Posts Categorised: Misc Software

0Group Policy LogoCustom ADM file for Windows Server 2003 / XP domain

Published by & filed under Misc Software. Last updated .

I was dig­ging thru an old back-up CD today and stumbled upon a cus­tom ADM file I cre­ated when I was admin­is­ter­ing a Win­dows Serv­er 2003 / Win­dows XP Domain. To use, copy the fol­low­ing code into note­pad, save the file with a .adm exten­sion on the system32 folder of a domain serv­er. Open Group Policy edit­or and add the file, then browse to the “Tech­ni­cians Set­tings” to enable any of the settings.
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0PC Hardware CPU RAM UpgradeSimple ways to make your PC much faster

Published by & filed under Misc Software. Last updated .

There are lots of tips and advice out there on the inter­net about how to tweak the per­form­ance of your PC. Some of them have some use­ful tips, but the vast major­ity are of very little use, either because they are for the wrong oper­at­ing sys­tem, or they don’t apply to your setup, or because they’re just plain wrong. When someone brings a PC to me and says its too slow, before I advise them to upgrade it (and that is always an option) I have a quick look for sev­er­al things that are the lead­ing cause of slow PC per­form­ance. Over 90% of the time car­ry­ing out the vari­ous steps detailed below res­ults in a sub­stan­tial improve­ment and a happy PC user.
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0Quizdom LogoQuizdom tablet “video capture” not working

Published by & filed under Misc Software. Last updated .

I was asked to invest­ig­ate why some video cap­ture util­ity which is part of the soft­ware pack­age for the Quiz­dom Tab­let was­n’t load­ing cor­rectly on a par­tic­u­lar laptop. Invest­ig­a­tion revealed that quiz­dom used the XviD codec and installs it as part of its setup routine. The laptop in ques­tion already had a video codec installed that was cap­able of decod­ing XviD videos, and this pri­or codec had a high­er mer­it than the XviD nat­ive codec installed by quiz­dom. Dis­abling XviD sup­port in this codec proved to be the solu­tion. Any­one with the stan­dalone MPC-HC codecs or ffd­show installed may come across this problem

0GATSO Speed Camera LogoTomTom speedcam alerts — inc eurozone

Published by & filed under Misc Software. Last updated .

Like many people I use a TomTom sat nav, and I’m a big fan of the speed cam­era data­base provided by Pock­et­G­PSWorld.  It is also pos­sible to down­load some nice alerts from PGPSW, but I find the beeps are rather annoy­ing, and the max­im­um speed sup­por­ted is 70, which is fine for the UK, but isn’t very help­ful for maps of Europe.  As a res­ult I have mashed togeth­er an altern­at­ive set that I think are much nicer.  Get them from the [int­link id=“741” type=“page”]downloads[/intlink] page.  They work for both UK and Euro maps.  The Euro ones go up to 130.  Both sets have a nicer voice (female) and a nicer alert beep.  By all means try them out.  They install and oper­ate exactly the same as the ones offered by PGPSW, if you need help installing them have a look there.

0Juice Podcaster LogoProblem with Juice — solved

Published by & filed under Misc Software. Last updated .

For a while I’ve used the pod­cast man­ager Juice. I’ve been very happy for a while, but the oth­er day it sud­denly stopped run­ning for no obvi­ous reas­on. Unin­stalling and rein­stalling did­n’t resolve the issue, but after some dig­ging I dis­covered the unin­stall­a­tion pro­cess was­n’t delet­ing the set­tings file. On Win­dows XP this is loc­ated in C:\Documents and Settings\Application Data and is a folder called iPod­der (not Juice!). Delet­ing this folder and then rein­stalling Juice restored it to its former glory.

0Flash Flv LogoPlaying downloaded FLV’s

Published by & filed under Codecs, Misc Media Software, Misc Software. Last updated .

I recently had a prob­lem with 2 PCs which appeared to be con­figured identic­ally, but whilst one would play a FLV down­loaded from you­tube, the oth­er would fail. Some oth­er FLVs played OK on both sys­tems. After much fur­ther invest­ig­a­tion I dis­covered that the act­iveX ver­sion of flash play­er on 1 of the PC’s was up-to-date, but on the oth­er was not.
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