WinExtra Community Forums » Forum: Tutorials, FAQs & Other Helpful Stuff

WinExtra Community Forums » Forum: Tutorials, FAQs & Other Helpful Stuff - Recent Topics http://www.winextra.com/forums/forum/38 Bring back the eXtra in Windows en-US Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:42:02 +0000 http://bbpress.org/?v=1.0.2 <![CDATA[Search]]> q http://www.winextra.com/forums/search.php Pierre on "Shortcuts to Win7 GUID items" http://www.winextra.com/forums/topic/10680#post-53509 Sun, 06 Nov 2011 14:20:27 +0000 Pierre 53509@http://www.winextra.com/forums/ Like the "God folder", but more complete: <a href="http://www.sevenforums.com/955359-post11.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.sevenforums.com/955359-post11.html</a> That site is a mine of information. PJ on "Windows 7 and Media Center" http://www.winextra.com/forums/topic/9654#post-47714 Fri, 01 Oct 2010 19:01:45 +0000 PJ 47714@http://www.winextra.com/forums/ This is part 4 of my eternal quest to find the perfect home media rig. The prior three parts are available at: Part 1. <a href="http://www.winextra.com/forums/topic/8481" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.winextra.com/forums/topic/8481</a> Part 2. <a href="http://www.winextra.com/forums/topic/8546" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.winextra.com/forums/topic/8546</a> Part 3. <a href="http://www.winextra.com/forums/topic/8886" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.winextra.com/forums/topic/8886</a> In my last recounting I mentioned that I found bliss in my Patriot Box Office (PBO) media player. That's still true but there's just one small downside to the PBO, your media still has to reside somewhere. I ended up blowing away the Ubuntu Server installation and put an Ubuntu Desktop installation in it's place. Then I reinstalled MythTV. And reinstalled it. And reinstalled it and reinstalled it and reinstalled it. See, this is one example of the many reasons that Linux will never catch on as a mainstream desktop OS destined for the masses. Windows in it's infinite flavors and Mac OS in it's marginally smaller palette of flavors will always come out ahead of Linux. It's easy to install new packages. The packages come complete and ready to install and it's all quite intuitive. MythTV is not intuitive to install. Sure, you can download the file through package manager or use apt-get but that's just the beginning.... Then you have to configure it. The GUI will let you modify maybe 80 percent of the settings but in the end, it's that other 20 percent of the settings that are critical to your success. So after OCDing on the installation piece, I also installed XBMC, as well as a bunch of codecs that were needed for playback of my video and audio files. Then I installed Tangerine and then mt-daapd and then forked-daapd and then I erased everything and started all over. The configuration of each of those installations was onerous, to say the least, and rarely worked well enough for me to listen or watch any of the media I had on the hard drives. Speaking of hard drives, that was a tough nut to crack in and of itself. Do I format my hard drives as NTFS, ext3, ext4? Why, oh why must I decide these things now? I finally settled on NTFS for one hard drive and ext4 for the other. A nice compromise that paid back in spades later on. Eventually Ubuntu, the software installations and I achieved an uneasy truce. I never was able to watch much on my LCD TV that was connected to the media center but at least I could watch/listen to the media on almost all the other computers in my house. The PBO ended up getting moved to my bedroom TV and connected to the home network via WiFi. Believe it or not, the video/audio quality really didn't change. The setup wasn't suiting my goals. I wanted instant access to all my stuff on the hard drive. From the main TV. In desperation I finally went out and bought a new copy of Windows 7 Home Premium and installed that on the computer. Indeed, in the intervening time, I had built a new computer and replaced the aging HP computer. Now I have an AMD X2 250 with a Biostar A780L motherboard, 4 Gigs of DDR2 RAM and an ATI HD 5570 video card. All stuffed into a standard black box that sits in the corner. I made a bad choice on the power supply though. Whines like a banshee. All the time. It'll have to be replaced but so far I've spent $220 on all the hardware plus another $109 for an OEM version of Windows 7. Get this: I paid more for the Windows 7 than I did for the motherboard, CPU and RAM! The motherboard sports a 10/100 NIC. Not ideal but it works for the moment. Eventually I'll toss in a Gig NIC. The keyboard is a Logitech Multimedia Bluetooth keyboard that I originally purchased for use with my PS3. It has a trackpad built into it. There is also a Hauppage 1600 TV tuner card and an HP MCE remote and MS IR USB thingie that I re-purposed from a few of my other computers. Perfection. Nirvana. Really, it is. After dropping in a few codecs so Media Player (and the MCE package) can play .mkv files natively, I'm sitting very pretty. Everything is controllable via the MCE remote control and I can even record HD programs off the Verizon FIOS cable TV. Just in time for the new season of Top Gear. And this is where my hard drive format choice came in handy. Windows doesn't read ext4, which is the format I used on the hard drive storing all my movies and documents. A quick trip to the CD bin and I pulled out my live boot CD of Ubuntu Lucid Lynx. Reboot the computer with that and, bingo!, I was able to copy all my files over to the NTFS formatted hard drive. No muss, no fuss. Boot back into Windows, reformat a drive, copy the files back, share out the folders and not one of the computers one my network required reconfiguration to get access to the media. Who would have thought that Microsoft could come up with such an awesome program? And then never pitch it? The Media Center Edition (MCE) of Windows 7 is a very low key hero in this game. It looks good, makes installation a cinch and setup is accomplished via wizards that do everything for you. And, to top it all off, after sharing out my folders on the hard drives, I still have complete access to my media from the other computers via the network as well as my PBO in the bedroom. The one piece that's lacking is auto-integration with iTunes. Not an issue, though. Forked-daapd has a Windows port that will allow me to share out my music library. If I get worked up enough to do it. Or I can always point the iTunes library to the network share. Either way, it's just gravy on the steak because everything else is working smooth as silk. I love it when a plan comes together.... So, where do I go from here? Because we all know that the journey can't stop just because I've reached the end.... I don't know but I have been eying the latest Apple TV box. And that sleek little Roku 1080p box over there? I just might have to give it a run around the block once or twice.... Not to mention, the WiFi Internet radios.... Maybe this journey isn't quite done just yet. Pierre on "Sharing downloaded Windows 7 desktop gadgets across multiple profiles" http://www.winextra.com/forums/topic/9449#post-46376 Mon, 26 Jul 2010 08:55:46 +0000 Pierre 46376@http://www.winextra.com/forums/ If you use desktop gadgets, Windows 7 comes with a small complement of them. You can download more from the <a href="http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/downloads/personalize/gadgets" target="_blank">Windows personalization gallery</a> and other sites. Normally downloaded gadgets require to be installed for each profile. Installing a gadget makes it immediately active. This is relevant only if you fill these prerequisites: you have multiple user profiles defined, you have downloaded additional desktop gadgets, and you want these extra gadgets to be available for all user profiles. Step 1: Log in to an administor profile, install the desired gadgets. Step 2: Close the newly installed gadgets. Step 3: Open an Explorer window, navigate to "C:\Users\{login ID}\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Sidebar\Gadgets". Each installed gadget is materialized by a subfolder. Copy those you wish to share between profiles to a backup location (such as your desktop). Step 4: Uninstall the gadgets(*). Close the gadget list window. Step 5: Open an Explorer window, navigate to "C:\Program Files\Windows Sidebar\Shared Gadgets". Copy the saved gadget folders there. Your downloaded gadgets are now available in the gadget list window for every profile. You can delete the backup copy if you wish. (*) To uninstall a gadget, open the gadget list window, right-click the gadget, select "uninstall". Some gadgets' files will not be unlocked when you close the gadget. In order to unistall them, you need to log off and back on first. moosepucky on "Search Engine Optimization (web sites)" http://www.winextra.com/forums/topic/8889#post-44066 Mon, 29 Mar 2010 03:33:06 +0000 moosepucky 44066@http://www.winextra.com/forums/ I wrote this tutorial and thought I should pass it along if any on here want to improve their web presence. I will C/P the start and place a link to the rest if it sounds interesting and any want to read the full tutorial. I go through an example web site optimization process and create all of the optimized title, meta description, keywords, text, alt tags, internal links, and title tags. ------------------------------------------------------ Search Engine Optimization What is SEO and how do you achieve it? The Basics: First you need to understand some basic concepts and terminology. A search engine is a program that looks for web sites based on a single word or a combination of words which are submitted to it by a user who is looking for content that relates to the key words they entered in the search. Getting good search engine placement depends on knowing what search words someone is going to use in order to locate what they are looking for. The first thing you need to decide is what search words someone may use to locate your web site. You need to know how to use those words to position your web site higher in the search results so that your site is one of the ones that they FIND when those search words are used. Before you try to do any kind of SEO (SEO is an acronym for search engine optimization) you must determine what words and groups of words you want to target. This is where you must start. Once you know all of the words that relate to your web site, you can then use those words in a way that will give you an advantage over other web sites when someone is looking for what you have to offer. In this example we will use a fictitious florist in Ohio who wants a web site. Someone who is looking for Roses for their girlfriend on Valentines day who lives in Cleveland Ohio may put the words "Roses Cleveland OH" into a search engine to find a place to buy flowers near where they live. They could also just as easily put in "Florist Cleveland Ohio". Using our Florist in Cleveland as an example. You would sit down and come up with the 10 most common words used by potential customers who are looking for a florist. This list of words in order of importance would be: ---------------------------------------------------- The rest is located here: <a href="http://www.gotfusion.com/tutorials/tut.cfm?itemID=4051" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.gotfusion.com/tutorials/tut.cfm?itemID=4051</a> PJ on "Patriot Box Office Media Player" http://www.winextra.com/forums/topic/8886#post-44058 Sun, 28 Mar 2010 05:58:55 +0000 PJ 44058@http://www.winextra.com/forums/ This post is part 3 of my ongoing saga to create the perfect home media rig. Rather than write a complete review of my latest purchase I'd like to give you an overview of my experience. For reviews of the Patriot Box Office Media Player please check out the following links: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Patriot-Office-High-Definition-Player-PCMPBO25/product-reviews/B002Q4U9PY/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1" target="_blank">Amazon</a> <a href="http://www.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3741" target="_blank">AnandTech</a> <a href="http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1147/1/" target="_blank">Legitreviews</a> These folks have said all that I might say and more. For the product page simply go to <a href="http://www.patriotmemory.com/products/detailp.jsp?prodline=6&catid=69&prodgroupid=159&id=895&type=20" target="_blank">Patriot Memory</a>. The forum community is well populated and versed in the ins and outs of the Patriot Box Office (aka: PBO) I was stomping around the local Micro Center today, thinking about picking up a low profile video card with HDMI output so I could connect my older Vista box up to the network and watch my streaming media on my 51 inch LCD. I was in a quagmire.... Did I want to spend $70 on a barely-able-to-perform card that was adequate for HTPC stuff or did I want to shell out $170 for a video card that would allow me to play video games as well? Out of the corner of my eye a somewhat plain box caught my eye. Rather, it was the picture of what looked like an external CD ROM without a faceplate that snaked me in. It looked wrong for some reason. Then it struck me, it wasn't an external CD ROM. Closer inspection revealed that it was a media player that played almost every format of media under the sun from almost any place in the universe. All for under $130. Now that sounded pretty sweet to me. I looked closer and found an identical product made by another company with almost exactly the same specs. For another $50. Hmmmm. Doing what I always do when I'm not quite sure, I picked the box up and carted it around for awhile. My shopping techniques are a bit strange. I'm always hesitant to part with my money but I'm also hesitant to pass up a good deal. To help overcome the internal conflict, I'll carry the box around the store for awhile. If we make it to the checkout counter together I'll probably buy it. If it becomes a pain in the butt to cart around, I'll drop it somewhere along the way. I save tons of money that way. 200 inch plasma TV? 5 feet and it gets dropped. 15 boxes of 16 Gb USB thumb drives for $5 dollars? They get dropped after 100 feet because they're too unwieldy to carry anymore. 14 boxes do me no good. 15 or none. (And I refuse to use a shopping basket, too girlish for me.) This box made it to the check out, thus it made it home. I really wasn't expecting too much when I hooked it up. Power cable? Check. Network cable? Check. Rats, it only does 10/100. Oh well. HDMI cable? Check. Rats, no more ports on the amplifier. Well, plug into the tv. Yep, it fits. Then I hit the toggle switch on the back, fired up the TV and was completely disappointed. The menus looked horrible. The graphics were obviously designed by Andy Warhol after he went color blind, cut off his dominant drawing arm and removed his remaining opposable thumb. A few minutes poking around the setup menu and all that changed. Especially useful was that one little setting I accidentally clicked, the one that says "HDMI Video format". Change it from NTSC to Automatic and the PBO began a very polite exchange of display capabilities. Much to my pleasure. The menu navigation was a bit clunky but given that it's obviously trying to serve several classes of user, it's understandable. The option I wanted was to select "Browse" then go to "Net". From there work my way to my media server. .mkv files played about as well as I expected. Artifacts are visible but tolerable. Audio just as I converted it. 2 channel, 5.1 channel and 7.1 channel. All there. Multiple languages. Subtitle files available as well. Nice. Then I backed up. How about the main movie .iso files I created? Those should be full DVD quality images. The PBO will play almost all flavors of video out up to 1080i and 1080p. Kind of like that guy in the latest Office Depot commercials, I was jolted into yelling "WOW!" The quality was pixel perfect! Audio? Perfect! Fast forward? Yep. Reverse? Yep. Other languages? Yep. Subtitles? Yep. Ugly as mortal sin but yep. Music files streamed music. Just like I had hoped. Pictures streamed pictures. Again, just as I had hoped. Full DVD .iso files streamed perfectly. I couldn't stream BluRay .iso files because I don't have any but I suspect it would have been just fine as well. I spent 45 minutes watching the beginning of "Casino Royale". Not the old classic but the new one with Daniel Craig. The video was almost flawless. A few blips here and there due to network congestion but really not bad. A gig connection rather than a 10/100 would have helped smooth things out but I can live with it as is. But WOW! The video looked so good. No pixelation or any other artifacts that I could pin to shortcomings in the PBO. Just gorgeous, silky smooth video and audio. The opening scenes of this movie are technically demanding for a video streaming system due to the amount of background detail and action. Didn't bother the PBO at all. So, all in all, I must say that this was the best ever $130 I spent on computer stuff. Except..... I want another one. Well, three more, actually. Now I want to put one on each of my other TVs. A quick search on the internet reveals that these boxes are available for less than $100. Some places have them for $80. Some for $100 with a wireless adapter. I could be upset that I spent $30 more than I needed except for one minor detail.... I got a mail in rebate for $35. This is the part where I jump out of my chair and dance a jig. Except I don't. I'm too old and fat. So, don't let that image creep into your brain. Just imagine me looking like Daniel Craig. A strong, beefcakey Daniel Craig with no shirt, dancing a jig. That's me. Happy as can be. PJ on "Ubuntu Server and MythTV" http://www.winextra.com/forums/topic/8546#post-42508 Mon, 18 Jan 2010 01:47:18 +0000 PJ 42508@http://www.winextra.com/forums/ This is part 2 of my continuing saga of trying to create my own home media server. The first part can be found in the post titled "FreeNAS". After having given FreeNAS a run I figured it was time for me to give Ubuntu Server 9.10 Karmic Koala (32-bit flavor, thank you very much) and MythTV a spin. FreeNAS was a relatively easy setup. Karmic and MythTV has been everything short of a nightmare. Getting Karmic to install was the easy part. To ease things even more, I installed an awesome program called Webmin. Webmin is a network admin's knight in shining armor. You can find it <a href="http://www.webmin.com/" target="_blank">here.</a> In their own words: <blockquote>Webmin is a web-based interface for system administration for Unix. Using any modern web browser, you can setup user accounts, Apache, DNS, file sharing and much more. Webmin removes the need to manually edit Unix configuration files like /etc/passwd, and lets you manage a system from the console or remotely. See the standard modules page for a list of all the functions built into Webmin, or check out the screenshots.</blockquote> At the risk of sounding like I'm raving about a program I will add this: there are frequent updates, tons of administrative modules, it's free, and I couldn't even begin to tell you what the support section is like because I've never needed it - it's one of those awesome programs that simply does what it's supposed to do. Fantastic stuff. Through Webmin I was able to setup Samba and Windows networking and get my network folders published to my home network in less than 15 minutes. From that point, I uploaded all my music, videos, pictures and what not to the network folders. Network attached storage has never been easier. I even was able to install Transmission, a BitTorrent add-on that lets me drop a torrent link into one of my network folders and a few minutes later the download auto-magically appears in the networked torrent download folder. Awesome stuff! Then I installed MythTV, follow <a href="http://www.mythtv.org" target="_blank">this link</a> for more info, and my life suddenly became an odd mixture of heaven and hell. Again, in their own words: <blockquote>MythTV is a Free Open Source software digital video recorder (DVR) project distributed under the terms of the GNU GPL. It has been under heavy development since 2002, and now contains most features one would expect from a good DVR (and many new ones that you soon won't be able to live without).</blockquote> There's much more that's not said in that description but we'll address that later. The initial setup was quite easy: <code>sudo apt-get install mythtv</code> The amount of configuration that followed was a nightmare. My shared media resided in folders on a separate drive which meant I had to change all of the settings in MythTV to point to the correct locations. Should have been easy. On the MythTV forums they claim it should be easy. "Should be...." Except there's several places where the changes need to be made and several more where they can be made and even a couple where they might be made if the code had been kept up to date. Do I modify the .config files directly or should I use the frontend interface? How about the backend interface? What about all of them? Well, all of them is what I ended up using. And yet, the settings never seem to stick. For example: one of the plugins is called MythVideo. MythVideo manages all of your movie or video files. MKV is welcome here. So is AVI, DIVX, M4V, M4P, ISO and a whole slew of other formats. Thank the fates above that there's finally a program that speaks all of those formats! Except, in this version there are some problems. ISOs don't play if you're using the "Storage Groups" but there's no instructions of how NOT to setup the Storage Groups. In other words, I was essentially led down the primrose path to establish Storage Groups (dynamic meta-groups that can include several storage areas) without being informed of the consequences. So, all that work and I couldn't get ISOs of my DVDs to work. That led me off to do research. A week later and I finally understand: get rid of the storage groups and I can play ISOs. So, how do I get rid of these storage groups. Not sure because apparently everyone knew not to set them up or once set up, nobody wanted to get rid of them. So now I'm waiting for the next version to come out which is supposed to resolve this issue. BTW, the current version is 0.22. The next version to come out will be 0.23. Not sure when that's going to happen though. Ah, yeah, almost forget the MythVideos section. I love it. A movie or video collection manager. Upload your video file to the storage folder and you simply hit the "scan for changes" button. The movie shows up right away in the index. Two more buttons on the movie window allow you to look up information about the movie on IMDB or edit the meta-data to your heart's content. Automatic population of the fields and images related to the movie is awesome! Check out the screen shot: <img src="http://www.panamajim.com/Frontend.png"> This is a picture of the frontend manager. Frontend, in this case, being on the Ubuntu computer. <img src="http://www.panamajim.com/MythVideo.png"> This is a picture from the MythVideo web page on my Windows computer. They look pretty similar and pretty good. From the webpage, clicking on the title of the video causes it to be played in your web browser in awesome glory and sound! You can't control the video though. It's a play or not play affair. Unless you're watching from a Mac or an iPod Touch. Their embedded players have controls that will show up. Haven't tried my PS3 yet but I'm gonna get there. Have to re-terminate my LAN cables to the PS3.... So.... What do I mean by heaven and hell? The heaven part is when MythTV works. The hell part is just getting it TO work. Installation of my TV tuner card is a prime example. I bought a Hauppauge HVR-1600 TV tuner card. A classic stand-by card that always works. Except under Linux. The drivers aren't really up to snuff yet. That meant I had to build my own from several different locations. Me. Build my own. From different locations. RRRRIIIIGGGHHHHTTTTT. What a joke that was. Three days in the making but I finally got it done. And the card still didn't work. I had to re-arrange card slots and re-install MythTV a few times to get it all done. And still, it doesn't work because I have Verizon FIOS which requires I use a cable TV box. And IR Blaster support for FIOS in MythTV doesn't exist yet. I'm screwed. Oh, yeah, MythTV used to stream TV over the network but that plugin broke with the introduction of version 0.20.... Go figure. For the moment, MythTV doesn't do it for me but I'm not ready to dump the Ubuntu install yet because it's working so damn well. I guess I just need to keep looking for other Media Center possibilities. PJ on "FreeNAS" http://www.winextra.com/forums/topic/8481#post-42204 Sat, 02 Jan 2010 04:07:36 +0000 PJ 42204@http://www.winextra.com/forums/ I've been in the market for a media server for my home. Being the skinflint that I can be sometimes, I figured I'd make one of my own from spare parts lying around the house. At the time I had three desktops sitting around unused, and four laptops, a PS3, several handled devices and a desktop in use. I was looking for a solution that would allow me to: 1. Collect all my music in one place and serve it out, 2. Collect all my videos in one place and serve it out to whatever device needs it, 3. Provide Network Attached Storage capabilities to the family, 4. Allow bittorrent downloads/storage, 5. Centralized server to log into from the internet and access my documents/media. This post has been <a href="http://www.winextra.com/index.php/2010/01/02/setting-up-and-using-freenas/" target="_blank">moved to it's proper home on the WinExtra Blog so feel free to read the complete post there</a> as well as post any comments for PJ Anonymous on "How to enable the administrator account in Vista" http://www.winextra.com/forums/topic/6257#post- Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:42:02 +0000 Anonymous @http://www.winextra.com/forums/ Anonymous on "How to enable the administrator account in Vista" http://www.winextra.com/forums/topic/6257#post- Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:42:02 +0000 Anonymous @http://www.winextra.com/forums/ Anonymous on "How to enable the administrator account in Vista" http://www.winextra.com/forums/topic/6257#post- Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:42:02 +0000 Anonymous @http://www.winextra.com/forums/