Since I bought a new computer, each component separately,  the RAM was incompatible with the mainboard. Although changing the RAM settings in BIOS to manual, what made the system stable, was insufficient for my needs. After reviewing the mainboard book, I found the CL3 version of Kingston 1 GB module being compatible and fast. Soon I ordered it on Amazon online store. My Computer’s performance increased in application loading times and visual movements. The only drawback was the bad smell. However, one day later it was fine, the smell decreased entirely. When I saw the improvement, I ordered one more. Now my system works with two Gigabyte of memory.

Although virtual RAM seemed useless, I thought about a technical suggestion I have read on Microsoft’s MSDN site: Set paging file (virtual ram) to a other hard drive than the Windows installation. Most PCs running Windows however contain one hard drive like mine, RAID 1 mirror. Therefore I bought a cheap external case and mounted one of my hard drives inside, which was dusting in my room.

Finally I removed the page file from the Windows drive and set it to the USB external drive. The improvement was immediately noticed. Actually I disabled Welcome Screen and set the machine to login itself. I have seen the loading profiles message with the old settings, but now the LCD screen disappeared, it said that the screen mode was unsupported, and I was required to power off the screen. When I powered the screen on again, I saw my Desktop already. After changing the LCD to use 75 hertz instead of 60, the issue was solved. Now I noticed right after the Windows XP boot screen my Desktop! What an performance improvement!

Microsoft’s latest Browser, Internet Explorer 7.0, looks much like the version included with Windows Vista beta. It includes awaited features like tabbed browsing and RSS support.

Although Mozilla Firefox offer these features already, they work slightly different.

I’m waiting for the official published release…

Every day I visit many websites; the most are in English, my third language.

Recently I opened Google’s Toolbar Options and found a translation box. I activated it and found it useful: When I move my mouse over a word it translates to a preferred language, German.

Finally Google’s software is getting more and more attractive.

Related Links:
http://toolbar.google.com/

I wrote an Hungarian document using Microsoft Word. When I tried to check spelling, I received an error; it was missing a file — msgr2HU.dll or msgrHU32.dll. I searched for it but found OpenOffice.

Finally I installed the software and spell checker worked. By the way it is useful, freeware, and include many features: PDF conversion, Math, Spreadsheet (like Excel), Presentation (like PowerPoint), and more.

Although I never used open source editors, OpenOffice seems to fit all my requirements.

Related Links:
http://www.openoffice.org/
http://www.4inkjets.com

I was impressed when the first beta of Google Desktop was released. Today I’ve noticed the new final release. The features offered are the same like with the beta release before, but there is one major change called “Search Across Computers”.

The most impressive Idea behind Google Desktop is to access your Computer anywhere. Therefore I use the Plugin DNKA. Google’s new final release however will upload your data or cache, when you agree, to Google’s Server. I’m wondering about the privacy: Will all my documents published online? I’m not quiet sure, but many reader will probably look strange, after reading this.

Google’s Desktop special Enterprise release will make it possible to disable the “Search Across Computers” feature; privacy restored.

See it yourself, Google’s Desktop Enterprise Edition: http://desktop.google.com/enterprise/index.html
Currently the final version is available in English only.

When you read the content of a website, you may find it useful to select and mark certain text passages. This is great for an overview and will make it easy to copy and past all marked text. The extension is available free for Firefox Browser — http://firefox.erweiterungen.de/liste/start/250/

It is more than useful, because it will copy all marked text at once, unlike copying every part separate.

See the next image.

The market offers large Hard Disk Drives. First they started with a few 100 Megabyte. Now we see these products listed with about 500 Gigabyte of capacity. However having more disk capacity means to handle more files and folders. My laptop uses more than 200.000 files, incredible! The main problem then is to find the files we need. Having 200.000 files on my laptop is great, when I know how to find certain documents, pictures, etcetera.

It would take ages to browse the whole Hard Drive myself. Greatly Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, ME, and XP include a file search – searching takes some while, but it works.

Finally Google invented “Google Desktop”, a great utility to find your documents within less seconds. Although the first indexing (caching all files and needful information in its local database) takes some hours, its functionality convinces. 

See it yourself and download Google Desktop 2 at Google’s site by clicking here. Three different displays are offered: Deskbar, Floating Deskbar, Sidebar. I like the Floating Deskbar and Sidebar most. The Sidebar is little distracting, when it always shows some nice picture or related news. Floating Deskbar is my second choice, it is great for finding my applications instead of finding them by browsing start menu. Tons of features are included, I won’t go more into detail,  enjoy it yourself — http://google.com/desktop/screenshots.html.

At least I wanna share you the Plugin “DNKA”, listed on Google’s Plugin Page http://desktop.google.com/plugins/c/remote_search.html. Independent where you are or stay, when you’re online, access your Computer at home and find the files and documents you need — yes, download it as well!

Yesterday I came across a weird problem: I upgraded the mainboard for a computer running Windows 2000 Professional and had no input device! The login window appeared and I was not able to use the keyboard, it was not installed!

However, I found a solution to fix the problem. First of all, I copied the registry file “SOFTWARE” to another drive in DOS, modified it (see regedt32.exe) to enable auto login and finally placed it back to its original location. Then I used a tool: AutoIt. I programmed it to press “Enter” every 15 second about 10 times, and soon it installed the input device

Related links:
AutoIt freeware — http://www.hiddensoft.com/AutoIt/

Last Saturday I was helping a friend, who is living in the next house to me, to upgrade his PC. I planned the upgrade like a professional, and what happened? It didn’t worked! The bios was having a bug, not allowing to boot from a PCI-IDE-Controller and that destroyed the prior plan.

I am not like a person giving up, so I worked to find another solution. The main problem was: I could not boot windows 2000, I received the error “inaccessible boot device”, the common message on Windows NT, XP or 2000 when changing the mainboard. The PCI-IDE-Controller should have been the solution, but it was not, the BIOS only accepted to boot from the On-board-Controller.

I ran setup from CD and replaced the files on the hard drive. Still no success. I grabbed out an old hard drive with 20 GB storage and made a fresh install of windows 2000. Everything was working fine on the new Computer but the job to keep all windows settings and files was not done.

The file “SYSTEM” in the Winnt/system32/config folder is containing Driver Information, also called Registry, used by the Operating System. I tried to copy “SYSTEM” from the fresh- to the old System and finally received no more errors but the Computer rebooted before the login screen. It seems like: “SYSTEM” cannot be used for every installation.

Later I found a great resource about avoiding the “inaccessible boot device” blue screen: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314082
To fix the problem I needed a way to edit the Registry-file “SYSTEM”. I copied the file and loaded its settings on the fresh Windows 2000 installation. I used regedt32.exe, it’s located in the system32 folder. After I imported its structure, I added the registry information from the link before. Please note: the structure used in the prior link is different from the usual registry key.

Finally windows 2000 booted using the new “SYSTEM” file. Now I found the keyboard and mouse disabled, its driver was missing. It was funny, I had completed my work, but I could not login. So I looked up the registry file “SOFTWARE” and changed the auto login values - search on www.google.com for “windows 2000 auto login” - I did it like before with “SYSTEM”, so then, the password field was skipped and the driver installation appeared.

How would a computer expert install necessary drivers for windows without the input device?
I will post the solution when I am done