DropBoks – Saving to the Cloud – Easy and Efficient

Recently I have come across a lot of teachers and students who lose their flash disks or are confused on how to move a file from one place to another.¬¨‚Ć In most cases I suggest using yahoo briefase or google docs as an easy way to store files safely online.¬¨‚Ć From time to time you may find that these sites are not useful in that they refuse certain file types.¬¨‚Ć For example if you were working a on a Visual Basic Program or had were working on a coding project with the DevKitPro developer tools you may find that your files are rejected. Looking around on the web I have found a good free service that does what I want in terms of online file storage.¬¨‚Ć DropBoks, is simple, it is free, and it accepts any files just like a disk. Take a look at the screen shot below, here i uploaded a simple old AppleWorks document (I don’t actually use AppleWorks). dropboks I recommmend DropBoks to any teacher or student who is looking for a fast easy way to store something online.

Transfer XP from One Computer to Another | Trick to Bypass BSOD (Intel to AMD)

As many people know by now, XP does not like it when significant hardware changes take place in a machine.¬† If you have every tried swapping a motherboard or moving a hard drive from one computer to another you have probably seen the BSOD (Blue Screen of Death).¬† To move a Hard Drive with XP installed and fully intact you need to do the following. This trick will work even if you are changing processors РIntel to AMD Рyou just need to follow one extra step if this is the case.¬† This is a great trick to quickly move an entire system installed on Hard Drive to a new machine.

1.  On the old machine start wincows and edit the REGISTRY  (Start | Run | regedit)

2.  In the registry navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG > SYSTEM > CURRENTCONTROLSET > ENUM

Now Delete the entire ENUM registry key.

3.  Shut Down this Computer

4. Transfer Hard Drive to New computer and then turn on.  The new computer will reboot a few times until it rebuilds the registry on the new machine.  If you cannot get it to boot (You see Blue Screen of Death) and you have switched from an Intel Processor to AMD you will need to do the following.

(Do these extra steps only if you are getting BSOD caused by switching from INTEL to AMD).  Boot into Safe Mode.  Edit the registry again and this time go to.  Locate and then click the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\Intelppm

  1. In the right pane, right-click the Start entry, and then click Modify.
  2. In the Value data box, type 4, and then click OK.
  3. Exit Registry Editor.
  4. Restart your computer.

Also found here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953356

Vista Tweaks – Rebuild Older Dell

After I fixed a friends older Dell machine running XP Home I came across another friends older Dell that had a failed Hard Drive.  I decided to go with Vista with this machine and tweak it in a similar way I would tweak XP.  In short Vista running Service Pack 2 utlizing some basic performance tweaks really performs quite well.

Vista Tweaks:

1.  Turn off the Aero Desktop or disable Translucent effect (The machine I am using only has 1 gig of RAM and an older X300 video card)

2.¬† Switch to the Classic Start Menu (Right Click on the Start button Рhit properties)

3.¬† Turn off indexing on main drive (Right Click Drive C in Computer and then uncheck indexing this drive)¬† РI opted to skip this only because I installed¬† new fast drive in this machine

4.¬† Turn off UAC (Universal Access Control РAnnoying and slow)¬† РGo to Control Panel, Click on USERS,¬† then Click on User Accounts again, then click on User Access Control and Uncheck.

5.  Install Lastest Service Pack 2 helps with Speed

6.¬† Disable Security Center¬† (Click on Run then type services.msc Рlook for Security Center and click Disable)

7.  Disable Remote Assistance (Right Click onComputer,  click on Advanced System Settings, then click on the Remote and turn off Remote Assistance

8. Install free.avg.com  AVG free edition,  disable daily scan.

9. Install Spybot Search and Destroy – good at removing bad software and doesn’t hog system resources¬¨‚Ƭ¨‚Ć (do not install Teatimer)

With these Basic Tweak applied the results were good.

Video of tweaked machine Running Half Life 2 in Vista at full speed (click on image to view video)

Mr._R's_machine,__running_Half_Life_2_to_show_Speed_Tweaks-multi-poster

Video Tweaked machine Running Office 2007 and Desktop.

MR._R's_Tweaked_machine,_running_Vista_SP2_with_minor_speed_tweaks_enabled.-multi-poster

Windows XP Tweaks | Cleanup

Recently I came across a friends older Dell Dimension Family PC.  This machine had 512 megs of RAM a pentium 4 clocked at 2.8 ghz and a older IDE hard drive at 80 gigs.  For fun I decided to clean and tweak the machine in an attempt to make it perform as fast and efficiently as their new IMAC (2.4 ghz Dual Core, 2 gigs of RAM).  I think I came close but will have to wait for them to get it back and use it for a while to see if I was successful.  Here are the basic steps I used to help bring this machine to maximum performance.

1.¬† Remove Unused and Potentially Harmful Programs, Dell Support, AOL, Limewire, The Weather Channel Toolbar (hard to remove Рfound it in registry), etc.

2.  Added additional gigabyte of older RAM I had laying around bringing the total amount of RAM up from 512 to 1.5 gigs.

3.  Removing Norton Total Internet Protection Suite -  This is probably the worst virus and firewall protection software around.  It is truly sad that a company as reputable as Norton has reached the bottom in the market,  under no circumstances install a Norton Antivirus product on your machine,  will probably slow machine down by 30%.  I instead opted for AVG free edition and disabled Daily scanning (performance).

4.¬† Downloaded CCleaner and Defraggler cleaning Hard Drive and registry with CCleaner.¬† Defragging with Defraggler Рboth products are free and work well.

5.  Downloaded Ace Utilities (www.acelogix.com)  This is another cleaner program that has a good menu option to remove startup items.  This program has a free 30 day trial so I use it to again clean the registry (better than CCleaner) and more importantly remove unwanted Startup Items  ( I try to narrow this list down to under 7 items).  Also used the Analyze Disk Option to free up more disk space.

6.  Disabled unused or system slowing resources   ( Turned of Indexing Service,  Turned off Remote Assistance, Turned off Alerter Service, Turned off Security Center Service, Turned off Network Location Service, etc.

7.¬† Turned Off System Restore Points РFree up HD space and free up memory resources.

8.  Removed XP themes (except default)

9.  Revert to Classic Start Menu

Machine performance was drastically improved.  The only weakspot in this machine is the older ATA style hard drive which has an 80 gig capacity.  With this drive 2/3 filled up there is a noticable delay compared to newer larger SATA drives, turning off indexing and defragging helped immensly but this still remains a weakspot.

Here are a couple of brief movies showing improved Performance

Running the Desktop and Office (Click on Image to Watch Video)

Mr._H's_machine_-_tweaked_running_Desktop_and_Office-multi-poster

Running PSXe emulator using software only drives(Click on Image to Watch Video)

Mr._H's_machine_running_PSX_emulator-multi-poster

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