kahlil88

Yeah, I really hate programs that want to install toolbars. There is a "lite" version that doesn't have the toolbar (a few MB smaller, so apparently the Yahoo Toolbar is larger than the actual program ) but they prohibit redistribution.

I've been using CCleaner for quite awhile now, at least a year I think. I've been hearing about a similar program called FCleaner, which I'm guessing was written in a different key? But seriously (music jokes aside) how do the two programs compare feature-wise?

I offered to optimize someone's Vista laptop the other day, and I noticed that while it runs fairly smooth in general, it hangs for several seconds at a black screen with the mouse cursor before and after the login prompt. After disabling drive indexing, system restore and several unnecessary startup items, it doesn't hang quite as long, but based on my experience with other Vista systems, I should think there is a way to completely eliminate the hangups.

How strange. I set AI Tuning to manual, but 800 MHz isn't an option. My options are 667, 833, 1000, 1111 and 1333 MHz. Maybe my board is just really weird and picky about RAM?

Boy, do I feel dumb! I didn't even think such a "feature" existed! Strange an update would change that setting...

After installing some updates and restarting, the desktop isn't loading right. Wallpaper and version number show up, but the icons are missing. I tried restarting explorer from the Task Manager as well as logging off/on. Curiously enough, the "Favorites" link in Windows Explorer gives a list of system folders instead of the contents of the Desktop folder. Has anyone else experienced this problem?

OpenOffice should be able to open older M$ Office documents. Not sure what to do about the PDFs though...

It's probably not Java, but I once had problems with JavaScript. Pages would just load wrong, certain things wouldn't show up. You might consider cleaning the registry with CCleaner and see if Dial-A-Fix solves the other problems.

Thanks, I'll have to try it some time. I mounted the UIF with MagicISO and copied the "disc" to an ISO with InfraRecorder. Seems to work, but is a few hundred MB smaller...maybe UIF is just a compressed format. Interesting...perhaps we should notify the Software Freedom Law Center?

My mistake! It's actually a UIF image, which apparently is a proprietary format used by MagicISO.

The Wikipedia articles are a bit skimpy. Can I run these from the command line the same way I run say? I mostly want to use it for goofing around (i.e. making my computer tell mom jokes or praising GNU/Linux operating systems ).

I will give ImgBurn a whirl then, since it's on the list and claims UDF support. Wish me luck!

Are there any free (as in "beer" and/or "speech") programs that will allow me to write UDF images to disc or convert them to something else like ISO? I've tried CDBurnerXP, InfraRecorder and DAEMON Tools with no success.

Mac OS X comes with a command line text-to-speech program called say. Is this program, or one just like it, available for Windows?

Does anyone know where I can get a new power button assembly for a Dell Dimension 2350? Apparently there's more than one type for this model, and I ordered the wrong one on eBay a few years back. The connector on the board is 22-pin.

I think it might be malware-related. I'm getting redirected to weird search engines when clicking on Google search results...

I'm tuning up someone's computer, and in general it runs smoothly, but attempting to open the Command Prompt or run any command line program or batch file crashes explorer. Any ideas?

I don't think her laptop came with any install discs. There's a repair partition, but those typically only do factory restore.

I've been using DDR2-800 on my ASUS P5B-E motherboard, but when I run Memtest86+ it reports it as being DDR2-665. I tried going into the BIOS settings, but couldn't find anything that would control RAM speed.

Try VLC and/or SMPlayer.

Nice list! I'd like to suggest HandBrake (DVD-ripper) and SMPlayer (great frontend to MPlayer). I should also point out that Gaim has been renamed Pidgin.

I've been unable to reproduce the problem when booting in Safe Mode, which makes me wonder if it's a driver issue. The laptop is an Compaq Presario CQ50z-100. It came preloaded with 32-bit Vista Basic even though it has an AMD64 CPU.

Ubuntu is the only GNU/Linux distro that actually liked my Radeon 9250. I can run Compiz-Fusion out-of-the-box! I'm really loving 8.10 "Intrepid Ibex" -- 8.04 came with the Firefox 3 beta, which crashed on me a lot, and there was also a Compiz-Fusion bug that would lock up my system. The one thing that almost held me back when I switched to Ubuntu a year ago was the file manager's lack of tabbed browsing, but everything about KDE aside from its file manager annoyed me, so it wasn't too painful a sacrifice. Now there are no worries, and I hear the next version of Nautilus is supposed to be even better.

One of my favorite features of Vista is the network icon in the system tray. It always bugged me how older versions of Windows have separate icons for wireless, wired and dialup. Are there any toys that give XP this feature?

I recently had a hard drive drop (or rather, my friend's dog yanked it off a table). At first, it would just take a really long time to spin up, and I would hear a ticking sound, but now I can't get it to spin up at all. My friend connected it internally and ran some hard drive diagnostic programs, and he said that it eventually spun up again. Unfortunately, it went back to not working after he powered the computer off.