Mikazo Tech Blog

Switching to Fedora 10 and Wicd Wireless Network Manager

2009-04-14T21:19:00.000-07:00

My last few posts have been pretty technical, so I thought I'd write an opinion piece for once, in case anyone cares. I've begun fiddling around with Linux again, and I went back to where I left off using Linux Mint, only I grabbed the new release of version 6. It felt essentially the same as Linux Mint 5, only this time it froze. A lot. Like more than it used to. I had the same problem with Ubuntu, and I know Mint is based on Ubuntu, so I decided to try an OS that wasn't Debian-based for once.

I downloaded the most recent version of Fedora, version 10. So far I really like it. I'm a big fan of GNOME, and I've found the switch relatively easy. I also noticed that I got a little more involved with the command line with Fedora, which is a good thing. I'm glad to learn more about the internal workings of a Linux distro, as it'll come in handy in the future.

My biggest project so far on Fedora has been trying to get the Wicd wireless network manager working. I hated the standard GNOME NetworkManager so I went looking for alternatives. The only problem was, after I installed Wicd 1.5.9, it wouldn't connect to WPA/WPA2 networks. After looking through some logs I determined that it was to do with an external command, wpa_supplicant not having enough privileges to do what it was supposed to. After lengthy conversations and help from the people on the Freenode #wicd IRC channel, I tried installing the release candidate for Wicd 1.6. One of the Wicd authors did some specific error-fixing for me before I got the latest revision. I also helped him uncover some other bugs. Anyway, it fixed my problem, but opened up a new one. Now Wicd would only connect if I restarted the daemon. It runs virtually identical with the same privileges from boot, but apparently it just doesn't want to work unless I restart it.

Anyway, it's been fun so far and I'm really getting stuck on Fedora.

Linux Mint/Ubuntu Overheating Laptop

2009-04-07T20:38:00.000-07:00

Back when I tried Ubuntu, and later on when I tried Linux Mint, one of the biggest problems I noticed was their tendencies to heat up quite a bit and the fans run at maximum, even when running idle on my HP dv6568se laptop. It runs an Intel Core 2 Duo at 1.6 GHz.

After realizing that other people have had the same problem, I spent an afternoon Googling around for CPU frequency throttling and the different utilities that you can use. It took me a while until I found the right one. I have now throttled my CPU down to 1.0 GHz and the heat level isn't so bad anymore. Here's how I made mine work.

Modules you may or may not need in your /etc/modules file:

powernowd
cpufreq_ondemand
cpufreq_powersave
cpufreq_performance
cpufreq_conservative
cpufreq-userspace
battery
ac
processor
thermal
acpi-cpufreq

Then I installed kpowersave and cpufreq-utils from the package manager. I set kpowersave to run on startup by going to Control center, Sessions, and added it as a startup program.

Use cpufreq-info in a Terminal to see what frequency steps your processor is capable of, then use cpufreq-set -d [value in KHz] to set a minimum supported frequency and cpufreq-set -u [value in KHz] to set a maximum supported frequency. So the commands I used were:

cpufreq-info
cpufreq-set -d 1000000
cpufreq-set -u 1000000

Now my kpowersave utility reports the processor running at 1000 MHz and the heat problem has noticably improved.

How To Upload Files with Perl and CGI

2009-03-19T19:15:00.000-07:00

I took me quite a while of sifting through the internet looking how to do this. I played with different CGI.pm functions, and so on, but eventually sort of improvised my own script based on what I've seen. This script takes a method="get" parameter of the form "c:\folder1\folder2\file.txt". It does not do any string sanitation or error checking, it just uploads the file. I had to edit the stupid HTML brackets because Blogger doesn't like me typing it there. You'll have to replace the (less/greater than sign) with the actual symbol. Feel free to use if you want.

Code:

use CGI;

$query = new CGI;
print $query->header;
print $query->start_html('Upload file');

$form = $ENV{'QUERY_STRING'};
@args = split('=', $form);
$args[1] =~ s/%3A/:/g;
$args[1] =~ s/%5C/\\/g;
@pieces = split('\\\\', $args[1]);
$length = @pieces;
$localpath = "";
for ($i=0; $i<=$length-2; $i++) {
$localpath .= "$pieces[$i]\\";
}
$localname = $pieces[$length-1];
print "Uploading $localpath$localname";
$serverfile = $ENV{'DOCUMENT_ROOT'} . "/assgn3/cont/$localname";

open(FILEIN, "<$localpath$localname");
open(FILEOUT, ">$serverfile");
while ($line = (less than sign)FILEIN(greater than sign)) {
print FILEOUT $line;
}
close FILEIN;
close FILEOUT;

print "Upload successful, redirecting to main.pl";
print "(less than sign)meta http-equiv='Refresh' content='4; url=main.pl'(greater than sign)";
print "(less than sign)/body(greater than sign)(less than sign)/html(greater than sign)";

Printing Unicode C-Style Strings with Variables in C++ MessageBox

2009-03-13T21:00:00.000-07:00

This drove me nuts for hours. The MessageBox function wants wide-character strings and I wanted to put variables in my strings, not just L"" constant strings. I had already been using the Unicode character set and didn't want to change a million other things in my code, so after much toiling, I've found the following code snippet to work:

int random = 42;
char message[128];
sprintf(message, "My random number: %d\n", random);
wchar_t mess[128];
mbstowcs(mess, message, 512);
MessageBox(hWnd, mess, L"Information", MB_OK);

The 512 value in mbstowcs() should be WCHAR_MAX_LENGTH but I was too lazy to find which header contains that, so I Googled and found a random value. It seems to work for me.

HP Battery Health Check in Vista

2009-03-13T13:20:00.000-07:00

If you own an HP laptop and would like to check your battery health status, you can download a little tool at HP's website. The only problem is that it's meant for Windows XP and if you try to run it in Windows Vista, it will give an error message asking for the file HPQNT.dll

The solution to this is to right click on the sp41862.exe file and choose the Compatibility tab, then run in compatibility mode for Windows XP Service Pack 2. Then when you go to run the exe, right click on it again and choose Run as administrator. Once the program extracts all the files to the directory you choose, do the same thing for the setup.exe file. It should then install the HP Battery Check Tool without any problems. Run the tool from the new shortcut in the start menu and it should let you know how your battery is doing.

How To Make Your Own Custom Vista Installation Media

2009-03-12T10:26:00.000-07:00

Ok if you are the proud owner of any recent brand name computer, it most likely has a recovery partition that holds an image of your hard drive and a bunch of bloatware and crap. If you recover to factory default settings, you might have to spend hours removing the garbage, installing Windows updates, tweaking settings, and so on.

The way I see it, it's much easier to have a clean install of Windows Vista with no bloatware or unneeded software, with all the updates and drivers already in place. How do you do that? Follow the instructions below.

First, you need to obtain a copy of a Windows Vista [version] Service Pack 1 OEM install DVD. In my case, I'll be using Vista Home Premium. Where do you get such a disc? You should already know the answer to that. As long as you use the product key on the bottom of your laptop, or the side of your desktop, you're good to go.

Once you have that, download and install vLite. vLite won't start until you first install the Windows Automated Installation Kit. I hope you have lots of hard drive space, because you're going to need it for this project. You might need DAEMON Tools to mount the Windwos AIK .iso

What else do you need? Updates. Head to RyanVM's message board and grab Vista Post-SP1 Update Pack and Vista Post-SP1 .NET Pack. Extract them to a folder somewhere on your hard drive.

Now for your drivers. There is a nice little tool called Double Driver that will make a copy of all the drivers on your current system for you and put them in a folder. Select the ones you want, and hit the Backup button. Make sure you get the essentials, network and wireless adapters, video card, sound, webcam, so on. Make note of where your driver folder is.

Now you're ready to start up vLite. Mount the Windows Vista install DVD iso with DAEMON Tools, and point vLite there for the installation files. Make a new folder for custom files when it asks you to. Then when you get to the Hotfixes page, include everything in the RyanVM update pack folders. Under Drivers, include everything in your Double Driver backup folder. You can go through all the other tweaks and settings as you please. I took the time to disable any services I won't need using Black Viper's guide.

In the seciton for entering your product key, type the legal product key on the sticker that's affixed to your laptop/desktop.

Once everything's done, let it integrate and create the ISO for you. Now you can burn the ISO and have your very own clean fully-up-to-date fully-customized driver-injected Windows Vista Service Pack 1 installation media.

Enjoy.

EDIT: If you're trying to make your own Vista install disc from the files on a recovery partition, I suggest you look elsewhere because to my knowledge, it is very difficult/sometimes impossible to do.

Windows Programming in C++: Mouse Coordinates without DirectInput

2009-02-24T21:51:00.000-08:00

So I've been programming a 2D game in DirectX and C++ as a project and I've spent hours and hours fiddling around with how to get the mouse coordinates so I could draw my own cursor on the screen.

My first attempt at this was implementing DirectInput, which is no small task. Turns out, there's an easier way with just a few lines of code. Inside the Windows message loop, you can watch for WM_MOUSEMOVE messages, then act upon them.

Code snippet:

#define GET_X_LPARAM(lParam) ((int)(short)LOWORD(lParam))
#define GET_Y_LPARAM(lParam) ((int)(short)HIWORD(lParam))
while(TRUE) {
if (PeekMessage(&msg, NULL, 0, 0, PM_REMOVE)) {
if (msg.message == WM_QUIT)
break;
if (msg.message == WM_MOUSEMOVE) {
newX = GET_X_LPARAM(msg.lParam);
newY = GET_Y_LPARAM(msg.lParam);
}
}
TranslateMessage(&msg);
DispatchMessage(&msg);
}

How To Install Windows XP From A Bootable USB Drive

2009-02-20T21:26:00.000-08:00

Since I must often use a Windows XP CD to boot into the Recovery Console, I thought it might be convenient to have a USB drive instead that served the same purpose. Also, it was time to integrate Service Pack 3 and the remaining updates, so that I don't have to download them all the time.

What I Used:

Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 Disc
SanDisk Cruzer Micro 2.0 GB USB Drive
RyanVM Post-SP3 Update Pack

Firstly, I used nLite to slipstream service packs and updates. Many nLite tutorials are available for further information on how to use nLite. Just make sure to create an ISO file at the end of customizing your Windows XP install. You can download all the Windows updates released after Service Pack 3 from RyanVM and streamline them using nLite.

Once you have the custom ISO, download DAEMON Tools and mount your image as a virtual drive on your computer.

Once you have completed these steps, follow this Eee PC article that works for all computers. This is the hard part that took me a while to find, and I'm grateful for their tutorial.

Hopefully after all is said and done, you're left with a bootable USB drive that will install Windows XP and offer Recovery Console functionality. I haven't tried a full Windows XP install yet with mine, so I do not know if the slipstreaming worked properly, but I have booted from the device, and it does get to the menu asking if you want to install or repair a Windows XP installation. I will edit this post later to report if installation is functional.

EDIT: The installation from the nLite ISO in VirtualBox went smoothly, without a hitch. Only updates I had to install were mots recent version of Windows Defender, and IE 7 because I forgot to include it. I type this from the XP installation itself in VirtualBox.

Error 1638 and Error 1603 When Installing Webroot SpySweeper

2009-01-24T20:11:00.000-08:00

The other day I encountered an Error 1638 while installing Webroot SpySweeper version 6.0.2.39. The installer proceeded to the point where it asks if you would like to install the Ask! Toolbar, then clicking Next, the installation begins and produces Error 1638. After the following steps were taken, the error no longer appeared, and the installation completed successfully.

Go to this Microsoft Support web page and download the Windows Install Cleanup utility. Install and run the utility. If the installation is attempted again at this point, error 1603 is produced.

Delete any Webroot folder in the Program Files directory. Go to the following Webroot support page and download the appropriate SafeCore.exe file. Save it in the same folder as your Webroot installation program. Note: The SafeCore.exe available for version 6.0.2.22 of SpySweeper worked for me in this case.

Reboot the system, then try the Webroot SpySweeper installation again, and it should work.

How To Speed Up Your Windows Computer

2009-01-13T18:37:00.000-08:00

The following are a few steps you can take to improve the overall performance of your computer and get the most out of it. These steps work for both Windows Vista and XP, but the instructions here were tested on Vista so it might be slightly different for XP.

For a start, you can automate the removal of temporary files from your computer (detailed instructions in my other post).

Right click on your task bar and select Task Manager. Move to the processes tab and at the bottom it will tell you how many processes you have running. If the number of processes is 50 or greater, there is probably room for improvement. In the Run... box, type in services.msc and navigate to either Black Viper's Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Services Configuration or Windows XP x86 (32-bit) Service Pack 3 Services Configuration. This website will give you a comprehensive list of all Windows services and which ones you can disable to improve system performance. I managed to get my old Windows XP desktop computer down to about 20 processes, though it's still showing its age when compared with newer computers. If you are using a laptop however, there are more essential services such as wireless, and so on. You can probably safely get your computer down to around 30-40 processes. Anything less than that is just icing on the cake.

Right click on Computer and select Properties. Then click Advanced System Settings on the left. Click the Advanced tab. Click on Settings... under Performance. Under the Advanced tab, make sure you have Virtual Memory enabled. It's safe enough to let Windows manage your page file size, but some prefer to manage it themselves. Under the Visual Effects tab, select Adjust for Best Performance, then re-select the following visual effects for a "still-pleasant" Aero experience, without taking too hard of a hit on the resources. I could list them all but it's easier this way: Select the bottom three, skip one, select two, skip one, select three, then select Show preview and filters in folders and Enable desktop composition. Vista should still look decent after this, and free up a few resources at the same time. Select OK to get back to the System Properties window. While you are here, click Settings under Startup and Recovery. Make sure Automatically Restart is unchecked under System Failure. That way if your system fails, you have time to read the error message before rebooting the system, which makes problem solving a whole lot easier.

Lastly, if you are running an older system with an IDE hard drive (anything pre-2003) it wouldn't hurt to check this article about slow IDE drives.

There are many more tweaks you can make to your system, and if I think of any more, I will add them here. This should get you on a good start though. If you don't feel like going through Black Viper's list of services (it can take a long time), feel free to just use msconfig to turn off startup programs and services. It's not as extensive, but it takes a lot less time to configure. If you turn off something essential, just reboot or boot into safe mode (F8 at POST) if necessary and fix what you broke. Take your time disabling services you aren't sure about, and everything should be fine. Be sure to defragment your hard drive every so often too.

Barring all these tweaks, if your system is still slow, buy more RAM or better yet, buy a new computer.

Using the Task Scheduler to Clean Your Temporary Files

2009-01-05T13:47:00.000-08:00

An often overlooked feature of Windows is the Task Scheduler, used to perform menial tasks at specific times, to save you having to remember to do them. In a few short minutes, you can create your own tasks to clean your computer of temporary files, scan for spyware and viruses, and execute any program you like.

The Task Scheduler can be accessed by opening Control Panel, then Administrative tools, then Task Scheduler. Upon opening the Task Scheduler on my HP laptop, I immediately noticed a few tasks that I did not want to run, so I removed them by right-clicking the task, then choosing Delete. Some tasks I removed included HP Health Check, Internet Provider Offers, and some other stuff. It doesn't hurt to check if you have any annoyances scheduled, and then you can remove them.

To create a task that removes unneeded temporary files, first start by opening Notepad. Copy and paste the following lines into a new file, then save it as clean.bat somewhere (I used my Documents folder). Be sure to set the "Save as type" field to "All files" when saving.

cd c:\windows\temp
del /Q /F /S *.*
cd %temp%
del /Q /F /S *.*

These commands switch to the Windows temporary directory and the user temporary directory, respectively. The del command should remove all files in each directory. The /Q tag is for quiet, asking no confirmation. The /F tag is for force deletion of read-only files. The /S tag is for subdirectories, delete files in each subdirectory. The *.* makes use of the wildcard character, meaning delete files with any name and any extension.

You have now just created a batch file, which is a simple text file containing a list of command-line commands to be executed in a specific order.

I have been deleting files from these directories for a long time, and as far as I can tell, it is completely safe to empty these directories. I have never run into a problem as a result of emptying my temp folders. Do not worry if some files cannot be deleted, as they are probably currently in use by the operating system.

Now that you have your batch file, open up the Task Scheduler, select Create Basic Task... and name it something like "Clean temporary files". On the next screen, to keep things simple, select "When the computer starts". On the next screen, select "Start a program". On the final screen, browse to where you saved your clean.bat file. On the final screen, check off "Open the properties dialog..." and click Finish.

In the properties dialog, you can change various settings if you like. The only change I made was under the Conditions tab, where I unchecked "Start the task only if the computer is on AC power (since I am running this on a laptop). Select OK and your task is complete.

Your computer will now clean up after itself every time it starts, giving you a fresh slate for your next work session.

Advantages and Disadvantages to Buying a Pre-Built Desktop Versus Building Your Own

2008-12-24T22:06:00.000-08:00

I have been wanting for some time now to build my own desktop computer, as that is something I have never done before. Mainly the reasons are all those listed below under "Advantages of building your own desktop computer". The only problem for me is that I can't find any good reason to spend this kind of money on a new computer. Yes, my current desktop is getting old and I would like to use it as a server, but I have a perfectly good year-old laptop that satisfies any computing need I might have. I'm not much into PC gaming anymore, and that seems to be the only major reason to buy a powerhouse of a desktop.

I need not build a top-of-the-line desktop, but I would still like to make it fairly future-proof if I do spend the money on one. In any case, here are some advantages and disadvantages to buying a pre-built desktop versus building your own.

Advantages of a store-bought desktop computer:

-Pre-built, ready to use
-Recovery partition and recovery disk creation
-No installing drivers
-Extended service plans are available
-Cost of OS and labour included in price
-Free trials of antivirus and office usually included

Disadvantages of a store-bought desktop computer:

-Don't know exactly what's inside
-Lots of bloatware
-Requires time to set up software and get the right feel
-Manufacturer may cheap out on certain components to lower price
-Must do research on brand names to find best track records

Advantages of building your own desktop computer:

-You select each piece and know exactly what you're buying
-You need not purchase Windows if you so choose/no hassle to refund windows
-You gain experience and understanding about building and troubleshooting a computer
-You can lower costs as you don't have to pay for labour or re-sold components
-You install exactly the software you choose, no more, no less
-You squeeze performance out of your hardware by implementing specific and custom builds and settings

Disadvantages of building your own desktop computer:

-Must download and install all drivers
-Must create drive image if recovery option is wanted
-Requires time to build, install and troubleshoot (this can be an advantage as there are a select few who actually enjoy this process)
-Warranty only extends as far as each piece of hardware comes with
-Must pay for Windows if desired
-Must pay for and wait for shipping (usually)

EDIT: Just recently I priced out the components of a pre-built computer that you might buy at a store. Excluding the cost of the operating system, the prices were comparable. I haven't done extensive research into this, but as far as I can tell, if you buy direct from a hardware company and build a computer yourself, it's not a huge price difference.

Easy Portable Web Server

2008-12-22T09:56:00.000-08:00

I tried and tried to get this to work in VirtualBox last summer, but I've just tried out the newest release (VirtualBox 2.1) with improved host network interface support. Before, manual bridging and network card manufacturer were issues that came into play. Now it's as easy as picking the interface you want to connect to, and it just works. Here is a small walkthrough on how to set up your very own portable web server (assuming you are using a laptop). For background, I am running the host OS Windows Vista Home Premium on an Intel Core 2 Duo, using an Intel Wireless 4965AGN wireless card.

Firstly, you will need to download the following:

A Linux distribution CD image that includes web server software such as Apache (I chose Debian)
Virtualbox 2.1

Install VirtualBox, then create a new system and virtual hard disk file. I made my virtual disk dynamically expanding up to 10.0 GB and set available memory to 256 MB.

Before booting up the new guest OS, select it from the list, then click Settings. Select Network from the list, then change the Attached to: setting to Host Interface. Select the host interface connected to the internet from the list, then click OK.

Once the machine boots for the first time, it will ask for installation media. Choose to add and mount the Linux image you downloaded, and proceed through the installation process. When installing Debian, I told it to install all web server and database packages. Your portable web server can very easily be scaled to a LAMP server by installing extra packages.

Reboot to the guest OS once it is finished installing. The Apache service should start automatically (assuming you are using Apache). Place whatever HTML files or whatever else in the /var/www/apache2-default directory. If you are behind a router, make sure to set port 80 to forward to your guest IP (found by using ifconfig or /sbin/ifconfig).

Now open up a web browser, type in your real IP address, and you should see "It Works!" or some other default page (unless you already changed it).

Java File Transfer Buffer Size

2008-12-16T12:23:00.000-08:00

As I may have mentioned in a previous post, I've been working on a file transfer program written in Java. I was getting very sick of MSN file transfer and other stupid such mechanisms that are unreliable and do not allow transfer of executable files.

I was testing v1.0 of my program over the LAN with a hefty-sized file, and found that the transfer speed was only about 10 kB/s. Frustrated, I did a little research on Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) size.

The byte buffer size I was using was 1024 bytes at a time. Apparently most LANs MTU value is 1500. I changed the byte buffer size to 1500 and some other small things, and the transfer speed jumped to around 1 MB/s. This was between two computers connected to the same router, and I have yet to test it over the internet.

phpBB Attachment Storage

2008-12-09T12:22:00.000-08:00

I've just recently set up a phpBB 3.0 forum for a local non-profit organization. Most registered users will want to frequently post pictures and so on with their forum posts, and originally I disabled attachments for fear that it would contribute to my small 100 MB database size limit set by my web hosting provider.

After asking on the phpBB support forums, apparently the files are actually stored in a folder on the web space storage, and only a reference to the attached file is stored in the database. This means that I will be able to store many pictures and attachments without having to worry about running out of space.

How To Get Rid Of Alternate Keyboards In Vista

2008-12-05T18:58:00.000-08:00

I find that everyone I know who uses Vista complains at some point of the OS randomly deciding to switch input languages. Since I am in Canada, this is most commonly French to English or English to French. There are a few simple steps you can do to stop this problem. I actually change this setting on every computer I set up at my computer technician job.

Follow the steps:

Start > Control Panel > Clock, Language and Region (or) Regional and Language Settings

Then depending on your Control Panel view,

Change Keyboards or Other Input Methods (or) Keyboards and Languages tab > Change Keyboards...

Select each language/keyboard you don't intend on using from the list, and select remove. To use the standard English keyboard, use US.

Move to the Language Bar tab, then select Hidden. Then move to the Advanced Key Settings tab, and if any of the entries have a key sequence beside their name, press Change Key Sequence... then change both settings to Not Assigned.

Hit OK a bunch of times and you're set. No more worrying about random switches between French and English and whatever other language you have installed. Unless of course you want it that way.

Common Java Socket Programming Bugs

2008-12-05T18:30:00.000-08:00

Last year I wrote an internet chat client in Java, and just now I've decided to write a file transfer program in Java. Both of these programs taught me how to use the Socket class from the Java API. I've ran into a few programming mistakes that cost me a lot of time, so here are some things to watch out for.

Remember that InetAddress.getHostAddress(); returns a string of the form "hostname/x.x.x.x" so to get just the IP address string you might want to do something like InetAddress.getHostAddress().split("/")[0];

When you are doing

Socket clientSocket = serverSocket.accept();
out = new PrintWriter(clientSocket.getOutputStream(), true);
out.print("Hello World!");

Be careful how you read on the other end with

in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(clientSocket.getInputStream()));
in.readLine();

The .readLine() method looks for a line break at the end of the string, but when you are using out.print() no "\n" is added to the end. Use out.println(); instead.

Lastly, if you are sending text such as out.println(); remember that it is not actually sent until you call out.flush();

Hopefully these tips will save you a bit of grief if you are new to network programming with Java. I know I would have been grateful if someone had told me about these simple things.

C++ Reading Files Using ifstream and getline()

2008-11-29T19:18:00.000-08:00

While doing a programming assignment in C++, I was trying to read data from a text file line by line using the following code snippet:

#include <fstream>
char line[2048];
ifstream in("data.txt");
in.getline(line,2048);

For some reason I was getting garbage being read from the file, but found out that the cause of the problem was the encoding of the text file. The text file I was using was Unicode. When I re-saved the file as ANSI encoding, the C++ program would then read the proper file data.

USB Memory Stick In Laundry

2008-11-22T22:54:00.000-08:00

Yep, it still worked after a wash cycle and a dry cycle.

Speed Up Really Slow IDE Systems

2008-11-14T20:34:00.000-08:00

A little known trick to try on an older Windows system with IDE hard drives (anything pre-2003) is as follows. If your computer is really really slow, it could be that the hard drive(s) are using the wrong transfer mode. To check, go to Start > Control Panel > System > Hardware > Device Manager > IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers. Right click on each IDE channel and select Properties. Go to the Advanced Settings tab, and make sure each transfer mode is set to "DMA if available". If the settings were set to PIO only, changing the transfer mode to DMA should significantly and noticeably improve system performance.

Error 1935 HRESULT 0x8007054F When Installing Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition

2008-11-10T14:21:00.000-08:00

When installing Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition on Windows Vista Home Premium, I received the following error:

"Error 1935 HRESULT 0x8007054F", along with some other stuff.

After some Googling, I found that the Microsoft .NET Framework can cause problems with the installation if it is already installed on the system.

I uninstalled Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 and its hotfixes, rebooted, and tried installing Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition again. This time, it installed with no problems.

HP Recovery Partition Does Not Boot

2008-11-10T13:22:00.000-08:00

I own an HP Pavilion dv6568se laptop that came with a recovery partition containing Windows Vista Home Premium on it. After a while of using Vista, I grew weary of its resource hogging and its near-constant crashes. That is when I decided to put good old Windows XP Pro on it and get rid of Vista completely. I bought a nice ExpressCard wireless card to play around with WEP cracking, and decided Linux would best suit that need, so I made a partition, and installed Linux Mint 5.

Over the past 6 months or so, I've reformatted my laptop multiple times, played with partition managers, messed with boot loaders and the MBR, and caused general mayhem on my laptop's hard drive. I was hoping somehow that my recovery partition would escape generally unscathed through all this in case I ever wanted Vista back, but alas, it did not.

I am in computer science and the course I am in requires me to use Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition. For some reason (which I never figured out), when it ran under Windows XP SP3, the compiler would turn my source files into renamed temp files and then give me "file not found" errors. Anyway, I tried Visual C++ on another laptop running Vista and it ran fine, despite "Known compatibility issues" warnings. So I decided to put Vista back on my laptop from the recovery partition.

When I booted and pressed F11 to try and enter the recovery partition, nothing would happen, and it would happily continue on to GRUB. After much playing with GRUB menu entries and partition flags, I decided to give up on using the recovery partition. Instead I downloaded a Vista Home Premium ISO with the intention of using the product key on the bottom of my laptop. I had issues booting the ISOs (I tried two), and was about to give up completely.

I looked around at the files on the Vista ISO, and found a program called bootsect.exe. This command-line program allowed me to fix the boot sector to an NT 6.0 bootloader (Vista-compatible). I ran this: bootsect /nt60 C: (C: is somehow my recovery partition drive letter). I rebooted to see if it worked, and pressing F11 still did nothing.

GRUB loaded and I was even more frustrated. GRUB proceeded to boot the entry for my Windows XP installation and somehow, voila, the HP recovery partition started booting.

Once the recovery partition boots, at this point requesting a complete recovery gives an error. The reason for this is that my laptop hard drive was all partitioned up like crazy into a bunch of different chunks. Open the command line interface and use DISKPART to re-partition the hard drive to one contiguous space, then run the complete recovery.

Mine proceeded with no issues and I am now running Vista Home Premium. Maybe I'll edit this post later to say if Visual C++ is working fine or not. After all, that was the whole reason for going through all this.

EDIT: Despite some installation issues, Visual C++ compiles my code without renaming/deleting stuff. This is good.

EDIT: This page seems to be one of the more popular ones in my blog, so apparently people are having a lot of trouble with their HP recovery partitions. If you need a copy of the bootsect.exe program, let me know. If this ends up helping you solve your problem, please post a comment so I can get an idea of how useful this post is. Thanks.

Choppy Video Playback On Older Systems

2008-11-07T00:00:00.000-08:00

One of the biggest features I enjoy about having a dual-monitor setup is the ability to watch a movie on one screen while working and browsing the web on the other. As it turns out though, an old P4 Northwood single core doesn't like handling DVD playback and Firefox at the same time. While browsing the web, video becomes choppy and frozen at times.

Fortunately, I've found an easy fix for this problem. Open up Task Manager, navigate to the Processes tab, and right click on the media player process you are using to watch videos. Under the Priority submenu, choose High and/or Realtime. Windows will warn you about system instability, just ignore it like you would User Account Control.

After those few simple steps, the video playback is smooth and much more enjoyable, and the performance of Firefox and other applications have been barely impacted. A good way to give a little more life to an older system.

Easily Override Java Platform Standard Classes and Interfaces

2008-10-29T19:24:00.000-07:00

I was working on a Java assignment, where the professor supplies a starting interface to work from, called Comparable. Other files in the assignment implement this interface, but when I tried to compile, the compiler thought I meant the Java Platform Standard interface Comparable.

I asked a friend for help on an easy way to tell the compiler which Comparable I am talking about. Apparently it was as easy as adding one line to the top of every class in my assignment:

package assignment3;

This method of organizing Java code has proven to be a very useful and simple way of overriding standard Java classes.

DOS/cmd.exe Window Input Redirect

2008-10-23T19:15:00.000-07:00

While completing an assignment today requiring assembly programming, I discovered a useful trick called input redirect when using DOS and/or cmd.exe windows. When executing your executable, if you need to constantly enter the same input every time for testing purposes, you can simply place the input in a text file, then redirect the program's input to that file instead of the keyboard.

The command is of the form:

C:\> myprog.exe <>

Your program can then use all its regular input methods as if reading from the keyboard, and it saves lots of time not having to enter everything yourself. For example, in my assembly program:

GetCh AX

This instruction does not wait for user input, it instead reads a character from the given text file.

I have not tried this trick in other languages (i.e. C, C++), but I assume it works in a similar manner.