What is Wake-on-LAN?

The MagicPacket: How WoL Works

Enabling WoL on Your System

sudo apt-get install ethtool

sudo ethtool eth0

sudo ethtool -s eth0 wol g

Sending WoL Magic Packets

I came across this list and thought I’d share it with my readers. Its a really useful list of RUN COMMANDS

• Compact and easy to use
• Windows automation software
• Record all mouse and keyboard events
• Convenient settings interface
• Using recorded files anytime, anywhere

Would you like more features and flash in Windows on your netbook?  Here’s how you can easily upgrade your netbook to Windows 7 Home Premium the easy way.

Most new netbooks today ship with Windows 7 Starter, which is the cheapest edition of Windows 7.  It is fine for many computing tasks, and will run all your favorite programs great, but it lacks many customization, multimedia, and business features found in higher editions.  Here we’ll show you how you can quickly upgrade your netbook to more full-featured edition of Windows 7 using Windows Anytime Upgrade.  Also, if you want to upgrade your laptop or desktop to another edition of Windows 7, say Professional, you can follow these same steps to upgrade it, too.

Please note: This is only for computers already running Windows 7.  If your netbook is running XP or Vista, you will have to run a traditional upgrade to install Windows 7.

Upgrade Advisor

First, let’s make sure your netbook can support the extra features, such as Aero Glass, in Windows 7 Home Premium.  Most modern netbooks that ship with Windows 7 Starter can run the advanced features in Windows 7 Home Premium, but let’s check just in case.  Download the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor (link below), and install as normal.

Once it’s installed, run it and click Start Check.

Make sure you’re connected to the internet before you run the check, or otherwise you may see this error message.  If you see it, click Ok and then connect to the internet and start the check again.

It will now scan all of your programs and hardware to make sure they’re compatible with Windows 7.  Since you’re already running Windows 7 Starter, it will also tell you if your computer will support the features in other editions of Windows 7.

After a few moments, the Upgrade Advisor will show you want it found.  Here we see that our netbook, a Samsung N150, can be upgraded to Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, or Ultimate. We also see that we had one issue, but this was because a driver we had installed was not recognized.  Click “See all system requirements” to see what your netbook can do with the new edition.

This shows you which of the requirements, including support for Windows Aero, your netbook meets.  Here our netbook supports Aero, so we’re ready to go upgrade.

For more, check out our article on how to make sure your computer can run Windows 7 with Upgrade Advisor.

Upgrade with Anytime Upgrade

Now, we’re ready to upgrade our netbook to Windows 7 Home Premium.  Enter “Anytime Upgrade” in the Start menu search,and select Windows Anytime Upgrade.

Windows Anytime Upgrade lets you upgrade using product key you already have or one you purchase during the upgrade process.  And, it installs without any downloads or Windows disks, so it works great even for netbooks without DVD drives.

Anytime Upgrades are cheaper than a standard upgrade, and for a limited time, select retailers in the US are offering Anytime Upgrades to Windows 7 Home Premium for only $49.99 if purchased with a new netbook.  If you already have a netbook running Windows 7 Starter, you can either purchase an Anytime Upgrade package at a retail store or purchase a key online during the upgrade process for $79.95.  Or, if you have a standard Windows 7 product key (full or upgrade), you can use it in Anytime upgrade.  This is especially nice if you can purchase Windows 7 cheaper through your school, university, or office.

Purchase an upgrade online

To purchase an upgrade online, click “Go online to choose the edition of Windows 7 that’s best for you”.

Here you can see a comparison of the features of each edition of Windows 7.  Note that you can upgrade to either Home Premium, Professional, or Ultimate.  We chose home Premium because it has most of the features that home users want, including Media Center and Aero Glass effects.  Also note that the price of each upgrade is cheaper than the respective upgrade from Windows XP or Vista.  Click buy under the edition you want.

Enter your billing information, then your payment information.  Once you confirm your purchase, you will directly be taken to the Upgrade screen.  Make sure to save your receipt, as you will need the product key if you ever need to reinstall Windows on your computer.

Upgrade with an existing product key

If you purchased an Anytime Upgrade kit from a retailer, or already have a Full or Upgrade key for another edition of Windows 7, choose “Enter an upgrade key”.

Enter your product key, and click Next.  If you purchased an Anytime Upgrade kit, the product key will be located on the inside of the case on a yellow sticker.

The key will be verified as a valid key, and Anytime Upgrade will automatically choose the correct edition of Windows 7 based on your product key.  Click Next when this is finished.

Continuing the Upgrade process

Whether you entered a key or purchased a key online, the process is the same from here on.  Click “I accept” to accept the license agreement.

Now, you’re ready to install your upgrade.  Make sure to save all open files and close any programs, and then click Upgrade.

The upgrade only takes about 10 minutes in our experience but your mileage may vary.  Any available Microsoft updates, including ones for Office, Security Essentials, and other products, will be installed before the upgrade takes place.

After a couple minutes, your computer will automatically reboot and finish the installation.  It will then reboot once more, and your computer will be ready to use!  Welcome to your new edition of Windows 7!

Here’s a before and after shot of our desktop.  When you do an Anytime Upgrade, all of your programs, files, and settings will be just as they were before you upgraded.  The only change we noticed was that our pinned taskbar icons were slightly rearranged to the default order of Internet Explorer, Explorer, and Media Player.  Here’s a shot of our desktop before the upgrade.  Notice that all of our pinned programs and desktop icons are still there, as well as our taskbar customization (we are using small icons on the taskbar instead of the default large icons).

Before, with the Windows 7 Starter background and the Aero Basic theme:

And after, with Aero Glass and the more colorful default Windows 7 background.

All of the features of Windows 7 Home Premium are now ready to use.  The Aero theme was activate by default, but you can now customize your netbook theme, background, and more with the Personalization pane.  To open it, right-click on your desktop and select Personalize.

You can also now use Windows Media Center, and can play-back DVD movies using an external drive.

One of our favorite tools, the Snipping Tool, is also now available for easy screenshots and clips.

Activating you new edition of Windows 7

You will still need to activate your new edition of Windows 7.  To do this right away, open the start menu, right-click on Computer, and select Properties.

Scroll to the bottom, and click “Activate Windows Now”.

Make sure you’re connected to the internet, and then select “Activate Windows online now”.

Activation may take a few minutes, depending on your internet connection speed.

When it is done, the Activation wizard will let you know that Windows is activated and genuine.  Your upgrade is all finished!

Conclusion

Windows Anytime Upgrade makes it easy, and somewhat cheaper, to upgrade to another edition of Windows 7.  It’s useful for desktop and laptop owners who want to upgrade to Professional or Ultimate, but many more netbook owners will want to upgrade from Starter to Home Premium or another edition.

Links

Download the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor

Windows Team Blog:

Anytime Upgrade Special with new PC purchase

Positioned as companions to either desktop or laptop computers, netbooks are small, light, convenient devices that allow for most of the basic computing functions found in larger systems. One of the most important decisions you will have to make when buying a netbook is whether to buy Windows XP or Windows 7 Starter for your operating system.

Windows XP had a long and fruitful life as the operating system of choice for almost a decade. Although it would seem that with the release of Windows Vista and 7, XP would fade from memory, it remains an excellent choice for netbooks and other applications where a fast, small-footprint O/S is needed.

Alternatively, you could opt for Microsoft’s Windows 7 Starter, essentially a stripped down version of Windows 7 Home Premium specially designed for netbooks and mini laptops. If you are confused about which operating system to choose, read on to learn the pros and cons of using Windows XP or Windows 7 Starter as your netbook’s O/S.

Windows XP Pros

Full Operating System – If you want a full O/S that doesn’t seem to be a watered down solution, XP is the better choice. Without any programs running, XP takes up only about 250MB of RAM vs about 1200MB with Windows 7 Home Premium. If hardware is a concern, XP just may make netbooks a possibility,

Stability – There’s no denying that Windows XP is a stable computing platform. Well, it should be after a decade of service packs, patches, and upgrades. If you are comfortable with XP as a desktop or laptop O/S, it will likely serve you well on a netbook.

Support – Going back to the 10 years of XP thing, no other operating has more support available on the web. If you have a problem, a quick Google search returns thousands of pages ready to help you with free tech support. No such luck for Windows 7 Starter given that it is new and not many people run it as an O/S.

Windows XP Cons

Old – As stated above, Windows XP is about 10 years old even though it enjoyed a long life. Still, if you use your netbook for 3 years, your O/S of choice will be 13 years old when you finally junk it. That fact doesn’t sit well with some netbook buyers.

Limited Future Support – No matter how long its life, even XP’s support will be limited in the future. Although you are covered for old issues, good luck finding support for new ones, especially those that include new hardware.

No 64-bit Option – Although there was a 64-bit edition of Windows XP (x64 edition), no current manufacturer offers it as an O/S for netbooks. Although Windows 7 Starter is also only available as a 32-bit O/S, at least with XP there was a possibility. As the software industry moves on to produce 64-bit versions of its software, you may be left behind no matter which of the two operating systems you choose.

Windows 7 Starter Pros

Latest Operating System – Although a stripped down version, at least Windows 7 Starter is based on the most current O/S from Microsoft. At the very least, you can expect the same kind of support you would expect from a current desktop or laptop O/S.

Streamlined – Although technically stripped down, some people prefer to consider Windows 7 Starter as streamlined for netbooks. Rather than install Home Premium and cut out everything unnecessary in order to deliver a pleasant computing experience, Microsoft has already done the work for you – it’s called Windows 7 Starter.

Anytime Upgrade Available – If you do decide to take the plunge and run Windows 7 Home Premium on your netbook, you can use Windows Anytime Upgrade to make the switch for about $80. At least this way you have the option if you think the investment is worth it.

Windows 7 Starter Cons

Limited Functionality – Let’s be honest, Windows 7 Starter really is a stripped down version of its bigger brothers Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate Edition. Although one thing the software giant got right was to allow you to run as many programs at one time as you want (well, at least as many as your RAM and processor can handle). Previous versions of Starter allowed a maximum of three programs to run simultaneously.

No Aero – If you got used to the Aero Desktop in Vista and 7, you may be in for a shock when you realize that the pretty desktop you have in those operating systems isn’t available in Windows 7 Starter. Don’t look for Aero Glass or Peek in this stripped down O/S because you won’t find them.

Preinstalled Only – Windows 7 Starter is only available preinstalled on a netbook or similar device. If you choose Windows XP, you may not be able to switch to Windows 7 Starter even if you are willing to pay for it. Make your decisions now because you may not be able to change it later.

Conclusion

Although a stripped down version of the other editions of Microsoft’s latest operating system, Windows 7 Starter is a competent alternative when choosing an O/S for a netbook. Still, Windows XP just may have some more life left in her if you want a full-fledged operating system and want to enjoy the free support available on the web.

If you generally like the features of Windows 7 and don’t mind that it doesn’t quite look or feel like its big brothers, Windows 7 Starter may be a good choice for you. If you want the tried and true stability and usability of an O/S with a long, successful history, Windows XP may be the better choice.

Whatever you choose, think of how you intend to use your netbook and make the decision from that information rather than the list of features each choice offers.

When Windows goes wrong, it can go really wrong. Worse: Often it’s extremely difficult to save your system from Windows itself. Here’s how to use a simple USB drive to free space, remove viruses, rescue passwords, and more from crunked Windows setups.

What You Can Fix with this Method

If you or your in-need friends or relatives can’t boot into your Windows desktop, or you can’t actually do anything once you’re into it, booting up a live Ubuntu system from a USB thumb drive, or off a burned CD, can save your system, recover files, and pull off other miracles. Here’s the short list of things we’ll cover here:

• Clean a virus with a Linux-based anti-virus app.
• Recover files and save them onto that same thumb drive, to a web storage spot like Dropbox, or to another USB drive.
• Change your login password if you’ve forgotten it, or someone’s changed it on you.
• Analyze your hard drive to figure out what’s filled it, and resize partitions if you’re dual booting and need to free up more space.

What you’ll need

• Empty USB drive: Sometimes called a “thumb” drive, a “flash” drive, or a USB “stick.” It’s a tiny little piece of plastic that usually holds at least 1 GB, and that’s the minimum size you’ll need. If you’re looking to recover files, you’ll need to use a separate USB drive, blank CDs or DVDs, or an online backup service. The drive you intend to install Ubuntu on should be empty, because it will get cleared out when we make it boot-able.

  Alternate: CD-R Using a USB drive gives you faster performance when booting a system like Ubuntu without installing it. If you don’t have a large enough drive to spare, or you’d like to save your USB drive space for backing up your much-needed files, you can still grab a recordable CD and create a “Live CD” to boot from. If that’s the case, skip the section about making a USB stick and head right to the “Boot Up and Get Started” section.

• A working Windows computer with a decent net connection Because you’ll need to download a 700 MB file to install onto your USB stick, and a 4.3 MB application to make it work. That application, though, doesn’t have to be installed, so you can easily clean up after yourself if you’re using a friend’s computer.

  Alternate: Mac options: You can create an Ubuntu USB stick from a Mac, but it requires both tricky, theoretically harmful Terminal commands and administrator access. If that’s not your thing, you can simply burn a live CD from a Mac.

Make Your Live CD or USB Stick

Turn on your working Windows computer, make sure it’s connected to the internet, and open up a browser. Head to UNetbootin’s home page. Click on the Windows icon at the top to download the latest version of UNetbootin—here’s a direct link for those following this guide on their monitor.

Once you’ve downloaded the file (unetbootin-windows-latest.exe), find it and double-click it. Windows will likely confirm that you want to do that, and you should say it’s “OK.” You’ll see this when UNetbootin opens:

What UNetbootin was made to do was automate the process of downloading an Ubuntu CD image, convert it for your USB thumb drive, find that drive, and install that image on there, without you having to do much of anything. It does this job well, and doesn’t make you worry about accidentally wiping out some other drive. Still, when you’re about to run UNetbootin, you should make sure no other USB drives are plugged in, except the one you want to turn into a system rescue stick. That said, make sure your USB stick is plugged in, and soldier on.

Click on the drop-down menu in the “Distribution” category at the top, which should also have a filled-in point to the left to indicate it’s selected. Scroll down in that menu and click on “Ubuntu.” To the right of that menu, there’s another where you can choose the version of Ubuntu you want to download. At the time of this post, 9.10 Desktop is the latest stable version of Ubuntu that’s released, just above “Daily Build” options for 10.04. In any case, you should select the “Desktop” version that’s highest in number, without choosing a “Daily Build” that will likely have missing features or unfamiliar aspects. With that distribution and version selected, UNetbootin will get to work downloading, right after we’ve confirmed the USB drive and hit OK.

Alternate option: BitTorrent: If you’re savvy in the ways of torrent downloading, you can likely get a faster download, and relieve Ubuntu’s servers, by grabbing a desktop ISO file over an official torrent, then setting UNetbootin to use that ISO file by selecting the radio button next to “Disk Image,” hitting the “…”/browse button to the right of that option, and pointing at the ISO file when it’s finished downloading.

Before you click OK and let UNetbootin set up your USB drive, triple-check that it knows which drive to transform. You’ll see which drive it wants to format to the right of “Drive:” at the bottom of UNetbootin’s window. Hit your Start menu, click Computer in the right-hand menu, and ensure that the letter your computer has given your temporary USB drive is the same letter that UNetbootin wants to use. If the two are matched up, you can head back to UNetbootin and click OK.

Alternate: Usbuntu Live Creator: Usbuntu is a similarly easy to grasp USB creator, made particularly for Ubuntu USB creation, and lets you create USB disks with persistent storage—meaning you can keep files on your system that stick around the next time you boot up, so you can use a very large USB drive as an actual backup location.

Nine times out of 10, UNetbootin won’t need any help or spit any errors. If it does, it’s likely because a download connection isn’t available, the file that did download became corrupted, or your USB drive has a quirky boot/format problem. I’ve covered at least one common fix for USB stick booting issues under the “Fix booting problems” header in a previous Linux-on-USB feature. If your error falls outside of that, try searching out the specific text in the error message on Google.

Once it’s done, UNetbootin will ask you to restart your system. You don’t really need to do that—you want to save your non-booting or crippled computer, not this one.

Boot Up and Set Up Ubuntu

Assuming all went well with UNetbootin’s USB formatting, you can pull out the USB stick (or CD-R) from the working computer, load it into the busted computer, and fire it up. If you’re lucky, the system was set up to automatically look for bootable USB devices and load them up, and you’ll see a screen that asks you, in old-school, lo-res computer graphics, if you want to boot “Default” or otherwise. Go ahead and hit Enter, and you’ll start booting into the Ubuntu desktop.

Nothing happening? Does your system just roll right into its busted Windows desktop? You’ll likely need to head into your BIOS settings and ensure that USB booting is enabled, and/or “ranked” above the hard drive as a boot option. When your computer boots up, there will likely be text on the screen stating that hitting F2, the Delete key, or another button will let you enter “system setup,” BIOS, or something similar. Hit that key when you first boot up, dig around in the menus, and change your setup so that your computer searches out USB drives before heading to the hard drive.

Your system should boot into an Ubuntu desktop, where you’ll see one or two icons, two toolbars, and not much else. The first thing you want to do is give Ubuntu an internet connection, so we can grab programs and files we need for our fixes. If you’re using a physical ethernet cable, or even most cellular 3G modems, ensure they are plugged into your laptop or desktop, and you should be good to go. If you’re using a wireless network, click on the tower/broadcast-looking icon in the upper-right corner.

Choose your Wi-Fi network, enter your password, if there is one, and you should see your system connect. If you’ve got a hidden network that doesn’t broadcast its name, there’s an option for accessing that, too, below your neighbor’s Wi-Fi names.

One last thing you must do before venturing forth is tell Ubuntu that it’s okay to download applications that aren’t entirely “free” in the software/copyright sense. Annoying, yes, but that’s how a free-as-in-speech desktop works. Click on the System menu in the upper-left corner, mouse down to the Administration section, and then mouse over and down to the “Software Sources” option.

When it opens up, you’ll see that all the options in the first tab, Software Sources, aren’t checked. Go ahead and check them, then hit the Close button. You’ll be prompted to Reload your sources, so go ahead and hit the button to do so. Ubuntu now has access to a lot more software, including some applications we’ll want access to.

Now you’re ready to get started backing up, scanning, freeing up space, and resizing your Windows installation.

Make Your Fixes

Retrieve and back up files: We’ve hit on the idea of Ubuntu as a Windows file saver before, in a guide to fixing your relatives’ terrible computer, and the practice remains the same. With Ubuntu loaded as a “live” system, you should see your Windows partition listed under the “Places” menu—perhaps as “120 GB system,” but it’s still there. Click on it, and Ubuntu will load up access to that drive, and you should see a window with the usual Windows files—Program Files, Windows, Users, etc. Plug in a USB drive, or load in a blank CD or DVD, and it’s a simple drag-and-drop matter to get your files onto those backup mediums. Be sure to hit the “Burn to Disc” button when you’re done backing up to physical discs.

Want to use an online service like Dropbox? You can do that, but make sure you’ve got a broadband connection—uploading on most residential accounts can be a long wait, especially with big batches of files. You can upload files to Dropbox’s web interface using the Firefox browser built into Ubuntu, but without Flash installed, you can only do one file at a time. To get around that, you can click-and-hold to select multiple files on your Windows system with the mouse, or hold the Control key to click and select folders and files. When you’ve got them all picked out, right-click on any one of the selected files and select “Compress.” Click the file type selector to the right in the dialog box that pops up, and change the compression from a .tar.gz file to .zip, and save it to the Desktop. Now you can select the “Basic Uploader” in Dropbox, or most other online sites, and upload those files as one big, slightly smaller package, to be unpacked back into Windows later.

Scan and fix viruses: Ubuntu doesn’t have a built-in tool for scanning Windows drives for viruses—and why would it, really?—but they are available for installing. Since we’re running a live session of Ubuntu, “installing” just means downloading and saving to temporary space on our USB drive, leaving your Windows drive untouched, and preventing viruses from interfering with the scan-and-fix process.

Head to your System menu, mouse down to Administration, and select the Synaptic Package Manager. Hit the Search button on the far right, type in clamtk, and then check the box to the left of the result that comes up. This is the Linux version of Clam AntiVirus, or ClamAV, that’s a popular, free virus scanner, and clamtk puts a graphical face on ClamAV, rather than making you learn how to use it from the command line. Even if Clam can’t fix your particular Windows virus from Ubuntu, it will at least identify it, and give you the means to Google that specific bug and see if there’s a fix.

Hit the Apply button after confirming that you want to install clamtk and all its “dependencies.” Close down Synaptic when it’s done installing, then head to your Applications menu in the upper-right corner of your Ubuntu desktop. Mouse down to the System Tools menu, where Clam should appear as an option. When it first starts, it will ask you how you want to apply signature updates—ignore the complexity of all that text, hit “Single User,” then hit Quit to move on.

When Clam loads, you’ll see options for scanning a File or Directory. Check the box to the left of the “Recursive” option, so that Clam will dig into all the sub-folders of your Windows drive. Now hit the Directory button. In the file chooser that pops up, look for your Windows system in the left-hand sidebar and click it. If you see your familiar Windows folders in the right-hand pane, you’ve got the right one. Hit “Open,” and, honestly, expect your system to hang for a bit.

Your system will hang because, basically, an operating system running off a thumb drive is using all its might to scan your entire Windows hard drive space and figure out what needs to be scanned. The freeze-out and lag should only last a few minutes on a modern system—if you see error messages, or nothing’s happened for 20 minutes, you might have to give it another go, or try a different anti-virus app—the gHacks blog has a few recommendations, including Avira. Otherwise, you can make yourself a sandwich, and probably crack a beer/soda, as Clam runs through your Windows files and checks for viruses. As mentioned above, it might not always be able to fix or properly quarantine your files, but you’ll at least know exactly which virus you’re dealing with, and can Google steps on fixing it manually—right from Ubuntu, actually.

Change or wipe a Windows password: Just like you installed Clam to scan for viruses, you can install a little open-source utility, chntpw (as in Change NT Password) to clear out a Windows password you can’t remember, or change a password you feel is insecure. After searching and installing chntpw from Synaptic, open up the Places menu from your left-hand menus. Head into Windows, and navigate to Windows\System32\config—where the SAM file is kept. Hold down your Shift key and right-click somewhere inside that config folder, then select “Open Terminal Here.” From that terminal, you can type in this command to change the main administrator’s password:

sudo chntpw SAM

If you’re looking to change Samantha’s password instead, type something like:

sudo chntpw -u Samantha SAM

You’ll see some options you can type in, from 1-4, but you’ll generally want to stick with “clearing” the password, then changing it when you head back into Windows. It’s been reported to work with XP and Vista, and I tested it out on Windows 7 and had success clearing a standard user’s password.

Shrink or create new partitions: Gina’s already covered the ins and outs of GParted, which you can get to in your live Ubuntu system by hitting up the System menu, the Administration option, and then clicking “Partition Editor.” Adam’s also shown his GParted skills, using a similar live CD, in his guide to dual-booting Windows 7 with XP or Vista. Don’t commit anything you’re not sure of, but know that you can pull off most anything you need from GParted.

Visualize your hard drive and clean it out: Under the Accessories menu, beneath Applications, you’ll find Disk Usage Analyzer, an awesome program that you can use to see where all the space on your Windows drive is being taken up. I needed this tool recently when Windows 7 had become so stuffed (with a failed DVD rip) that it was almost inoperable. To use it on a Windows installation, click the “directory” button in the middle row, and in the file browser that pops up, click on your Windows drive/partition in the left-hand column and hit “Open.” Give it a few minutes, and you’ll get both a spiral chart and nested lists of what’s taking up space. Right-clicking any folder or files gives you the opportunity to open them up in a file browser, or delete them directly. As you might guess, you should be careful with Windows and Program Files stuff, but the rest is up to you.

All done? Simply shut down your system from the “ubuntu” user menu in the upper-right corner. Nothing was actually touched on your system, unless you specifically deleted or changed files, and when you reboot, you’ll have a chance to get reacquainted with your hopefully fixed system. Remember to remove your USB drive from its port before rebooting.

Check out this video… How cool is that? The screen separates and it even has a projector built in. Although.. the camping trip movie looks a bit unlikely

Phones are going to become so cool…. eventually…

Here is a video of the new Photoshop CS5. Its something I look forward to because I really get lost too easily in Photoshop. Some of the features mentioned are really dumbing things down for the everyday users.

If you are low on time, skip to about 2.50 in the video.

The whole idea behind CS5 is content aware editing… check it!!!

and another:

Another video for you from the Tinkernut site. If you ever wanted to make your email server and host it yourself at home, now is the time to grab a can of beer and sit back.

Tinkernut have done a video on Making Your Own Email Server. This can be a great feature to a geeky household. It will give you full control over all mail accounts and settings. You can learn a lot too on how email servers work.

Windows: We recently detailed two ways of getting Mac-like multi-finger scrolling on a Windows laptop, involving little open-source apps and hacked drivers. Touchpad giant Synaptics actually offers its own app, Scrybe, that provides multi-finger scrolling, along with gesture-style application launching.

The big catch to Synaptics’ own Scrybe app is that it’s fickle. You need to have a Synaptics touchpad on your laptop, you need Synaptics-approved drivers installed, and, depending on your hardware/software setup, Scrybe may or not play nice. On my ThinkPad T61p, I installed Scrybe after removing my hacked drivers and TwoFingerScroll app, and I did get two-finger scrolling and three-finger motions working. The settings interface, though, had graphical and display problems, so I couldn’t quite guess at what gesture I was setting my different applications to launch with.

Click the images below for a larger view.

Update: Turns out the actual application launching and gesture settings are contained in a little system tray panel app, which you can right-click to set up. This didn’t appear for me until my second system restart:

Many of our commenters, however, have had better luck with Scrybe, getting the kind of “write an ‘a’ with your finger to launch Amazon.com” experience detailed at Scrybe’s web page. There will likely be a follow-up post here about Scrybe’s offerings, but in the meantime, you can check it out yourself, if you’d like scrolling and gesture powers without having to make slightly gray-area moves. It’s a free download for Windows systems with Synaptics touchpads.

Tinkernut is a great site for how to videos on everything in PC land. They make quality videos with simple language. Anyway, they recently got hacked and decided to share how to make things secure so it doesn’t happen again.

You need to spend time protecting you PC from hackers and other nasties. Believe me, its time well spent. It is always a matter of when, not if you get hacked.

Have a look at this video for some straight forward tips on defending your geek life.

Accidentally deleting a file is a terrible feeling. Not being able to boot into Windows and undelete that file makes that even worse. Fortunately, you can recover deleted files on NTFS hard drives from an Ubuntu Live CD.

To show this process, we created four files on the desktop of a Windows XP machine, and then deleted them. We then booted up the same machine with the bootable Ubuntu 9.10 USB Flash Drive that we created last week.

Once Ubuntu 9.10 boots up, open a terminal by clicking Applications in the top left of the screen, and then selecting Accessories > Terminal.

To undelete our files, we first need to identify the hard drive that we want to undelete from. In the terminal window, type in:

sudo fdisk –l

and press enter.

What you’re looking for is a line that ends with HPSF/NTFS (under the heading System). In our case, the device is “/dev/sda1”. This may be slightly different for you, but it will still begin with /dev/. Note this device name.

If you have more than one hard drive partition formatted as NTFS, then you may be able to identify the correct partition by the size. If you look at the second line of text in the screenshot above, it reads “Disk /dev/sda: 136.4 GB, …” This means that the hard drive that Ubuntu has named /dev/sda is 136.4 GB large. If your hard drives are of different size, then this information can help you track down the right device name to use. Alternatively, you can just try them all, though this can be time consuming for large hard drives.

Now that you know the name Ubuntu has assigned to your hard drive, we’ll scan it to see what files we can uncover.

In the terminal window, type:

sudo ntfsundelete <HD name>

and hit enter. In our case, the command is:

sudo ntfsundelete /dev/sda1

The names of files that can recovered show up in the far right column. The percentage in the third column tells us how much of that file can be recovered. Three of the four files that we originally deleted are showing up in this list, even though we shut down the computer right after deleting the four files – so even in ideal cases, your files may not be recoverable.

Nevertheless, we have three files that we can recover – two JPGs and an MPG.

Note: ntfsundelete is immediately available in the Ubuntu 9.10 Live CD. If you are in a different version of Ubuntu, or for some other reason get an error when trying to use ntfsundelete, you can install it by entering “sudo apt-get install ntfsprogs” in a terminal window.

To quickly recover the two JPGs, we will use the * wildcard to recover all of the files that end with .jpg.

In the terminal window, enter

sudo ntfsundelete <HD name> –u –m *.jpg

which is, in our case,

sudo ntfsundelete /dev/sda1 –u –m *.jpg

The two files are recovered from the NTFS hard drive and saved in the current working directory of the terminal. By default, this is the home directory of the current user, though we are working in the Desktop folder.

Note that the ntfsundelete program does not make any changes to the original NTFS hard drive. If you want to take those files and put them back in the NTFS hard drive, you will have to move them there after they are undeleted with ntfsundelete. Of course, you can also put them on your flash drive or open Firefox and email them to yourself – the sky’s the limit!

We have one more file to undelete – our MPG.

Note the first column on the far left. It contains a number, its Inode. Think of this as the file’s unique identifier. Note this number.

To undelete a file by its Inode, enter the following in the terminal:

sudo ntfsundelete <HD name> –u –i <Inode>

In our case, this is:

sudo ntfsundelete /dev/sda1 –u –i 14159

This recovers the file, along with an identifier that we don’t really care about. All three of our recoverable files are now recovered.

However, Ubuntu lets us know visually that we can’t use these files yet. That’s because the ntfsundelete program saves the files as the “root” user, not the “ubuntu” user.

We can verify this by typing the following in our terminal window:

ls –l

We want these three files to be owned by ubuntu, not root. To do this, enter the following in the terminal window:

sudo chown ubuntu <Files>

If the current folder has other files in it, you may not want to change their owner to ubuntu. However, in our case, we only have these three files in this folder, so we will use the * wildcard to change the owner of all three files.

sudo chown ubuntu *

The files now look normal, and we can do whatever we want with them.

Hopefully you won’t need to use this tip, but if you do, ntfsundelete is a nice command-line utility. It doesn’t have a fancy GUI like many of the similar Windows programs, but it is a powerful tool that can recover your files quickly.

A proxy is essentially a web page that gives internet surfers the ability to browse websites that have been blocked or not allowed to view. By using a proxy to get around the block, surfers can now view the content as much as they want. By using a proxy, it makes the user invisible to detection therefore erasing evidence that the user has visited any site.

How does the proxy really work?

Basically the proxy provides users the same way to browse the internet like any other web browser. A proxy site allows users to enter a specific web address and access it in the browsers window. By using a proxy the window is then coded as part of the proxy site address and not the real website the surfer is visiting. Any information cached in the temporary folder is that of the proxy, not the users. This means the user is not traced at all and the information is kept hidden.

Why Use A Proxy?

People use a proxy for a few reasons. The first is to get around blocked sites to access the information within. Sometimes the content may not be safe for work or for young people that’s why a website is usually blocked. Many employers use this as means to prevent their employees from slacking off and let them concentrate more on their jobs instead. Employers enforce this by keying in specific words that may allow the user to access or be blocked off at work. For example, employers can disable social websites or dating websites from being seen by entering words related to them. Any user that accesses these words or sites with these words are prevented from viewing them. The more key words there are, the more the user has limited or no access whatsoever. The blocked websites can be anything the employer deems inappropriate at work.

Some users have found out that by using a proxy website they can access these banned sites easily. Using a web based proxy is like opening another page in the web browser. By using web based proxy, users don’t need any technical knowledge. All they have to do is go to the proper URL. Web based proxy does not need to be installed and this saves users from actually tweaking the PC they are using. In short, less hassle, less problems.

In the end, users have the final say on how they would use this ability to surf unseen. Sometimes you have to practice restraint when the temptation to free surf becomes too strong to resist.

I found a great how to article over on gHacks.net. Its a problem we all run into. You install so many apps on your c: drive that you eventually run dry of space. When that happens… everything sloooowwwwss down and becomes painful. Here’s a guide to get you out of that situation.

The move process itself is easy enough. Just move the files in Windows Explorer, or any other file manager that you may be using, to another hard drive. You can move the folder by pressing shift during the drag and drop operation (if you do not press shift you copy the files).

Most games and applications will not start anymore after they have been moved around. The solution to this is to create symbolic hard links and Windows comes with the tool to do just that. Open a command prompt as an administrator. You find the Command Prompt under Accessories in the Windows Start Menu. Right-click the command prompt and select run as administrator.

The command that we are using to create a so called directory junction is mklink. A directory junction basically tells the operating system to create a mirror in another directory that provides access to all files of the selected directory in the mirror directory again. The files and folders of the mirror directory are however actually only redirected to the destination where they are actually hosted. This essentially means that you can make the game, application or Windows believe that the files and folders are still in their right place even if they are not.

mklink /J "new folder" "folder with the files"

That’s the basic command that we will be using. The /J parameter defines the type of symbolic link that we are creating, in this case a directory junction. The new folder is the mirror folder and the folder with files the folder containing the real files.

mklink /J "C:\program files (x86)\Dragon Age\" "e:\games\Dragon Age"

This creates a directory junction so that the files and folders of e:\games\Dragon Age are accessible by the program and Windows under C:\program files (x86)\Dragon Age\ as well (where they have been initially installed to).

C:\Windows\system32>mklink /J “c:\Program Files (x86)\Dragon Age\” “c:\games\Dragon Age\”
Junction created for c:\Program Files (x86)\Dragon Age\ <<===>> c:\games\DragonAge\

The same principle can be applied to other applications or games. It is for instance possible to move some Steam games or files to another hard drive to free up space on the one Steam is installed. Mklink is available in Windows Vista and Windows 7. I’m not sure about Windows XP right now, would be nice if anyone with XP could let me know in the comments. There are programs like Junction from Sysinternals that can create junctions as well in case that is needed.

Corruption of Windows operating system is a very common issue, which often puts you in the desert of empty disk that is data loss. One of the main reasons for the corruption of Windows operating system is the damage of file system. Once the file system is damaged, Windows cannot boot and you need to repair the operating system. If you do not repair the operating system then you face data loss. Most of the guys do not repair the corrupt operating system rather bear data loss. Reason behind that is lack of the knowledge about the process of repairing the damaged operating system. Today, you acknowledge the process of repairing the corrupt operating system using Windows built in Recovery Console. However, for that you first need to install the Recovery console.

Install Recovery Console
Execute following steps to install Windows XP recovery console:

• Insert the CD of Windows XP in the CD-ROM of your computer.
• Click Start > Run.
• Type d:\i386\winnt32.exe/cmdcons. Here, d is the letter of the CD – ROM drive.
• Click the Yes button to start the installation process.
• Restart your computer.

When you restart your computer system, Microsoft Windows Recovery console appears on Windows start up.
Use Recovery Console
Follow the below mentioned steps for using Windows Recovery console:

1. Switch on your computer system.
2. Press the ‘R’ key when you see the “Welcome to Setup” screen. The Windows Recovery Console starts.
3. In case, you have multi-boot computer then select the operating system for which you want to use the Recovery console.
4. Type the administrator’s password. If no password was assigned to the admin account then simple press the ENTER key.
5. Use required commands for repairing Windows XP and getting lost data. If you do not know that which command should be executed then type help at the command prompt and you will see a list of the commands that can be used for recovering data.
6. After using the Recovery console, type exit on the command prompt to close the Recovery console and restart your computer system.

This way, you can repair the damaged operating system and recover the data stored on computer’s hard disk. However, using the Recovery Console require advance knowledge about its commands. If you do not have good knowledge about the Windows Recovery console then do not use it. Rather use Kernel for NTFS – Recover NTFS Data software, which is self-explaining and simple-to-use software designed for repairing the damaged Windows operating systems. The Recover NTFS Data software can be used to recover data lost from any of the Windows operating system, such as Windows 95, 98, 2000, 2003, XP, Vista, and Windows 7.

Well it didn’t take long for the Hero replacement to come. More interestingly, it didn’t take Meteor Ireland to get a hold of theirs weeks before most of the international mobile networks. Kudos to them and their magic working commercial director.

Since they launched the Hero, I have had one and loved the phone so much. Between apps and features, it keeps me “busy” all the time. But can it be better? Hmmm, well can it rain and snow in Ireland at the end of March…….?

So what can we expect?

The camera is the same 5.0 as the Hero. It maintains the same overall shape, which I love. Makes it easier to hold. But it has the new 2.1 Android OS whilst keeping the HTC Sense UI. This brings with it the new FriendStream widget which I love and is a big improvement on the separate Twitter/Facebook widgets.

The screen is AMOLED so it improves on an already sharp high quality screen. The memory department has seen some improvements also. The internal memory is dropped from 512 to 384. I dont understand this one however Apps2SD will sort this out. However, the memory card slot now supports up 32gb.

Here are some of the specs from Meteors site

A sculpted alloy body houses some advanced tools, including seamless integration between your online and offline contacts. It’s bursting with powerful features, and driven by useful functionality.

The good stuff

• High resolution touch screen
• Social networking integration
• 5.0 MP camera with video
• Expandable memory
• Quadband

Display

Memory

Battery

Music

Camera

Ringtones and Downloads

Messaging

Other features

I hope to secure a HTC Legend soon. When I do, I will do a full review and hands on for you. In the meantime, check out Meteors site for pricing details.

A new feature in Windows Media Player 12, which is included with Windows 7, is being able to stream media over the web to other Windows 7 computers.  Today we will take a look at how to set it up and what you need to begin.

Note: You will need to perform this process on each computer that you want to use.

What You’ll Need

• Two computers running Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, or Ultimate. The host, or home computer that you will be streaming the media from, cannot be on a public network or part of domain.
• Windows Live ID
• UPnP or Port Forwarding enabled on your home router
• Media files added to your Windows Media Player library

Windows Live ID

Sign up online for a Windows Live ID if you do not already have one. See the link below for a link to Windows Live.

Configuring the Windows 7 Computers

Open Windows Media Player and go to the library section. Click on Stream and then “Allow Internet access to home media.”

The Internet Home Media Access pop up window will prompt you to link your Windows Live ID to a user account. Click “Link an online ID.”

If you haven’t already installed the Windows Live ID Sign-In Assistant, you will be taken to Microsoft’s website and prompted to download it.

Once you have completed the Windows Live download assistant install, you will see Windows Live ID online provider appear in the “Link Online IDs” window. Click on “Link Online ID.”

Next, you’ll be prompted for a Windows Live ID and password. Enter your Windows Live ID and password and click “Sign In.”

A pop up window will notify you that you have successfully allowed Internet access to home media.

Now, you will have to repeat the exact same configuration on the 2nd Windows 7 computer. Once you have completed the same configuration on your 2nd computer, you might also need to configure your home router for port forwarding.

If your router supports UPnP, you may not need to manually forward any ports on your router. So, this would be a good time to test your connection. Go to a nearby hotspot, or perhaps a neighbor’s house, and test to see if you can stream your media. If not, you’ll need to manually forward the ports. You can always choose to forward the ports anyway, just in case.

Note: We tested on a Linksys WRT54GL router, which supports UPnP, and found we still needed to manually forward the ports.

Finding the ports to forward on the router

Open Windows Media Player and make sure you are in Library view. Click on “Stream” on the top menu, and select “Allow Internet access to home media.”

On the “Internet Home Media Access” window, click on “Diagnose connections.”

The “Internet Streaming Diagnostic Tool” will pop up. Click on “Port forwarding information” near the bottom.

On the “Port Forwarding Information” window you will find both the Internal and External Port numbers you will need to forward on your router. The Internal port number should always be 10245. The external number will be different depending on your computer. Microsoft also recommends forwarding port 443.

Configuring the Router

Next, you’ll need to configure Port Forwarding on your home router. We will show you the steps for a Linksys WRT54GL router, however, the steps for port forwarding will vary from router to router.

On the Linksys configuration page, click on the Administration Tab along the top, click the “Applications & Gaming Tab, and then the “Port Range Forward” tab below it.

Under “Application,” type in a name. It can be any name you choose. In both the “Start” and “End” boxes, type the port number. Enter the IP address of your home computer in the IP address column. Click the check box under “Enable.” Do this for both the internal and external port numbers and port 443. When finished, click the “Save Settings” button.

Note: It’s highly recommended that you configure your home computer with a static IP address

When you’re ready to play your media over the Internet, open up Windows Media Player and look for your host computer and username listed under “Other Libraries.” Click on it expand the list to see your media libraries. Choose a library and a file to play.

Now you can enjoy your streaming media over the Internet.

Conclusion

We found media streaming over the Internet to work fairly well. However, we did see a loss of quality with streaming video. Also, Recorded TV .wtv and dvr-ms files did not play at all.

via HowToGeek

I am about to undertake a huge.. ah.. well.. undertaking. I decided since I gave up cable/digital TV connections a long time ago and stick purely to my server for movies and TV Shows, it is time to network my house fully. I mean, no longer have a 25m Cat 5e running the length of my hallway which my wife has patiently put up with. I mean running the cables through the walls and proper connection sockets in every room.

How? Well, I thought a lot about this and you can guess this is going to be difficult since my house is 7 years old. But when I built it, I had COAX points installed everywhere. Since I have no use for them, I am going to feed each one back up to the attic and feed through two Ethernet cables and the coax cable back down. However, once I have completed this, I will need to have patch cables ready and would much rather make my own.

So here is a guide on how to make you Ethernet cables and hope it helps you.

1. Unroll the required length of network cable and add a little extra wire, just in case. If a boot is to be fitted, do so before stripping away the sleeve and ensure the boot faces the correct way.

   
   

   
   Carefully remove the outer jacket of the cable. Be careful when stripping the jacket as to not nick or cut the internal wiring. One good way to do this is to cut lengthwise with snips or a knife along the side of the cable, away from yourself, about an inch toward the open end. This reduces the risk of nicking the wires’ insulation. Locate the string inside with the wires, or if no string is found, use the wires themselves to unzip the sheath of the cable by holding the sheath in one hand and pulling sideways with the string or wire. Cut away the unzipped sheath and cut the twisted pairs about 1 1/4″ (30 mm). You will notice 8 wires twisted in 4 pairs. Each pair will have one wire of a certain color and another wire that is white with a colored stripe matching its partner (this wire is called a tracer).
2. 
   Inspect the newly revealed wires for any cuts or scrapes that expose the copper wire inside. If you have breached the protective sheath of any wire, you will need to cut the entire segment of wires off and start over at step one. Exposed copper wire will lead to cross-talk, poor performance or no connectivity at all. It is important that the jacket for all network cables remains intact.
3. 
   Untwist the pairs so they will lay flat between your fingers. The white piece of thread can be cut off even with the jacket and disposed (see Warnings). For easier handling, cut the wires so that they are 3/4″ (19 mm) long from the base of the jacket and even in length.
4. 
   Arrange the wires based on the wiring specifications you are following. There are two methods set by the TIA, 568A and 568B. Which one you use will depend on what is being connected. A straight-through cable is used to connect two different-layer devices (e.g. a hub and a PC). Two like devices normally require a cross-over cable. The difference between the two is that a straight-through cable has both ends wired identically with 568B, while a cross-over cable has one end wired 568A and the other end wired 568B.^[1] For our demonstration in the following steps, we will use 568B, but the instructions can easily be adapted to 568A.
   • 568B – Put the wires in the following order, from left to right:
     • white orange
     • orange
     • white green
     • blue
     • white blue
     • green
     • white brown
     • brown
   • 568A – from left to right: white/green, green, white/orange, blue, white/blue, orange, white/brown, brown. You can also use the mnemonic 1-2-3-6/3-6-1-2 to remember which wires are switched.
     
5. Press all the wires flat and parallel between your thumb and forefinger. Verify the colors have remained in the correct order. Cut the top of the wires even with one another so that they are 1/2″ (12.5 mm) long from the base of the jacket, as the jacket needs to go into the 8P8C connector by about 1/8″, meaning that you only have a 1/2″ of room for the individual cables. Leaving more than 1/2″ untwisted can jeopardize connectivity and quality. Ensure that the cut leaves the wires even and clean; failure to do so may cause the wire not to make contact inside the jack and could lead to wrongly guided cores inside the plug.
6. 
   Keep the wires flat and in order as you push them into the RJ-45 plug with the flat surface of the plug on top. The white/orange wire should be on the left if you’re looking down at the jack. You can tell if all the wires made it into the jack and maintain their positions by looking head-on at the plug. You should be able to see a wire located in each hole, as seen at the bottom right. You may have to use a little effort to push the pairs firmly into the plug. The cabling jacket should also enter the rear of the jack about 1/4″ (6 mm) to help secure the cable once the plug is crimped. You may need to stretch the sleeve to the proper length. Verify that the sequence is still correct before crimping.
7. 
   Place the wired plug into the crimping tool. Give the handle a firm squeeze. You should hear a ratcheting noise as you continue. Once you have completed the crimp, the handle will reset to the open position. To ensure all pins are set, some prefer to double-crimp by repeating this step.
8. Repeat all of the above steps with the other end of the cable. The way you wire the other end (568A or 568B) will depend on whether you’re making a straight-through, rollover, or cross-over cable (see Tips).
9. 
   Test the cable to ensure that it will function in the field. Mis-wired and incomplete network cables could lead to headaches down the road. In addition, with power-over-Ethernet (PoE) making its way into the market place, crossed wire pairs could lead to physical damage of computers or phone system equipment, making it even more crucial that the pairs are in the correct order. A simple cable tester can quickly verify that information for you. Should you not have a network cable tester on hand, simply test connectivity pin to pin.

The next step will be wiring up the patch panel that I will be installing into my utility room to have a central connection area.

If you’re a photography buff or even just like the odd click and shoot, you can always benefit from some tips from expert photographers. If experts need to continue learning from others in the field.

BBC put together a masterclass edition on photography coincidentally called the BBC Photography Masterclass. They were put together back in 2006. They are in PDF format, so you can easily save them to your PC for offline use or printing. Its from the wildlife section and the tips feature wildlife shots heavily. But the instructions are beneficial in any setting.

Head over if its your thing to BBC Wildlife.

Take a moment and think about all of the sensitive data kept on your computer.  Account passwords, addresses, phone numbers, access to bank accounts and other financial services, and maybe even your social security number.  Almost every aspect of your identity is kept on this little machine.  Now imagine you want a new one.  So, you go out and buy a shiny new laptop.  What do you do with the old one?  Just toss it, right?

Wrong!  If you just throw out your old computer, all of that personal information is still available to any tech-savvy thief.  Merely deleting a file in the traditional fashion will not truly “delete” it.  With a few techniques, a file sent to the recycle bin and emptied can be recovered if the deletion was recent enough.

So how can you erase a hard drive completely?  Well, there a few techniques that anyone can employ to protect their identity.

Disclaimer: Please keep in mind that the following software and techniques will ERASE your hard drive and you will not be able to get your data back.  That’s the whole point.

Formatting

Most people’s first instinct would be to just reformat their drive to get rid of data.  But there are all sorts of formatting that can be done.

First, you can perform what is called a high level format.  Sometimes, this is referred to as a quick format.  This method is not secure seeing as it only erases the boot sector and partition table, thus leaving all of the other files intact and accessible through purpose built software.

There is also low level formatting, referred to officially as “disk reinitialization.”  This process goes through your disk and sets values to zero and will erase a hard drive completely.

For more advanced users, you can also change the number of passes that the format goes through.  The more passes, the more secure it will be because the format goes through the disk the specified number of times and writes over the information with junk.

As you would expect, more passes take more time, but more passes means your data is better scrambled and harder to recover.

This process sounds like it would do the trick, but there are some catches.  If you use a different file system than the one used to originally format the disk, or if you have multiple partitions, not all of your data will be thoroughly erased.

Thus, formatting the disk is not the preferable way to really, securely erase your data.  Instead, there are some freeware tools you can use to make sure your information is gone.

If you do want to go the reformat route, MakeUseOf already has some good articles on how to do that here and here.  You may have to use your OS disk, or software that came with your drive to perform the format you want.

Darik’s Boot And Nuke

If you checked out Varun’s article linked above, you’ll notice he mentions Darik’s Boot and Nuke.  Let’s take a closer look at that tool.

DBAN, as it is shortened, is a nice little application that lets you completely erase your data.  You can download it for Intel/AMD machines and Apple Power Mac machines by clicking “Downloads” at the top of the home page.  You should see the following.

Download the ISO for your system and burn it to a disk.  Next, pop the disk into your hard drive and boot from it.  This may require you to press F12 at the BIOS screen (the first screen you see when your computer boots up) and choose to boot from your CD/DVD drive.  After the CD boots up, you should see the following.

Hit Enter and the program should boot a few things up before settling on the next screen.

Hit Space when the arrow is pointing at the disk you want to wipe and hit F10 to start the process.  The process will start and you should see something like this.

Let it run through the whole process and you should get a screen letting you know the process was successful.

DBAN is easy and performs well.  There are other options to get rid of your data for good.

Get Physical

The absolute best way to make sure your data is completely gone is to just destroy the drive.  Clearly, this is only an option if you are going to dispose of the drive afterwards.

There are a few ways to go about this.  You could get some high powered magnets and wipe the drive a few times with them.  This scrambles all the data that is written magnetically on the disk.

Another option is to wail on the drive a few times with a hammer.  Please remember to wear proper safety accessories such as safety glasses when using tools.

Finally, you can always take the drive apart to make sure the disk gets completely demolished.  To do this though, you will probably need a special T9 torx screwdriver.  Or, you can try to simply pry the thing apart, but please, as before, use proper safety measures.

On top of making sure you completely sure your information is gone, this can work out to be a good stress reliever.

Now you have the tools to make sure your identity is safe if you want to get rid of an old hard drive.  Know of any other tools or methods?  Let us know in the comments below.

[itk-eticker]via MakeUseOf[/itk-eticker]