virtualmv

A collection of downloadable utilities to enhance your desktop. Object dock – a zooming menu (like mac) and fences (if you have lots of desktop icons)
http://www.virtualmv.com/wiki/index.php?title=Operating_System:_Desktop_utilities

A useful utility on the cover disk of Australian PC authority ( http://www.pcauthority.com.au/ ) is Paragon’s Hard Disk Manager (9.5 SE)

I am often confronted with students who have trashed their Hard Drives (or the drive have magically trashed themselves). This utility allows you to create a complete backup of the drive. Additionally if you want to upgrade your HDD to a bigger one it has a wizard to do this.

Also included is Magix Music Maker Silver for those of you who want to create your own “original ” music.

JJ has just given me a link to a page that links to lots of free(?) utilities – nicely organised.

FileHippo.com (2009). Retireved August 4, 2009 from http://www.filehippo.com/

Conflicker is doing the rounds so had a quick surf and found Microsoft has a Malicious Software Removal Tool for post infection (once you have a computer that is infected). Apparently it is part of Windows Update, so it should only be an issue if you have this turned off!!

Have added to my wiki

http://www.virtualmv.com/wiki/index.php?title=Virus/Anti-virus_software

Probably the dumbist thing I have seen in a while is the cobbling of IE 8s view source. IE8 has an amazing developer tools feature (press F12 in the browser or Tools > Developer Tools), however with all its magic it is unable to do a simple edit. 

However all is not lost, to change the View Source from the Default viewer, to either notepad or some other editor (I like pspad (http://www.pspad.com/en/) as its as quick as notepad but has better context editing).

1. Open the Developer Tools (press F12 in the browser or Tools > Developer Tools)
2. Select File > Customise IE View Source
3. either select notepad or browse to where your editor exe file is stored (my pspad was in C:\Program Files\PSPad editor\PSPad.exe)

Makes you wonder why you get a glitzy viewer but no way to do simple editing. Would it be so hard to have a check box in the developer options to “enable web page editing” if they are worried about people accidentaly changing pages?? (And yes I know chrome suffers the same fate – but I am sure there would be a plugin for editing like in Firefox!!)

Thanks to Ramesh Srinivasan (2009) from Winhelponline for pointing me in the right direction.

Srinivasan, R. (2009)”The default View Source Editor has changed in Internet Explorer 8 – The Winhelponline Blog” Retrieved June 22, 2009 from http://www.winhelponline.com/blog/default-view-source-editor-changed-in-ie8/

On the theme of multiple monitors something that can cause you problems ( grief) is if change monitor types (e.g. I have an external wide screen  at work and a square one at home). So what happens is that some applications remember what the position was when they closed and try to do this on the new monitor. Sometimes this means that the top of the window (including all the toolbars are off the screen and unaccessible).

If the applications have been well designed they should have a move option available if you right click on the button on the Windows status bar.  If this is so you can click move, now the sneaky bit – just tap one of the arrows on your keyboard – somehow this attaches the mouse to the mindow and by moving your mouse you can get your window onto your current screen.

Note: You may have to double click the button on the status basr as in order to move the window it has to be in the windows desktop.

Updated to 2.2 (Win 32bit). Lost my Internet connection inside the virtual machine.

Temporary solution found at http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/3655. There is a dll (in a zip) – post towards the end (2009-04-15 18:20:43 changed by frank) that fixed the issue. (though virtualBox lost the connection when I restarted the computer after I sent it into hibernation.

Indications that this will be repaired in a patch to 2.2 in the “near” future!

Microsoft (2006). Crash Analysis. Retrieved March 27, 2009 from http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

The Windows Memory Diagnostic tests the Random Access Memory (RAM) on your computer for errors

An issue I have is trying to test different software packages which can be like octopus’s in my operating system (like .net development or WAMP). I used to have them all installed and inevitably my computer would run slower and slower.

Now I use virtualBox to create a virtual machine in which I only install the software relevant to the development environmment. It means the actual developmet environment runs faster and it doesnt handicap my working PC.

I have put some instructions on my wiki at http://www.virtualmv.com/wiki/index.php?title=VirtualBox

If you want to make modifications to the wiki entry you will need to create a userid and login. Apologies for this as I know this is not a “true” wiki thingy.

Another big advantage is that I can run virtualBox on another computer (e.g. my Vista one) and can use the virtualBox image without change and it includes all the set up stuff as well – which is brilliant. I found this particularly useful when my work PC was upgraded. My virtual machines were up and running with all their weird configurations once I’d installed virtalBox, copied over the virtualMachines and connected them up.

From a post by Paradigm PCs (http://www.pp.co.nz)

Adding system memory is often the best way to improve a PC’s performance. However, upgrading memory can be difficult and costly, and some systems have limited memory expansion capabilities, making it impossible to add RAM.
Windows Vista provides a way to add memory to your system using a USB Flash drive which is called ReadyBoost to improve performance without having to add additional memory to your system.
The flash memory device serves as an additional memory cache, which means that your computer can access the necessary data much quicker than it can access data on the hard drive. This is how you Speed Up Vista with Vista ReadyBoost.

Its best to use a USB flash drive that you can spare and then plug it in an empty USB slot, preferably at the backside of your system so that you won’t have it in sight.
Now you should see a pop-up with the option “Speed up my system, using Windows Ready Boost”.
If you are not prompted, just follow these steps.

• Go to start
• Select My Computer
• Right click your flash drive
• Choose Properties 
• Select the ReadyBoost tab
• Check “Use this device” and tweak the settings, click apply and you’re done.

The minimum requirement for the USB flash drive is at least 256mb.