Why You Shouldn’t Buy a Mac

Why You Shouldn’t Buy a Mac ( Click Picture to Enlarge )

A step by step narration about the evolution of Internet

Ever wondered how the Internet evolved? I'm sure the answer is yes, almost all of us at some point of time wanted to know this. This 8 minutes and 10 seconds long video will roughly reply all your queries you ever came across, regarding the evolution of Internet.

Cable or DSL broadband Speed Test

My Results

If you want to check you Cable or DSL broadband Internet connection go visit Speed.io.

Check your own speed.

My Desk and my wife Vicki at her Desk

My wife Vicki at her Desk today

My Desk

My wife Vicki gave me her LCD monitor today and took the CRT that I was using for my Linux computer. This is so much better.

ctfmon.exe and how to disable it in Windows XP and Vista

If you’re like me, you probably like your computer to run as fast and efficiently as possible. One of the main ways to do this is to stop any unwanted processes from working behind the scenes and eating up your system’s resources. Most likely you have already gone through Windows Task Manager to stop unneeded processes, but what about that pesky "ctfmon.exe" that never seems to go away.

According to Microsoft, Ctfmon is the process that controls Alternative User Input and the Office Language bar. It’s how you can control the computer via speech or a pen tablet, or using the onscreen keyboard inputs for Asian languages. In other words, 90% of Windows users will never need nor want the addition, so how do you go about disabling it for good?

Here’s how to get rid of it on Windows XP:

Go to your control panel and open up "Regional and Language Options." Choose the "Languages" tab in the window that appears and click "Details" under "Text Services and Input Languages." Go to the "Advanced" tab in the new window that appears and check the box labeled "Turn off advanced text services." This will immediately close Ctfmon. Finally, go back to the "Settings" tab and verify the information under the heading "Installed Services." The first tier should read English (United States) followed by a second tier that reads "keyboard." followed by a third tier that reads "US." As long as there are no other services besides your keyboard, Ctfmon should never come back on. If you have any additional services installed, review whether you truly need them, and if not, remove them.

Here’s how to get rid of it on Windows Vista:

The process is similar to the steps taken in Windows XP, but since the layout is different, there’s a different route that must be taken. First, open your "Control Panel," and choose "Regional and Language Options." Find "Change keyboards or other input methods" which should bring up a new window. Choose the "Keyboards and Languages" tab and click "Change Keyboards." At this point, you should be at the same screen as in Windows XP. You’ll want to remove the extra installed services in the list other than your default keyboard language to make sure Ctfmon will never again activate.

To save your changes and to make sure Ctfmon will never again return, you need to alter your startup procedures. Go to "Run" in your startbar and enter "msconfig.exe" to open up a new window. Go to the "Startup" tab, and uncheck the box next to "ctfmon." After this, simply reboot your system to be completely Ctfmon free.

Computer viruses make it to orbit

Image via Wikipedia A computer virus is alive and well on the International Space Station (ISS).

Nasa has confirmed that laptops carried to the ISS in July were infected with a virus known as Gammima.AG. The worm was first detected on earth in August 2007 and lurks on infected machines waiting to steal login names for popular online games. Nasa said it was not the first time computer viruses had traveled into space and it was investigating how the machines were infected.

Read more about this at BBC News.

Security Warning fake Microsoft e-mail.

Screen Shot. Click Image to see full size.

If you get an e-mail that says it's from Microsoft asking you to download anything just delete it. It's a Trojan/virus. Microsoft is not going to send you download links. This one leads to, I am not posting the beginning to this URL for security reasons.de/DE44424232V2/images/ie7.0.exe Just delete these kinds of e-mails unless you want to pay me to fix your computer.

Read more about this here at the Internet Storm Center.

August’s Patch Tuesday Microsoft

Here's what Microsoft has planned for us next Patch Tuesday that affects Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office and some components of Windows such as:

* Windows Messenger
* Internet Explorer
* Outlook Express/Windows Mail
* Media Player

The affected Operating Systems are as follows:

* Windows 2000
* Windows XP
* Windows Server 2003
* Windows Vista
* Windows Server 2008

The affected Microsoft Office products are:

* Microsoft Works 8
* Microsoft Office 2000 SP3
* Microsoft Office XP SP3
* Microsoft Office 2003 SP2 and SP3
* Microsoft Office System 2007 and with SP1
* Microsoft Office Project 2002
* Snapshot Viewer for Microsoft Access
* Microsoft Office PowerPoint Viewer 2003
* Microsoft Office Excel Viewer 2003 and with SP3
* Microsoft Office Excel Viewer
* Microsoft Office Converter Pack
* Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack
* Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and with SP1
* Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac
* Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac

They also plan to release an updated version of Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool

Microsoft is also planning to release the following non-security update on August 12, 2008 via Windows Update website:

* Windows Mail Junk E-mail Filter [August 2008] (KB905866)
* Windows Home Server Power Pack 1 (KB944289)
* Update for Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, and Windows XP (KB951072)
* Update for Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, and Windows XP (KB951618)
* Update for Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, and Windows XP (KB952287)
* Update for Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) 3 Service Pack 1 (KB954960)


* Seven Microsoft Security Bulletins with maximum severity of Critical.
* Five with maximum severity of Important.
* These updates may require a restart.

This is an advance notification of security bulletins that Microsoft is intending to release on August 12, 2008.

You can read more about these here.

Windows Vista

I talked to my son John a few weeks ago and he was telling me that he was thinking about getting a new more powerful laptop computer for himself. Right now he has an almost one year old laptop running Windows Vista Home Premium and it just doesn't have the power that he wants. It has two gigs memory and a 383mb video card, and a 160gb hard drive. He also has two external hard drives that he uses for additional storage and an ipod. You can click here to see what he has now. I can understand him wanting a new one. John is a computer nut so to speak. He uses it for everything, music, movies, television, phone calls, programming, work and so on. Before John joined the Navy he was in college majoring in Computer Science and doing some tech support on the side. Usually he is doing several things with his computer at once and needs allot of power. "John is a power user".

Now, getting to my point, I have two desktop computers myself and my wife has one. My computers run Windows XP and Linux and my wife is using XP. I get allot of calls asking me for help with other peoples computers and since I don't have Vista I really can't help others that use that OS. John said that when he buys a new computer for himself that he would give me his current laptop. That will enable me to use and learn Vista. I am really excited by the prospect of owning a laptop with Vista. That would enable me to learn the OS and the flexibility to do work from other places besides my computer room/office. It will be nice to be able to sit in my living room in the recliner with my knees up instead of sitting here in my computer chair every time I want to do something with the computer. At the very least I'm sure that my blog will be updated more often when I get a laptop..... I'll let you know what he decides on when he finally buys a new computer, and thanks in advance John. :)

As a side note, I called my daughter Cindy but she was working and couldn't talk at the time. At least I know that she made it to Washington ok. :) I'm sure she will call me later when she has the time and I'll try to let you know what she is up to then.

Is Linux Ubuntu usable enough for non-tech-savvy people yet?

Image by ktostereo via FlickrThe author asks his girlfriend to perform simple tasks using a fresh Ubuntu installation. It's surprising how some of the simple things we assume to be easy are actually hard for someone who's never used Linux. Interesting insight into how ready Linux is for the desktop.

read more | digg story

I finally got Synergy to work

What a day. I have been trying to get Synergy to work with my Windows XP and Linux machines for two days now and finally got everything to work tonight. What I had to do was so simple. I had to click the Scroll Lock button on my keyboard on my Windows XP ( Server ) machine. That was it. Once I did that I was able to move the mouse from one computer and Operating System to another. I can now control both computers from one mouse and keyboard. The Scroll Lock is a hotkey that locks the mouse and keyboard to one computer. LOL This will make things so much easier. :)

This is how I finally got Synergy to work. On the Linux desktop I installed QuickSynergy. That was easy. Just go to the Synaptic Package Manager and do a search for QuickSynergy and download and install it. In QuickSynergy you go to the Share tab and type in the Server computer name in the direction box ( in this case the left box ) then go to the Use tab and type in the IP address for the Server computer. Then click Start. ( the Server is the computer that has the mouse and keyboard that you want to use )

On the Windows desktop go to the Configure button next to Screens and Links and input all the variables for both computers. Do this for the IP addresses and the computer names. It using two computers you will have 4 entries here. Under the advanced setting put the windows computer name. Make note of the port Synergy uses.

Next: GO to the Windows firewall ( or whatever firewall you are using ) and add exceptions for synergy. Synergy will do this once when you set it up but you should do it again. I had to do this to get it to work.

Next: Go to your router settings and enable port forwarding for synergy for the port that you noted earlier. Do it for all IP addresses for the computers that you are going to connect using synergy. That's about it except for the pesky scroll lock button on the keyboard. The Scroll Lock button locks Synergy to one screen. If you are having problems getting it to work try clicking on Scroll Lock and try again.


If you have any questions just ask.

I want to say a special thanks to Sean over at "The Tech Juice" for his excellent tutorial on Synergy and all his help.


Synergy lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware. It's intended for users with multiple computers on their desk since each system uses its own monitor(s). Redirecting the mouse and keyboard is as simple as moving the mouse off the edge of your screen. Synergy also merges the clipboards of all the systems into one, allowing cut-and-paste between systems. Furthermore, it synchronizes screen savers so they all start and stop together and, if screen locking is enabled, only one screen requires a password to unlock them all.



How to use Synergy Video from Cnet

Mibbit: Web-based IRC client

Mibbit is a new IRC client. While AOL, MSN, Yahoo, Google, Skype, ICQ, and others dominate the world chat scene these days, once upon a time IRC or Internet Relay Chat was king. And while IRC doesn't get much attention these days, it's still alive, kicking, and useful if you need a multi-user chat system for communicating with co-workers, open source project developers, or anonymous folks you might want to trade files with.

So what makes Mibbit different from old school IRC clients? It's web-based, which means you can run it from anywhere. But despite the fact that you can run Mibbit from your web browser, you get all of the features you'd expect from a desktop based IRC client, and then some.

There's a search engine that lets you find channels by keyword. You can change the color scheme, and even use a built in translator to communicate with users in different languages. Each new channel or server screen opens in a new Mibbit tab, and if you're running Mibbit in a tabbed browser, you'll get cute little alerts like "Server stuff!" or "People said stuff!"

There's even a Mibbit widget that you can install on your web site to let visitors chat with you via IRC.

Another Computer up and running

My wifes computer in her computer room

My computers in my computer room

I worked on a computer due to a lightning strike for a neighbor and they ended up getting a new one because this one didn't work ( several parts fried ) and insurance paid for the new one. After working on it here for two days and about 15hrs I was able to get it up and running again with the Ubuntu Linux OS installed. I downloaded Freedos and formatted and ran Chkdsk on the hard drive and then after several tries was able to get Linux installed. I had to replace some things inside but I had the parts here. You can see my setup in the picture.

The new ( old ) computer is a Dell Dimension 9100. All three of our computers are connected to the internet now through my Linksys router.

This is what it has:

*Pentium 4 3GHz with 2 MB Cache and Hyperthreading Technology Chipset Intel 945P

*375 W Power Supply

*3-V CR2032 lithium coin cell Battery

*1 Gig DDR2 SDRAM 2 DIMMS 667-MHz.

*160 Gig 7200rpm SATA 16MB Cache Hard Drive

*CD-RW drive

*DVD-RW drive

*3 1/4 Floppy Drive

*10/100/1000 Ethernet

*256meg PIC Express NVIDIA Video Card with TV Out

*Sound Blaster Live 24-bit Advanced Audio Sound Card

*Dell USB Keyboard

*Dell USB Optical Mouse

*56K PIC Data Fax Modem

*7 USB 2.0 Ports ( two front-panel and five back-panel USB 2.0-compliant connectors )

*Running the Ubuntu Linux Operating System

Dell Dimension 9100

Good morning. I have been busy trying to work on a Dell Dimension 9100 that was given to me after a client had it replaced due to this computer failing due to a lightning strike. The hard drive has failed and all test show that the drive it a total loss. I tried to run a linux live cd on it yesterday to see if that would work and still I had no luck. My son John called from Mayport Naval Base last night and he is going to get me a new SATA hard drive for this computer and then I will work on it some more. Aside from that I will upgrade the memory and video card and see how far I can get with this thing.

Memory Upgrade for the Dell Dimension 9100 Desktop/PC

The last few day here have been quiet

The last few day here have been quiet. Our neighbor had her computer fail due to a lightning strike a few days ago. She had me come over and test it and then write up an estimate for her insurance company. After I talked to the the Insurance Adjuster her Insurance company decided to cover the whole thing minus her deductible. I ordered her a new computer yesterday and should have it sometime next week.

This is what she did have:

Pentium 4 3GHz with 2 MB Cache and Hyperthreading Technology Chipset Intel 945P
375 W Power Supply
3-V CR2032 lithium coin cell Battery
1 Gig DDR2 SDRAM 2 DIMMS 667-MHz.
200 Gig 7200rpm SATA 16MB Cache Hard Drive
CD-RW drive
DVD-RW drive
3 1/4 Floppy Drive
10/100/1000 Ethernet
256meg PIC Express NVIDIA Video Card with TV Out
Sound Blaster Live 24-bit Advanced Audio Sound Card
Dell USB Keyboard
Dell USB Optical Mouse
56K PIC Data Fax Modem
7 USB 2.0 Ports ( two front-panel and five back-panel USB 2.0-compliant connectors )
Speakers
Microsoft Works Suite with Microsoft Word
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition

Her new one will be a little better.

Just waiting

Good morning. I sold the computer that I mentioned in an earlier post today. I had 3 calls about it this morning and one yesterday. The computer is going to a school teacher so it will go to good use.

My wifes friends Kara and Sheila from Arkansas are coming up to visit us this week. They should be here sometime today or tomorrow and are planning on staying until Sunday. My wife Vicki has been friends with them since they were kids. Kara is bringing her Dell Dimension 4600 with her for me to work on. It's running slow and has some other problems, but that is to be expected after 4 years. I will probably format the hard drive and reinstall the OS and suggest that she get some more memory for it.

Got the computer up and running

I spent several hours last night getting the new ( used ) computer formatted and then reinstalling the OS, drivers, and other software. This morning my computer room looked like a real mess with computer parts everywhere. Today I moved things around and cleaned up a bit. It will stay this way until I get rid on the computer that I got yesterday.

I have both computers right next to each other on the floor and the monitors on my desk. This way when I show it to people they can try it out before deciding on whether or not they want it.

Formatting Computer

Today was a good day. I went to help some people with a new computer that they bought a few weeks ago and when I was done they gave me their old one. It is a Dell Dimension 2400. Not that great by any standard but it will do. The first thing I did was to open it up and get the vacuum cleaner out and I then vacuumed all the dust ( 5 years worth ) out of it. Don't ever do that people, you could fry the insides. I have been using and working with computers since the 80s and know what I am doing. The next thing to do was to find a keyboard ( I had an extra one in a closet ), then I wiped the drive and am formatting it before I install Windows XP back onto it. You can see the computer and the 19in CRT monitor on the left on the pictures with the keyboard sitting on top of it.

UPDATE: I got the computer that was given to me to work. I have everything installed and am still doing windows updates. I had this computer up and running with Windows XP at 7:30pm. I am doing this Blog update on the new ( old ) computer. :)

This computer is a Pentium 4 2.4 GHZ, 256megs ram, 74 GB hard drive, 3 1/2 inch Floppy, CD/RW, and DVD Rom drive with a 19in CRT Monitor. It runs pretty good right now. Probably just like it was when it was new several years ago. If I were going to keep it I would probably upgrade the memory quite a bit ( you can get the memory from Walmart for $34.86 ) but aside from that this would be a great first computer for most people. Anyone need a computer?

I installed Firefox, IrfanView, SM Player, AVG antivirus, and CCleaner and did all the latest updates for the software.

Keep your private files into password protected Lockbox

Do you have some files on your computer you'd like to hide from others? I see so many people doing their taxes on their computers in spreadsheets that I thought this program might be a good idea. The program is called My Lockbox. It is for hiding your sensitive data.

Here's how it works. Once you install My Lockbox, the application will create a hidden folder. By default that folder will be in your My Documents folder, but you can place it anywhere on your PC. The folder is password protected, and when you hit the "lock" button, nobody can open it. That means they can't copy or open files, and they can't save files to the folder. So you'll need to unlock the folder in order to save new files to your lockbox. My Lockbox is very simple to use, and even hides your files when your PC is running in safe mode.

Relocate the "Temporary Internet Files" folder to a different drive

If you have a second hard drive and want to move the Temporary Internet Files to it instead of your C: drive just follow these directions.


Relocate the "Temporary Internet Files" folder to a different drive

To redirect the Temporary Internet Files location to a different drive, follow these steps:

1 Save and close all running applications

2 Create a folder in the destination drive (say F:\TIF)

3 Click Start, Run and type CONTROL INETCPL.CPL

4 In the Temporary Internet Files section, click Settings

5 Click Move Folder button and browse to the target folder

6 Click OK

7 Click Yes, when you see the prompt

"Windows will log you off to finish moving Temporary Internet Files. Do you want to continue ?"

Windows will now copy all the Cookies, temporary internet files to the destination folder and log you off. Log back in for the changes to take effect.


To accomplish this via the registry, alter the Shell Folders path for TIF

The above method is effective as it copies the contents of the current Temporary Internet Files folder to the new location. Whereas, relocating the Temporary Internet Files shell folders path via the registry does not copy the existing content to the new location.

Open Registry Editor by typing REGEDIT in Start, Run dialog

Navigate to the following registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software Microsoft \ Windows CurrentVersion \ Explorer User Shell Folders

In the right-pane, double-click the value named Cache and set it's data to the new TIF folder
(F:\Temporary Internet Files)

Similarly, make the changes in this registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software Microsoft \ Windows CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ Shell Folders

Close Registry Editor and log off. Login back for the changes to take effect. The TIF will be stored in the new location which you defined. The old TIF files can be deleted manually by navigating to this folder from Start, Run dialog: %userprofile%\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files