I was recently asked to look at the touchpad on a HP Pavilion DV2000 laptop which had a faulty left button. Spares and repairs for laptops are often hard to come by so I was pleased to find the HP Service manual as a PDF, which included all the part numbers, and then very pleased to find that HP offer an extensive direct sales service for most parts via the HP PartSurfer. Suffice to say this laptop is now fixed, for a very low price. Good move by HP — I wonder if other major manufacturers provide a similar service?
Posts By: Jon Scaife
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Google Earth: How to fix poor quality overlays
I’ve recently had some problems with displaying large overlays (generated from NASA SRTM data) in Google Earth. Although the overlay data I exported was very detailed google earth was displaying a blurry mess which was impractical for my intended purpose. Searching around on the ‘net didn’t reveal anything useful so as a last resort I tried switching from “Direct X” to “Open GL” mode (under tools: options).
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More on NoScript
A few more tips to improve NoScript, as the author sadly doesn’t quite configure it for optimal security, or browsing-friendliness by default.
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Improve your browsing security without crippling lots of sites
I always recommend that people install an alternative browser to Internet Explorer. Personally I prefer Firefox to the other alternatives (Chrome, Opera, Safari) as I find the huge number of addons on offer give it an unassailable advantage. I’ve recently experimented with the NoScript addon, which enhances security by blocking active objects and scripts unless explicitly approved. However I found that I was forever having to grant permission to every site I visited for it to work correctly.
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Uninstall Haali Media Splitter x64
There is a beta (or maybe its Alpha) installer for Haali Media Splitter x64 out and about (for links to the installer see my previous post on windows 7 x64 codecs). Sadly the uninstall seems to be broken, which can cause havoc when trying to diagnose codec issues. To remove Haali completely you need to unregister the following files manually using regsvr32 /u filename
(from a command prompt run as administrator)
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Media Codecs and Utilities for Windows 7 x64
Here is a quick list of links to useful x64 codecs and related utilities that are compatible with Windows 7 x64 (64-Bit) edition…
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Replacing an invalid Win XP key with a genuine key
If you’ve ever been asked to fix a PC and have subsequently discovered it has a non-genuine or inappropriate Windows XP key installed, and you wish to update the key with a legitimate key, for example when a second hand laptop has been installed with a corporate key and needs updating with the OEM key from the sticker still attached to it, you may have run into problems switching between OEM, Volume and Retail versions of windows.
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Extra Freesat channels
Update: ITV-HD has changed. See this newer article
It seems that Windows Media Center 7 doesn’t find all the channels that are FTA on the main UK Satellite group, the Astra 2D group at 28.2º East. I imagine many Freesat boxes wont either. Here are the frequencies for a few fully Free-To-Air English language channels available on this satellite cluster…
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Free Anti-Virus from Microsoft
Microsoft have released (a few weeks ago) a free Beta of their new Anti-Virus / Security product Microsoft Security Essentials. Unfortunately as a UK resident when I visit the official Microsoft page I am told “This beta is available only to customers in the United States, Israel, China and Brazil”. A quick google search quickly turns up a download link on SoftPedia which works. There are downloads of x86 and x64 versions of Security Essentials for Windows XP, Vista and 7
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Installing Mobility Radeon drivers from ATi
Update: Catalyst Mobility drivers are now available for many cards from ATi. (as of Catalyst version 10.3)
It seems to be very difficult to obtain reasonably up-to-date drivers for the ATi graphics chips in many laptops. This is because the OEMs have asked ATi not to provide generic drivers direct to the end user, ostensibly to reduce support requests from users with drivers not tested by the OEM’s. This seems perfectly reasonable, but the sad fact is most OEM’s only update the drivers for a new laptop model a few times and soon abandon it as they concentrate on the next generation release. For those people trying to update their drivers to address a problem or to gain access to new features there are no clear options. Fortunately there are ways around this problem.
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