WOW Windows 7 needs to grow up with these silly problems, I’m talking about driver installations dude…

Hellooooooooooooo readers, its been longggggggggggggggg. I know you can go on with your rants about me, here is a tip,save it lol, I will receive it with a smiling face when I’m ready to get hit by tomatoes Yeah I’ve been moving around here and there, and I’ve finally found myself a full time job after my college. Yeah you can go peep into my “About section” if you wanna know more about that. For those who realllly misseddd me, right back at ya baby, well for those who didn’t well *ahem* love ya tooo
So I’ve had a problem recently with configuring IDT audio drivers for my Dell Studio 15. The problem was I have Windows v7 now, and to think driver installation was so easy, think again for audio drivers. To be honest, the same driver had no problems while I installed it in Windows XP whatsoever. So I asked Dell techsupport, they told me to download the latest drivers for my laptop from their site, which wasn’t much of a support lol jk jk. Then I browse in the Internet for hoursssssssss to come up with a good solution but noneeee, everything turned out to be a dead end. Oh and for the readers of this post, if you get an error stating that  “IDT Package didn’t detect the audio hardware” your on the right post, cuz I got the same error. So enough with the description about the problem lets get on the with solution. When you download the latest drivers for your laptop(any brand) they give it to you as an .EXE package or a .ZIP file. In either case, download it, and extract the contents to any place in your harddrive. Once you’ve done that the setup automatically starts, and while starting the audio service in your laptop you should get the above error. Here is another indicator, the audio volume icon thingy on your right corner at the bottom gives a red ‘X” and turns back to normal again, after which you get the pop up error as I’ve stated at the top. At this point don’t be mad, its okkkk. Just cancel the setup(I’m guessing it should cancel itself since the audio service fails to start). Follow the below steps from here and on…

1. In Windows Vista/v7 to access Device Manager, go to  System properties in Control Panel otherwise you can just right click on  My Computer and click on properties. On the screen that pops up, look on the top left where you should find “Device Manager” hyperlink click on it.
2. In the tree hierarchy that shows up, Look for “Sound, video and game controllers” expand the list there you should find 2 entries which says “High Definition Audio Device”. Right click on the first one and click on “Update Driver Software” it should pop up another wizard.
3. You are given with two options, select the second one which says “Browse my computer for driver software” and now in the succeeding menu you have to point to the path where the drivers you extracted in the first place are located. For example if I’ve extracted it into C:\Driver, you should point to the WDM folder inside it like so Search for driver software in this location: C:\Driver\WDM.
4. Check the box which says “Include Sub Folders” then click on Next, wait for the installation to finish and then restart WOLLAAAAA HD Audio at your serviceeeee as simple as that.

Hope this post helped you out, and don’t worry readers from now on I’m doing regular posts, no more heartbreaks Thanks for readinggg so until next time take careeee.

Why in the world would you install Windows Vista/7 first, When dual booting is easier with Windows XP Installed first?

Frustration, thats what struck me, I mean I’ve installed Windows numerous times, infact most of it to my friends and family members etc etc, and there is one lesson I still fail to learn, when I wanna dual boot two Windows versions, its a only logical to install the lower version of Windows first followed by the higher version. In my case, I should have followed this order, FIRST INSTALL WINDOWS XP, AND THEN INSTALL WINDOWS VISTA/7 SO THE VISTA BOOTLOADER WILL MAKE THINGS EASY FOR YOU!!!!

Sorry for the dramatic shouting, I couldn’t help myself for being such a doodoo brain . Anyway I always do this mistake, subconsciously or unconsciously if you must put a word to it, although there are pre-defined ways around the internet, and many bootloader controlling softwares around to make dual booting windows versions, whilst vista/7 installed first, all of those steps are tedious to follow for a rookie user.

So what did I do? I learnt from my mistake and writing this easy solution for you, which will simply help you dual boot, without any time seeking methods or softwares, when you have Windows Vista or v7 pre-installed. Considering you’ve installed Windows XP now, and you can only boot into that, here is what you do.

Steps:

1. Boot into your trusty Windows Vista/7 Installation DVD and Select “Repair My Computer” from the menu that appears.
2. Select “Boot Up Problems” from the following menu. Then follow the on screen instructions to bring back the Vista/v7 bootloader.
3. Once your into your v7 or Vista OS, open up command prompt with administrative rights.
4. Run the following sequence of commands :

bcdedit /create {ntldr} /d “Windows XP”

bcdedit /set {ntldr} device boot

bcdedit /set {ntldr} path \ntldr

bcdedit /displayorder {ntldr} /addlast

Finally exit the command prompt, and your done hope this tip really helped you out. Thanks for reading, so until next time, take care readers

Who in the world visits my blog??? Visitor Maps will answer that ;)

Here is a short tip for all you new wordpress users, if you ever wondered who on earth is visiting your blog everyday, there is something called Cluster maps which has the answer to that. I am gonna make this post less wordy cuz I am in a kind of a hurry well here is how you add a visitor map to your blog’s sidebar or header or footer or wherever

1. First open your browser and head over to http://www.clustermaps.com, this is how it looks like :

2. Type in your blog address and your email address to register for a cluster map, once you succeed they should give you a HTML code, select all of that code and copy it.

3. Now head over to your wordpress account by logging in as administrator, then follow the path Dashboard -> Appearance -> Widgets , now you should be in a place as the below screenshot :

4. Drag a new text widget from the left column to your Sidebar or Footer or Header at the right.

5. Edit the widget’s settings, this is where you paste the HTML code you’ve just copied into the clipboard before. Here is the screenshot:

6. Now save the widget settings, log out of your wordpress account and THAT’S IT !!! , from here and on your blog will the visitor map for your site.

Hope this tip helped out all the new users of WordPress, I mean I know there are numerous posts related to this topic, but I wanted to give a simple explanation to it, and I hope that I did

Cheers.

Missing Windows Boot Files !?!… Oh my can that be devastating ???

Well “not really” is the answer for that question. But sometimes when life goes happy like a fairy tale, we forget to realise the fact that not all fairy tales have happy endings. Its funny that I should bring up that quote here, if one of my friends is seeing this blog he/she would surely be laughing at this inside joke … but whatever….. right?

Anyway the thing is whenever you install Windows and you are having a good time with it, there are some jittery times when you are bound to end up with a corrupt startup configuration….like say…. the boot files going POOF!! WOSH!!! into thin air Now…. considering the OS you are using is Windows Vista or above fixing boot problems is almost automated ( which means when you boot up with your installation dvd of vista or above, you get an option like Repair this computer –> Fix Booting Problems and BAM!!! whatever the problem is , it gets solved ) But what if its Windows XP ??? now there is a pickle, you could use Automated Recovery but it rarely helps in frisky cases, and when I say frisky cases I mean files like hal.dll and/or ntdetect.com or ntldr going POOOF!!!!

So for ppl who are using Windows XP and having problems like missing boot files such hal.dll, ntldr etc, here is how you restore them from Windows XP Installation CD.

For ntldr & ntdetect.com Missing:

1. Boot into your Windows XP Installation CD/DVD ( the blue colored setup thingy ) once it does its routine of checking the connected hardware, you should get a menu to setup a fresh version of windows, below it there is another option which says “Press R to Enter Recovery Console” do what it says then you should enter the console. [Note: Keep the administrator password of your existing Windows Installation handy, cuz you'll need it from here and on]
2. Provide the admin password wherever asked to, finally you should have reached the command prompt. This is where you should type “copy d:\i386\ntldr c:\” [without quotes] and hit Enter.
3. Then type “copy d:\i386\ntdetect.com c:\” [without quotes] and hit Enter.
4. Here the drive letter d: represents your optical drive(CD/DVD drive) letter and the drive letter c: represents the partition in which your previous Windows Installation currently exists. Mind you, this may vary from system to system, be sure of the drive letters before doing the above.
5. If prompted to overwrite, Hit ‘Y’ .
6. Finally type exit and remove the Windows Installation CD/DVD.

For hal.dll Missing:

1. Get into Windows Recovery Console as before.
2. Provide the admin password wherever asked to, finally you should have reached the command prompt. This is where you should type “expand d:\i386\hal.dl_ c:\windows\system32” [without quotes] and hit Enter.
3. Here the drive letter d: represents your optical drive(CD/DVD drive) letter and the drive letter c: represents the partition in which your previous Windows Installation currently exists. Mind you, this may vary from system to system, be sure of the drive letters before doing the above.
4. If prompted to overwrite, Hit ‘Y’ .
5. Finally type exit and remove the Windows Installation CD/DVD.

For Corrupt or Missing boot.ini:

1. Get into Windows Recovery Console as before.
2. Provide the admin password wherever asked to, finally you should have reached the command prompt. This is where you should type “bootcfg /rebuild” [without quotes] and hit Enter.
3. If prompted to Add Installation to bootlist? , Hit ‘Y’ .
4. The next prompt asks for your Load Identifier where you should enter “Windows XP Professional“ or “Windows XP Home Edition” [without quotes] based on the OS you’ve installed in the first place.
5. The next prompt asks for your load options where you should enter “/fastdetect” [without quotes] and hit Enter.
6. Finally type exit and remove the Windows Installation CD/DVD.

If you have any questions in any of these steps just leave a comment and i’ll get back to you Well… hope this post helped you out. Cheers.

 

 

Regedit , Task Manager , Control Panel DISABLED!!! CALL 911 !!!!!!!!!!!!

Well I am a little hyper today and a bit dramatic :p its just cuz the problem that viruses cause today are not only insane but really gets on your nerves even if your realllllly geeky. Once such problem hit me last week, I have a routine I’ve get hit by a virus, first I try to take my meds, get a good sleep, make a doctor’s appointment if it gets really worse….no WAIT!!! ….what am I doing? thats the wrong routine let me start over. I meant to say that i have a routine when MY COMPUTER gets hit by a virus. Well I am little aware of what common viruses would do today with the help of creating registry keys. I pulled a few strings to learn more about what sort of registry keys would be malicious in my registry, I used to track them down and erase them for good. As far as the task manager is concerned, I use it to track down the culprit virus process that is hiding in the memory and creating the registry keys at every regular bootup. But some smart a$$ virus thinks it can ruin my day by disabling my tools of the trade (regedit & taskmanager) whilst carrying out its dirty work as usual. Well fear no more friends, I am about to put a solution in here for viruses like that which I am sure will make your day when you end up in a situation like I did. Although there are numerous free tools and fixes in the internet to enable regedit , task manager bla bla, I am of the mindset, “you can do anything to make your life easier but never let that stop your geeky side to grow ” . Well lets talk business now shall we?….
I assume that you’ve been infected by a virus that has disabled all the required system tools that can possibly bring it down. So to renable everything follow the steps:

1.Make sure you have administrative privileges to your account.

2.Open command prompt and type the following:

“REG add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v DisableTaskMgr /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f” [without quotes]

“REG add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v DisableSR /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f” [without quotes]

“REG add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v DisableRegistryTools /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f” [without quotes]

“REG add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v DisallowRun /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f” [without quotes]

“REG add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v NoControlPanel /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f” [without quotes]

3.If hypothetically, command prompt is disabled too then you have to open a new text document and create a .reg file. Its content should be as follows, its copy and paste friendly

————————————
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System]
“DisableTaskMgr”=dword:00000000

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System]
“NoControlPanel”=dword:00000000

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System]
“DisableSR”=dword:00000000

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System]
“DisallowRun”=dword:00000000

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System]
“DisableRegistryTools”=dword:00000000

————————————-

4.Save the file with a name followed by “.reg” extension and then double click that reg file to add those entries into the registry.

5.Either method gives the same result, so its simply based on the fact whether your command prompt is malfunctioning or not.

6.There its done!! but before I finish, in step two I am using standard dos commands to do the job, which means the /d /t and /f are options to be used whilst the key is being added to the registry.

/v denotes the name of the New value to be added.

/t denotes the type of value to be added , be it BINARY or DWORD etc.

0 denotes the value that the key will hold once it is created. It can be 1 or 0 if its a DWORD key.

/f denotes to forcibly change the value of the key if the registry key already exists(because of the virus, which creates the key and sets the value to 1, where you set it back to 0)

I hope this tip helped you out, so until next time, take care and thanks for reading

Reliance NetConnect Made Easy

Hey hey ppl I hope you are all having a fine day, well mine is going ok, its how do you say “So far so good” or my personal favorite “All izzzz Well ” [If you are wondering where that quote is from, you obviously haven't seen 3 Idiots ] anyway, the huge news is I bought a new USB modem and the brand I am sure its obvious from the title of this posting I have to say of all the USB modems i’ve seen, Reliance is pretty much good for the money, not that I am advertising this for them or I work of them or anything if thats what you are thinking. But imagine this 3.1Mbps for a mere Rs.500 and my download speed zooming up dramatically city wise now thats power which you can’t buy . Most of my class mates and friends own a BSNL data card which is awesome too but the coverage was very poor. This was the same case for my other friend who owns Tata Indicom Photon+. So regardless of speed , Reliance has an awesome coverage area which is what guy’s like me look for So there I was downloading movies and songs and tutors bla bla [if you are still wondering about speed , imagine downloading 4 movies in a mere single hour ] in WINDOWS. If you are a tech geek, you would be smart to know that network connectivity is pretty less resource hungry in Linux than it is in Windows which is to say, Internet is much faster in Linux. So I couldn’t wait to configure my modem in Linux. So I ask my bsnl data card buddies to help me out here, but to my dismay their methods did not apply to Reliance netconnect well atleast not completely [BUMMER!!! i know ] So anyway I had to pull a few strings to finally figure out how to do it properly for my USB modem. So this post would be pretty useful to all you Reliance NetConnect users out there. So enough chitchat, lets talk business now shall we?

Steps:

1. Boot into your Linux distro with your USB modem plugged into your USB port properly. [This step is very important, make sure there are no loose connections]
2. Now all the following steps requires Root level privileges, so make sure once you open the terminal in your linux you type in “su” [without quotes] and enter your     root password before continuing.
3. Once you have root level access, type in “lsusb” [without quotes] and hit enter, you should get the following on screen.

4. As you can see my USB modem is detected correctly as indicated by the first line of the result. Now there are certain numbers after ID which has vendor ID : product ID write down both in a piece of paper.

5. Next thing you have to do is to boot up the drivers and modules for your USB Modem as follows

6. Here in the place of vendor= 0x you should enter your vendor ID [the value before the colon] and in the place of product= 0x you should enter your product ID then hit enter, if all goes well you should have no errors or warnings. If you get a warning saying that “Deprecated modprobe.conf, all modules in the future bla bla” it simply means you have to go to the following path /etc/modprobe.d/ and rename the file blacklist to blacklist.conf and that should fix the warning message. The above warning if it does occur, is mostly on red-hat based linux distros 0_o I wonder why?

7. Now make sure that your Modem’s LED is blinking twice every second, blinking once every second denotes no good configuration 0_o and you have to start over.

8. Now comes the most important step, open the file /etc/wvdial.conf and delete anything thats in there and save the file. Now in your root terminal type in the command “wvdialconf” [without quotes] and hit enter this should fill the wvdial.conf with the configurations based on your USB Modem. Open /etc/wvdial.conf again and you should have something like the following :

9. Remove any extra semicolons in that file and fill in the corresponding details based on your account in place of the <>. Finally save the file.

10. Now in the root terminal type in the command “wvdial” and hit enter . If all goes well your internet should by up and running. A successful connection is indicated when your remote ip, local ip, primary dns address and secondary dns address is displayed in your terminal.  DO NOT CLOSE THE TERMINAL AS LONG AS YOU WANNA STAY CONNECTED TO THE INTERNET.

11. If you wanna disconnect click on the root terminal and press Ctrl+C and thats it. Hope this tip helped you out as much as it did to me .

12. From the next time, just plug in the modem and type in wvdial in the terminal and your done.

AWKWARD SUGGESTION: If you haven’t installed wvdial package in your linux make sure you get the .deb file and install it before getting this over with.

Peeka Boo!! In Your Network

Hey ppl, during most of the times we’d like to share resources between two or more computers in your network. This task is made easy to you by the network neighbourhood.  You can easily access other computers in your network from there, But what if you still want to be able to share folders with some users but you just don’t want everyone on the network to see your computer’s shares? Is there a way to do it instead of just disabling sharing altogether, you ask? Well here is how you do it, perform the below steps in the computer whose resources you wanna make it limited and visible to certain users alone.

Steps:
1.Click Start —> Run.
2.In the Run box, type net config server /hidden:yes
3.Click OK.
Now others who know the UNC path (\\your computer name\share name) can connect to your computer’s shares from the Run box, but it won’t show up in the network browse list. There you go! hope this tip helped you out