In many ways I’m an easy-going and tolerant person; but I can also be rather sharp-tongued and intolerant too, when things start to get my goat, having built up for some time. I’m a logical-thinker, and may at times appear to suffer from overindulgence in my own intellectual-prowess: Nevertheless I try to stay on a level and retain an heir of consistency and competence.

There are a number of things, though, that make me see red fairly quickly; although I usually successfully contain any over-emotional reaction to a certain degree in most cases. Here are a few of them: -

1) Drunkenness and associated inarticulate vulgarities and depraved fuckwittery: Everyone likes a drink but nobody likes a drunk; particularly me, if the drunk in question happens to use it as an excuse to behave in a delinquent and irresponsible manner. Very very occasionally I get drunk myself; once or twice a year at most, but I tend to just shut up and do and say nothing, as there’s probably nothing sensible to say if my head’s swimming, and as I already know, if there’s nothing to be said some idiot usually has to go and say it: I just don’t want it to be me.

2) Huge sales letters: Do marketers honestly think that I’m going to read all 30,000+ words covering an equivalent of 48 single-sides of A4 paper? The way I see it; there are several points to be made: -

1. What the product is.
2. What the product does.
3. How the product will help the customer.
4. Why the customer should buy this particular product.
5. What other people think of the product and/or the vendor.
6. The money-back guarantee of satisfaction.
7. Re-affirmations and closing remarks.

That’s it; no more is needed. While touching on how using the methods or whatever contained within the product has helped the vendor personally is a very good thing, I honestly don’t want to spend an hour reading about how much money the vendor has had since birth, and how they are now the greatest marketer in the history of the internet because they have been bringing in $20,000 a day in the last 3 months using the “secret formula to success” that is only and exclusively contained in their publication. (The “secret formula to success” that they mention is, usually, set up a website/blog and sell the “secret formula to success” to everyone else.)

(A video-presentation helps too; because it’s more interesting than reading reams of multi-coloured typeface, as well as the fact that it can eliminate the need for all the said typeface.)

Don’t get me wrong here, though: There are some genuine products out there from genuine vendors and authors that don’t claim that they’re going to make you an instant success overnight; but sometimes do nevertheless: It’s a matter of knowing how to filter golden-nuggets these out from the detritus. – and that’s what I attempt to do with regard to anything I offer via this blog, before I advertise it. – I’m just nearing the end of the Blog Masters Club course by David Risley myself; so yes I do buy and try some of the products before I offer them here. If they are no good then I ask for a refund and forget them. If I benefit from them then I advertise them here. (Yes; I will be promoting the Blog Masters Club; because it’s an excellent product.): This includes physical as well as online products too.

At times I’ll see a product and get a gut-feeling about it, after which I’ll do a little research and then promote it if the gut-feeling remains. Also at times I see a product that makes me curious, but after looking into it I can say “No” to it and move onwards.

3) Spammers – That includes Twitter-spammers, email-spammers, and every other kind of spammer out there.

Now, surprisingly, I actually do admire the tenacity and dedication of some spammers in a way, in that they have the persistence and unerring dedication to continuously flood the market with their dodgy offers of dodgy goods, and that, even though any spammer has a bad reputation by designation, people still, nevertheless, buy their goods: Well you don’t think that spammers would be spamming if it didn’t work do you? Some people even if only 1 in almost a million, buy from a spammer: Therefore, if the spammer sends out 100 million spams a day, or get 100 million views a day, then they make 100 or more sales a day.

Don’t get me wrong, though; spammers annoy me just as much as they annoy anyone else, and I definitely don’t condone or encourage spamming: It’s irresponsible and selfish; it puts a vital public utility; namely the world wide web, in jeopardy by consuming too much bandwidth, it’s usually a criminal activity supporting other criminal activities, and it’s illegal: There are 3 good-enough-reasons not to do it.

But the public; even if it’s just 1 in a million people, keep the spammers in profit, because they buy from them: therefore there will always be spammers because there will always be dodgy or criminal or stupid or any combination of the three members of the public who use the internet.

4) Brainless egocentric men. Please note that I intend no sexism here: I mentioned “men” rather than “people” because brainless egocentric women don’t annoy me; they actually entertain me to some extent, despite the fact that I treat them with the contempt that they deserve in many cases. I have creased up so many times because of this that I’m surprised I still have all my ribs intact. I have a knack of making such females appear and feel 1/2 inch tall.

Men with this trait, on the other hand, bore me to tears, and if I ever manage to get a word in edgeways through their mindless, brainless, senseless drivel about how big they are, how they scare everyone else, who they’ve beaten up + stories of fights from the past, and how they always make a perfect sexual conquest of some poor victim-girl afterwards who is amazed at their macho-ness… zzz, it usually angers them because the comment I make out of sheer intellectual-unbelievability, boredom, and tedium, is guaranteed to be pointed with a poison-tip and hurts their inflated male-pride.

5) Christmas – Yes Christmas; a time for giving, a time for sharing, the season where we show our love and compassion towards our fellow humans… OK let’s cut the BS:

Christmas; take 2, and action: A time for some people to get as much as they can, no matter what the cost; particularly if they’re a teenager. A time for being bored to tears by the in-laws and having to listen to their boring tedium of an excuse for conversation again. A time for drunkenness and gluttony…

Enough! – That’s the negative bit.

On the positive side; a time for stores and other retail outlets to do a roaring trade and balance their books against any losses accrued at lean-times in the trading-calendar. A time when the year’s profits can be estimated fairly accurately from the season’s overall profit when run against projected losses in the coming post-Christmas lean-time.

I don’t intend to labour this: There is one winner from Christmas: Commerce – Everyone else loses at the end of the day.

It’s not about Christ, other than the token “away in a manger” stuff as performed by schoolchildren, nor is it about anything religious any longer; be it Pagan, Christian, whatever.

Me? I hibernate: Not literally; I mean I hermit-ise. – I lock myself away with a computer and an internet connection and a coffee machine, and before I know it the day’s over. Relief! ‘Only another 250 or so days to go before everything starts gearing towards the following damn Christmas again… and before that we have Valentine’s Day, Easter, Halloween… Now I don’t mind Halloween, but all the Christianisation and the Westernisation and the Hollywood influence, etc, has detracted far away from its real meaning…

Enough of this: It’s coffee-time. Bye.

If you’ve just built or bought a new PC to run Windows 7 on; you might want to run all the programs that you ran in XP or Vista. Some of these may be programs that you purchased from online vendors which have a setup program which requires an installation key. In some cases the user may have retained both the installation program and the installation-key. Guess what: You’ve lost the key.

Vista to 7

When moving up from Windows Vista to Windows 7; you can do an in-place upgrade and take all your programs from Vista to 7, and they’ll work “perfectly” without any problem – At least that’s the idea. In reality, though, any errors/corruption or whatever that appeared on your previous Vista installation will most likely appear on your Windows 7 installation if you use this method; and any problems you encountered running things in Vista may recur in 7, or worse.

I’m an advocate of reformat/reinstall: I don’t advise an in-place upgrade for the reasons mentioned above.

XP Dead-End

With Windows XP as your previous operating system, you’ll have to go the reformat/reinstall route anyway: There is no way of doing an in-place upgrade anyway in such a case.

Drive-Transplant

You might think that it would be an idea to take the old machine’s hard-drive and install it in your new machine. The added drive will appear as a second hard-drive, and you’ll be able to access all the data on it. As for the programs on it, though; that’s a different matter: –

If a program was installed using a setup program initially; then there’s a 999/1000 chance that it’ll require the setup program again to make it of any use to the new machine… And, of course, you’ve lost the key, even if you still have the setup program.

A lot of programs, rely on configuration and registry settings that are made within the operating system by the installer-program. Without having run setup, those settings are not in place, and the programs will not run.

There are a few, smaller, programs that don’t require a setup at all, but usually anything in the way of programs that are either large or purchased will require their specific setup programs to be run before they can be used.

Get Set-Up

The first place to look would be the website where you originally purchased the program from. In some cases the vendor will no longer be providing the setup program for your particular version of the program, as it has now become “obsolete” and new versions have since been issued. In cases such as these you should probably buy the latest version anyway, as the old program you were using may contain incompatibilities with your new operating system, as well as security vulnerabilities which have been patched in later versions.

Think Ahead

I personally have a way round the “lost-key” scenario: I hold on to a copy of the installation-program wherever possible, and I send all of my installation emails containing installation-keys to one of my Gmail accounts, so that any time I want to reinstall a program I find its setup-program on the relevant storage-media, and I look up the installation-key online on the relevant Gmail account: Target neutralised.

Scrooge Isn’t Just For Christmas

At the end of the day, then, in most cases, if you don’t have a setup program and a key, if one is necessary, you’re screwed: ‘Simple as that. – But stop being so tight-fisted: shell out a few bucks for the latest version of the program in question: It’ll be compatible with your new operating system, it’ll be secure, and it will possibly save you time and hassle by avoiding any of the problems which would have arisen had you eventually installed the old version, having got hold of a setup program and a key, by whatever means.

I myself am a cheapskate, and I’ll be a freeloader as well as a paying consumer if it’s a viable proposition to do so: In many cases, however, it isn’t a viable proposition to be a freeloader and/or to try and do it all on the cheap. The above is one of those situations: One where shelling out a little, rather than avoiding doing so in any way possible, is actually going to save you time and money at the end of the day: It’s a situation where you spend money in order to save money.

Lastly; if you use hacked or pirated software in its place then you’re asking for trouble, and if you end up screwing-up your operating system completely because of that then I have no sympathy for you whatsoever: You got exactly what you deserved, and hopefully that’s taught you a lesson.

Summary in Midwinter

In summary, then, if you’ve lost your product installation key and/or your installation program and the program doesn’t work when you try to move it between operating systems; buy new: It’s the most sensible and cost-effective way to go when all’s said and done.

UK magazine Computer Shopper have rated Microsoft’s new Security Essentials 1.0 anti-malware package as top-of-the-class with regard to free antivirus solutions. In the February 2010 edition of the magazine, which brings product news, computer help, tests and analyses new technologies, and runs competitions, Microsoft’s offering was awarded the Budget Buy award and rated with four stars; the same score as AVG 9.0. As we’ll go on to see further down, Microsoft’s product has a smaller footprint and is much more environment-friendly than AVG.

(You may wonder why it was given a budget buy award when it is free: Well free appears to me to be a decent budget!)

Computer Shopper claim that their specialised anti-virus testing lab is one of the best in the world, and a member of AMTSO. (Anti-Malware Testing Standards Organisation.) They use viruses downloaded live from the internet as malware samples, rather than having a cumulative collection of virus-samples that may have mutated considerably since the sample was collected.

In short; they test using XP Professional with the SP2 service-pack applied, and ensure that the anti-malware solution under test is updated with the very latest available malware definitions.

The anti-malware solutions tested were both free and paid products. In the category of free products were: -

• ALWIL Avast! Home Edition 4.8

• AVG TECHNOLOGIES AVG Free 9.0

• AVIRA AntiVir Personal 9.0

• MICROSOFT Security Essentials 1.0

The lowest-scoring of these was Avira AntiVir Personal. In summary the magazine said that although it was easy to use, they were very disappointed at its poor web-threat-detection, as well as its unreliable automatic updates.

Second from bottom, but yet in third place, came Alwil’s Avast! Home Edition, which has loads of features and provides a good all-round malware defence. – However others did a better job.

AVG 9.0 was released while CS were testing, and despite having an unfair advantage in a number of ways, the product continued to hold its own among the best free security software available, coming in second-place out of the four.

In first-place amongst the free-category was Microsoft’s Security Essentials 1.0. Computer Shopper’s summary verdict was that it was lightweight, easy-to-use, and accurate. They said that Security Essentials was the perfect choice if you’d rather not shell-out on a paid-for security suite.

So although AVG had an herein-unspecified ‘unfair advantage’, it was nevertheless beaten back to second-place by the cream-of-the-crop from Microsoft. Why was this?

Taking a look at the stated minimum hardware specifications required to run the 2 solutions might give us a clue as to at least a part of the reason: -

• AVG requires Windows 2000, XP (Pro or Home, 32 or 64-bit),Vista (32-bit or 64) or Windows 7 (32 or 64-bit). At least a 1.8GHz processor is recommended, along with at least 512MB RAM and 550MB disk-space.

• Security Essentials, on the other hand, isn’t quite so demanding: Security Essentials isn’t built for Windows 2000 or XP 64-bit, so users of those versions of Windows will have to use AVG. – All others that AVG will run on are recommended though; that’s XP 32-bit, Vista 32 and 64-bit, and 7 32 and 64-bit.
•  

         Unlike its resource-hungry rival, Security Essentials requires lower specs to operate, indicating that it has a much smaller footprint: It only needs a 500MHz processor, for instance, it only requires a minimum 250MB RAM, and will operate comfortably within 150MB disk-space.

Another thing CS stated about Security Essentials that gave it the edge was that it “rivalled the best of the paid-for anti-malware suites.” : It ended up with an overall-score of 18/19, having failed to protect against live-malware on just one occasion out of 19 attacks. The software didn’t interfere with or delay the running of any other software either.

Microsoft’s previous attempt at anti-malware; namely Windows Live One-Care, was rather lame; but this time round, the softies have done themselves proud.

I myself have written a number of positive comments about Microsoft Security Essentials; one or two of them on this blog itself. Apparently it appears that everyone else is doing the same; which can only mean that Microsoft have yet again excelled themselves with an excellent product, worthy of the accolades bestowed upon it.

German online retailer www.hpm-computer.de last week leaked details of Intel’s coming range of Core i3 processors. Although Intel forced the retailer to remove the offending info; it was too late: TechConnect Magazine managed to copy the information, and is still displaying it, including clock speeds and prices.

The Core i3 range are supposed to be a budget range of processors: With that in mind, a price-tag of between 104 and 253 Euro seems a bit steep; bearing in mind the current unfavourable exchange-rate.

So what do you get for your money? All 5 of the i3 offerings have an on-chip-built-in graphics processor, constructed using Intel’s new 32nm fabrication technology. The 32nm transistors will require less power in order to operate due to their decreasing size; which gives the Core i3 the edge in power-efficiency. The on-chip graphics-processor will mean that it won’t be necessary to have a graphics-processor on the motherboard itself; as is the case with the Core i5 family also.

The fastest of the bunch of 5 different models of the Core i3 will be Core i3 540; clocking in at 3.06 GHz.

(Why am I thinking P4? Maybe I’m paranoid, or maybe it’s that I distinctly remember that just after I purchased a first-generation P4 clocked at 2.8GHz, Intel released a 3.06GHz P4 with hyperthreading, back in 2002.)

The Core i3 dual-core range will also include hyperthreading; allowing the operating system to see them as quad-core processors.

Expect the price of DDR3 RAM to fall even further: These babies have a dual-channel DDR3-1333 memory controller, as well as 4 whole megabytes of L3 cache. 

– It’s about time DDR3 got cheaper: I’m now seeing 4GB of DDR3 1600 MHz for less than £100GBP, while 4GBs DDR2 800MHz is up to around £70GBP, from less than £60GBP when I bought 4GBs of it for my triple-cored Windows 7 box just before they released the RC, and another 4GBs shortly afterwards, for a tiny bit less still. ( – Supply and demand. )

I once said that I didn’t think they’d get fabrication technology much smaller than 35nm: That was only about a year ago and it seems that I’m already about to be proved wrong, if I haven’t already been so proved. How much smaller can they go? According to my quick off-the-cuff calculations they’re already at the thickness of three or so atoms. What next; quarks carrying energy inside atoms? – That would bring a whole new way of looking at electricity and electronics if it is feasible!

This was a post I wrote a while back, as a prospective guest-post on another tech-site. The owner of that site went on a trip just after I submitted it, and they delegated it to their staff to prepare it for publication. Six weeks or so later I asked the staff member concerned what had happened to the post. All I got was a dismissive “No idea” initially; but after pursuing the enquiry it became apparrent that this person hadn’t even bothered with it.

In the light of that; having retained a copy of it, I’ll post it on my own blog. Even though it may be a bit late to post any more XP advice, I’ll publish it nevertheless.

If you’re updating your computer running Windows XP with a new device, maybe a graphics card or something, and you don’t have a driver for that piece of hardware; there is a way that you can actually get the operating system to help you find a driver for the device.

If you connect a new device in Windows, the first thing that the operating system will do, after detecting the new installation, is scan all of the relevant files and folders on the disc to see if it can find a compatible driver for the new device. Sometimes it’ll find an older driver that works, from the operating system’s files; but a driver written in 2001 or thereabouts might not exactly be up to scratch for more modern equipment. If it does install a driver, it’s always best to check in Device Manager to find out how old the installed driver is.

How do I do that?

First, open Device Manager. There are a number of ways of doing this:

The easiest two ways to do it are; either to right-click the “My Computer” icon, click “Properties” and select the “Hardware” tab, then click the “Device Manager” button in the top section of the dialog box. Alternatively you can actually create a Device Manger icon on your desktop; which will open Device Manager when you click it. To find out how to do this, click this link.

When you’re in Device Manager, click the + signs in the boxes until the hardware device that you’ve just installed appears. Right-click the name of the device and click “Properties”. Click the “Driver” tab and look at the line that starts “Driver date:” If that date is more than a year ago I would suggest going to the devices’ manufacturer’s website and seeing if a newer driver version has been released.

(There are a number of drivers in Windows XP that don’t have a later version than 2001: These are mainly some of the system drivers, which appear in the System section of Device Manager. The reason for this is that they were written at the same time as XP was, and they’re XP specific. Microsoft didn’t re-release XP itself, and therefore those drivers were never updated – and they probably have no need to be either. A number of updated system drivers were added with the release of any of the three service packs; but yet others still bear the original 2001 date. Don’t worry about these. – there is nothing you can do about it; nothing legal anyway.)

What now?

If Windows can’t find a suitable driver then the next thing it does depends upon how you have the Windows Update setting set.

To discover how you have it set in Windows XP, right-click on the “My Computer” icon and select “Properties”. Click the “Hardware” tab, and click the “Windows Update” button on the right in the second section down of the dialog box.

In the smaller dialog box that appears you’ll see that there are 3 radio-buttons. If you put a . in the top one then Windows will connect straight to Windows Update to look for a driver if it can’t find one on the disc(s). If you put a . in the middle one then Windows will ask for permission before it looks in Windows Update. If you put a . in the bottom one then Windows won’t bother looking for a driver in Windows Update.

I’m not saying that it’ll find a driver that is compatible every time it looks in Windows Update; but it’ll increase the chances of doing so if you let it look. If it finds and installs a driver, then I suggest that you check in Device Manager to find out how old the installed driver is. If you don’t know how to do that then see the section “How do I do that” above. Windows Update doesn’t always offer you the latest driver for a device. In fact I’ve had one as old as three years offered for an nVidia graphics card, so it’s always best to check.

Why use the latest driver in preference to any driver that works?

As time goes by, manufacturers may update their technology’s performance by rewriting some of the routines performed by the driver to enhance performance of their product in any number of ways; perhaps even to prevent it causing a BSOD. Also there may have been security problems identified in a driver which therefore called for the writers to issue a new version with the security problems patched.

If you use an old driver the chances are that it’ll work 9 times out of 10, but maybe not quite as well as a newer version, and/or it may have a dodgy security flaw in it too.

Have you ever had to call on Windows Update for a driver using this method  herein? Did you get the driver you needed? Did you get an older driver from Windows Update and have to go to the manufacturer’s website?

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: -

That’s a fairly common problem, and the reason for it is that your computer has a specialised sound codec that requires a specialised driver that’s not included with your copy of Windows. Windows might either have installed the best driver that it could find, which, it turns out, isn’t up to the job, or it can’t find a suitable driver, realises it, and therefore gives up trying to install any driver.

What is a driver?

A driver is a piece of software, specific to a relevant piece of hardware, that translates the instruction data from the machine in which it is situated into a command sequence that is recognisable by that piece of hardware. Without that driver the piece of hardware might as well not exist as far as the operating system is concerned, as it has no other way of recognising it or communicating with it except through the driver.

Imagine you came face to face with an alien: You have no idea what anything the alien says means, and the alien can’t understand your language either: Therefore, unless you can find an interpreter that speaks both your own language as well as the alien’s language, there is no way of you and the alien communicating properly. Now imagine that you are the computer, the alien is the piece of hardware, and the driver is the interpreter… You now get the idea.

Each is special

All drivers are hardware-specific, but Windows, particularly in the case of Windows XP, includes driver models that in many cases will just translate enough to allow your hardware to function in a limited capacity until you can download and install the proper driver. There are two other cases that could be possible too: Either Windows has the exact driver for the hardware, in which case it’ll install it and the piece of hardware in question will run properly from the outset, or the case may be that either Windows will attempt to install a driver that fails to install properly because it’s not the right one, or Windows will see that it doesn’t have the correct driver and won’t try to install anything at all in relation to that piece of hardware – With the result that when the operating system is fully installed and begins functioning, it won’t even see that the related hardware exists at all.

If Windows attempts to install a driver that it thinks might work but finds that it doesn’t it’ll, in the case of XP anyway, abandon attempts to try further and leave a bad driver in place at times:This will result in a similar outcome to not having any driver installed usually, plus a black exclamation-mark on a yellow background will appear in the Device Manager in relation to that piece of hardware, indicating that the operating system sees that a device is present, but the installed driver is the wrong one and thus there is a fault somewhere. The device may show up as something like “PCI Multimedia Device”, indicating that Windows knows what type of device it is, but no more. In short; without the drivers Windows has no way to control the hardware so it treats it as if it’s not there.

In such cases the right thing to do would be to totally uninstall the device in Device Manager, and install the correct driver(s).

How do I find the correct driver(s)?

Drivers come from one of two places; those being either your Windows installation or your hardware manufacturer.

The good news is that it’s usually not too hard to find drivers; particularly for recent versions of Windows from XP onwards.

Manufacturer-specific hardware drivers can be obtained from places such as the HP support site, if your machine was manufactured by HP.

Other major computer vendors like Dell and others also take advantage of the internet to have support sites that provide the latest software drivers and updates for the machines that they sell. And most also have fairly active support forums these days where you can get specific help for your computer and hardware from other users as well as, occasionally, the vendor’s staff too.

In some cases you might need to actually determine what specific piece of “driverless” hardware is in the computer, and then visit that hardware manufacturer’s site to download the latest updated drivers. That’s very common for custom built machines, or machines from smaller vendors: ‘Not as common in mass-manufactured machines, such as Dell computers, for instance.

Once you’ve found the correct driver(s) for your piece of hardware, you’ll probably find instructions for installation from the manufacturer either on their website or in a readme file within the installation-package itself. – Usually it’s a pretty straightforward case of simply running the .exe file and an installation wizard takes care of the rest of the process with minimal user interaction.

In your particular case you may find that you have a particular specification of Realtek driver required to operate the onboard sound hardware on your motherboard, perhaps, or something similar.

7

Windows 7, at time of launch, appears to have either a proper a driver or a substitute-driver that’ll make the hardware operate at reduced-level for almost every piece of hardware imaginable at the time. – Another thing about Windows 7 is that it’ll search Windows Update for drivers that aren’t included on the DVD during installation, so it’ll possibly7 be quite rare to discover that a driver is missing after installation in the case of that operating system. Having said that, though, there will no doubt be new drivers produced for new hardware over time that neither Windows 7 nor Windows Update will have in their respective driver-arsenals.

At the end of the day; the best place to go for drivers is to the manufacturer’s website; particularly in the case of graphics card drivers. See this article for more on that.

Have you anything that you’d like to add to that? If so then please do comment.

Logging in on someone else’s computer isn’t a wise move – Here’s why:

Let’s look at this fictional example: -

The unusual situation that you find yourself in one day is that your computer’s not working for whatever reason, and your laptop or netbook or iPhone is already in for repair. – Therefore you have no computer of your own available. – But your friend very kindly offers to let you use theirs for a session, just to get your pressing business sorted out in the interim until you can get online.

You arrive at your friend’s house, and after swapping pleasantries you sit at their waiting computer and log in to your important accounts, such as your bank, email, Twitter, etc, see to your important pressing matters, thank your friend, and after another coffee, you start out merrily on your way back home.

The following day the geek you phoned for help the day before gets your desktop working again, and you also are informed that your other hardware is ready to pick up and working perfectly. – But when you attempt to get the money from your bank account to pay for the repairs, you find that your balance is in the red. You also find that you can’t log in to your email account, and someone’s spamming Twitter using your account.

Someone has possibly stolen your identity. Definitely they’ve hijacked your Twitter and email accounts, and stolen all your bank balance. – All just at the worst time that you could have had it happen to you.

How did it happen?

Spyware Woes

Since your friend’s machine is a computer that you don’t normally have control of; you have no idea whether or not keylogger spyware on that machine is recording every keystroke you make and sending resultant data to hacker somewhere on the planet. Your friend had no idea that their machine was so infected either, until all their own accounts were hacked into as well. Other types of spyware were also recording which sites and web pages you visited, for how long, what passwords you used…etc, and the criminals raced each other to see who could get a hold of major parts of your entire online identity first.

… But spyware is not the only worry you would have in using someone else’s computer for personal business: -

Browser Memories

In the browser, form fields in particular, the same ones that you enter your banking account ID and passwords into, are remembered. Sometimes they’re remembered automatically, along with the password entered. Therefore someone could possibly see your user name, select it, and be able to login to your account with your password on the computer you’ve just used: Whether it’s your friend’s machine, a public computer, or even a retailer’s box.

Malice Aforethought

- Even your best friend’s little geeky brother, or sister even, could log on as soon as nobody was watching, enter the username that they overheard in conversation, and have full access to your account(s) from the passwords that the browser remembered.

Let’s not forget, it’s fairly easy to purposely install software or set up browser features to record your user name and password automatically. – So if you don’t trust the computer’s owner 101% then this is a particular reason to not use their machine to log on to your personal accounts. – Even if – in fact especially if – they offer to pay you to do so.

On the other side of the coin the person who allows you to use their computer also can get stung with accusations and/or probing from you and from the authorities during investigation into the crime. – I assure you that this will strain even the strongest of friendships up to or beyond breaking point in many cases.

- So, if necessary, let others who won’t listen to your explanations use terminology about you such as “tight”, “selfish”, “stingy”, “mean”, whatever. – It’s a lot better to have some shallow half-brained person insult you than to lose everything.

You’ve had your machine switched on a while, and you’re in the middle of a project. –‘Time for a break; so you go out to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. When you’ve made coffee and grabbed a biscuit you return to your desk to find your computer’s displaying a Welcome screen and waiting for you to log in.

- For some reason it shut down and restarted without being told to do so. Maybe this has happened before, at random times; and you’re furious about it. Why could it be happening?

It could be a number of things: -

1) RAM issues

2) Overheating due to too much load

3) Dodgy or corrupt programs

4) Dodgy, old, or corrupt device drivers

5) Bad Windows XP setting choice

Or maybe something else.

Let’s take a look at the 5 we’ve listed so far: -

1. RAM issues

If a fault has developed in one of the RAM chips on one of the sticks, such as even a single transistor failure, which causes it to not work as it should, then Windows or whatever operating system you’re running could well become confused when it attempts to access that piece of physical memory, and go into a tizzy, resulting in a BSOD.

How would you discover if this is the cause of the fault? Simple answer = change your RAM sticks. If it works normally with new RAM then target neutralised.

On that point; I do realise that RAM isn’t as cheap as it used to be: At the time of writing, DDR2 is going up in price, when not long ago it was dirt-cheap: Less than £10GBP for a 1MB stick. DDR3, on the other hand, is coming down in price; but it’s still not as inexpensive as DDR2. – On that basis, you might not want to shell out and change all your RAM, especially if you have around 8GBs on 4 2GB sticks, for instance. (That much DDR2 cost me about £80GBP when it was dirt-cheap.)

- If that is the case then the answer is to buy a single stick, the same size and designation as the others, and try swapping just a single stick at a time with the new stick in all cases of RAM sticks on your motherboard. If the restarts stop totally at some point, leave things as they are and bin the faulty RAM stick, which is already uninstalled from your computer.

2. Overheating due to too much [processor] load.

Some programs use a lot of processor resources. The more processor resources used, the more wattage is burned up and the hotter the processor gets. This is true with all processors; single and multi-core, (I’ve had my AMD Athlon 64 x 2 shut down on me for this very reason before now.) although generally, multi-core processors can bear more load than a single-cored processor. The capability, age, and fabrication technique used in manufacture can all have a bearing upon how hot a processor gets under certain working environments. To use an extreme example of this; if you were to attempt to do video-transposition, editing, etc, on a Pentium 1 processor, (Which can barely run XP, incidentally.) along with various other programs, you’d probably get a system shutdown with a BSOD due to overheating. (- And possibly fry the processor in the process too.)

Keep your fans and cooler clear of dust and dirt: This, also, will help avoid overheating issues. A utility called Speedfan will tell you the current temperature of your CPU and hard drives at any time.

3. Dodgy or corrupt programs

As a computer user, especially in the case of those who use Windows, you need to be careful what programs you download and run on your machine: Some programs are just badly-written – free ones and paid ones, and can screw up your operating system eventually. Other programs may have a hidden payload of adware, spyware, or even malware, in the code, which executes when you run it, and causes all kinds of trouble.

Hint: If the program looks like it does too much for the price, or it is claimed to solve all issues perfectly, then it’s probably full of crap and should be avoided.

Run an offline scan using your usual antivirus/antimalware program, and also run an online scan using an online scanner. – You might be surprised at what’s uncovered.

4. Dodgy, old, or corrupt device drivers

Since device drivers are magnetic data just like programs, they can become corrupted over time just like programs. If you suspect a driver is causing a shutdown issue, look in Device Manager and check that all devices are functioning correctly. If a driver isn’t right, note the details written about the device, remove it, and download and install a replacement driver.

Every now and again a new device-driver version is written for any particular hardware device: This is done because there may be issues in the previous driver version that need addressing, or because an emerging technology requires an extra set of functions to be added to a particular driver for whatever reason. If you’ve not downloaded new drivers recently then your shutdown issues could be due to old drivers on your disk.

Check for new versions of drivers regularly; particularly in the case of graphics cards. Microsoft Update have a driver update service; which I’ve found to be unreliable, behind the times, and often gives you the wrong driver for your hardware. – The individual hardware item manufacturer’s website is always the best place to go for a driver update.

5. Bad Windows XP setting choice

There’s a setting in Windows XP that instructs  your computer to restart if a system error occurs. If you turn off that option, you may solve your automatic reboot problem – But then you’ll not see the resultant BSOD screen, if one occurs, which might well assist you to diagnose the issue.  – So in short I don’t suggest that you switch on the “Automatically restart” setting. To check whether or not it’s already on, do the following: -

Click Start, then open Control Panel

Switch to classic view if not already selected.

Click System.

Click on the Advanced Tab.

Click Settings in the Startup and Recovery section.

Uncheck Automatically Restart in the System failure section if it’s checked.

These are just a few of the many reasons why your system is restarting.

It might be something to do with something you’ve recently added: If you’ve installed new hardware, software, or peripheral devices, remove – and see if the restart persists.

It could be that your power-supply unit (PSU) is wearing out, or it may be due to bad capacitors on your motherboard. (See this article)

There is no one answer, nor is there one single set of answers: Having said that, I hope the above information helps.

‘So Much Hardware!

You’ve no doubt noticed the frankly amazing rate at which new hardware, particularly motherboards, is being produced at these days: It’s like there’s a race on to produce better and better hardware. The leading players appear to be motherboards in first place, closely followed by graphics cards, and processors aren’t far behind.

When a new processor begins manufacture, every motherboard manufacturer makes a variety of motherboards initially to accommodate that processor and get the very best from it. They also utilise the latest chipset designs, many of which are purposely designed to operate in tandem with a particular type of processor. The production run continues with more specifically-designed boards, possibly utilising newer chipsets; tailing off as the processor in question, and/or its socket designation, becomes less utilised in favour of something newer.

Graphics cards are more in a league of their own; with the onus on the manufacturer to use one of the recently-introduced graphics chips from the graphics-chip manufacturers to give the best performance on screen in high resolutions and fast frame-rates, from complex multi-processor-core-utilising games software.

Unique Drivers

…And with each new hardware design comes a new set of software in the form of drivers; although having said that; recently companies such as Via Technologies, in the case of motherboard chipsets; and nVidia, in the case of graphics cards, have done fairly well in producing an all-in-one driver software package that fits pretty well all of their recent products. An example of this is Via Technologies’ site Viaarena; where a driver package of this sort, one-size-fits-all, cab be used to drive pretty much any recent Via chipset.

- But that’s not the case with every manufacturer; and even a number of the products manufactured by such companies as mentioned above are so particularly specialised that they have their own individual driver.

The good thing is that, in the case of motherboards and graphics cards, the manufacturer usually provides a CD or DVD with the product that has all the necessary drivers on it. When you install the board or card, you just simply install all the necessary other drivers from the disc. You’ll also find that the manufacturer provides a download for these drivers on their website also: This is a subject that we’ll be returning to later in this article, as there is something particularly important about that fact.

Motherboard drivers mainly relate to the chipset used on that particular type of board, as well as to the onboard soundcard and any other chipset-associated graphics-circuitry if included. Also the SATA and PATA controllers, and the RAM controllers, need a driver – as does the processor itself, in relation to the specific motherboard build as well as a unit in its own right too.

Windows in the Equation

Operating systems such as Windows, particularly Windows XP onwards, were designed to cater for drivers to some extent, and, when installed, attach a driver to each device to allow it to at least function something like correctly and identify itself, so that the operating system can be properly installed. – But that doesn’t always happen.

Windows XP was launched in 2001, and contained compatible drivers for most if not all of the technology in use in 2000. With a bit of forethought, Microsoft also created basic drivers that would at least run future hardware to some extent also. – But this doesn’t mean that Windows XP will install every driver necessary to run your system proficiently and optimally on install: As years have gone by, technologies have appeared which, although largely backwards-compatible with XP, are built for Windows Vista, or more recently Windows 7; which uses a very similar kernel to Vista anyway.

- So when you install no-frills Window XP and nothing else on your box, it runs. – Perhaps the functionality of a number of devices is impeded; for instance the graphics card is only able to work with a couple of screen resolutions, at a set monitor frequency, but nevertheless it runs. The reason for this is that it installs drivers to your devices that make them work with the XP kernel. These drivers, however, aren’t specially designed for the hardware that they’re driving in most cases, and they’re old.

-She’s Boasting Again…

I’ve just installed the RTM version of Windows 7 64-bit, after previously running the 64-bit RC version. – Both versions instantly recognised all of the hardware in my self-built computer, and so it should: the hardware I used was a Gigabyte motherboard that had been around a few months, as had the Gigabyte 256MB GDDR3 graphics card, the 8GBs of DDR2 800MHz RAM, the AMD triple-core Phenom processor, and so on. – All fully 64-bit capable, designed for use with Vista, and therefore Windows 7… – Except for two pieces of hardware in particular: The Realtek onboard sound-card needed a Realtek High-Definition Audio driver, which even Windows 7 didn’t carry in its arsenal: Result = no sound. Also there was no decent driver for the chipset: While Windows installed one that made it work, it didn’t have the necessary custom-designed driver that was required: The nVidia nForce System Management driver. – Both of these I had to install from the CD that came packed with the motherboard.

Soon Windows 7 will start initially installing only make-do drivers that allow the hardware to function very basically with the kernel. – The good thing about Windows 7 is that if it can’t immediately find a decent driver for a piece of hardware, then it will, after installing the best  driver it can find that works, go straight online to Windows Update to try to find a better driver there.

Another thing is that even Windows Update isn’t always that accurate: Yesterday, for instance, I was offered a replacement driver in Windows 7 for my Realtek ethernet connection as an optional update. The replacement driver was a year older than the one that was already installed, which was installed from the motherboard driver CD, and it didn’t work: result = no ethernet connection. I rolled back the driver and the ethernet port instantly started working again.

On that note; there are some automated driver-update services out there, which are supposed to always keep your computer up to date with the latest drivers. – These are also rather fallible: One of them that I used to use told me that my then Via chipset’s drivers were old, and it replaced them with Intel chipset drivers, so that it wouldn’t start. – ‘Not good.

In short; automated driver update services such as this, like most AI of this point in time time, occasionally have a brain-fart, and mess up big time.

(Windows XP will also go to Windows Update and find drivers; but not by default: You have to set the operating system to do this manually after installation; and even then XP will only chase down a better driver than the one already installed if you ask it to. If a piece of hardware doesn’t have a driver that isn’t available on the XP CD, or that piece of hardware has just been installed without a driver, XP will go to Windows Update to look for a better driver, sometimes automatically if set right; sometimes only if you prompt it to do so.)

Windows Update doesn’t have every type of hardware driver, though, so there’s a 50/50 chance that the operating system will have no luck there. Also, Windows Update doesn’t have all the latest versions of the drivers that it does have ready to be used: If it has a newer version of the driver that you have installed, then it’ll upgrade it; but just because it’s newer doesn’t mean that it’s the newest applicable driver.

‘Time for an Update?

This is where the manufacturer’s website that I mentioned earlier comes into play: –

If you look in Device Manager, then you’ll see details of the driver version that you currently have installed, who made the driver, the date that the driver was released, the hardware that it’s driving, who made the hardware, the hardware’s model number, etc.

Every now and then a hardware manufacturer’s research and development team will discover a flaw in a driver that was previously unnoticed. They’ll rewrite the driver to eradicate that flaw and improve performance of the product. – Either that or they’ll discover a security vulnerability in it and write it out. Having rewritten and tested the new driver version, they’ll release it to the public, so that their customers get better performance from their product.

Unless you keep a lookout for new drivers you could miss out on such performance-gains. – Which is where an occasional visit to a manufacturer’s website can be very helpful. If you rely on Microsoft Update then you’ll get the odd update; but it won’t be anything like new, and you’ll probably miss out on many new driver versions.

The above paragraph applies particularly to chipset drivers and graphics drivers; so keep a lookout for new versions of the drivers that you’re using especially in the case of those devices.

- So in the best geeky tradition, always keep your drivers up to date, and you’ll always get more from your box.

Have you checked your drivers recently? Do you keep an eye on your drivers?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read more

Welcome to Part Two of this series.

In Part One we looked at the situation that I was facing, having moved to a dedicated server from a shared-platform server. Being a noob as far as Linux is concerned, I followed leads from other people who were more experienced in using Linux, (Although one of them did in fact confess that, although he used Linux more than anything else at work, his main area of proficiency was, in fact, Windows.) which ended in a dead end.

Not to be outdone I eventually discovered a blog post from February 2008 which appeared to contain part of an interesting line of php that turned out to be the answer to my problem.

In Part Two, which you’re reading now, we’re going to look at that line of php, as well as add it to our respective blogs to prevent unnecessary 404 errors.

First, though, from my experience, although somewhat limited, I suggest that only bloggers who are hosted on a dedicated server use this code: I don’t see why it would be necessary to run on a shared-platform server. If you are on a shared-platform; that is sharing a server at your hosting company’s depot with others unknown, then your web-host’s engineers will normally be tending to the server and keeping it problem-free. (Which, in my case, is why it costs more to host 4 individual websites on separate domains on shared-platform servers than it does to host those 4 domains on a  single dedicated server: Because the engineers will only fix hardware faults and occasionally give limited advice on dedicated servers.) If you get unexpected 404s on a shared-platform server, phone customer support and they’ll ask the engineers to put it right. – Only use this code if you have no other alternative.

Note 1: – Which brings me on to thinking: There must be some setting somewhere in the server which will prevent the 404 issue from occurring. The engineers can sort it on shared-platform servers; so why can’t I on a dedicated server?

The answer to that is; a) I’m a technician. – Engineers are much better trained and have a wealth of experience. b) I’m a trained electronics technician, rather than a trained computer technician. c) Er, read on: You’ll see that I have sorted it out; but not in the server settings (Linux) themselves; rather, on a third-party application, namely WordPress, that is on the server, using php.

OK; so first, as promised, I’ll reveal where I found this code and give credit: The site is called “The Moonlight Blog”.  I’ve linked the name to the relevant page.

As you’ll see, the writer gives this information: -

Note the php. When rebuilt by myself it looks like: -

<?php header("Status: 200 OK");
?>

Yes I did say a single line of php; well it sort of is; it just works if it’s typed like that; so that’s how I’m presenting it.

“That was the fruit of a week’s work?” you ask; bemused.

In itself that was the fruit of a few minutes work; it just took me a week to find it, as well as many other things besides.

Note 2: In Part One I stated that the author’s php notation was incomplete; that’s true and then again not true: You see if you’re working with php all the time you know what goes where, and you come to expect a pattern. – so much so in fact that you only need write the information that’s not obvious to the trained eye.

header(“Status: 200 OK”); is the bit that the developer needs. The developer knows that it’s php because the semi-colon shows that it’s the end of the statement. The machine won’t know that it’s php because the machine hasn’t been told that it’s php. The bit that I added tells the machine that it’s php; otherwise, to the experienced developer, it’s simply not required.

OK so we have our line of php code; written so that the machine can understand it.

Where do I put it?

Well; since it’s an instruction for the header of a page to return a html 200 code when executed; it appears logical to put it in the header.php file in the theme folder; located at ~\wp-content\themes\<name of your theme>\header.php. if you have more than one header folder; for example: page_header.php and post_header.php, put it in all of the header files.

Where exactly do I put it in the header.php file(s)?

Right at the very top; above all the other text. Why? Because it works.

How do I add it to my header.php file?

There are 2 ways to do this: The first is possibly the easiest, and is from inside the WordPress GUI itself: -

(This method will only add it to the currently active theme installed on your WordPress installation.)

Click on the arrow on the Appearance tab and click on Editor. On the page that follows, look on the right-hand-side of the screen and click on Header (header.php).

In the text editor in the centre of the screen, type or copy & paste the php from this article above all the other text. You might have to click at the start of the first line and press return to create a clear line at the very top before you insert it.

Below the text editor window you’ll see a blue button with white writing on it “Update File”. Click it and wait for the function to execute. – That’s it.

The other way of doing it is to open up your FTP client and navigate to the wp-content folder on your server. On an Ubuntu server the path could look something like

/home/default/yourdomain/user/htdocs/wp-content

(Various servers/hosting companies may vary.)

Inside that folder you’ll find a folder called “plugins”. Open that and you’ll see a folder with the name of your current theme. Open that folder and download the header.php file to your local computer.

Use a text editor program to open the file and insert the php from this article at the very top of all the other text. Close and save. Use your ftp client to overwrite the existing header.php file on your server with the edited file. Do the same with any other themes you may have loaded as you wish.

-It’s as easy as that: The word “easy” depending upon your previous experience.

Just to recap: We’ve added some additional php to our header.php file in our header.php file in our WordPress blog to instruct the page headers to return a html 200 – OK when executed. This should stop them returning a html 404- not found error. The server then has no choice but to execute the other php on the page in question  and serve the product of that execution to the requesting machine.

- And that’s about all there is to say. This php did the trick for me. Why not let me and all my readers know whether or not it did the trick for you too? Leave a comment. Leave a comment also if you have anything further to add. I’m not a php expert, whereas you might be though; so do feel free to add something.

That’s all.

- And now; some adverts: -

There’s quite a lot of information below: Some of it might be applicable to you, some might not. I’ve tried to cover this matter as comprehensively as I can; but if you do run up against problems and obstacles that aren’t covered herein; there are many more similar resources online which may or may not deal with your particular issue(s).

I’ve collected data on this subject from a number of leading online resources, as well as contributing to it myself from my own experience. I hope that this article has all the information that you’ll need contained within it. It was quite an effort to collate, write, adapt, and update all of the info from my sources, and I hope I’ve done the subject justice.

The physical act of installation in itself is actually quite easy. It’s the preparation and getting the thing ready for use that may take a little longer; particularly if it’s an IDE (PATA) drive.

If you’re installing an IDE (PATA) hard drive then you’ll first need to set the jumpers on the drive so that it works correctly with your current hardware. IDE hard drives have settings for master, slave and cable select. This is because of the multi-drive-connected ribbon-cable used: The drive has to tell the controller on the other end of the cable how it’s been connected; otherwise confusion will reign. For Serial ATA drives (SATA), you don’t need to worry about jumpers as there aren’t any: SATA drives have a single cable running to a single corresponding port for each drive cable. See your motherboard’s manual if you’re using SATA for more details on how the drives should be connected and if there is a particular special sequence of connections pertaining to certain drives. – More on IDE drives and their jumpers and connections below.

Next: -

Before you do anything else, take a look at the inside of the computer’s case and work out where you want the drive be positioned. If you’re using an IDE hard drive, it would be best to connect the drive on a different IDE channel than your DVD/CD drives if at all possible. Some (older) motherboards have two IDE channel connectors, but most modern motherboards have only one. If you can do so, it’s a better idea to connect your disc drives to IDE2, and connect your hard drives to IDE1.

SATA drives are totally different. Each SATA drive has it’s own channel. It’s usually fairly straightforward to work out the connections; but if in doubt check your motherboard’s manual. Now that SATA optical drives are fairly commonplace, you might not even require an IDE connector, even if your motherboard has one or maybe more: – Providing, of course, that it has SATA capability. If it doesn’t then it’s getting well past its prime anyway, to be perfectly frank, and you may consider changing it: This operation will probably entail, by necessity, also upgrading the RAM and processor too. – So if you do feel that you’d like to have a change of motherboard, then you might consider building or purchasing a new computer. If not; and you’re happy with your existing motherboard, then you’ll probably get anything between 5 minutes and 5 years of life from it yet. – Just don’t expect it to have the capabilities of more modern components.

Back to the subject at hand; and let’s take a look at the materials required: –

• You’ll obviously need a hard drive to fit to your machine.

• You might need a copy of the hard drive manual if you need to set jumpers on an IDE drive: This can be downloaded if your drive didn’t come with one or you’ve lost it.

• You might need a controller card if you’re fitting an IDE drive but don’t have a spare connector on the motherboard, or space on an existing ribbon cable to connect your drive to.  You can also purchase a SATA controller card if necessary. These controller cards will usually fit into a spare PCI slot; although you may find some that fit into a PCIe x 1 port.

• You’ll need a data cable for the drive; unless you’re installing an IDE drive as a slave-drive on an existing cable.

• You might also need a power cable Y-splitter if you don’t have a spare power connector. There are 2 types available; the 4-pin “Molex” connector, and also the standard SATA power connector. Which one you use will depend upon the type of power connector on the drive you’re installing. (If you only have 4-pin Molex connectors, but require a SATA power connector; you cab buy an adapter which is satisfactory for most cases.)

• Drive-cloning software for if you want to clone your old hard drive to your new one, or a recent drive backup of your old drive if you only want to copy some of the files off the old drive.

Whichever drive you’re replacing, if you are indeed replacing a drive, make sure that you back up any data you want to save before you start, or you could well be sorry at a later time. If you don’t want to have to go through the laborious process of reinstalling Windows, you can clone the contents of your old hard drive to your new one using the setup utilities that hard drive manufacturers provide, or you can use any of the specific cloning programs available online. If you intend to reinstall Windows; make sure you have discs for Windows, all your drivers, and all your programs. This will prevent frustrations at a later point in time.

(At least one leading online publication recommends using the “Ultimate Boot CD”in this process. I don’t personally recommend using this, as I’ve had some bad experience with it. (Neither am I going to link to it.) – However if you want to use it then go right ahead. – That’s your prerogative.)

If you’re simply installing a secondary hard drive for storage then there’s no need to make any changes to the configuration of your current hard drive. If, however, you’re installing a second IDE drive, it is possible that you will need to alter the jumper configuration of your primary hard drive. If your current hard drive is set as “Cable Select” (meaning it is the only drive on the channel), then you may need to change it to “Master” which will allow you to add the second hard drive as a slave (see below).

Setting the Jumpers on IDE Drives (if using IDE)

IDE can accommodate two drives per channel. Some computers may have two channels available on the motherboard; but most modern boards will have only one. The primary drive on a single channel is called the Master, and the secondary one is called the Slave. If there are 2 IDE channels on your motherboard, then they’re labelled as Primary (or IDE1) and Secondary (or IDE2). The hard drive that the system boots from is usually the primary master. Generally, if you’re adding a second hard drive you’d set it up as the primary slave. (The secondary master and slave are usually used for optical drives, although they can accommodate hard drives if needed.)

Most IDE drives arrive pre-set to be used as masters: If you want to use one as a slave, you’ll have to change the jumpers, which are located between the power connector and the IDE connector. Each manufacturer has different jumper settings, so you’ll either have to read the diagram on the top of the drive telling you how to set the jumpers, or the instructions in your hard drive’s manual – Which you can download from the manufacturer’s website if your hard drive didn’t come with one.

If you have an 80-conductor ribbon cable, you can use Cable Select as a jumper-setting:  With both drives set to Cable Select, the computer will recognize the drive hooked up to the black end connector as the master and the one hooked up to the middle gray connector as the slave. – Just be sure that the drives are connected to the right connectors if you use this setting.

…And now – having done all the preliminary checks and adjustments; let’s get into actually physically fitting the thing: Here we go: -

Turn the computer off and switch off the power supply’s switch. You might not want to unplug it if you are using a 3-pin plug to plug it in to the AC household electrical supply: Why not? Because the case is earthed properly if you leave the 3-pin plug plugged in to the household supply power socket. – You might want to use the earthed case to discharge any static electricity in your body from time to time, and/or you might want to wear an antistatic wrist strap just to be on the safe side, (*Technician’s Tip: It’s always a good idea to wear an antistatic wrist strap whenever you do anything inside a computer. There are some companies that will sack people for failing to do so.) which you can connect to the computer’s earthed case or its chassis.  Now remove the side-panel and any other panels that you wish to remove. (It might be an idea to take digital photographs of everything inside before you start; especially if you’re new to this. If anything goes wrong at any stage or you forget what goes where, you can refer to these photographs for guidance.)

If you’re replacing an old hard drive, unplug all the cables from the old drive. You will see either a ribbon cable and a small (white) Molex power plug, or a small data connector and a larger power connector in the case of a SATA drive Do not force their plugs out: The ribbon cable connector on an IDE drive is usually fairly easy to remove, as are all connectors on a SATA drive. Sometimes the Molex power connector on an IDE drive (Occasionally on a SATA drive.) can seem hard to budge. Just rock it back and forth (Lengthwise, along the narrow side of the drive), taking care not to rip the connector off the drive (Which can happen.).

Once all the cables are disconnected, remove the mounting screws that hold the drive to the case frame. You might find that you need to tip the case or get into some strange positions to reach all the screws. You may find that the hard drive is mounted in a cage that you’ll be able to take out. Now remove the old drive from the case.

If you’re replacing the old drive, slide the new drive in the slot from where the old one came out. If you’re adding a second drive then just pick an empty drive bay, but remember that hard-drives produce heat; so try not to mount them too close together with other drives if at all possible. If you’re installing an IDE drive than a slot a bit below the current drive might work best, because it will make it easier to route cables. If you’re installing a 3.5″ drive into a 5.25″ drive bay, you may need to add an adaptor or a mounting bracket to make it fit. Screw the drive into place, making sure the screws aren’t going in crooked and cross-threading as a result.

If you need a separate controller card, install it now into a spare motherboard PCI or PCIe slot. You probably won’t need to worry about this; It’s usually only necessary to add a controller card if you want to add more IDE or SATA drives than your computer’s motherboard will support with it’s existing ports. If you are using SATA, your motherboard will probably have enough SATA ports, unless you’re running some huge RAID configuration. If there aren’t enough ports available, however, you should fit a controller card.

Attach the cable plugs to the hard drive, as well as to the motherboard and/or controller card if necessary. There are two cables: There’s the ribbon cable if the drive is IDE, or SATA data cable if the drive is SATA, and the power cable. The ribbon cable goes from the controller to the drive. Most cables are keyed to the connector so they only go in one way; if the cable isn’t going in, try flipping it over. The SATA data cable’s plug also only connects one way round, as does a SATA power plug and a Molex power plug. – Whether or not it appears to be going in – don’t force anything, or you’ll possibly end up in tears.

If you’re adding a second IDE drive, simply choose an unused connector on the same ribbon cable. Most IDE ribbon cables come with three connectors: one on the end (usually black) and one mid-way (usually gray), then one further away on the other end which connects to the motherboard (usually blue, green, or red). In general, the master drive should use the black connector on the end and the slave should use the gray connector in the middle, but if each drive is set either as master or slave, the position is not as important. (With SATA you have only 1 choice: Plug a new cable into a socket on the SATA controller on the motherboard and plug the other end into the SATA data socket on the drive.)

Now check that everything is as it should be, switch the switch on the power supply at the back of the computer on, and power up. It’s best to leave the case cover off for now in case you need to fiddle with something or troubleshoot the installation.

Your new drive may be instantly recognised by the system; but if not try the following: If you didn’t use a controller card, enter the BIOS (usually by pressing the F1, F2, F10, F12, or Delete key when you see the Power-On Self-Test or the manufacturer logo). Check the BIOS to make sure that the drives are all being recognized. If you installed a drive on an IDE connector that was not in use, you may have to set the corresponding drive to “Auto.” If your BIOS has an auto-detect feature, you can use that as well. If you did use a controller card, it will pop up a screen showing the name of the card and any drives it has detected.

If the drives are not being recognized, check that both power and data cables are in tightly (including the motherboard end for the data cables), and that the jumpers are set correctly. Windows may be able to see the drive but may need some help to display it. A reboot may be needed after Windows finds and installs drivers, or if that doesn’t work a little software coaxing may help – But some of that’s beyond the scope of this article.

If everything looks right and is working properly then proceed>.

Finally…

Now that your new drive is installed you can add data to it. If you’re replacing your current drive and cloning it to your new drive, you’ll need to connect both drives. If you’re using IDE drives only, change any necessary jumpers (see above) so that both drives as well as a CD drive are recognized. At this stage it is not important to screw in your old drive; you can just rest it somewhere convenient, but it’s not advisable to leave it hanging in mid-air. Now clone your old drive to the new one and disconnect the old one, reset the jumpers as appropriate if you’re using IDE drives.

If you’re replacing your current primary drive but you’ve no intention of cloning its contents to the new drive, put your operating system’s CD in the drive and boot from it. You’ll be prompted during the first part of setup to partition and format your drive. If you’re installing Windows XP,Vista, or 7; make sure to use the NTFS file system: it’ll make life so much easier for you as compared to FAT32.

If you’re installing a secondary drive for storage purposes, your operating system won’t see your new drive until you format it. To format the drive in Windows XP, right-click on My Computer and go to “Manage”. In the window that comes up, click Disk Management in the left pane. Once it loads, you should see an “Initialize Disk” wizard pop up. Partition and format the disk to your liking, but make sure not to convert it to a dynamic disk, as doing so will probably end in tears eventually.

Other operating systems may vary, but I can’t cover every possible operating system in this article.

That’s about it for this article: You now have a new working hard drive installed. Please see my other articles for more advice on what you can do next. You’ll find a chronological listing of articles on the page called “Blog Contents”, which you can access from the menu at the top of every page and post on this blog. In the same menu you’ll also find “Posts Listing: Computer Hardware” and “Posts Listing: Computer Software Help”; both of which could have an article or two listed on them with regards to what to do next, if you’re looking for ideas.

For more tips, tricks, products, and new content updates, please request to join the mailing list by entering your email address into the appropriate box. – You’ll then be eligible for regular content updates as well as my free members-only updates and newsletters.

Whilst I agree that there must be fair legislation with regard to anticompetitive practices, it may appear that the European Union has gone over the top in its latest antitrust probe against Microsoft: -

From Computer Buyer Magazine’s website: -

“The European Commission has told Microsoft that it believes the tying of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browser with its Windows operating system infringes EU antitrust laws.

The Commission has sent a Statement of Objections (SO) to Microsoft which outlines its view that the tying of IE to Windows provides Internet Explorer with an artificial distribution advantage which other web browsers are unable to match. This “harms competition between web browsers, undermines product innovation and ultimately reduces consumer choice”.

It EU executive is also concerned that “the ubiquity of IE creates artificial incentives for content providers and software developers to design websites or software primarily for Internet Explorer which ultimately risks undermining competition and innovation in the provision of services to consumers”.

Microsoft has eight weeks to reply the SO and will then have the right to an Oral Hearing. If SO findings confirmed, the Commission may impose a fine and require Microsoft to make changes to Windows that would ameliorate the Commission’s concerns.

In a short statement, Microsoft said it was still examining the SO.

“We are committed to conducting our business in full compliance with European law. We are studying the Statement of Objections now.”

The decision to issue the SO is based on legal principles established in the 2007 ruling by the European Court of First Instance, which upheld the Commission’s 2004 finding that Microsoft had abused its dominant position in the PC operating system market by tying Windows Media Player to its operating system.

That judgement saw Microsoft release a special N version of Windows XP without Media Player, which remained available as a free download. The company was also fined and has to date been ordered to pay fines totalling €1.68 billion for this and other antitrust violations.”

This is just too much: It’s no secret that the EU is a corrupt powerbase of political subterfuge and scam-mongering. This appears to be just another attempt to swell the EU coffers even further. Not content in just charging Britain millions of Euros in membership fees so that European politicians can hire call-girls and throw lush parties, the Eurocrats like to have a stab at Microsoft from time to time; as Microsoft is where the money is. In early 2008, Microsoft was fined 899m Euros by the European Commission for anti-competitive behaviour over bundling in the Windows Media Player and browser into Windows. As if that wasn’t enough loot for them, they’ve decided to have a second snipe and see if they can get some more out of the software giant.

Now this is rather ancient news from Computer Buyer; as on the 16th June I reported on this in the article “Europe Doesn’t want IE8”, and I also reported Microsoft’s solution to the problem: -

“In order to comply with European competition law, Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 will be removed from the European versions of Windows 7. Microsoft made the decision to drop the web browser in order to stay on the right side of the European Commission and avoid further possible fines. Versions of Windows 7 released in Europe will have an E suffix to show that they are European versions that don’t include Internet Explorer.”

- So if they don’t include IE then what browser do they include?

Internet Explorer is a fundamental software component of the Windows operating system; and it goes a lot deeper than just the browser GUI that IE users see. Without IE, there is, in all reality, no Windows as such. Without IE there are just a number of disjointed codes resembling an incomplete operating system. Conversely, Windows Media Player is more an app than an integral part of Windows.

This becomes puzzling now: How, if there’s no browser, does the customer add a browser so that they can download anything? ‘Beats me!

According to the BBC Website, in an article from 12th June 2009: -

"In terms of potential remedies, if the Commission were to find that Microsoft had committed an abuse, the Commission has suggested that consumers should be offered a choice of browser not that Windows should be supplied without a browser at all," said the Commission in a statement responding to Microsoft’s announcement.

It said Microsoft’s approach of offering the program to computer manufacturers "may potentially be more positive" in terms of remedying its alleged abusive behaviour.”

-Which still doesn’t really answer the question. – I mean if I were to buy a copy of Windows 7 E, post RTM, to install on a computer that I just built: OK I’ve installed it. How do I get a browser onto it? There is no browser. – No wait; I have a choice of browser? – If the EU have their way then yes. OK; I’ll install FireFox. Is that how it’s going to be? That would actually be rather good.

- The Eurocrats are targeting the IE GUI itself perhaps; and maybe they have a point: If the IE GUI is supplied along with Windows then it gives the IE browser an unfair advantage in a way; because many computer users aren’t geeks. -  In fact many (European) computer users are rather clueless when it comes to computers. – Other than instant messaging, browsing to find their family tree, and email, they really don’t have much idea of anything else that the internet has to offer. (I know, it’s a bit of a wild assertion; but if a lot of British users are anything to go by then it’s true.) – Therefore, when they buy the Windows operating system from Microsoft they stick it on their computer as is, if it isn’t preinstalled, and they use it as is: Sucky browser, the lot. Possibly half of them aren’t even aware that there’s an alternative to IE. The other half may have heard of FireFox, Opera, Safari… But are of the attitude: “If it works; why fix it?”

…But Microsoft have even included a function in Windows 7 to deactivate IE – The GUI bit, that is, for people who don’t want IE on their computer at all, even though they run Windows, as a primary or secondary OS. (Linux users come to mind.) Nevertheless the non-nerdy users probably won’t bother to deactivate IE and choose an alternative browser.

So what are the choices? Supply Windows with another browser? That’ll give the new browser an unfair advantage no matter which browser they use; although the Eurocrats may have problems getting any money out of Microsoft for promoting another company’s browser. – But Microsoft themselves probably wouldn’t be too happy about promoting someone else’s product.

What if they supplied Windows with no browser and let the customer make up their own mind which one to install? – The problem then would be that the customer has absolutely no way of downloading any software whatsoever: No browser = no browsing = no downloads.

Email a browser to the customer. – Yeah right. As soon as the malware distributors hear of that they’ll spoof the email and get everyone to download tons of malware into a blind operating system. Forget that straight away: It’s a definite non-starter.

The only option left, then, is to include a copy of every browser available that works with Windows on the installation disc, and let the customer choose which one is to be used from the offing as the operating system installs. As I said before; that appears to be how it’s going to work; but we might have to wait until the RTM to know for certain.

What do you think?

P.S. The next EU antitrust suite against Microsoft will probably be targeting Windows Live Mail, or maybe even Windows itself: -

“The European Commission has told Microsoft that it believes the tying of Microsoft’s Windows operating system with its range of Windows operating systems infringes EU antitrust laws.” 

– The Eurocrats have got to find enough money to continue to live in the lap of luxury somehow. – Those call-girls cost quite a bit!

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

Hello, and welcome to another newsletter here on kkomp.com. In the last week I’ve produced some pretty good articles; although I say so myself. If you haven’t had a chance to read them yet I suggest that you click some links in the list below and have a look at anything that takes your fancy for a short to medium read: -

WordPress 2.8 Baker

The above post was more of a link than anything else. Quite obviously WP 2.8 has already been released, and it’s most likely that most WordPress-user-bloggers have already upgraded, even by the time the article was written,and sampled it for themselves. The thing is that not everyone will be aware of exactly what’s been changed straight away, unless it’s staring them straight in the face. – Therefore I thought it a good idea to do a little piece about it and link to the WordPress blog for further details; even if only to somewhat enhance the traffic to the WordPress blog as a thank you.

Something that carries a lot more weight is a computer’s PSU. It supplies quite a vast amount of wattage at low regulated voltages for its size. Only 30 years or so before it was invented and prototyped you’d have been looking at a box at least twice the size of your computer, if not bigger, just to perform the same function and supply the same output. That huge box would have also probably heated your entire house as a side product.

Due to significant advantages in manufacturing technology since then, a lot of miniaturisation has been made possible through component integration and also further advances in technology. Voltage regulators no longer require a set of differential amplifiers built from individual large aluminium-canned power-transistors. (2N3055 keeps appearing in my mind’s eye.) These days the differential amplifiers, multiple-output-stages, everything, is all integrated into a single hi-current regulator package about the size of a matchbox or thereabouts, making the unit cheaper, saving resources, producing less in the way of heat and outputting more in the way of power.

-But, despite higher tolerances and vastly better performance, things still fail eventually: Nothing lasts forever. – When a computer power supply fails the result can be quite catastrophic in some cases; with damage occurring to other sensitive CMOS-based parts.

If you know and understand the warning signs of impending PSU-failure then you can avoid this scenario happening in the case of your machine: Saving you you time, money, and resources. This article will give you some ideas about what to look for: -

‘Dodgy PSU? Replace it Before it Damages Anything Else

Perhaps I’m a bit intolerant, or maybe I just don’t have a high-threshold when it comes to the thoughtless acts of others. – Now when people are thoughtless towards others then that’s just plain wrong, and those people need an attitude adjustment along with having their brain switched on and their thought-processes enhanced in my opinion. However, when a person’s thoughtless actions are detrimental to themselves and/or to the company that they work for, then the expression “thoughtless” takes on an entire new meaning: Brain-dead might be a better description?

OK maybe that’s a bit harsh. I have to take into account that not everybody’s a geeky-type; but it should come as no surprise to anybody that if a computer remembers their data it must be stored somewhere. – When the power’s switched off and switched back on it still remembers the data that’s been inputted into it, so  it must be filed somewhere inside the computer; it’s just obvious logic.

- So when someone puts their old computer in a public place for disposal because they don’t want to use the dinosaur any more, you’d think that they’d remove their sensitive personal data from it wouldn’t you? …But no; many times people don’t bother: They just trust to luck or have too much faith in human nature and hand their identities over to all and sundry to do as they wish with. Likewise when someone sells their old hard-drive on eBay. – Do they bother to clean their data off of it? Do they even attempt to conceal it? In my experience not always, no. If I was a criminal I could now be operating under at least two identities other than my own and have some sort of racket going on with at least one business because of this. – All without even trying!

Read this article: -

Don’t Leave Sensitive Data on Your Old Hard-Drive

The following post was one that I pushed out in a bit of a hurry as an extra article, firstly to explain how I seemingly managed to miss the Summer Solstice; or at least I certainly missed posting about it, and secondly to warn about an unpatched security hole that Microsoft don’t appear to be that bothered about; even though exploit code has been written and released to the wild with regard to it.

Extra: Summer Solstice + Advisory

Is it Worth Running a RAID Array?

Above is a brief article in which I basically share my opinion, for what it’s worth, on the idea of using RAID on servers and also on workstations.

OH WOW! You Simply MUST See This: Is a post that, if I told you was an advert, might put you off reading it. – So what I did was give it an heir of mystery and allow those who are curious enough to drift towards it to do so. It’s not just any old advert though: Firstly, as my regulars will know by now, I don’t advertise crap on this blog. Secondly even I’m excited about this product, and I’m living proof that it’s worth getting excited about as I’m already part of it as a customer who’s benefitting greatly from the quality information-input from it.

In further marketing language; don’t just take my word for it: Read this: -

I’m just about to link you to a video that shows you, step-by-step, how to optimize your YouTube videos to help you drive an insane amount of traffic back to your website.Gideon, the guy who is not only a half of the Become A Blogger course that this article advertises, but who also created the video, tells me that he tried these exact same strategies on one of his own YouTube channels, and got like 67,400 views in just 8 weeks! At first I thought he was just kidding me but then I saw his channel, and my jaw dropped at the
results (He actually shows the same channel inside the video).

- So, yeah… if you want to get more traffic from YouTube, you’ll like this stuff…
http://www.becomeablogger.com/go.php?offer=kkomp&pid=4&u=http://www.becomeablogger.com/blog/youtube-x-factor/

But that’s only a part of it: Read the actual blog post itself for more links, on to an instructional video that actually features in the Become A Blogger course. – At absolutely no cost to yourself. – and another to a page where you can get another 10 instructional videos to do with the course.

Now that’s value in just the advertising alone…

Wednesday 24th June 2009 was this blog’s official first birthday: -

Happy Birthday Beyond

Lastly; when Microsoft launch Windows 7 on October 22nd 2009, they’ll be charging more for the Professional and Enterprise versions that have XP Mode included with them. – But why should you pay Microsoft more for the pleasure when there’s a way to scrub round it using free software? Read this article to find out how you could save yourself a few dollars more: -

How to Avoid Paying Extra for XP Mode(?)

That about sums up the week that was here on kkomp.com/Beyond since the last newsletter. Enjoy your weekend. ‘Next publication is scheduled for Monday; but you never can tell; I might get the bug like I did last weekend and publish something impromptu before then, and maybe I might not – ?

Namaste’

Peace.

What are botnets?

Botnets are a collection of thousands – sometimes millions – of mainly home and office computers that have been compromised by malicious software which allows then to be taken over and externally controlled in a mass distributed-computing criminal operation, giving the controllers masses of computing power and internet access. Botnet is short for robot network. The member computers of this network can be used by the controller(s) to accomplish almost any operation; including distributing and relaying spam, porn, stealing sensitive information, participating in DDoS attacks, etc.

How do botnets operate?

Malicious botnet software operates silently in the background, running with full privileges and utilising the computers’ resources. A Trojan horse may invisibly hold a port open so that the botnet controller can instruct the machine in what to do. Other rogue software may post millions of copies of spam emails, black-marketeering, fraudulent and illegitimate financial transactions, as well as reporting all the legitimate user’s personal details, including bank details, account passwords, as well as any business information – Even sensitive information from political organisations or Government officials, should their personal computers become compromised, to the controlling criminals.

A botnet will never inform you that your computer is a member; in fact a botnet will do its utmost to hide that fact. A recent estimated figure of 30 million computers; known as “zombies”, are unknowingly involved in a botnet network. Botnets spread by means of email, p2p, network-aware viral infections, and a number of other methods including directing a user to a malicious website where they are encouraged to click on a link that downloads the malicious code which will get them set up to run as part of the botnet. Once a computer is so compromised the botnet will almost instantly spread across any connected Local Area Network or LAN.

Basically all you need to do is be cynical about what you see online, practice safe computing, and use common sense. – If you do then you’ll be at far less risk of ever unknowingly joining a botnet.

- So how can I avoid becoming a part of a botnet?

Be careful. Don’t open any emails claiming to be from eBay, PayPal, banks or the government. Never click on email links to access suspect sites. If you feel compelled to take a look at the alleged website; Google for it and see if it is legitimate before typing the correct URL into your browser manually.

Always keep your computer up to date with genuine security patches issued by your operating system’s creator; especially if you use Microsoft Windows. It may help to use a spam filter to help in discerning malicious email. Keep your anti-malware programs updated and do not click on dubious links: If in doubt simply don’t click on it. Beware of offers that seem too good to be true: they probably are. Always suspect unexpected emails with subject tags related to holidays, celebrities or current events. Never buy anything from a spammer.

Normally a decent updated antivirus/antispyware program will protect your computer from most types of known botnet-associated malware. However, if your computer appears to be behaving strangely in some way then it’s always a sensible idea to run a scan, both from your regular antivirus software and other online sources. In the case of Windows, the Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool supplied online every Patch Tuesday will also search for and eradicate the major forms of this type of threat when installed and run.

It’s Wednesday 24th June 2009 and it’s kkomp.com’s first birthday today. It feels like I started this blog aeons ago, (Really, it does. It feels like I’ve been blogging for a number of years; yet it seems like only yesterday I had my 40th birthday.) and also only a few days ago too. In the year since this blog started I’ve made about 430 posts in 24 categories. – That’s not to mention the pages. My initial intention of enough content creation to place this blog on the blogosphere map has to all intents and purposes come to fruition, and some.

A year ago the world was facing the fact that we were in a global recession courtesy of the greedy international banking system. From what I hear lately, the UK appears to be pulling out of it: The economic growth report for March 2009 appears to indicate that GDP and growth returned to a positive figure in the case of UK. Although one leaf doesn’t make a summer; it appears that there are definite signs of a recovery on the way for Blighty.

- But; as some prominent bloggers have asked; where exactly is, or where exactly was, this massive economic downturn? More than not it appears to have been largely created within the minds of negatively-biased individuals by a media-led frenzy. The press will do anything to sell newspapers. A few businesses disappeared, true: That can and does even happen in times of economic prosperity though. Were there people claiming that the end of the world is nigh, that the commercial system as we knew it was going into meltdown? Of course there were: ‘Probably the same doom-mongers who did the same thing in the last recession, and the one before that too. – But the car-parks are still just as full at the shopping-malls as they always were, the traffic still flowed as per usual on the highways and byways, the world continued turning.

I accept that the world financial institutions made crazy speculative investments which lost them billions: perhaps they’ll now learn that putting spotty teenagers with a constant hangover and greedy out-of-control excuses for businesspeople in charge of the world monetary system is a definite recipe for its doom.

As we hopefully begin to emerge from this major economic turbulence we find that the world is still changing in our favour: By “our” I mean those of us who are building our world online. Social networking and global communication has, and will most likely continue to, cause the storm-clouds to depart and to build bridges of co-operation and opportunity for businesses globally. The remainder of the commercial entities will be forced to follow suit. Unfortunately for those of the old-school; opportunity and inter-corporate/interpersonal connectivity will continue to elude them, and they will fade away to be replaced by those who are operating under the new electronically-connected socio-commercial framework that has arisen from technological and societal advancement and the evolution of civilisation that has ensued as a result of that progress.

As I pointed out earlier, during the last year this blog has accrued around 430 posts, mainly of late technologically-orientated material dealing with basic practical and theoretical electronics and/or computer hardware and software, punctuated here and there by a news item or two which stood out to me, along with the odd mystical/Pagan-themed post.

Like a human child; this blog started without form, just a cell of an idea, fertilised and conceived a year ago on a whim, following a suggestion from someone who was already a blogger. Having no womb to mature within, it slowly took form in the wild, evolving with the mainly indirect assistance of a number of professionals who advised and directed with regard to its construction, renovation, changes, layout, and to a limited extent its content.

My naivety during the first couple of months of managing this blog was a little more prolific than I’d imagined it would be. I remember my first move as my brainchild came into existence was to announce on the social media channels, which I’d only recently become familiar with and had managed to pick up 1 or 2 followers, that I now have a blog: here’s the URL; please come visit. Well 1 or 2 people did visit, for about as long as it took to hit their back button on their browser.

I’d heard of people making fortunes on the internet; but somehow connected it with the dot com boom of the turn of the century, and regarded it as a thing of the past. Spring 2008 turned to Summer, my web 1.0 website at kustomkomputa.co.uk didn’t appear to be attracting much if any business, and I was starting to become extremely despondent. – Then a pro-blogger by the name of David Risley suggested I start a blog using WordPress. – Well what I was doing at the time wasn’t working; so in for a penny… Why the heck not?

I had been using Word 10 as an html editor to build kustomkomputa.com: It was difficult, cumbersome, and the resultant pages were full of so much unnecessary html that they took quite some time to load even with a broadband connection. Despite this I’d become used to Microsoft Word, and I even understood most of the crap html in it.

WordPress was a totally different kettle of fish though. I downloaded it, looked at the files and their contents, and screamed inside. .php – I’d never learned any php. .css – I had even less idea about css. Html: No problem; even Microsoft Word. – Especially Microsoft Word. Php and css, though, looked like Chinese to me.

By the time I’d installed WordPress on the server my head was so drenched in sweat I thought I’d just washed my hair! – But I’d done it. – And it didn’t work. Check: Had I done everything right? Yes. I’d triple checked everything before I started, and triple checked it again after every stage while I was doing it. having triple checked everything afterwards I eventually discovered that fasthosts.co.uk Windows servers were no good for running WordPress on. I’d specifically asked them beforehand: -

“Are your Windows servers able to run WordPress?”

Answer: “I don’t know. Nobody’s ever run WordPress from our servers before.”

- When pressed: “Well I can’t see any reason why it wouldn’t work on a Windows server. If you install it and it doesn’t work properly then we can always put you on a Linux server instead. The transfer won’t cost anything, our Linux servers cost exactly the same price to use as our Windows servers, and it’ll only take a few minutes to swap over.”

It didn’t work on their Windows server. – As promised they transferred me to a Linux server, and I installed WordPress again. This time it worked straight off and without problem.

Advice:

1) If using fasthosts.co.uk as your host for a self-hosted WordPress blog; always choose their Linux servers as your server.

     1a) Always use a Linux server wherever possible: Linux is a much better server platform than Windows.

2) Don’t use fasthosts.co.uk, unless you want to be wound up in red tape.

I hope you like reading; There’s more: -

To start with I didn’t really bother too much about presentation as far as the pages were concerned, which was my first mistake: After a false start earlier in June 2008, where it ended up that I took the entire blog down and restarted from scratch due to some kind of major problem. – I can’t remember what exactly, I downloaded and used a pre-built theme, threw up a Welcome page – almost literally by the previous look of it, and concentrated on turning out content.

I decided to break the mould of how most blogs were operating early on, by having a Welcome page initially, which visitors not linking from a link to an article would arrive at, rather than having the entire content of my posts appearing in chronological order on that initial page. Unfortunately the element that was missing was a contents listing, other than a table of the ten latest posts in the sidebar. This was a matter that wasn’t remedied until 2009, which was another major mistake I made. I agree that it would have been more sensible to attend to the matter earlier, but as things turned out it didn’t happen that way. We live and learn.

Although I’d written a number of papers over the past few years; I didn’t then classify myself as a writer, and maybe it showed. A few of my articles at the time were articles featuring content throughout that I’d created myself, but they were mainly seemingly less than quality content. In the main I concentrated upon relaying news items that I found to be of interest more than anything else.

Quite obviously, since there were an almost infinite number of alternative and better-known sources of the news that I was relaying; people stuck with what they knew, and other than a few visits sent by Google I didn’t get much traffic at all. Also, although I’d downloaded and installed the tools for search-engine-optimisation, I hadn’t configured them properly, (- As I actually wasn’t aware that they required further configuration in the early days, and I also didn’t know how to do it anyway, had I even been aware.) which didn’t help either.

During July 2008 I’d started to introduce advertising via advertisments that I’d created myself with links back to Clickbank. This however generated very little, if any, revenue.

By September 2008 I’d started to relay the news items whilst also including my personal take on them. Although this helped, it still didn’t have that much upwards-effect on my traffic figures. Despite having trained in electronics, as well as having a number of years of experience with computers, I felt at the time still very naive and vulnerable when it came to blogging, pretty much throughout 2008. Despite this though, I noticed that this blog was nevertheless ranked 5-million and-something-th at the time.

In October 2008, I think it was, I began to properly configure my SEO plugins, such as All-in-One-SEO-Pack, Google XML Sitemaps, etc. This did begin to have a positive effect, and the number of unique visitors began to increase somewhat. I also began utilising further free tips from David Risley, which also helped.

By December 2008 the blog was attracting a more realistic audience figure, and I set my attention upon the blog’s homepage, as well as the header and footer.php files, with the intention of tidying it up and making it look more attractive. Php still worried me, as although it was quite easy to understand, I was constantly having issues with the syntax of anything I wrote. Also most of what I wrote clashed with the style.css file of my theme. Although my effort eventually improved the page considerably, the resultant page was too crowded, not designed well, and the colour scheme failed to convey the theme of the blog. Many female readers liked it; but since the blog was attracting a mainly male, older, audience, I felt that it wasn’t a sensible option to allow things to continue that way.

I worked on and designed an entirely new home (Welcome) page, in addition the the header and footer, and implemented in during January and February 2009. I also edited and redesigned the theme to be more in tune with the central subject material of the blog.

Previous to this, although the subject matter had been mainly of a technical bent, I hadn’t really had a theme for the blog as such, nor had I used the blog’s design to clearly indicate the subject matter to my readers; which probably left some readers in somewhat of a quandary as to exactly what it was that I was trying to convey herein.

Also the footer, (footer.php) at one point during 2008 had a serious php error in it which caused a number of problems. These issues were rectified when I almost totally rewrote the header using a lot of html in addition to attending to the php already present – which was enhanced, and also in addition I repaired and enhanced the footer.

In doing so I introduced a header banner, which I enhanced over a number of weeks. I’ve since moved the RSS link into the header, and provided the mailing-list-subscription link high in the sidebar, above the fold, by writing its script into the sidebar.php file. I also introduced a contents page,clearly linked to from the header as well as the Welcome page.

A lot of the inspiration for the redesign came from Yaro Starak and Gideon Shalwick’s “Becomeablogger” course, which I bought into earlier this year, admittedly a little late. Whilst I haven’t yet implemented all of the suggestions within the course material by any means yet, it has nevertheless helped me out no end. The Becomeablogger course will be having its second run soon, and the enrolment window will be between 29th June and 3rd July 2009. As soon as the window opens I’ll be advertising it in the header of this blog, so if you’d like to join up you’ll have the opportunity to do so via this blog.

One of the biggest issues for me over this past year has been avoiding clutter, both in the sidebar and on the Welcome page. The sidebar is an area which I’ve particularly concentrated upon in this respect, along with its appearance, as the sidebar appears along with almost every page and post. My intention has been to not let it detract the reader’s attention overly from the main article. I hope I succeeded in that.

That’s summed up some of the main points of the blog’s evolution over the time since its creation. No doubt it will continue to evolve further with time; hopefully in a positive manner.

The Future

So what will I be doing on this blog in the future? For the immediate future nothing much is scheduled to change. I’ll be writing more free content fairly regularly, plus making the odd tweak to the theme perhaps. I’ll be adding further advertising of top-quality products from other bloggers and online businesspeople, plus also I will probably be writing more reviews of a number of them.

At some point I’m hoping to be adding podcasts to the mix – Maybe followed by video too. I don’t have a schedule for doing so planned out at this point, so I can’t be any more definite than that at this present moment.

A year has passed, and the blog is still up and running. I have the feeling that the following year will contain many profitable and beneficial additions; both for you the visitor as well as for me the blogger, plus any help in the form of people that I take on in the future.

That’s about it for this post then: A year older and wiser.

Enjoy the rest of the Summer if you live in the upper Northern hemisphere. If you live in the lower Southern hemisphere you can take heart in the fact that midwinter has passed. Wherever you are, enjoy the rest of the year, and don’t forget to return regularly to kkomp.com to see what’s new. If you happen to be in space or on another planet then enjoy the break, and if you aren’t part of the Human Race from Earth and you actually live on another planet then I invite you to make contact with the us Humans. – We’re a peculiar civilisation, but most of us still have some semblance of normality left I believe.

If you’re not on the mailing list then it would be a good idea to subscribe to it and get notified by email. You might also like to subscribe to the RSS feed for notification too.

Finally I invite comments/constructive criticisms/remarks… You know the drill.

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.

If you’re like me (Computer builder.) and install XP a lot, then a useful thing to have in your arsenal is your own XP SP3 CD, to save you all that time downloading it from the internet.

There is another option available, which is to slipstream SP3 with Windows XP SP2, but for the time being I’ll concentrate on making a separate disc.

To make things easier, Microsoft have released an official Windows XP SP3 ISO image. << Click the linked text to download it. It’s a free download. – This can be written to a CD as you would with any ISO image. The entire file is 549MB in size; so it might take a while to download.

The best no-brainer ISO burner software I’ve found is ImgBurn : It makes creating a CD from an ISO so easy it’s incredible. – So much so in fact that there’s no need to give any instructions other than those already given on the website.

Do you install XP regularly; perhaps on computers that you build? Do you install SP3 too, or do you leave it for the customer to do? Are you going to start installing Windows Seven as soon as you can in preference to XP?  Have you already started installing the Windows Seven RC build 7100 at the customer’s request? Do feel free to comment.

Xmarks (Formerly Foxmarks.) is probably one of the most useful pieces of free software that I’ve featured on this blog to this day. It’s a browser plugin. It currently works with Internet Explorer (Including IE8), FireFox, and Safari. – So whether you use Windows, Linux, or Mac osX, it can work for you.

(Although it’s not from Google, it’s marked as  a beta, and probably always will be; just like most of Google’s software is. – Think of it as a work constantly in progress. (Perhaps I should rename this blog to “Beyond (beta)” in that case?)

Xmarks allows synchronisation of your added bookmarks and stored passwords with a secure online server. – Therefore if you ever have to reinstall your browser you can simply upload all of them from the server. Also, if you have more than one computer, no matter how far away they are from each other, providing that they’re both on planet Earth, you can synchronise your bookmarks and passwords between the two via the secure server.

From the Xmarks page on Mozilla Corp’s website:

“It takes only a moment to get up and running with Xmarks. After you install the add-on, click on the notification to set up Xmarks and start backing up and synchronizing your bookmarks. Install Xmarks on each computer you use, and it seamlessly integrates with your web browser and keeps your bookmarks safely backed up and in sync.
Xmarks will sync across browsers too. Today we support Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari (Mac OS). Please visit our website at xmarks.com for details.”

Also from the same website:
“Secure Password Sync is an optional Xmarks feature. If you’d like to learn more about how it works, visit: http://www.xmarks.com/about/features/secure_password_sync”

 
“Xmarks provides seamless bookmark synchronization between your computers and browsers via our synchronization server. Your bookmark (and optionally password) data is securely stored and backed up on our servers.”

Users of this service include technology nerd and problogger David Risley, as well as myself.

Xmarks can prove to be an invaluable tool to keep your browsers synchronised. Download links follow: -

FireFox

Internet Explorer

Safari

If you could gain and learn in three days the commonsense basic knowledge that someone who now generates a six-figure-income online has learned by tuition – That’s tutelage if you’re American – and experience, over the course of 10 years; you’d apply that knowledge and make your own online income, yes?

Of course you would! – It’s easy money, right?

Wrong: There is no such thing as “easy money”. There is such a thing as uneasy money though; and it could be what you’re making now? – You see there’s a right way, and a wrong way, to make money online.

The right way to do it has changed from a few years ago: Then it was a simple task of building a website, writing content, and plastering your website with targeted ads. That might still work to some small extent; but it’ll never generate enough income for you to live on. – But you can still make a decent income online; it just takes a little more effort plus a whole new way of thinking.

I want to introduce you to David Risley at this point. David is what is known as a six-figure-internet entrepreneur (That’s six figures to the left of the decimal point incidentally); meaning he makes somewhere between $100,000 and $999,999 a year from his online business. – But he’s one of the lucky few, right?

Wrong: David’s income stream isn’t generated by luck. – That pleasure is the domain of lottery winners, and it’s short-lived. – David works determinedly day in, day out, at his online business, from home, and possibly generates more income in a month than many people do in a year. – All of it online. All his business is legit, nothing’s hidden from the Tax Man, all his customers are happy customers; and most, including myself, are repeat customers. – Customers who’ve bought his products before and have ordered again because they’re happy with the quality and value of their purchases from him.

Now successful people are generally nice people. – OK, losers would have you believe that successful people are mean and tight – which is probably why they’re losers. But successful people like to pass on the success that they’ve had to others and give others the chance to become successful people too. That’s what David’s doing right now, in a 3-day course of video presentations – Which you download and keep on your computer.

Now you don’t have to learn everything in 3 days; you can take 3 months to watch all the videos if you like, that’s up to you. – But in these videos David shares with you everything that he’s learned and is currently putting into action to generate him a six-figure income right now. – That’s what the title of this article is all about: If you watch the videos in 3 days, and put everything you learn into action, then those 3 days could be the most productive three days of your life!

In case you’re wondering; I already have the product. I have watched all the videos. I’m watching the videos again too. I’m glad I have the product. Is it worth what I paid for it? It’s worth much more in my opinion.

Ah; so it’s going to cost then? Yes; the only free lunch is in a mousetrap. – But you’d think; for knowledge that can have you making six-figure-income, that you’d have to pay a six-figure sum, right?

Wrong: Not a five or four figure sum either. – Not even a three-figure sum. – And with a money-back guarantee the most you have to lose is three days: Well considering that out of an 80-year life we spend more than 22 years (>8343 days) asleep, it’s nothing really. – And if you learn and act on what you learn then you could be making money while you’re asleep too!

There really isn’t a better time to act than right now. Procrastination is reputed to be the thief of time; and procrastinators are always close to success; if they could decide to make the right move at the right time they might actually become successful: But they won’t and they won’t. – They’ll always be procrastinators rather than success stories…

So no more rabbit from me. – That’s it. I refuse to force-feed you. The next move is yours:

See the banner below? You have the following choice: You can either click on the banner and find out more about becoming a six-figure-earner online yourself, or you can navigate away from this page and make do with your current circumstances for the time being. The choice is yours. Thank you for reading. Have a nice day. – Or should I say, have a nice three days.

- Oh I forgot to tell you about the free bonus offer… And I’ve run out of time now too. Oh well if you click the banner above I’m sure David will be good enough to tell you about it in his presentation. – Enjoy: And here’s to your coming success.

Social media has proved to be a great means for getting traffic to your blog: Once you have your web-presence, in the form of a social-circle on networks such as Twitter and Facebook, you can publicise your posts by this means in addition to socially interacting.

There are plugins that you can add to a WordPress blog, (I’m speaking from experience here.) that will aid you in doing this: They automatically send notifications of your articles to Twitter, Facebook, Ping.fm, and the like. You can also set these networks to notify other networks too.

There’s a single drawback there though, in that notifications are restricted to your own network alone. Whilst the faithful followers are notified, it can become somewhat of a cut-off clique in a sense of the phrase. Unless someone notices and retweets your tweet on Twitter, for instance, it’ll stay within your own personal following to a greater extent.

Having said all that; here’s a plugin that could get some great publicity for your WordPress blog posts. It’s called the Tweetmeme Button. It’s a plugin for WordPress that adds a retweet button to your blog, so that readers can retweet the main subject matter of your article on Twitter to their own social-circle.

From the plugin’s home page on wordpress.org: -

“The tweetmeme button easily allows your blog to be retweeted. The button also provides a current count of how many times your story has been retweeted throughout twitter.

Features

• Integrates the ability to retweet your post with one click
• Shows the current number of times your post has been retweeted on twitter
• Easily installed
• Allows you to specify when the button should go (e.g. top or bottom) “

From the button page on the tweetmeme.com website: -

“The Retweet button is for website and blog publishers that want to encourage their audience to retweet their content on twitter.

We have made our button really smart, with one simple piece of javascript we are clever enough to give you up to date tweet counts and shorten your title and link for the retweets. Best of all it will work on any web page, anywhere!”

Yes it’s not solely restricted to use with WordPress blogs. Any blog or otherwise can use it. The relevant code etc is available on this page linked here. The WordPress plugin itself will only work on WordPress, of course. Otherwise it’s a multi-platform sensation.

‘Pretty neat eh? – And I know that a number of probloggers are using it already. – So what are you waiting for? You gotta be in it to win it.

P.S. : Don’t forget to retweet this post.

The sun is out and the daffodils are blooming in the UK; in fact they’re all but over. Spring is in the air; life returning everywhere. Eostre is just around the corner.

The spring has sprung; the grass has ris’:

I wonder where the birdie is?

It’s on the wing? – Well that’s absurd:

I thought the wing was on the bird!

( – Source Unknown.)

*It’s been quite a week: With the publication of the Akamai report it appears that the figures show that microblogging service Twitter had too much downtime last year; almost doubling that of the second-placed runner.

Twitter’s Fail-Whale Outperforms All Other Social Network Downtime Indicators

*Also in the report is not-exactly-unexpected news that UK broadband is lagging behind a lot of the rest of the world; although the spam and malicious traffic appears to be coming from elsewhere. (Well I suppose if you’re flooding the net with spam you’d want to do it on a broadband connection that’s capable of handling the traffic at a decent speed without overloading.)

The New British Snail

*Is your software up to date and clean? A computer requires servicing regularly or it’ll screw up. – Not the hardware so much as the software.

Service Your Software

*Last week I installed Apture and started using it on my blog. – This resulted in complaints from my hosting service about using too many server resources. Has anyone else had a similar problem?

Why I Had to Stop Using Apture

When you view a website you might not be viewing the most current content: You might be looking at a snapshot taken by your computer.

How to Flush Your Local DNS Cache

*April 1st; April Fools Day; and I wrote an April Fool. – The problem was that as far as I’m aware nobody read it until 2nd April!

Zalman’s Wireless Power

And lastly: These days computer-makers aren’t including floppy-drives in their product; – which is fine and dandy unless the user happens to be running Windows XP and wants to use the Automated System Recovery function.

Using Windows Automated System Recovery With No Floppy Drive: Is it Possible?

Hopefully you’ll find these new articles both interesting and/or useful.

Let’s hope that the good weather and renewal of life continues at its already brisk pace: There’s just too much of Winter in the UK. (It must be utterly awful in places like Siberia!)

I discovered something recently that I feel you might find rather useful. I won’t rabbit on about it here: I’ll just link you to the relevant page.

Whatever you’re doing in whatever place on the planet; have a prosperous and blessed week.

What is DNS?

The term DNS stands for Domain Name System. DNS allows a server to be addressed by a domain name. – For example kkomp.com is the domain name of this blog. The DNS nameservers connect the IP address of a server with a domain name in order to make this possible.

When you type http://kkomp.com into your browser bar; the connection request is sent to a DNS server, which translates it into a request for connection to the appropriate IP address. The computer/server at that IP address is then sent the request that you made and responds by sending the data that you asked for.

Using DNS means that you don’t have to refer to every server by its IP address directly: If you had to address this blog as 213.171.218.220 then you’d have to write it down somewhere along with a note that it’s the IP address of kkomp.com. The DNS server does this for you; so that all you have to remember is kkomp.com.

*This article has no pictures. It’s difficult to know how one might go about getting pictures of DNS.*

What is a DNS cache?

When you visit a website, your computer may store a snapshot of what it finds there in the DNS cache of the DNS Resolver in your local operating system. This allows your computer to display a picture of what it last saw from that location at that IP address; therefore speeding up the time it takes to display it in your browser. Although the image in the local computer’s cache is only a temporary file, you might be viewing a cached image of the website in question rather than the actual content; which could have changed since then.

Flushing the Local DNS Cache

If you flush your local DNS cache; your computer is forced to make another DNS lookup when you request to see a website, as in flushing the DNS cache the locally stored image is deleted, and the computer has to store another one. This is useful if the website content has changed but your computer is still displaying the cached image of how the site looked previously.

Here’s how to flush your local DNS cache: -

(¬ = return.)

In Windows XP:

Click Start>Run.

Type “cmd” and click OK.

Type “ipconfig /flushdns” at the command prompt. (Note the space between “ipconfig” and “/flushdns”.) ¬

The message of confirmation will appear.

Type “exit”. ¬

In Windows Vista:

Right-click the Command Prompt icon and select “Run as Administrator”.

Type “cmd” and click OK.

Type “ipconfig /flushdns” at the command prompt. (Note the space between “ipconfig” and “/flushdns”.) ¬

The message of confirmation will appear.

Type “exit”. ¬

In Mac OSX 10.5.1 or below:

Open a terminal session.

Type “lookupd –flushcache”. ¬

After confirmation that the cache has been cleared; close the terminal session.

In Mac OSX above 10.5.1:

Open a terminal session.

Type “dnscacheutil –flushcache”. ¬

After confirmation that the cache has been cleared; close the terminal session.

Target neutralised.

I was working on this blog on Monday 30th March 2009, having installed Apture on 28th March 2009, when suddenly I got a 404 error when I tried to go to a certain page. I checked the rest of the blog; which was initially for the most part working; but piece by piece started returning the same 404 error.

It was as if my blog was being taken down piece by piece.

I rang Fasthosts Customer Support to ask if they knew what was going on.

I was informed that a ticket had just been raised on the matter a few minutes ago; and that my blog had been taken offline by the abuse department. I tried to enquire further; but was told that an email was being drafted by the misuse department as I spoke explaining the issue. All I could get from technical support was a brief overview of the situation.

Ten minutes later I received the following email:

“Dear Sharron,

Re: Your website – kkomp.com

We have recently become aware that your website, kkomp.com, was causing performance problems on the shared webserver on which it was hosted. Our monitoring system detected a resource problem on the server and we are confident that that your site has been contributing to this issue. More details as to the nature of the problem will be found below.”

It gives the impression that they’re still using 386s with 8MB RAM as servers.

“As a result of this problem we have acted to move your website to our probation servers, these servers provide a separate hosting environment that we maintain specifically to allow our customers to diagnose and resolve performance issues with their sites. This action on our part gives you the opportunity to alter the site as required so that we can then consider moving it back to the standard hosting environment without affecting the performance of the other hosted sites.

While your site is hosted on our probation servers you are likely to experience performance below the levels that we normally provide to our shared hosting customers.

The move has meant that the IP address associated with your website has now changed to 2**.***.***.*** “

Thanks: I really needed that. ‘Much unappreciated!

“The problem is:

Your site was found running a number of php processes, using up excessive amounts of memory. At one point we suspected it on Sunday but were unable to gain sufficient evidence. However, today your site was caught running 5 php processes, each using up over 50MB of RAM and on a further check just now, we found 7 php processes using similar amounts of RAM each, plus a further 8 php processes using up around 28MB of RAM each.”

WOW: 574 MBs of RAM: – Big Deal! That’s on a 64-bit quad-core Linux server serving 26 customers I believe. That means that if everyone was using the same amount of memory as me there’d be 14 GB RAM fitted to cope with the load. Assuming that you have 4 RAM slots with 4 GB DDR2 cards in each then that’s 16GB RAM in total… But you clearly don’t have 16 GB  RAM fitted: Which means that you have 2GB sticks, fitted making a total of 8GB.

I find it astonishing that you’re too tight to spend less than £100 on 4 x 4GB sticks and fit them so that I can use the server properly, considering the fact that you bring in over £250 a month from that server alone!

Oh I almost forgot: It’s a British hosting company. What did I expect? Charity? Is this yet another example of rip-off Britain?

“In a shared hosting environment, this sort of RAM consumption can cause severe performance problems.”

It sounds a bit like British housing: We have 28 flats in your 20 x 12 metre-cubed tenement block, all sharing a single pipe. Since 45% of the residents are also geeks, please be considerate of the needs of others and don’t hog bandwidth or you’ll be disconnected. A limit of 1 GB per day at an expected speed of 512Kb/s is the maximum you should expect, despite the advertised 8Mb/s speeds. If you have any problem with this, RTFM including small-print.

“Beyond the description of the symptoms given above we are unable to offer assistance in diagnosis or resolution of the problem. We cannot advise you on how your site should be changed to resolve the problem. If we have been able to identify a particular script responsible for the problem then this information has been included in the notes above. If there is no indication of a particular script that we believe is causing the problem then you should assume that we have not been able to identify one. We will not take any further action to diagnose this problem.”

Ah I detect British Workman syndrome here:

“We didn’t find exactly what the problem was as it was time to clock off. You sort it out yourself, as we’re not getting paid for overtime.”

“While we recognise that this move may be inconvenient for you we would like to remind you that, when you opened your Fasthosts account, you agreed to be bound by our terms of service and to be responsible for the domains in your account. We feel that we have fulfilled our responsibility to you as a customer by providing this alternate hosting environment and giving you the opportunity to resolve the problem.”

What a weird way of going about things. Why not just email me and say “There’s a problem with your site overusing server resources. WE can’t be bothered to work out exactly what the problem is as we’re clocking off shortly. Please do our diagnostics for us and then fix it, or we’ll remove your blog from our servers.”

“We regret that we cannot allow your site to remain on the probation server for longer than 7 days. To prevent the suspension of your site you need to contact us within 7 days and tell us what steps you have taken to resolve the problem. If we do not hear from you within 7 days of the date of this email we will act to suspend your website and associated services including email. This step is not reversible and so it is imperative that you act quickly if you wish to continue to host your website with Fasthosts.

Should you require us to remove any unacceptable data and related services in order to resolve this problem we will require your explicit authorisation to do so.

On receipt of your reply, we will assess the situation again with the aim of moving your website back to the shared environment.

Once we are confident that the problem has been resolved we will move your website back to the shared hosting environment. Any further performance issues caused by your website will result in the site being permanently disabled and so we strongly advise that, in future, you actively monitor the resources used by the domains that you host with us.”

That seems a bit draconian!

For further information please refer to:

http://www.fasthosts.co.uk/knowledge-base/?article_id=1115

http://www.fasthosts.co.uk/companyinfo/termsofservice/

.
Regards,
***** *****
Misuse Team
Fasthosts Internet Ltd.”

Bloody heck: What a palaver!

Well it didn’t require a brain surgeon or a rocket scientist to guess what was causing the issue: Logically, since the Apture plugin was installed on Friday, and the issues had initially come to the fore on Sunday; just after I had configured a number of posts and pages to fully utilise the Apture plugin; it was logical to assume that the Apture plugin was the cause of the server memory usage issues. – So I removed it and rang up the host to check that the problem was resolved. There appeared to be no further problems, so the site went back onto the usual server.

I was getting 404s still; so I also asked them to check that the site was getting out. It was, so I flushed my DNS cache and everything returned to normal.

Now then; I want your opinions readers please: -

1) Do you think my host is tight-fisted and draconian, or is this normal behaviour for a web-host in your opinion?

2) Do you think; in your honest opinion, that I should find a better web-host?

3) If yes to #2; who would you recommend?

Please comment below.

Feedburner are asking everyone to move their feeds over to Google. i hope Google are more professional than Feedburner; but I’m going to wait to see about that before I open an RSS account with Google. I have a gripe with Feedburner; and I very much doubt anything will be any different in terms of the standard of service with Google, at least not initially.

I’ve closed my RSS account with Feedburner; and somehow they managed to sabotage my normal RSS feed when I did that: I’m now locked into a 30-day redirect loop that seems to go nowhere; and nobody can parse my feeds from that URL.

To remedy the situation to a certain extent I’ve set up a second RSS feed, which connects to a lot of the apps and services that the original feed did; such as the newsletter, Facebook, etc. I use a Twitter app with my blog to inform Twitter via xml.RPC. I don’t know if the Ping FM notification system is still working; I can’t remember whether it’s notified via my old feed or xml.RPC. I think probably the latter. My traffic has not been affected in any way anyway, so I’m not too bothered about that right now.

I have to manually update my current feed; which has its drawbacks but also has advantages: It means that I’m totally in control of the feed and can put what I like on it without having to be a php, xml, and RSS expert.

Why did I close my account with Feedburner?

This blog has been up and running for almost 7 months. It’s not long in the scheme of things; it’s not even very long in blogosphere terms. – Yet during those 7 months Feedburner have shut down my RSS feed three times simply because its size limit was larger than they like.

OK but they do let you know that they’ve shut it down don’t they? NO they don’t: they just terminate sending any new entries and expect the customer to notice immediately. They shut off my feed on the 17th January 2009 last time. I noticed on the 21st January that my feed had stopped incrementing. I checked everything. There appeared at first to be nothing coming out of my blog in the way of RSS; but then I remembered Feedburner had taken control of it. On the 22nd I found out that Feedburner had stopped the feed without telling me; so at least 5 articles had escaped notification in certain sectors, and some of my audience who relied on the feed might have been under the impression that I’d stopped publishing.

But surely Feedburner send you an email warning that your feed’s about to run out of space and get too big for them to handle? No, they don’t: Not even that courtesy. In my view they are extremely discourteous, unprofessional, and to all intents and purposes; they suck.

Yes I am aware that their service is free, and yes I am aware that there is a limit on the amount of data that they can store for free: Although I don’t understand why that amount is gigabytes in the case of Microsoft and Gmail; yet only a few kilobytes in the case of Feedburner.

Anyway I made the decision based upon the evidence available that they suck and that I was going to close my account. I went to their website to do so where, in addition to being told that they’d stopped my feed for the first time, (Anyone would think that they’d never heard of email!) I was reminded to transfer my feed to Google which I did without problem. I think I was on Google’s site when I had a last minute change of mind, as my feed remained blocked on Google too, and the GUI was almost the same but with the name Google instead of Feedburner. I searched a while for how to do it and than cancelled my account. there was a box underneath the unsubscribe paraphernalia that was something to do with redirects which was already ticked – I noticed after I’d clicked “submit” but before the page disappeared – Then the page disappeared.

Now when I look for my feed on that GUI it tells me that “This feed is almost toast…” and something about redirection. When I look for my feed I get a blank page, and other feed readers are unable to parse it: they just go round in a redirect-loop and give up after a number of attempts.

But there must be a simple way in the GUI to get the redirect cancelled? No there isn’t: the only way to do it is to post in the Feedburner forums begging the Feedburner staff to do it for you and wait for a reply. I saw a couple of people had waited seven days for someone from Feedburner to reply and rather condescendingly agree to do it: In the meantime the forum chimpanzees, who’d probably wandered over from You-Tube, had posted messages of abuse to the person who’d made the request.

I decided that this was all too much, and that I wasn’t going to fall on my face before the great Feedburner, humbly begging for them to release MY feed whilst subjecting myself to possible abuse from retards. I simply walked away. My feed is toast anyway. – Until they release it; which should be late February. Until then my current feed that I manually update at http://kkomp.com/kkompRSS.xml is all there is. Please subscribe to it. If your feed-reader won’t parse it then get a better reader. Most readers have no problem with it; but one or two are too fussy. I’m not a computer, neither am I an xml expert; so they’ll just have to like it or lump it: At least I know that it won’t be secretly stopped at the whim of some tight-fisted unprofessional company anymore.

I’m not going to use Google instead just yet. ‘Sorry Google, but you appear exactly the same on first impressions; so until you can properly take up where Feedburner left off and provide a better service, I’ll be handling my feeds myself.

For your edification I included this video. Enjoy: -

Feedburner hacked! from Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on Vimeo

Just after writing this article I realised that I had Feedburner Feedsmith plugin installed; so I’ve deactivated it: Possibly my old feed might just spring back to life having done this – ?

Back in July 2008 I wrote an article about the sensitive and to-all-intents non-political commentary of David Risley on the Obama campaign’s influence upon bloggers and micro-bloggers to the extent that a multitude of articles and comments were being produced in echo-chamber fashion covering everything to do with it almost to the point of recording Obama’s every visit to the toilet. (Draws long breath.)

Whatever Risley’s opposition, the coverage did its job; as I’m sure President Obama will testify to at some point perhaps?

Despite being no political commentator, (Not that he ever tried to be.) David Risley is one of the internet’s success stories; and has from that point gone from strength to strength, building up a strong online business using his own self-generated business-model fashioned after a multitude of tips from many internet gurus and moulded to the Risley model.

His websites include PCMech as well as davidrisley.com. I’m not going to tell you all about them; rather I’ll let him do that:

In the search for quality materials to present on this blog I have in the last few hours discovered this recently-written manual by David Risley himself, and available online from his blog davidrisley.com , called The Future of Blogging Income . In it he shows how, by building up an online business and leaving it on autopilot, he was able to make over $12,000 while away on a 10-day cruise.

With those words I’m going to end this article. Your choice now is to either do nothing and never know; therefore you’ll not be informed how you can do similar yourself; OR you can click on the link and read the e-book: It’s entirely up to you.

No, the e-book won’t cost you anything: It’s totally free of charge. – So why miss out?

http://www.davidrisley.com/blogincome

“The Woork Handbook is a free eBook [by Antonio Lupetti, of woork.blogspot.com .] about CSS, HTML, AJAX, web programming, Moo Tools, Scriptaculous, and other topics about web design…”

That’s got to be good. I haven’t even looked at it yet; I’ve only just discovered it. Since it’s free, however, I reckon it’s worth a Digg, maybe subscribing to the RSS feed, even a contribution if you’re feeling generous why not? I simply have to blog it.

Please remember that the guy who wrote it doesn’t have English as his first language; so it may be a little confusing in places. : But it’s FREE – Who’s complaining?

This guy may not necessarily be a cunning linguist, but he seems to have a good amount of tech prowess; which can only be beneficial to take notice of. It would appear to be a good idea to bookmark his website.

You can download your free copy HERE.

It’s strange to note that this chap; having all that knowledge and experience, uses Google’s blogger rather than his own self-hosted blog. Maybe he has many other blogs; hosted and self-hosted? I have a blog on Posterous, as well as one on Windows Live: Both of which I hardly ever use these days.

Carrying on with that point: When I was working in the double-glazing industry, a lot of my colleagues had the worst windows I’d ever seen, in an unbelievably bad state, on their own homes; yet they were selling brand new double-glazed uPVC windows and doors etc to other homeowners. -  Have you ever noticed that with trades people? I know a builder whose house is a wreck. I know an electrician whose home wiring hasn’t been attended to for about 50 years… It’s quite uncanny in a way.

Anyway enough of this rabbit: Go forth and download your free copy; then do something nice like donating, bookmarking, adding to social media, etc.

If you like you could tell me what YOU think of the book. Please remember when you do that I’m not a programmer as such, I’m still a novice when it comes to php, css, and almost everything else too in that line, other than 1970’s Commodore BASIC. Also to a lesser extent; DOS, and HTML. Having said that you get the chance to go well beyond my understanding here. – So if you’d like to take the opportunity to ‘beat the author’ ; please feel free to indulge.

  – No I didn’t mean that kind of beating.

“Untouchable” Apple are becoming security-conscious it appears:

Despite the “I’m a Mac” guy sneezing the word Vista at the “I’m a PC” guy in their adverts; Apple have found it not below their demeanour to publish the following page on their website: –

Does the great Jobsweh suddenly feel that his invulnerability is threatened – or is it just the paranoid manifestation of the symptoms of hormone imbalance? Whatever the case, it appears that Apple have woken up to the fact that just because a rival operating system is more targeted, it doesn’t make theirs immune to attack.

It’s in every Mac user’s interests to ensure that your Mac doesn’t become infected with something called “malware”: That’s the nasty malefic mini-programs that only a few months ago the Apple advertising campaigns were insinuating only affect PCs. You might like to click upon this link to be taken from here to a place created by your own kind from whence you might gain the protection that you’ve hitherto been told you don’t need.

The Mac-attack is coming: Prevention is better than cure. Immunity is a myth.

Read This. Don’t end up with a rotten Apple.

There’s an RSS feed to the Apple Networking and Security Downloads page by which you can get notified when new tools are put on the list.

Question: Are Steve Jobs’ kids known as “applets”?

Yesterday I opened the post "Dwindling Economy Hits US Trade Shows" with the words:- "Steve Jobs has not had a heart-attack; indeed Steve Jobs [aka "Jobsweh"] is not in poor health, nor is he dying."

My timing was impeccable considering the announcement today by Jobs himself. My information sources may not be quite right though:

According to Scientific American website:

"Apple co-founder and chief executive Steve Jobs posted an open letter to customers on his company’s Web site today in which he says that he’s being treated for an unspecified "hormone imbalance" that has caused severe weight loss and kept him out of the public eye."  http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=apples-jobs-hormone-imbalance 

‘Maybe not quite as much  weight loss as suggested in the illustration left; but it is nevertheless apparent that Jobs is suffering from a bit too much lean-ness.

INTERLUDE

At this point during writing this article the power went out. Fortunately I have 2 UPS’s looking after my entire system; so I was able to finish the line I was on and shut down everything without data loss or damage of any kind to my systems. For further reading see http://www.pcmech.com/article/avert-disasters-with-a-ups/ .

Is that the way to lose weight without trying? Hormone imbalance? If so then perhaps I should find hormones to start taking at random? I’ll just have to be careful I don’t start speaking in a gruff voice, or grow wings, or something. – Not that I’m particularly overweight; but I could do with a little weight-loss nevertheless.

Perhaps the hormone imbalance explains Jobs’ overly aggressive marketing, combined with his control-freak style? Whatever the case; I didn’t get it quite right:

I stated the information that I’d heard from Robert Scoble on Twitter. – This was largely accurate; but not 100% so.

Anyway that’s cleared up the misunderstanding; so now onwards and upwards: I have another article which I’m intending to get written and published; hopefully today.

Do please comment on this article.

On October 10th 2008 I stated the following:

"In general I think that most computer users are too lax don’t take security seriously enough.

I am fairly certain that the number of machines that are still unprotected by any kind of firewall is fairly big.

I am fairly certain that the percentage of machines unprotected by any kind of anti-virus and anti-spyware software is quite high: Higher than you’d imagine.

I am fairly certain that the number of people who have anti-virus and anti-virus software installed, but whose databases have never been updated is quite colossal.

I am fairly certain that the percentage of machines that have not once taken any update to or Windows components is probably in the twenties.

I am also fairly certain that there are a number of people who’ll click on links or open attachments from unknown sources without giving it a second thought."

A new survey by the UK Government’s Get Safe Online Campaign allows me to put some actual figures to those statements:-

Overall almost half of UK internet users fail to keep their security software up-to-date.

48% do not update their anti-virus software frequently enough to ensure it remains effective.

47% do not have website authentication software to protect against phishing attacks.

23% do not have any protection against spyware.

As a result cybercrime is on the increase, especially phishing, according to the campaign.

23% of those people surveyed said that they or someone they knew was the victim of a phishing attack this year, 2008. In 2007 the figure was only 8%.

According to Tony Neate, managing director of Get Safe Online: “If internet users invest a relatively small amount of time and money in ensuring they are fully protected and up-to-date, the risk of such financial loss is almost negligible.”

‘Typical couldn’t-care-less "Der I’m a Brit so I don’t need none ov this crap" attitude. What is wrong with people? Are they really so unthinking and irresponsible in the UK? Unfortunately the figures seem to speak for themselves. I’m still getting visitors to this blog who are using Windows ME and 9x. Read this article – I wasn’t joking; these operating systems are a security risk, even if you do apply all the patches available.

"Oh who’d want to bother hacking Windows 9x? It’s outdated and Microsoft don’t have anything to lose ." Bad answer; you’re missing the point: The attacks aren’t so much virus and other malware attacks by criminal Linux zealots designed to discredit Microsoft these days. They are designed to rip off the public in any way possible, to steal money from you and me. Criminals launch malware designed to target old Microsoft operating systems still in use which aren’t patched against the latest threats. Your old relic machine running Windows ME/9x is probably being used right now as a malware relay and/or a remote server under the control of a criminal gang; and I also bet you that those criminals have any of your security details left on that computer too.

There’s no need to buy a new computer necessarily: If your machine will run Windows XP, or Ubuntu Linux even if you can’t afford a second-hand copy of XP, then all you need do is change the operating system. I’ll write an article at some point on this.

Please please please peoples; for the sake of all internet users, follow these simple rules: Yes it’ll take a little extra time; but you and everybody else will reap the rewards of doing so:-

1. Ensure that you have antivirus software installed and that it is updated daily. If you can’t or don’t want to pay for it then download Avast! Free Edition. Avast free edition includes antispyware. It updates automatically and will inform you audibly when it has done so. (Male American voice: Unchangeable.)

2. Get website authentication software. (Microsoft have this built into Internet Explorer 7 and above.)

3. Get spyware protection. Avast! free antivirus has built-in spyware protection. Some antivirus programs do not. (If your antivirus program is more than a year old it needs changing as it’s unable to detect or cope with current threats.)

I’ll be blunt here: If you can’t be bothered to stick to these simple rules then I hope you get scammed/robbed; after which you might just take some care to abide by them. If you can’t be bothered then you deserve anything and everything you get. Despite that I suggest you do the sensible thing and ensure that your online security is 100% – Before it’s too late for someone else; or more importantly before it’s too late for you.

A break from the usual tech-related subject matter.

A blonde phoned up a video-hire shop:

"Hello: I rented a porno-film yesterday to spice up me and my boyfriend’s lovemaking, but when we played it there was nothing on the cassette at all. It really let us down, and I’d like compensation when I bring it back later."

The store owner replied:

"I’m so sorry madam. We did receive a few faulty videos in our last batch; and it seems that you’ve accidentally managed to pick up one of them. I understood that we’d checked all the videos on display and removed all the faulty ones. You say this was a porn video. Do you have the title of it to hand?"

The blonde replied:

"Head Cleaner."

I was having an extended blonde moment today; so I started writing a post about blondes. I deleted a lot of things. It’s unfair to judge a person’s IQ level by their hair colour – There are a lot of hair dyes available these days.

I’m trying to introduce this video I found on You Tube. The artiste’ is Damh the Bard – A very famous performer amongst the Pagan community. You can visit his website at http://www.paganmusic.co.uk. If you like his music then why not buy his album(s)? All the recorded tracks are self-produced, and the money from sales of his albums funds the next album.

Enjoy.

Feel free to comment. Have a good week.

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.

Today; in a change from my usual Windows-adherent policy, I decided to browse some Open-Source projects – having downloaded Firefox 2.** yesterday and finding that it surprisingly renders this site better than IE7 in Windows XP Professional!

Another Open-Source project I stumbled upon while testing K-Meleon was http://browsershots.org: This is a very useful website to bookmark. With this website you can see exactly what your site looks like in a number of different browsers at 2 resolutions using a variety of operating systems: Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Free BSD…

For the privilege of so testing their site I’m going to make a donation to the cause: You no doubt see the donate linkin the screenshots, so it would be good to give it a click when you get there and chuck a few bucks into the development coffers if you feel like supporting them.

Life’s a bitch; which is why I always try to be a bigger one.

Here are some more screenshots:-

What do you think; of K-Meleon? Of browserhosts.org? Did you test neither, either, or both? What are your results? Your remarks? Your comment below is welcomed.

No-o! I said “click” ; not “chick”. Sod off until Easter!

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In the post I made earlier entitled “A Geek’s Toolkit Supplement: Loaded USB Drive ” I spoke of what I described as “branding files”: Files that I add to the operating system to indicate that I am supplier, builder, and maintenance tech for a particular computer.

I can hear your brains whirring; so before you start thinking that I’m up to something naughty I’ll show you exactly what I mean. Oh yes; this only works if you have Windows XP installed, so don’t go trying it with a Linux or a OSX installation and then comment that I’ve messed up your operating system or “I can’t find those files in Ubuntu!” – “It doesn’t work with Leopard!” You’re quite right; it doesn’t – So be forewarned.

If this information has already been added to your operating system by the manufacturer then I suggest it best to just leave it anyway.

(Why are you playing about with your computer like this anyway? What do you hope to achieve? Oh well; your problem, not mine.)

The aim of the exercise is to customise Windows XP’s general tab in the System Properties dialogue box that you call up by right-clicking the My Computer icon and selecting Properties.

This customisation involves adding support contract information and a logo. It involves using only Notepad and whatever program you like to use to create a 256-colour bitmap.

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OK let’s start with the details: I won’t tell you exactly what details I put for computers that I build; so for this exercise we’ll assume that these details are regarding a computer built by the Acme Computer Corporation:

The computer is a Datamax, model 55102. Support line is 1-800-ACME…

Open Notepad and type the following text, replacing the example with your company’s details etc:

[General]

Manufacturer=Acme Computer Corporation

Model=Datamax 55102

[Support Information]

Line 1=Call 1-800-ACME for technical support

Line 2=  ">.invalid

Line 3=500 Billion Byte Drive

Line 4=Pixelgraphicsville, USA

Save this file to %windir%\Windows\System32 as Oeminfo.ini

Create a 256-colour bitmap of your company’s logo that is no more than 96X96 pixels in size. Save this file to %windir%\Windows\system32 as Oemlogo.bmp

Yes I deliberately soiled the picture: ‘Better safe than sorry.

To see the results either right-click on the My Computer icon or press the Windows and the Break key simultaneously.

And that’s how it’s done – No registry edits, no hacking into anything. This is a white box system builder’s trick; but it’s no massive secret. The files aren’t permanent anyway; if you remove them or reinstall your operating system the dialogue box reverts to default.

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At times I’m browsing through folders and remember that I need to make a backup to another internal HDD of a particular file or subfolder, or I discover a file in the wrong folder. Sometimes I snag a picture from somewhere and add it to the My Pictures folder. On my computer I store my main picture library on my D: drive; which is a relatively large drive on a separate disk all to itself.

I built my computer myself: As you may have gathered if you’ve spent any length of time browsing my blog; I’m a computer-designer & builder as well as a blogger. This one I built for myself is from a range of a particular baseline design of computer I call INXPense. As an experiment and to use up an old hard-drive I had lying around I used a 40GB Hitachi HDD as the system drive (C:) and I try to keep as much as I can off that drive and store it on the other drive(s).

(The reason for this is that should the system drive fail on me (Which has happened to me at least once already with another computer.) I have a recent backup of C: which I keep up-to-date; and therefore it’s a simple matter of removing the old disk drive and installing a new one; restoring the twenty-something gigabyte backup to it, and I’m ready to go again within the hour; avoiding too much downtime.

Previously on the other computer mentioned above I had a 320GB HDD split into 2 partitions of around 160GB each. The operating system stored all pictures by default to the My Pictures folder…etc. In a short time I had filled up over half of the system drive C: with mainly files that had little or nothing to do with the o/s and I’d backed up everything to an external hard drive – Hence when the internal HDD took a dive I had a backup of all the contents of both drives: So installed a new internal HDD (15 mins.), restored the contents of the C: drive backup onto it, (> 1 hour) then had to partition it ( 1 hour) and install the contents of the D: drive backup onto the newly-formed drive D: (> 1 hour). Altogether the machine was down for about 1/2 day which pissed me off no end.

If it happens again I won’t have that problem. (I could have used RAID 1 instead; but that requires a second identical hard-disk and I just didn’t have the room in the case nor the SATA ports on the motherboard – and those PCIe RAID controller cards come in at nearly £20 ($35-39USD) cost each – Even the PCI RAID cards are almost £15 ($26-29USD) – And although I had all necessary components in stock I didn’t want to utilise resources unnecessarily.)

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This is becoming a little long-whinded admittedly; but I’m getting there: – So you’ll appreciate that I don’t want everything I input accumulating on the relatively small C: drive or it’ll fill up fast. Every now and then I transfer a small accumulation of files, such as pictures, from where the operating system puts them by default – In this case the My Pictures folder, to the Pictures library on the D: drive.

The immediately obvious way to do this would be to open the My Pictures folder, highlight an icon, click Edit>Select All, then cut everything, open the D: folder, browse to the Pictures folder which is in a folder called “Media” on D:, and paste. What a load of hassle! There’s a much easier way – I call it a “portable shortcut”:

Enabling hidden-folder viewing reveals a system-folder called “Send To” in %windir%Documents and SettingsUsername. (Where %windir% is the root-directory of your system drive; usually C: ) Right click on this folder and create a shortcut to it on your desktop. (You might not believe it but that was a major part of the operation.) Here comes the boring bit:

Create further desktop shortcuts to folders and drives that you use a lot; for example a shortcut to D: drive, if like me you happen to have another hard disk or partition of a hard-disk at that location. On that drive you may have, for example, a folder called “Recipes” and another called “Dress Patterns“. (Or even “Motors” and “Porn“.): Create desktop shortcuts to whichever folders you feel like doing so; especially those that you use a lot and transfer files into and out of a lot. Be thorough. I appreciate it’s very boring after a while; but the more decent shortcuts the better.

So that you don’t overlook a shortcut that you create I suggest that you create a new folder and label it something like “New Shortcuts“. Put all your newly-created shortcuts in that folder as you create them.

When you’ve finished creating and rounding up all the shortcuts you like, it’s time to edit them – yes all of them individually. (I know this is getting very boring; but it’ll be time well spent in the end.) What you want to do is shave off “Shortcut to” from the shortcuts name; thus “Shortcut to D:” becomes simply “D:” and so forth.

DO keep the shaved shortcuts in your “New Shortcuts” folder; otherwise if you let them spill onto the desktop you could think that they’re direct-path icons which might lead to some confusion: If you like you could even create a folder within New Shortcuts called “Shaved Shortcuts“; just so that you know where everything is: It’s better to be meticulous and safe than slightly careless and sorry.

Once you’ve done that; copy the contents of your Shaved Shortcuts folder by highlighting a single shaved shortcut, click Edit in the toolbar at the top, and click Select All, right-click a highlighted shaved shortcut and select Copy. Now mouse-over the Shortcut to Send To icon on the desktop, right-click it, and select Paste.

You’re all but finished: If you don’t want to keep the New Shortcuts folder and anything inside it on the Desktop, then it seems a shame to delete it after all that work – So mouse-over it and right- click. Select Send to… – Where do you want to send it to? All those shortcuts you just created are now made available as portable shortcut (LOOK!) places that you can send that, and indeed any other shortcut or file, to in the same manner.

Sending the file to anywhere will not delete it from its original location though; so after you’ve sent it wherever you choose, you can then erase it from the Desktop if you like; safe in the knowledge that your hard work is in the folder that you sent it to.

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Test it out again if you like: Create a new text file on the Desktop and call it “Test“. Mouse-over it, right-click and send it somewhere using your enhanced Send To… menu: Now go where you’ve sent it to and you’ll find it.

So in future anything that you download; you can use the Desktop as the default download location rather than fiddling about specifying the file to download it to, if you like: As soon as you’ve downloaded your file(s) to the Desktop and checked it (them); just mouse-over, right-click, send it (them) to its (their) final destination(s); then delete it (them) from the Desktop. – This can and does save a lot of time – Especially if you’re transferring files from one folder to another:-

Imagine that you have a file in the folder C:My DocumentsFashionTops that you want to transfer to D:PicturesCatwalkModelsTops: If you have a portable shortcut in the Send To folder to Tops that is the destination folder then all you need do is browse to the source folder C:My DocumentsFashionTops and send the file straight to Tops on the D: drive without all the faffing about.

There are many useful enhancements you can make to your Windows XP operating system and this is just one of them. There are others mentioned on this blog-site; as well as at http://www.pcmech.com. Here they’re all free so far at the time of writing; at pcmech.com there is so much content that there has to be a charge for some of it; but what you get for a small fee is well worth it in my honest opinion. Yes I’m a member, and no I’m not currently getting paid for advertising it: This is just a complimentary favour at this point in time.

This site, kkomp.com, is currently at time of writing totally funded by advertising: I don’t currently charge anything for anything: Nil, nada, sweet FA. If you’d be so good as to look at some of the adverts, click a few, even buy something you might like, or give it as a present to someone even, then it will help to fund this site.

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BT have messed up again! I tried to access this website via the normal ftp channel that I use to upload and download files, and the server returned an invalid address error. I checked my ftp settings on my Fasthosts account, which were correct; but still got the same result. I uninstalled and reinstalled my ftp client, FileZilla, inputted the correct settings – same result. I downloaded WS-FTP-LE , set it up, and got the same result with that too. I phoned Fasthosts who said that all BT customers had exactly the same problem since BT had introduced new  measures to combat spam and illegal downloading via P2P earlier.

What that means is that BT have introduced a new piece of equipment into the loop that looks for anything it doesn’t like and blocks it. It saw my ftp, which it passed to the server, the server responded but the BT equipment saw the response and blocked it. My ftp client didn’t get a response and assumed that there wasn’t one; hence its response.

This is all connected with this stupid illegal unworkable UK government initiative to kerb illegal downloads that I reported on earlier. http://kkomp.com/archives/629 I asked how long did they think it would take for the problem to be remedied. They said it should only take a few hours, that they were kicking and screaming at BT, and that BT had assigned some of their top technicians to the case.

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2 Hours later I phoned BT : After following through several stages of a complicated menu I was played the message

“Welcome to BT broadband…we’re closed…” in short. “…For faults only please ring…” I did.; I endured the boring drivel about how BT record all phone calls and that if I had a problem with the internet service I could visit their website…A bit like saying

“If your car won’t start why not drive round to our garage and we’ll have it fixed in no time at all.”

“…please phone 0800…” was the message before the phone went dead: I redialed again and endured the same drivellous messages before…

“Om-put-put-ding-ding saab. Welcomming to BT. Please be to how may I help you. Can I have your name and the first line of your address please thank you?”

Yes hello Ranjeet – Here we go again. I gave my name etc – Yes I am the account holder. (Stupid question to ask: “Are you the account holder? Why not just look at the details on your screen when you bring up the account?)

“I’m having problems with using ftp over the internet and am unable to access my server at my web-host.” I continued. “BT are aware of this matter and are working to resolve it. Would you tell me how much longer you expect the matter to take until it’s resolved please.”

“You can’t access the internet?” Came the reply.

I think I used the word pillock in what I said next before I repeated myself.

“It is a problem with your server.” Said the Indian

(I’ve edited out the next few lines to make this blog fit for publication.)

“I will find out for you. Please to be holding the line. What is ftp?”

“File Transfer Protocol” I replied; amazed at the lack of knowledge. “I thought you were trained? This is a technical helpline isn’t it? – It bloody well better be as it’s the only one that’s open!”

“I will find out for you.”

The line went silent for a while and then was hung up.

“‘Cheeky f—ing bleeders!” I hit the roof.

To cut a long story short; after partly-demolishing a door that I didn’t like, I went through all that again to be told by a very gently-mannered Indian woman that nobody had a clue as nobody had been informed of it.

“Fair comment.” I thought; thanked her for her time, and rang the BT Broadband Status line, which told me that there were no problems at all with BT Broadband. I tried to connect via ftp again and got the same result. I phoned Fasthosts again, who confirmed that BT were fully informed and working on it.

- An ISP that lies; both by telephone message and by half-baked computer-illiterate representative. An ISP that neglects to inform its staff of major issues so that they can be of any help to its customers. An ISP that promises a service and ruins the experience of that service for its customers; then lies about it, and keeps everyone in the dark.

You’re wondering “Since you’ve had all this trouble with BT lately; why don’t you change ISP?”

I’d love to; but they give me material for my blog as part of their excuse for a service, so it can’t be all bad.

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BEWARNED: BT’s new Home Hub could cost you nearly twice as much as advertised as an existing BT customer; and you won’t know that you have to pay extra until after you receive the unit:-

Home Hub v2.0, released in July 2008

Last week I was looking at the BT website and I noticed that they had brought out a new model of the BT Home Hub router – a version 2.0. http://www.frequencycast.co.uk/homehub2.html It had a stylish curved polished black plastic design and 4 ethernet ports. I decided that I was going to have one, as the one I was currently using was white which clashed with the colour of the rest of my equipment, was chunky and fairly ugly in comparison, and I was using both ethernet ports out of the 2 available and would prefer an additional 2 ports for future expansion.

I rang BT and eventually managed to get the Indian at the other end of the phone to understand what I was saying and take my order. He said that I’d have to pay £44.99 for it, (About $90USD) which I thought was fair (That was half-price as an existing BT customer.): I’d had the existing BT Home Hub (V.1.1) free with the full package including VOIP phone, unlimited bandwidth, and their biggest and most expensive residential phone package. The VOIP phone uses a separate BT telephone number on the same line, and was channeled over the internet from the BT exchange; thus the cost of calls was allegedly cheaper. (As well as worse quality.)

(*Note: The recent BT Home Hubs; 2.0 and above, require a working voltage of 15 Volts. The older BT Home Hubs, before 2.0 require a working voltage of 9 Volts: Therefore if you’re replacing an old Home Hub with a new 2.0 or greater, you would probably have problems with it, if it works at all, if you don’t use the power adapter supplied with it and use the old one instead. (I don’t advise using the new adapter with an old Home Hub; although it may or may not work as a temporary measure. (Then again it might damage the old Home Hub due to over-voltage – I don’t know and I don’t intend to experiment in this area.)))

Today I received delivery of my new BT Home Hub; exactly as described in their advertising material. It was a snitch to set up; the only thing I had to do really was replace the old mains power adapter with the supplied adapter; as the new hub ran on a voltage of 15 Volts, whereas the old one ran on 9 Volts. I already had the required software installed, (I don’t use their free Norton security software as it’s ineffective resource-hogging crap. I only use the BT Desktop Help software.) and it picked up and worked a dream. I then realised that I hadn’t attached the VOIP handset’s cradle or configured it to work with my existing handset. The existing handset was white – Hmm; a new one would cost me so I decided I’d live with it until I had enough spare balance to buy a new black one.

I removed the cover from the cradle socket on the new hub and it suddenly hit me that there was no way that my old cradle was going to fit. I checked the package for a new cradle but none was supplied. I phoned BT. :

The Indian went all through the most stringent interrogation for identity verification; and then said he’d transfer me to the relevant department; who did it again. This time I was talking at last to a Brit – Yippee!.. But my happiness was short-lived:

The reply was that they don’t supply a new cradle separately; and that I’d have to buy one along with a new handset for £35.99 (About $70USD)> I said that this was a con: I already had a perfectly good handset; all I needed was a cradle which should have been supplied with the new hub: I’d like a free cradle by itself or I’d be taking the matter to the Office of Fair Trading. I’d also like BT to make it clear in their advertising that the new router would require a new cradle and handset BEFORE the customer chose to buy it; or I’d be taking that matter to Trading Standards as well.

To cut a long story short she wouldn’t budge; so rightly or wrongly I went ahead and ordered and told her that I’d be referring the matter to the relevant powers that be – Which I’m about to do.

If you’re a BT customer and you’d like a new BT Home Hub 2.0 with a usable cradle and phone included; the cost isn’t £44.99: That’s a con – You can’t use your existing handset as the cradle won’t fit. The true cost in total is £80.00 approximately. (Somewhere around $160USD.)

Another example of Bullshit Telecom’s dishonesty and unethical advertising.

They WILL be sorry: I’ll make sure of it!

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As you may or may not be aware; I’m constantly attempting to improve and/or update this blog in as many ways as I can. Current news items relating to technological issues in particular have been the main thrust of the recent posts, although I do intend to broaden the scope somewhat in future to cover more electronics (Basic/theoretical/practical electronics.), and other subjects, as well as introduce more categories.

Also in the near future I intend to start up a mailing-list as well as a separate subscription-only mailing-list. To accomplish this I have bought an extremely efficient plugin from Tribulant Software : I know that there are various online services that take a subscription and manage mass email distribution on your behalf; but to be honest I fail to see the point when, for less than the price of a month’s subscription in some cases, one can buy this plugin as a one-off including support, and target neutralised; no more fees to pay.

To add – There is an issue with the Kontera WordPress plugin: This was discovered by Antonie from Tribulant Software today when helping me install the mailing list plugin. I quote:

 ”Unfortunately there seems to be a problem.”

I’ve informed Kontera about this: Their autoresponder says they’ll be in touch in the next 3 working days.

Also the (free) plugin called “Simple Tags” caused a fatal error in the server when the plugin was installed the first time. (By me.) It may well be the case that “Simple Tags” causes a fatal error to occur even when installing a few of the free plugins too.

-So I’ll be looking at starting a free mailing list within the next few days, and then a subscription-only list thereafter.

Other news:

You’ll notice I’ve at last tidied up the top of the index page; which appears to be by far the most popular page to date – Hopefully those who turned up to have a laugh at it will now beam in admiration at it: OK I know that’s going a little too far… That logo; it changes colour and brightness slowly: The “kkomp.com” part changes between almost black and pink & black. The “Taking you beyond the comfort zone.” part starts off purple, goes black and almost illegible, goes bright and pink; then it cycles slowly through again and stays pink – Just in case you were wondering what actually was going on but didn’t have the time nor patience to sit watching it in zomboid style.

Moron Newsletters More on Newsletters:

Of course; all this type of thing will appear in the free newsletter in future, rather than a post in the blog itself.

And; since the free newsletter is, as its name suggests, free; it’ll have advertising included. The subscription-only newsletter, on the other hand, will have a lot more content and be totally ad-free. The first one; when it appears, will cost you exactly $1.00 USD or thereabouts. I’ll be announcing more on that in due course, as and when.

Only those signed up for the free newsletter will receive it in their email, and those who have subscribed to this site will automatically receive it unless they choose to opt out: So if you want to receive the free newsletter then do sign up for it when you see the link appear in the Main Pages table near the top of every page and post in the sidebar.

Postings:

Thus-far I’ve done my best, with a couple of exceptions, to post something, hopefully of interest, on some topic(s) or another, every day. I intend to continue doing this and maybe more, up to a point; but if there should be nothing posted/written on the occasional day every now and again, please don’t immediately assume that the blog’s been discontinued – Some days I just don’t get a chance to get anything typed up.

 ”It’s time I started using my head.”

Conclusion: Is that a promise? Please make it so!

Enough of my verbatim for the time being: It may interest you to know that the number of incoming spam comments has overtaken the number of incoming decent comments. (The spam went up BTW…OK, and the real comments have gone down a bit lately.) – So let’s put the spamming halfwits to shame and see if we can out-comment them.

Right then; that’s it for now: Enjoy the coming week. Blessed be.

Sharron. (admin)

(P.S. Certain domains will not be accepted for email/newsletters: The “sogetthis” domain and others associated with mailinator are examples. – Such domains are frequently utilised by spammers, hackers, and kooks, for dubious or malevolent purposes.)

(There is a person – And I do know who it is incidentally – who is signed up to this blog on the main list under the domain “sogetthis”. Will this person kindly please sign up again with a proper email address as your current registration will be removed in due course. Thank you.)

Read on; you’ll soon feel better

Today I was wondering what to write about. I have a folder full of text-files going right back to the year 2000, most of which are complete junk. I thought I’d have a look through it to see if I could gain any inspiration. I found several parts of a series of advisories I’d written in 2003 with regard to setting up an FTP and web server in IIS in Windows XP – but I decided that was a bit old-hat for this point in time.

One of the items I found was one that I posted on Twitter, and would, I feel, be a must-have for any male geek:

http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/product/Accessory/DriveBay/a2021/a2021.asp

(See website for image.)

An ashtray and cigarette-lighter fitted to a spare 5.25 drive-bay would be just the thing for the macho motor-enthusiast geeks.

Next we come to the one that I mentioned that I have designed into the novelty G1RL-P0W3R range from Kustom Komputa:

http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/ezbake.shtml

Personally I think this in-computer oven is a great little novelty: Cook while you compute.

For the third gadget – What can I say? Al Bundy eat your heart out. (Al Bundy never actually did use a computer in Married With Children as far as I recall, not even a 386.)

http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/pcmods/8095

Think Geek themselves describe this device as “High-tech Laziness at its Finest”.

Oh what a shame that our next device is out of stock or discontinued!

http://tekgems.com/Products/et-15783-cmo-yel-paradise-bay.htm

Damn! I think it’s quite a useful idea; providing you have enough drive-bays to sacrifice one for storage.

Now you might, like myself, have hundreds of old cassette tape cartridges with all your favourite 70s, 80s and early 90s music on them – But try buying anything to play them on and it’s virtually impossible to get a cassette-player these days. (I have an old Ferguson Cassiever analogue radio/cassette deck which I used to play the cassettes on and used it also to transfer the content to my computer: Unfortunately the cassette-deck gave up the ghost last year.)

Now, however, using our next gadget, playing and transferring cassettes is even easier:

http://www.firebox.com/product/1700/Plus-Deck-Cassette-Converter?src_t=sbk&src_id=cassette&currency_conversion=1

Just in case nothing out of those took your fancy there’s a whole lot more similar weird geeky gadgets for you to browse at http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/product/Accessory/DriveBay/drvbay_index.asp

-And no, I gain nothing, whether or not you buy any of these products.

Enjoy.

 I’m going to use this opportunity to republish the original article that was originally published last month, whilst at the same time introducing another, at least equally valuable computer troubleshooting resource; that being http://kadaitcha.cx

The Author

This resource is created by  Australian Rick Mathers aka Kadaitcha Man; emphatic tech guru and Usenet kook who doesn’t endure fools lightly in any way whatsoever. Renowned for at times having a verbiage in common with a backyard dunny when dealing with idiots, and known throughout the Usenet community for his extreme technical prowess and contemptuous distaste for what he describes as “fuckwittery”; the K-Man has survived “death” twice through a clever piece of trolling, and has played a part in dispelling the useless or incorrect advice so plentifully available on Usenet. He was renowned for creating the infamous “Peanut Gallery”, into which he would “cast” those advisors on Usenet who were guilty of extreme technical ineptitude and dispensing incompetent advice. He’s an extremely male type of man, and this may appear in some ways evident from his site: Nevertheless it doesn’t detract in any way from the useful content therein.

The Site

Kadaitcha.cx is a well-designed website with good graphics and a thoughtful layout. Its greatest achievement is in indexing most of  the Microsoft.com website into easy-to-find links indexed into well-designed individual help sections complete with additional technically-informative commentary. The site is aimed primarily at XP users, but also has some sections and commentaries designed for those using or thinking of moving to Vista.

Overall…

Overall the site is a gem of competency and accuracy in a cyber-world of dodgy and unhelpful, even at times counterproductive “advice”. I myself have used this resource on numerous occasions and would recommend http://kadaitcha.cx to my readers.

I’ve read a very interesting article on “Ask Leo” recently that I thought was extremely perceptive and in pretty much every way spot on – So much did it strike a chord with me, in fact, that I’ve decided to feature a link to the article on this site. The introductory words below are Leo Notenbloom’s (Microsoft MVP and ex-employee.) words quoted from the first paragraph of the article.

If you like what you see on Leo’s site then I would suggest that you subscribe to his newsletter, which raises some useful points of interest, tips, and help articles. I personally get nothing from your subscription or lack of it: I don’t know Leo personally, don’t have a contract to advertise his site, and am simply another subscriber. The motivation for advertising his site here is for information purposes alone, in the hope that it might assist readers in their computing experience:

The Plight of the Average User

“Over the course of the last four years of doing Ask Leo! I’ve also learned a lot about computer and technology myself. The old adage about learning something by teaching it is very, very true.”

“But I’ve also learned a thing or two about you, the people trying to use computers, too.”

And these are things I wish a lot more people would realize and understand. People from the executives at my former employer, to some of the people that comment on my answers.

“The “average computer user” is not who you think.”

Continue reading: “The Plight of the Average User”

Addendum

“Isn’t that cheating;” You ask.”republishing an existing article alongside a new article?”

Well it is true that it does add to the page’s content somewhat using previously published information; but I felt it would be an enhancement to bring together these two useful resource commentaries so that Windows users are able to benefit from links to both in one place. Convenience and interoperability being buzzwords in cyberspace lately it does little if any harm to reduce the number of clicks a user must make to find the information that they need. Bearing this in mind the resultant compilation and semi-repost is surely nothing less than beneficial.

With that in mind I’ll go on to advertise, although completely off-topic for this posting, that I now am subscribed to identi.ca and FriendFeed in addition to Twitter; Username = kkomp: Your following would be greatly appreciated, and I will return the favour and follow you too, therefore we all benefit.

ALSO:-

PC Mech Live streaming on kkomp : You can watch, listen, and learn, by viewing the streaming video feed, or if you want to go interactive and sign up/sign in just click the link at the top of the page. (Most of the content is pre-recorded.) PC Mech Live

If you want to go straight to PC Mech.com then just click here.