Tech N Life » Support Sunday

Support Sunday: Update Microsoft Software Offline – IT Techie Tips

Konrad Walsh-(admin) — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 07:57:40 +0000

It’s a sad sad fact, that there are still many places that do not have a decent broadband connection. Of course, places like Finland, with their 1MB line minimum law, this doesn’t apply to. But for the rest of us – it’s fact!

Many times, when on the road fixing peoples computers, invariably, I have to update a fresh install of Anti-virus software. As you know , this takes forever the first time. To get around this I had been downloading Microsoft’s Security Essentials offline update file. Of course, you have to grab a latest copy before you head, it still saves a lot of time.

Well, it would be great to be able to do this for all the software I install. And now you can.

WSUS Offline

WSUS means Windows Software Update Service. Its an app/software server that allows admins to download one copy of the latest Windows updates, approve it and send it to clients.

WSUS offline.. does this in a similar way but offline of course!!! It’s now at version 6.3 and its a small enough download. Open the ZIP file and extract the contents to a folder on your desktop. Double click your Application file and this is what you get:

Click for larger image

You have many options from here. You can download the files to ISO’s ready for DVD burning or to your USB key.

When you are then on-site, you can load up your offline files and you will something like this:

Head over and grab it so you can continue your conquest for the family hero title!!

Website: WSUSOffline

Support Sunday: How To Set Up And Optimize uTorrent

Konrad Walsh-(admin) — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 22:30:00 +0000

Many people use uTorrent and never actually set it up for their type of connection or needs. So here we are going to delve into it in a little detail to get you your way. Hopefully , you will be able to get faster and more reliable results with this information. Bear in mind, it is not supposed to be an exhaustive walk-through, but rather to suit novices.

Torrents? uTorrent?

Without being overly technical, I want to explain this in simple terms, explaining just enough for you to get going. A torrent is a really small file that contains the link back information to the original file/program/movie/show/album that you are looking to download. The torrent file is conveniently label abc123.torrent. The file contains the name and sizes and more importantly the location of the files out on the internets. FYI- downloading torrents is NOT illegal. Downloaded pirated software etc., is.
A magnet link – is and I quote Wikipedia:

Such a link typically identifies a file not by location or name, but by content; more precisely, by the content’s hash value.

Since it refers to a file based on content or metadata, rather than by location, a magnet link can be considered a kind of Uniform Resource Name, rather than the more common Uniform Resource Locators. Although it could be used for other applications, it is particularly useful in a peer-to-peer context, because it allows resources to be referenced without the need for a continuously available host.

As far as you and I are concern, its a faster, more direct way to download with peer to peer.

So first of all, download uTorrent here. Run through the setup installation accepting the defaults, except that last option. This offers you the Ask toolbar. Make your own decision here bearing in mind that accepting it supports the free uTorrent. If you don’t like, uninstall it after.

Now we’ll get started

Start up uTorrent by clicking on its icon or find it in the start menu.

When it opens a one time only pop up appears called a speed guide. It is designed to help you choose your speed settings that will optimize the running of uTorrent. In the first dropdown box, you have a list of speeds that say xx/256, xx/512 etc.

You want to choose the one that suits your UPLOAD speed. I have a 7 meg line at home and an upload of 512. So I chose xx/512. You can choose accordingly.

Next is the port number. This is very important to get decent speeds. As you can see in the screen shot, it automatically chose 34999 for me. This is fine, however, I need to go to my router and create a port forward to my desktop/PC IP address for that particular port. Next Sunday, I will write about how to configure your router for port forwarding. When that’s done, I will update this post on getting a green icon in uTorrent. In the meantime, ask in the comments below and I will answer you.

Click use selected settings.

Now go to Options > Preferences.

Rather than me writing this out word for word, just follow the screen shots from here and copy each screen and make it identical to your setup. I will circle my changes:

Click the Associate Button and Start with Windows

Now head to UI Settings:

I like being able to double click files to start/stop them. Saves extra right-clicks

Move on to the directories tab:

Do this, because it makes finding and organizing everything a lot easier later on. However, these are up to you.

Now the connections tab, but you have this part done earlier.

The blue messy bit is my actual port. You chose this earlier.

Bandwidth Tab:

These are my settings. You can see my Upload is a max 10. This means it will upload slower, but won't choke your network so much. My download is 350 which allows me to still browse the net comfortably whilst downloading. This is on a 7 meg line. You need to reduce these according to your connection. If I had a 1 meg line, I would reduce my download speed to 50.

The rest of the settings are up to you. The queuing area is how many concurrent downloads will happen at once. If you leave that low, you generally have a better experience.

Hope you have fun with this and follow on to this post tomorrow on how to download a torrent and use it -

How To Download Movies And TV Shows Torrents

___________________

[ad#banner2]

Support Sunday: How To Root Your New HTC Hero Safely And Why You Want To

Konrad Walsh-(admin) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 00:16:39 +0000

I know posts have been a little quiet lately but there is little happening this time of year and I always try to only post relevant news. This however is relevant and important. Many of you are most likely going to unwrap an Android phone this year. And for a couple of days you’ll have lots of fun.

However, you are going to quickly learn that you handset is limited. Yes, I know it has great specs and does amazing things, but you’ll realized you’ve been locked out of certain features and add-ons. Now the “people” will have you think that this is for a good reason… so you don’t break anything. And maybe they are right in certain respects but my experience has proven that if you read, read and read again, then follow each step closely, this is a walk in the park.

It’s not so scary!!

I’ll be straight up.. I was scared to do this to my lovely new HTC Hero. I have flashed plenty of windows mobile handsets 100′s of times. I’ve unlocked some of the most difficult handsets and forced upgrades on renationalized phones. But, I thought, what if I muck up.. ah.. my phone!! But then, I remember that this is what is fun and said SO WHAT!! Well that was all for nothing.

First of all, what does it mean to root your phone? Its akin to having a Windows desktop and not having administrator privileges. Yes, you know what that’s like – frustrating!! Rooting allows you full rights over everything and means you can install anything.

Why would you do this?

Because you can
Because its most likely still stuck on 1.5
Because you can use other software like Market Enabler
Because HTC’s stock ROM sucks after ten minutes and slows down so much

This is the most important tip: BACKUP!

Nandroid is a fantastic piece of software for backing up everything. A Nandroid restore puts the handset back to EXACTLY the state it was in before you flashed a new ROM. So if you don’t like the new ROM, then ten minutes later, its like you never touched it. I’ll explain later how to do this.

Although the rest of this information is based on my personal experience, I got all my help from theunlockr.com who did an article on this very subject.

First – Watch this video but note the change in the instructions from step 6.

Second - Go back and watch the video if you didn’t already! I mean it!

Third - follow these steps:

I. Read Before You Begin

1.This ONLY works on the HTC Hero and the Sprint Hero!
2. Also, if you have already Rooted your HTC Hero without using the 1 click method, then do one of the quick unrooting procedures before beginning to start fresh. Head to their site for more info on this.
3. Your Hero MUST be on Cupcake to proceed, use the Magic unrooting process to get to a fresh cupcake install!
4. IF YOUR HAVE FIRMWARE 2.73.x.x OR ABOVE, PLEASE USE THIS PROCEDURE HERE BEFORE YOU DO THIS ONE.
How To Downgrade Your Hero (So It Can Be Rooted)

II. Let’s Get Started

1. On your phone, goto Settings, Applications, and make sure Unknown source is checked ON.

2. On your phone, goto Settings, SD card and phone storage, and click Unmount SD card.

3. Then click Format SD card (it should automatically remount after this).

4. Plug the phone into the compuer via USB, then pull down the notification bar and click on the SD card notification. Then click mount.

5. Download this APK and recovery image and save it to your computer:

FlashRec.apk (Updated 09/26/2009)
Amon Ra’s Hero Recovery Image (Updated 11.18.09)

6. UPDATE: Do NOT follow the video instructions from this point on (use them as a visual aid only!) We have recplaced the Cyanogen Recovery Image with the Amon Ra one so when it says anything about the Cyanogen Recovery Image, just ignore that and put the Amon Ra one in it’s place. This is VERY IMPORTANT when typing into the FlashRec program. You will NOT be typing what is written in the video, type what is written here in this procedure instead!

7. Save both the Recovery-RA-HERO-v1.2.2.img and the FlashRec.apk to your computer, then copy them both to your SD card (do NOT put them inside any folders on the SD card, just put them on the SD card itself).

8. Unplug the phone from the computer once they are downloaded to the SD card.

8. Goto the Market and download Linda File Manager or any file manager program if you do not already have one.

9. Open the file manager and goto SDCard and then find the FlashRec apk file and click it. If asked tell it to use Package Installer to open it. It should automatically install the apk.

10. Open the FlashRec program and click on Backup Recovery Image and wait for it to finish.

11. Once done, click on the empty text box in the FlashRec program and type (again remember we have replaced the recovery image from the one in the video so type what is written here, NOT what is written in the video!):

/sdcard/Recovery-RA-HERO-v1.2.3.img

Then click on the Flash Custom RecoveryImage button and wait for it to finish.

12. Turn off the phone and turn it on into Recovery mode by holding down Home and Power to turn it on (keep holding until the recovery screen comes up has a bunch of text on a black background). So long as that screen comes up, you have done it correctly and can now go on to the How to Load a ROM video for your appropriate device!

13. To get Root access you MUST go to the next video mentioned above and load a custom ROM.

Okay… so that wasn’t so hard… but what now… Well you need to get hold of a decent ROM.. I am using the Eclair 2.1 ROM from here and it is really fast and superb. But when you get to the stage of turning off your phone and pressing Power + Home to get to the recovery menu, MAKE SURE YOU RUN NANDROID.

Once you’ve done that, then flash away.

Please note this disclaimer: I am not responsible in any way if you damage your handset. I have pointed out that this is easy to do, however I have a lot of experience with this stuff. I offer no warranty whatsoever on this information. I am happy to answer any questions you have on this. Have fun.

[poll id="2"]

_________________________

[ad#banner2]

Support Sunday: How To Transfer Files From An Old PC

Konrad Walsh-(admin) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 23:11:41 +0000

When you buy a new computer – like I did recently – you’ll want to transfer most of your existing files over to the new computer. A lot of people, who spend their time gathering vacation pictures and family videos, will want to make a big move leaving nearly nothing behind. Others, like myself, only keep the essential stuff; some documents they’re still working on and a few application installations they’ll be needing shortly. No matter how much you plan on taking along, you want to do it quickly. Spend the minimal amount of time before you can cut that old hardware loose. There are a number of ways to do this, and we’re taking a look at five of the ways how to transfer files from one computer to another. Depending on what you’re working with, some might be better than others.

Use An External Storage Media

The standard way of backing up data. These days, everyone has a USB stick, or a at least a computer that can burn CDs and DVDs. An even better alternative are external hard drives which you can connect over USB – these often combine crazy speed with incredible storage.

There are three back-up patterns you can follow. Often the easiest way is to create categorical folders to put your files in – movies, pictures, documents, applications, and so on. Back on your new computer, you can easily put these wherever you want to have them. A duplicate copy requires even less effort, but you’ll be passing up on an excuse to (finally?) categorize your data. Just copy the folders your files are in – Desktop, My Documents, etc. – and you’ll be able to merge them with your new system’s counterparts. Too lazy to do it manually? You can always use back-up software suites to do the work for you. These are often able to return your file to right location on your new disk, but are especially useful if you plan on doing periodical back-ups (e.g. every two weeks).

Share Over LAN

You can also use your existing home network to transfer your files, given that both of your systems are connected. The speed can vary from ‘incredibly fast’ on a wired network to ‘pretty damn slow’ on a wireless one. First and foremost, you’ll need to enable the sharing of your hard drive. In Mac OS X, just go to System Preferences -> Sharing, and the rest is pretty obvious. In Windows, the process is quite easy as well. Browse to My Computer -> (right-click) Properties on your hard drive. In the Sharing tab, you’ll need to enable file sharing for the folder. Below is a screenshot of how it looks like on a Windows 7 PC.

Vista and 7 — If your disk isn’t Shared, go to the Network and Sharing Screen and open the ‘Advanced Sharing’ settings. Here you’ll be able to turn on File and Printer Sharing.

Got everything set up? On your new system, you should be able to find the drive shared in ‘Network’. When opening the hard drive, you’ll probably be asked for a password. From there on, you’re free to go. Copy the files and folders as if the network drive is just another folder.

If you don’t have a home network, or don’t feel like using your wireless one, you can directly connect two computers with a crossover ethernet cable. This one looks exactly the same as your everyday internet cable, but has a slightly different wiring. You can buy these for a few bucks in most hardware and computer stores.

Use an EasyTransfer Cable

Windows Easy Transfer is a new application that comes installed in most newer Microsoft Windows operation system. One way to use the program is with an EasyTransfer cable, a special double “male” USB cable.

The cable, that can be bought online and in computer stores, facilitates file transfers between two Windows systems and works great for our purpose. If you don’t mind spending the extra money, this is an option you might want to consider.

Connect the HDD Manually

This is the way I ended up doing it – the geeky way. If you don’t have an external HDD casing, why not make one? By taking out your old hard drive and using the right connections, you’ll quickly have it hooked via USB to your new system. This has a number of advantages – the speed is well enjoyable, you don’t need (much) extra hardware, and you can copy the files straight from point A to B.

All you need are (depending on your hard drive model) a SATA to USB or an IDE to USB adapter. These can be bought separate or together with an external hard drive casing – which is often even cheaper. If you’ve got an external drive of the right type lying around, you can even use the casing from that one, and spare yourself the extra costs. via [MakeUseOf]

________________

[ad#banner2]

Support Sunday: Keep Your Drivers Up To Date Easily With Device Doctor

Konrad Walsh-(admin) — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 00:00:26 +0000

Do you constantly worry that your device drivers are out of date? Oh wait….that’s just me as a system admin, I worry and check my devices constantly. Network cards, SCSI cards and much much more. Now using a little freeware application called Device Doctor, I can update drivers a little more efficiently and for free. We should probably start off with what a device driver is and when you need to load drivers. Drivers are needed for every piece of hardware on your computer from your monitor to your mouse back to your printer. The device needs the driver to tell it how to interact with the operating system – no drivers means that your hardware is not going to work as expected, if at all. When you reformat your computer system, you need to reinstall your drivers but sometimes you cannot find the proper driver and then sadly you will not be able to get your hardware to function. What do you do? Well Device Doctor can also identify and download the proper driver for unidentified items. Let’s take a look at the application, how it works and how it can help you update drivers for free. First run the installer and it will do its thing:

Click through and let it install. When it completes, the application will launch automatically. The user interface looks like this:

Go ahead and click Begin Scan to let it scan your device’s drivers.

Once the scan is completed you will be presented with a full list of devices that need updating. But wait! There is more - the application actually provides download links to grab the drivers that need updating. They really take all the leg work out of this for you. If a device is unidentified the application can still grab data from the card and check for drivers online. This is super helpful when you do not know where to look for the correct drivers. This can help you to not have to open the case and pop the card out looking for the fcc id or another identifying piece of information.

When you click download update it will take you to a webpage. That page will contain information as well as the link to grab the driver.

If the driver does not work out for you, please click the link to report the incorrect driver and then the next person will not have the same issue as you. This feature alone makes this much better than just Googling for the driver. I have used other applications like Double Driver in the past but it did not do much for downloading drivers for unknown devices and then I found Zhangduo that does find drivers for unidentified devices but not for known ones. You will see a statement warning you to backup, create a restore point and instructions for doing so. Good looking out Device Driver Guys! Click the download driver installer link in the center of the page to initiate the download. That will start the download like so:

Run the installer and update your drivers. It is that simple!

When my driver was updated, my mouse moves smoother! Sweet. It is easy to run this on a system to see where you stand. Now I will preach a little bit about how important keeping your drivers up to date are. Today in my network we upgraded a switch to giga bit speeds from 10/100. One of our servers refused to connect at giga bit speeds. What did we have to do? We had to update the NIC drivers and then all of our problems were gone. If I had done this before it would not have been an issue and the upgrade would have been complete. Instead it took another 20 minutes of my life and down time! So kids keep your drivers updated! When you don’t know what drivers you need, this can wind up being a MUST HAVE application! This story appeared first on MakeUseOf

____________________________

[ad#banner2]

Support Sunday: Find Hard Drive Problems Easily With Windows Surface Scanner

Konrad Walsh-(admin) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 02:11:23 +0000

DTI Data Recovery have made a useful piece of software for investigating hard drive errors. Sometimes when diagnosing your PC for performance issues, there is only so much you can do with tweaks. If the problem is physical.. then you need to get physical and fix it directly. If a hard drive(s) is faulty, then you will definitely have performance issues. Windows Surface Scanner steps in here to help zero in on those bad sectors and report back to you what problems you are facing. Then you will know the appropriate action to take. That is fix or replace. If its very bad, you at least know to start backing up and quick! Here is a rundown on installing and running the software. This is the second screen after you start it up. On the first screen, just accept the terms and conditions. To list your drives, hit the mount button: Tick the drive and click Scan. Only one drive may be scanned at a time. Then let it do its business. You can watch its progress on the bottom left of the application: If you need to stop it, just hit Exit. Simple software. Download Windows Surface Scanner Here

__________________________

[ad#banner2]

Support Sunday: Dealing With Rootkits Before They Deal With You

Konrad Walsh-(admin) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 13:13:03 +0000

In fighting viruses, malware, trojans and spyware, it’s important to know your enemy. A rookit is your biggest enemy and the hardest to fight. Understanding rootkits are your only hope of ridding your machine of them. They can do an enormous amount of damage. I was about to write a long explanation on this and then I found this great explanation over on Online-Tech-Tips. The term rootkit or root kit originally referred to a maliciously modified set of administrative tools for a Unix-like operating system that granted root access. If an intruder could replace the standard administrative tools on a system with a rootkit, the modified tools would allow the intruder to maintain root access over the system while concealing these activities from the legitimate system administrator. In Windows world, the term rootkit is also used to describe the mechanisms and techniques whereby malware, including viruses, spyware, and trojans, attempt to hide their presence from spyware blockers, antivirus, and system management utilities. A free rootkit revealer from Sysinternals is a very lightweight tool that I use to scan for probable rootkit anomalies. The tool doesn’t tell you if the anomalies are good or bad. Some that are hidden from the Windows API are valid like ongoing file downloads. You should examine all discrepancies and determine the likelihood that they indicate the presence of a rootkit. Unfortunately, there is no definitive way to determine, based on the output, if a rootkit is present, but you should examine all reported discrepancies to ensure that they are explainable. If you determine that you have a rootkit installed, search the web for removal instructions. If you are unsure as to how to remove a rootkit you should reformat the system’s hard disk and reinstall Windows. Download from the Sysinternals Site Did you find this information helpful? Leave a comment………..

___________________

[ad#banner2]

Support Sunday – Quick Tip: Increase The Speed Of Vista Or 7 On A New Laptop

Konrad Walsh-(admin) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 22:01:41 +0000

Some people don’t realize that when they get their brand new, super fast up to date laptop from the shop, that it is restricted to balanced battery performance. All it takes is a couple of clicks and you re-gain the full potential of the laptop. Its worth noting that this uses more battery power. So, you could use it selectively, when you know you may be away from a power source for a while. There are usually three default power profiles built in to Vista & 7. Power Save, Balanced and High Performance. Although, I have seen machines that didn’t have the High Performance profile setup. However, it is simple to setup… I’ll show you in a minute.

Step One

Click on this icon.. on the bottom right of your screen…

Step Two

Choose High Performance. …and that’s it.. simple quick tip. So what if it only offers you Power Save and Balanced? Then click here more power options at the bottom of that pop up box. Either choose the drop down for Hide additional plans and you may find it there or click on Create a power plan on the left hand side. You’ll have the chance to create one. Did you enjoy reading this tip? Please let me know in the comments.

_______________________________

[ad#amazon-a1]

Support Sunday: XP Quick Fix Plus – Easy Fix It Solutions For Windows XP

Konrad Walsh-(admin) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:45:01 +0000

I decided to do two Support Sunday slots today. I stumbled across this simple and free piece of software for XP machines. OK, so it wont actually repair a smashed screen that you took your technophobic rage out on. However, it does help to fix those little annoyances in XP, but without having to google every step and manually change them. As the screenshot shows, its a simple click and click. Its provided by a company called Leelu Soft. They make some interesting little software pieces like this one. I will post a few more of their applications later. Here is a screenshot of the main screen:

There are a lot of excellent free Windows comprehensive repairing and fixing tools around the internet. But there are times when you want just one quick fix for example when you are under a virus attack and you just want to enable the Task Manager or the Registry Editor so you can fight the virus back, or when some new installation changed your XP behavior and My Documents opens on every start up. This is the right time to draw XP Quick Fix Plus with 40 common Windows XP problems fixes, only 0.58mb, portable, small and fast, a must have on every computer and with a small extra, a command line utility to fix 6 common problems directly from command line !

Download it from here – [download id="5"] Do you like what Tech ‘n’ Life does? Please tell us…

_________________________________

[ad#banner2]

Support Sunday: Licence Crawler – Backup Your Licences Before A Reformat

Konrad Walsh-(admin) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 07:30:40 +0000

OK, to kick off our new slot called Support Sunday, that will feature an IT support article every Sunday, so that you don’t have to call the IT guy again, we are looking at Licence Crawler.

Licence Crawler

So you backed up everything on to an external drive or CD’s DVD’s and have your re-installation disks all ready. For the last before you re-format, you reboot, pop in your operating system disc and go for it. It wipes your system clean and you have this uneasy feeling.. You’re thinking, “Did I think of everything?”. Problem is, you won’t know the answer for a couple of hours when you re-install your apps. That’s when it hits you. You are re-installing some software and you can’t find your licence key. That’s OK, you think, I must have an email somewhere. But you don’t. Now what? Well, normally, you’re stuff and out on your own to cough up more money. I say normally, because this time it didn’t happen to you. Why? Because you downloaded Licence Crawler from here and backed up all your licences just in time. Simply put, licence crawler scans your registry and pulls out any registration keys used to install software. Works simple and fast. Let me show you how……….. Its simple to use. You simple go with the defaults and it will run through the normal processes. Click Start Search. When you’re done, head to the File menu and you can Save the File. You can also encode the file should you need to. I have highlighted in red an interesting option. If you run a network at home, you can choose which computer to check against. So, you can keep a running inventory on all PCs for all software. This is the end result…………. For me it found 29 keys. I am now going to run it on all my family PCs

Notable Features

Backup local PC software keys
Backup network PC software keys
It has 64 bit compatibility for your programs. Just make sure you tick the box.
It can encode your key file
It is free!

There are no fancy graphics… but it gets the job done. Its important to note that if one of your applications doesn’t store its product key in the registry License Crawler not back it up. Download it here – Licence Crawler[download id="4"] Did you enjoy reading this post? If so, I would love to know about it.

__________________________

[ad#banner2]