Battery life and your laptop (cellphone, too!)

There is a lot of bad information out there about battery life when it comes to charging/not chargin

Windows 7 chkdsk doesn’t, well, check the disk!

I still run into a situation every once in a while where Windows 7 does not run a chkdsk properly. C

Recovery Console iso file–you asked for it

It’s been almost 10 years now, but I still get people asking for this file, a windows xp recov

 

Battery life and your laptop (cellphone, too!)

March 15, 2012 in hardware

There is a lot of bad information out there about battery life when it comes to charging/not charging.

I blame it on the Internet.

The probably with the internet is once it is out there, it is out there forever. I can still find tracks of things I did on the internet way back in the days when we used things like gopher, archie, usenet, etc.

As such, old ideas tend to get repeated over and over again, even when they are no longer relevant (talk to me sometime about fixed page files).

This is certainly true about batteries.
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Windows 7 chkdsk doesn’t, well, check the disk!

February 19, 2012 in Windows 7

I still run into a situation every once in a while where Windows 7 does not run a chkdsk properly.

Chkdsk (Chkdsk.exe) is a command-line tool that checks  your harddrive for problems. The tool then tries to repair any that it finds. For  example, Chkdsk can repair problems related to bad sectors (although it will not fix a bad sector), lost clusters,  cross-linked files, and directory errors. To use Chkdsk, you must log on as an  administrator or as a member of the Administrators group in Windows 7 or Windows Vista, which is accomplished by clicking START and typing CMD in the search box at the bottom. CMD will then appear in the top of the START MENU, where you can right click it, and choose RUN AS ADMINISTRATOR.

CHKDSK should be a part of your monthly maintenance–it can sometimes head off serious problems that might prevent your computer from starting.

Anyway, back to Windows 7 and the mystery of the “WHY THE FRIG DOESN’T CHKDSK RUN?!?”

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Recovery Console iso file–you asked for it

February 19, 2012 in Windows XP

It’s been almost 10 years now, but I still get people asking for this file, a windows xp recovery console as a CD image.

It’s not much use on modern computers with sata drives as it does not include the drivers for such devices, but people all over the world download this thing daily through copied links. You can google rc.iso and see links to my website from hundreds of countries.

It’s just a simple windows disk with all the good stuff removed so people who received computers without installation disks can recover their computer, but is apparently it is still in high demand if the server logs are any indication.

I’ve gotten calls from people in New York, Pittsburg, Texas, Florida….and those are just the phone calls.

I guess they are right, once it is on the internet, it’s there forever.

the famous rc.iso file

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Backing Up Your Wireless Networks

February 19, 2012 in Networking

It’s nothing I need to use every day, but every once in a while, but this relatively unknown feature of Windows 7 sure comes in handy.

I’ve had people who get a new laptop and cannot remember their network settings (not just at home, which is simple enough to sort out by logging into your router and taking a peek at the wireless settings, but at the office, school, friend’s houses, etc…)

See the magic after the break

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