending to undertake was a manual upgrade of my WordPress installation. had I done this it would have been a first for me, as I’ve only done the initial install, – twice now, with both this blog and also Shazza-Live too, – but I’ve always relied on automatic upgrades. These have all gone smoothly for me up until recently: -

…And that is the main reason for this unscheduled post. – That, as well as the fact that I have possibly cut an hour or two out of the weekends’ schedule by avoiding manually upgrading.

WordPress 2.7 has a built-in upgrading feature; whereas in previous versions of WordPress you either had to rely on a plugin to do the auto-upgrade, or manually do it yourself. I always used the plugin option without any problems other than fear that things would screw up in the middle of the process and I’d have to take an on-the-job crash-course in rebuilding the database. Fortunately that never happened under the old WP Auto-Upgrade plugin; at least not in my case anyway.

When I upgraded to WP 2.7; almost as soon as it was released in RTM format, I noticed that it had its own built-in upgrading feature, and I wondered if the WP Auto-Upgrade plugin would interfere with that. – Despite the fact that it had handled the upgrade to 2.7 without problem. I made a mental note and put it to the back of my mind… And forgot all about it.

When it came to upgrading from 2.7 to 2.7.1; which I wanted to get done as 2.7 was rather overly buggy for an RTM release, I clicked on the “Upgrade Automatically” button: CRASH! : -

Upgrade WordPress

Downloading update from http://wordpress.org/wordpress-2.7.1.zip

Unpacking the core update

Fatal error: Cannot redeclare pclziputilpathreduction() (previously declared in /538/linux/kkomp.com/hdoc/content/plugins/wordpress-automatic-upgrade/lib/pclzip.lib.php:5421) in /538/linux/kkomp.com/hdoc/admin/includes/class-pclzip.php on line 5498

‘Pretty obvious really – Like RTFM (Read The F…ing Manual.). I failed to spot the obvious, however, and nothing jogged my memory either. I even showed this to an alleged php expert; who said that it was probably due to a fault in the server’s php and that I should get on to the host about it. I did; and even the advisor at Fasthosts.co.uk missed the obvious; advising me that my WordPress install had screwed up and that I’d have to manually upgrade to fix the problem.

Fortunately I’d also put out on Twitter, but not getting a decent response for 24 hours wasn’t helping. I took my attention off Twitter and began planning the manual upgrade; going through every step with a fine-toothed comb.

I was distracted by my older computer, which had been acting strangely for a while, crashing with a repeated BSOD. I put that problem right, and as I reinstalled Twhirl I looked at the replies in my Twitter account: –

My thanks to @kwbridge, who came straight up with the solution:

“Do you have the WP Auto-Upgrade plugin installed? If so, delete it and try again.” Brilliant!

I found and deleted the WP Auto Upgrade folder in Root\WP-content\Plugins directory, attempted the auto-upgrade, and everything was accomplished in a matter of seconds.

Target neutralised.

I’m rather embarrassed that I failed to spot the obvious though. Rather than “RTFM”, analyse, diagnose, rectify; it was more a case of LATFM (Look At The F…ing Manual.) and panic:

“Oh sh.t my blog’s crashed: There goes my blogging career before it even started properly.”

Panic stations. Dial 999 and ask for the technical assistance squad. Shut down all operations. ‘Houston we have a problem.’ Gather all available financial resources and put them on standby. Go to red alert status. Battle stations. Evacuate all non-essential personnel. Mayday, mayday…

In hindsight the problem was obvious: The php code had already declared and set a value for the function “pclziputilpathreduction()” when the plugin activated, hence when the built-in Auto-Upgrade function was activated and attempted to redeclare it, it was unable to do so and caused the fatal error. It’s all there in the error description FFS; but me being a php novice caused me to go into a flap.

As @kwbridge said in a reply to my reply:

“…I wonder how many people have that plugin installed and are going to run into the same problem?”

Well if any of those people happen to be you then here’s the solution in case you missed it like I did.

Kkomp.com – Taking you beyond the comfort zone and ensuring that you don’t miss out in getting your geek on. I so hope pcmech.com don’t mind me combining their motto with mine. Lol.

And now, with that out of the way, back to the grindstone. Onwards and upwards with panic asunder…

I have been trying to work out what went wrong for some time now, until just now without any success. I was totally baffled and had assumed that I’d tried everything possible without having a full knowledge of php, in attempts to solve the problem with the RSS feed.

 I’d narrowed it down to being a problem with my blog itself; inasmuch as the fact that no RSS feed was being produced by this blog. I’d researched all kinds of reported RSS failures to do with WordPress 2.7 in forums and blogs via Google, and had followed a number of suggestions, all without any positive results. I’d also attempted to apply logical reasoning to the matter, and had even renewed some of the RSS-associated php files from a fresh copy of WordPress 2.7. Nothing seemed to be having any positive effect or making any difference to the RSS failure.

In my quest for knowledge and to stay up to date on the latest trends and ideas in the blogosphere I’d also been devoting a portion of my time to reading and commenting on other blogs, in addition to trying to diagnose the RSS issue. It just happened that not so long ago I started listening to an audio recording of Yaro Starak’s interview with David Risley. Yaro was inquiring about the plugins that David was using. David was saying that he used “Yet Another Related Posts Plugin” as it was a cool tool; as it seems to figure out which posts are related to the post in question fairly accurately , and not only does it display them underneath the post on screen, but it also includes them in the RSS feed…

Holy carp, I didn’t think of that plugin as being related to the RSS feed!

I deactivated the “Yet Another Related Posts Plugin” plugin and the RSS feed came back to life instantly. AT LAST! Success!

“But don’t go celebrating yet girl.” I told myself, cautiously. “Let me first see what happens when that plugin is reactivated.”

Well I’ve reactivated it, and last time I checked the RSS feed was working 100%. Target neutralised! (For the time being at least.)

What caused it to foul up? There must have been a bug somewhere inside that plugin that caused it to get stuck. – and block the RSS feed in anticipation of further data while awaiting another subroutine execution that never happened… Maybe? I’m not a php expert by any means. – Really, I’m not by any means whatsoever. I can barely string two lines of php code together as yet, so I’ll not try and be clever at the risk of making myself look utterly stupid.

I’ll be reporting everything to the creators of the plugin for their analysis. – Including a copy of this post, along with a copy of my entire modified theme folder. In the meantime I hope the RSS feed doesn’t fail again. If it does I’ll at least have some idea of why. – Or at least what’s causing it.

So in summary the RSS feed is working again and David Risley has saved the day yet again; without even realising it! In fact I’m going to give his blog at davidrisley.com a free plug. – As well as the other site he runs at PCMech.com .

Analogue amplification stages incorporating just a single active device, such as a transistor or op-amp, – as in a DC amplifier -  usually allow amplification of either the negative-going or the positive-going part of an AC waveform alone; basically cutting out half of the cycle and therefore causing immense distortion. There are two ways of overcoming this: Those being amplifying both halves of the waveform separately and recombining them at the output; perhaps at a decoupling transformer, (Too much copper wire, inductance, and consequential weight for my liking.) or by using two interconnected active devices to amplify both halves of the waveform at once, before passing the full AC waveform on to the next stage.

The latter method can be achieved with a push-pull amplifier.

Pictured below is a circuit diagram of a very basic push-pull amplification stage. (Please excuse the freehand drawing.)

The input signal; an alternating waveform, is fed via capacitors 1 & 2 to the bases of Q1 and Q2. The functions of C1 & 2 individually and collectively are two-fold: The first is that they individually shield the base connections of their respective transistors from any stray DC voltages from a previous stage, also they separate any DC potentials present at the base junctions of Q1 & 2; therefore preventing unintentional and accidental biasing of one another.

Resistors 3 & 4 act as a potential divider biasing the base of Q1 to 0V7. Resistors 1 & 2 have the a similar effect effect on the base of Q2: However since Q2 is a PNP transistor, the values of resistor used in the case of the R3,4 pair are reversed; therefore giving the base of Q2 a negative bias with respect to that of Q1.

Preset potentiometers PR1 & 2 set the potential of the transistor-pair with respect to the supply rails; and consequently the swing-maximum of the output-waveform. Resistors R5 & 6 are a precaution to avoid the peak output level colliding with the supply voltage and therefore causing distortion.

Capacitor C3 provides AC decoupling for the transistor pair.

Note that the emitters of the transistors are connected together and the output taken from that connection. This allows the inclusion of the traditional collector load resistance in both cases.

A waveform appearing at the input flows through both C1 and C2 to the base of the individual transistors. If the waveform is on the positive-going half of the cycle it lowers the conduction of Q2 and raises the conduction of Q1. If the waveform is on the negative-going half of the cycle the reverse occurs: Hence the output polarity mirrors the input polarity to whatever degree of amplification is involved.

A Little Background Information:

Prior to the advent of digital electronics, this type of circuit configuration was widely used in analogue receiving and amplification devices throughout the 1950s, 60s, and to some extent even the 70s. Back in the 1950s before the transistor became widely used in electronic circuitry, they would use a pair of triode or pentode  thermionic valves in the place of the transistor pair. As technology developed the manufacturers developed smaller valves with two triode or pentode sections for the purpose, screened from one another by a metal electrode.

(Example: ECC82 (European Nomenclature), or equivalent 12AU7 (American nomenclature.) AF double-triode with a 6.3 Volt heater supply. The European equivalent with a higher heater voltage was the UCC82 which required a 32 Volt heater supply.)

Valves were also manufactured with a pre-amplification or oscillator stage included, usually a triode; along with a main amplification device, usually a pentode. (Example ECL85 (6.3V heater supply), UCL85(32 V heater supply), and PCL85 (17.5 Volt heater supply, commonly used in the audio output stages of televisions. – Right up until around 1973.))

During the late 1960s/early 70s, valves began to be excluded from the designs of electronic devices, in preference for the transistor; which was lighter, lasted a lot longer, required less voltage to function, and didn’t require an internal heater powered from an external source to make it work.

(There was a period at the very end of the 1960s which lasted a little way into the 70s where equipment manufacturers would produce valve/transistor hybrids, especially in the case of televisions. These exhibited a few benefits over valve-only technology; such as they took less time to warm up before they started working, and the amount of mains-hum distortion was reduced to a large extent.)

There: A free history-lesson along with the main subject. There’s value-for-money; even though there was no charge in the first place.

Personally Speaking:

Just in case you’re wondering, I do just about remember those old days mentioned; especially the latter valve/transistor technology. I was just getting into electronics in those days. – And yes I was rather young to be messing about inside televisions et al. I practiced hobby electronics until fairly recently, when I got qualifications in the subject after a crash-refresher course at college. I became interested in computers in the late 1970s, around the time the Commodore Pet was released to market. Upon leaving school I followed the arts for a while, at the same time as running a small hobby-enterprise in analogue electronics, until I got back into both computers and digital electronics in the late 1990s.

(Oh yes. – Just in case you were wondering; I do remember the large B9D-base line-output pentode valve used in some televisions right into the 1980s; although I can’t remember the alphanumeric designation offhand. It started with a “P”, but that’s pretty obvious. – Most television valves did, other than maybe the HF triode-pentodes in the UHF/VHF tuners of some 1960s models. – Apart from some of the B8A valves of the early 1960s with the metallic base. – Now that is going back a bit too far.)

Ah I just remembered: PL504.  

. . . . . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I was just proof-reading after writing this lot and I remembered; I need to hyperlink. There is so much I should hyperlink. If this article takes longer than expected to produce then that’s part of the reason why.

Oh wow; this’ll be fun!

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Every now and again hardware manufacturers write a new device driver version for their products: They do this to iron out bugs in previous drivers, to add extra or better functionality to an existing product, or to allow better integration with new technologies used by websites etc. Maybe even for security reasons too.

It is always good practice to keep your hardware’s drivers up to date, as it will allow your computer to function better if you do.

Microsoft sometimes announce and allow you to download drivers from Windows Update: Personally I don’t think it’s a good idea to always trust drivers from Microsoft Update. It has been known for WU to advise people to update a driver only for it to be the wrong driver which crashes the system. Also these driver update sites which scan your drivers and find the latest versions don’t always get it right. Whilst they are generally accurate they do tend to boob at times: I once was offered a driver package by such a site which was supposed to be the latest drivers for the chipset in the machine which I was using at the time. The drivers were the latest drivers for an Intel chipset; yet there was a Silicon Integrated Systems chipset fitted to the motherboard.

The only fully reliable way to do it is to take the long route and go direct to the manufacturer of the device in question to search for the latest correct driver. To do that you need to know who the device manufacturer is, what the device in question is, and also any particular model number of a specific device.

This can be easier said than done, as there are many devices on the motherboard itself; all of which need their own individual unique driver. If you know which device needs a driver, and what it is + its model number and manufacturer, then you’re almost there. If you have a motherboard that needs drivers but you don’t have the corresponding installation CD, you’ll need to either order a corresponding driver CD from the board’s manufacturer, or download it online as an .ISO file and burn it to CD on another computer.

If you’re already running an existing working PC then it’ll be worth checking your drivers to see if they can be updated. Old or corrupted drivers can result in anything from less-than-tip-top performance to a stop error. (BSOD) Assuming that you’re not someone with lethargic loser mentality; "Oh I can’t be bothered – My computer works as it is, so I don’t need to improve it.", you’ll want to keep your computer working at its best as much as possible.

The place to start is in Device Manager. In earlier 9x versions of Windows this was readily accessible. In Windows XP they’ve hidden it. I wrote an article on creating a Device Manager icon on your desktop, which it might be useful to read. If you haven’t yet created that icon then there are 2 ways to get to the Device manager window:

The first; the short way, is to click Start>Run and type "devmgmt.msc", then click OK. The second; the long way, is to click Start>Control Panel>System(In Classic Mode.)>Hardware and on the Hardware tab click the Device Manager button.

There you will see a list that looks something like this:-

The top icon is your computer itself, and it has your computer’s name next to it. (In this case "INXPENSE2X"; because the computer I’m using is an ex-demo model from the Kustom Komputa INXPense range with a dual-core processor.) Below that you’ll see various sections which expand if you click the corresponding + signs in the boxes to show which devices you have installed:-

As you may note I expanded the "System devices" section, which is in essence most of the drivers associated with the components the motherboard, and as you will also note there are a lot of them. Don’t fret; they won’t all require updating.

Double-click on a device and a spec.s box appears which has information on that particular device:-

As I insinuated earlier; there are certain drivers that won’t need updating. These are the system device drivers that are provided and installed along with the operating system:

When Windows is installed it installs a number of drivers by default during the installation process. Some of these drivers are stand-ins and are installed pending installation of a better and updated driver, which usually occurs when the drivers on the motherboard’s accompanying CD are inputted on initial power-up after build – And/or in the case of using a supplemental graphics card; when the graphics card’s driver CD is installed after the motherboard’s devices are installed. Some of the drivers that the operating system installs, though, are only licensed to Microsoft, and form a part of the Windows operating system; such as the drivers for the COM ports, the motherboard resources drivers, the PCI standard host CPU bridge drivers, etc. These are normally set in stone with the operating system and cannot be updated unless you upgrade the operating system: For instance from XP to Vista. Occasionally but rarely Microsoft may offer an updated driver of this type on Windows Update -  And in such rare cases it is worth taking the new driver and upgrading your existing driver as you won’t get an update from anywhere else. Usually, though, if you double click on a device and the driver manufacturer as written on the Drivers tab is Microsoft plus the year of manufacture is the same as the year that the operating system was released, then there’s no point in attempting to update that particular driver.

It’s drivers such as "VIA standard PCI to PCIe Bridge" which might be able to be updated: In the case of this one it comes in a package of system drivers from Via at the ViaArena website, and which is updated somewhere in the region of every 9 months to a year. Also drivers such as Asus nVidia GeForce 6200 graphics card… Basically anything with a manufacturer name in it, is a great place to start looking for updated drivers.

Go to the device’s manufacturer’s website, search for an updated version of the correct driver, and install it:-

Some drivers are supplied in their own .exe package and can be installed with just a click + follow any instructions. Other drivers aren’t quite so user friendly, and require a different approach; such as unzipping to a .temp file, opening the device’s installation program, pointing it to the temp file that has been unzipped, and allowing Windows to install the files for you. (Canoscan FB620U scanner driver for example.) Yet others are so primitive that I’ve known at least one case where it’s best to just dump the files on C: drive and the installer usually finds them and installs them on reboot. (- An old Xerox printer I used to use once, years ago.)

That’s given you some idea of how. As for why; well as I already said: It’ll give you better performance, and greater stability – So keep your drivers up to date. Maintain a healthy computer.

This is a deviation from the normal type of posts:

I’m currently carrying out maintenance of my main computer due to the hard-disk packing up. basically what’s been happening over the last 3 days is that for no apparent reason the machine’s been randomly BSODing; just a couple of times a day at first, then more including at boot. Yesterday the CHKDSK initiated after crash at boot 3 times and repaired errors on the disk, only for it to crash again at boot, sometimes activating CHKDSK before attempted reboot.

The situation now is that it won’t boot at all without crashing.

I had a second drive in the machine; so I disconnected the faulty drive from the motherboard and connected the second drive in its place. I switched on and was planning on using Windows Automated System Recovery to restore things. My backup was on the drive that I was now using – Which Windows promptly formatted! Fortunately I had a copy of the backup on an external disk.

I though that I’d left it connected to this second computer which I’m on now, so I switched it on but found that it wasn’t. OK fair enough. I didn’t realise that it was connected to the machine I was working on.

I went out to the kitchen to make coffee and returned a while later to a dialog box telling me that Windows ASR was formatting volume \DosDevices\ D: … and the external drive was spinning away with a constant green light on:

So thanks Windows – You just ruined any chance I had of making things easy: Now I’ll have to try and use a month-old backup which I have stored on this computer, or I’ll have to rely on the slow restore of Carbonite online backup.

This operation is clearly going to take the rest of the day: In future I’m using Acronis and Carbonite/Backblaze online backups only.

You are reading the third edition (Final Retail) which has replaced all other editions. Each edition is extremely similar to the previous edition but with added content.

Ok here’s my first thoughts about the whole damn thing:-

Today everywhere has been alive with iPhone buzz: FFS it’s only a phone! Networks are overcharging, Apple are overcharging, but the crowds just keep charging up to the counters for the pleasure of getting ripped off so they can say “Ooh look at me; I’ve got the latest gadget -Just like everyone else!” Pfft!

Big deal! Clever you with your new toy – Moving on: In a case of perfect timing WordPress have announced WordPress for the iPhone: Now you can blog with your new toy too if you know how to read and write. Remember that thing called school that you tried to avoid? At school they taught you how to read and write…Oh never mind; go play with your iPhone.

Don’t hold your breath on wpiPhone though. (That’s WordPress for the iPhone for the benefit of iPhone owners.) I have a weird premonition that it might just go to pot as they try to make it bloom. Keep watching for nipples and if you see more than one then wpiPhone has probably gone tits-up.

I just cannot credit the hysteria about a phone – Holy carp!

I set out to be brief on this article; and brief I shall be. When the hype has ceased to have any residual effect and networks send people their bills for using the phone.

(Phone is what it is and it’s not mine and probably never will be, so why call it an iPhone? Information – pah! Try reading classes first. ROFL. I wonder; can Chris Pirillo’s followers read the instructions? PMSL!

Google – Help; I’m in hysterics!

Chris Pirillo <—Yay! AVG 8. 

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=pirillo

I always and without fail crease up every time Pirillo announces an apology in his posts that certain things may involve reading. I bet Apple never thought to include a text-reader in their new phone though did they? – Hey don’t take it personally; you got great advertising out of it.)

The new iPhone – The perfect escapism for the cyber-escapist – Until the first bill arrives: You just wait. <chuckle>

iPhone, iPhone, folla-diddle-i-phone; iPhone, iPhone, folla-diddle-i.

iPhone, rip-off, overcharged by networks; goon-fad, boy’s toy, I will never buy.

I could be wrong; I have been known to be so before; but I reckon it’s all a big hyped up load of trash and people will end up regretting the day they ever set eyes on an – Oh I’ll utter it then. – iPhone. <shiver>

That’s all; that’s my twopennethworth.

No it isn’t: I lied: ‘Still same day and already the problems have started!

“Software problems bug Apple’s launch of new iPhone” Friday July 11, 1:59 pm ET

My thanks to David Risley of  PCMech for providing the following link via Twitter

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080711/apple_iphone.html?.v=27

And so it begins:

“”Steve Jobs knows what people want,” Web developer Lucinda McCullough told the Christchurch Press newspaper, referring to Apple’s chief executive. “And I need a new phone.”"

-Quoted from that linked site.

Then why the hell am I trying to sell unique quality desktop computers? If Steve Jobs really does know what people want I’ll get a few old wrecks that no longer work properly out of the spares cabinet, give them a quick identical case mod, and sell them at an exaggerated price: Who cares whether they work or not provided they all look the same and are the latest fad eh Mr Jobs? While we’re at it Steve Jobs; perhaps you’d inform me why it is that you’re named after a polite english slang term for crap?

Brilliant Headline from Gizmodo.com:-

“Apple and AT&T Stores Having Difficulty Activating iPhones (UPDATE: It’s the iPocalypse)” (Linked)

“Even the iTunes link on Apple is gone. “

Throughout the entire United States and Canada; in fact seemingly worldwide, Apple’s servers have crashed or are over-capacity

“So How Did This Happen:
The source of the iTunes crash/slowdown seems not be those buying iPhone 3Gs from Apple/AT&T stores at all but the millions of people updating to the new firmware at home. Firmware 2.0 isn’t like other firmwares in that it needs to update the phone and reauthenticate the service. And in turn, when the servers are slammed and the phone reaches for reauthentication, the server isn’t always there to reactivate the service. This is how some of those newly bricked iPhones are occurring, and a source tells us that even first gen iPhones are susceptible.”

Unacceptable: There is no other word for it. The internet isn’t to blame: The wiring isn’t stretched to capacity, the isps are taking the load without trouble. The problem is Apple – Nobody else: Sheer incompetence!

“iTunes activation servers go down, iPhone 3G customers being sent home unactivated, first-gen iPhone customers stuck with dead iPhones.”

From http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/11/itunes-activation-servers-go-down-iphone-3g-customers-being-sen/

“Update: Apple has confirmed to us that activation is down, and that customers are being asked to take the phone home and activate via iTunes later. We’re not sure what good that’ll do, since the servers are down no matter where you are, but Apple says it’s “working on a solution.” In the meantime, it looks like the new SIM works in first-gen units, so at least upgraders aren’t totally phone-deprived. Oh, and remember that updating a first-gen iPhone to 2.0 requires hitting the server as well, so if you haven’t taken the plunge we’d say hold off until this all gets sorted.”

“Update 2: In related news, those updating their first-gen iPhone to 2.0 are also getting caught in the activation shuffle, leaving some with bricked iPhones. In our test case, the activation servers came back up after about 45 minutes just long enough to get 2.0 running on our first-gen iPhone, but not all have been so lucky.”

<Fits of laughter>

“This does not look good. Apparently people at home can’t even upgrade to firmware 2.0 and the problem is afflicting iTunes on an international scale.”

This is the end of my coverage for this article: Follow this link for the continuing saga:

http://gizmodo.com/5024187/apple-and-att-stores-having-difficulty-activating-iphones-update-its-the-ipocalypse

The Joke is on Apple.

Why not go buy a Mac?… ROTFLMAO!

 I just have to add this: It had me in stitches:-

From Steve Rubel on Flickr: