Over the xmas holidays I was asked to look at a few issues with a family PC. One of the problems was a minor annoyance related to the modem-based DSL internet connection. The dial up box has a tick box which says “connect automatically”. Although this box was ticked, when the PC was restarted when a connection was required the same dialog box would show up, with the option unticked.
… ਪੂਰਾ ਲੇਖ ਪੜ੍ਹੋ
0Playing downloaded FLV’s
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.
… ਪੂਰਾ ਲੇਖ ਪੜ੍ਹੋ
0A temporary workaround for the ATI / 7MC / BBC-HD problems
-update-
This issue has now been fixed by a driver update from ati. For more info see the [intlink id=“48” type=“post”]latest article[/intlink] on the issue
… ਪੂਰਾ ਲੇਖ ਪੜ੍ਹੋ
0Audio issues with gigabyte power saver
I’ve been suffering from audio distortion issues when playing back movies on my recently rebuilt HTPC. After much testing I discovered a solution — disabling (in my case by uninstalling) the gigabyte dynamic energy saver utility. I am not sure if this tool only causes problems because of my specific configuration of codecs, but it certainly did cause problems across a range of hardware and media players. Disabling it immediately resolved the problem.
0Automate DVD Ripping on Windows 7
With my recent HTPC project now working really well, I want to rip my collection of DVDs to my media server for more convenient playback in Windows 7 Media Center (and all the additional benefits associated with Media Browser, particularly the meta data on ratings, synopsis, etc). Ripping DVDs, whilst straightforward is rather tedious. I found an excellent method of automating the process was to modify my autoplay settings with AutoPlay Repair, and point the autoplay to a program called DVD Rip which automates the ripping of DVDs with the well known DVD Shrink.
… ਪੂਰਾ ਲੇਖ ਪੜ੍ਹੋ
0Fixed: Media Center 7 behind taskbar on startup
I’ve had a very irritating problem with my new Windows 7 Media Center HTPC setup. I have 7MC set to load fullscreen on startup (as the PC is a dedicated HTPC), but something I changed at some point was causing the taskbar to show on top of Media Center (i.e. Media Center didn’t have window focus) and therefore my remote control didn’t work until using the mouse function to click on Media Center to refocus it (at which point the taskbar disappears).
… ਪੂਰਾ ਲੇਖ ਪੜ੍ਹੋ
0Creating Windows 7 DVD from digital distribution
I got my copy of windows 7 via digital purchase, and after running the downloaded EXE was left with the contents of a setup CD in a folder. Now i want to do a clean install so I need to create a bootable DVD. A bit of googling revealed the way to do this. Download and install WAIK for windows 7 from microsoft. Install it, and then use the command line as follows…
… ਪੂਰਾ ਲੇਖ ਪੜ੍ਹੋ
0Speed up SSDs, especially in netbooks
I recently upgraded the SSD in an Asus eeePC 901, and whilst the size and performance were both better, the performance upgrade still wasn’t on par with even a 5+ year old laptop HDD. The problem with most SSDs, especially the cheaper ones, is that they usually have very poor write performance with small files. This can make windows very sluggish and unresponsive at times.
… ਪੂਰਾ ਲੇਖ ਪੜ੍ਹੋ
0Get rid of the outlook reading pane
One of the most irritating things in MS Outlook is the reading pane. Not only is it turned on by default, but according to Microsoft there is no way to change this default. Well, I beg to differ.…
Below are specific instructions for Outlook 2007. Other versions of outlook will no doubt differ slightly, but it should be possible to find the same settings
… ਪੂਰਾ ਲੇਖ ਪੜ੍ਹੋ
0Switching the default WMP to x64 in Windows 7
One of the strangest things in Windows 7 x64 is the presence of both x86 and x64 versions of Windows Media Player 12. Even stranger is that despite Windows Media Center being 64bit only (and therefore requiring 64bit codecs) Microsoft saw fit to set the default WMP12 version to the x86 edition. For those of us who don’t wish to maintain 2 sets of codecs it is desirable to change this default status. However, Microsoft do not appear to have provided a simple way to do this as yet. So here’s how…
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“Hi James I realise it has been a long while, but I just checked this on windows 11 (build 23H2)…”