March 10, 2010
December 9, 2009
November 17, 2009
Windows 7 Tip: Power Efficiency Reports Tune Up Windows 7's Energy Use
Running powercfg -energy as Administrator will generate a nice (albeit slightly cryptic) HTML report showing you how to configure your device to save energy.
October 29, 2009
Google Chrome Tip: Fixing 'Resolving proxy' Delays
Google Chrome is a quick, quick browser, but if you have it set to automatically detect your proxy settings, it can be IE6-slow to launch. Here’s how you fix it:
- Click the wrench menu.
- Select Options.
- Click the Under the Hood tab.
- In the ‘Network’ section, click the Change proxy settings button. This will open the ‘Internet Properties’ dialog box.
- Click the LAN settings button.
- Deselect the ‘Automatically detect settings’ checkbox.
October 27, 2009
Automatically Paste Text Into Outlook Without The Formatting
This alone was worth upgrading to 2007. It always drove me nuts that I’d have to fix the font size and color after pasting in stuff from other programs/emails.
Bonus tip: To strip all formatting from text, highlight it and press Ctrl-Shift-N.
September 22, 2009
How to install your old HP Photosmart 7350 printer in Vista/Windows 7
My trusty old Photosmart 7350 (circa 2003ish) has always installed automagically in whatever OS I’ve thrown at it (Linux included). Windows 7, not so much. As it turns out, you need to install the driver for the Deskjet 5550 (included with Windows 7), and then mess around with the port settings a bit. After that, no problems (yet).
August 6, 2009
Windows XP Login Logout Loop (Virus)
If you find that upon logging into Windows you are immediately logged out without even a peek at your desktop, you are probably suffering from the effects of a virus that nukes some Windows System files or the registry values that point to them. The fix is pretty easy. Just take a look at the link above. You may need a Windows install CD (or in my case, a Linux LiveCD) to restore userinit.exe back to its proper place in windows\system32. I found an extra copy hanging around in windows\i386 that I copied over there (I’m not sure, though, whether or not that file is the proper version for SP3, so YMMV).
I’m too busy to mess around with viruses on my own PC. That’s just one more reason why I use Ubuntu.
July 1, 2009
How to get Transport Tycoon Deluxe to Run in Windows 7
Update 16 FEB 2010: I’ve noticed that this post ranks very highly on Google for “Transport Tycoon Deluxe Windows 7” so I decided to write a new post detailing how I actually play Transport Tycoon these days: with the excellent open-source remake OpenTTD, which runs on Windows and Linux. My new post is available here.
If you’re trying to run the classic simulation game “Transport Tycoon Deluxe” in Windows 7, you may get an error upon startup when the game can’t find dplay.dll. Here’s what you need to do:
- Go to
C:\Windows\winsxs\x86_microsoft-windows-directx-directplay4_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7100.0_none_e80363be14f8ec68(substitute your Windows installation path for C:\Windows if necessary). - Copy
dplayx.dllto your Transport Tycoon installation folder. - Rename the new copy of the file to
dplay.dll.
How to Automount a drive in DOSBOX
Dosbox is a DOS emulator that lets you play your old games on Linux, Windows, Mac, etc. This tutorial shows you how to auto-mount your DOS folder so that it’s ready to go each time you fire it up.
May 5, 2009
VirtualBox Tip: How to Fix a VirtualBox Guest That Is Stuck in Seamless Mode
This one’s easy…
- Find the xml configuration file for your VM (check the “Machines” folder configured in VBox preferences if you’re not sure where it is).
- Find a line that looks like “<ExtraDataItem name=”GUI/Seamless” value=”on”/>”.
- Change “on” to “off”.
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