Owner: Computer Tips From a Computer Guy! URL:http://www.online-tech-tips.com/ Join Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2007 18:55:45 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Computer tutorials, technology news, software reviews, and personal computing tips. Site statistics:Click here
Top things Windows System Administrators should and should not do! 2007-03-14 20:45:00 As a System
s Administrator for a small company for several years, here are a few things
I learned the hard way when it comes to managing IT operations, which I condensed down into the SHOULD and SHOULD NOT!As a Systems Administrator you...1. SHOULD NOT update ANYTHING on production servers unless you have tested it in a virtual environment first. This goes for the obvious patches, service packs, and drivers, but also for any software applications. If you can't test it, then you should not install it. If it is a critical security patch and you are not able to test it in a virtual or lab environment, then you should be absolutely certain you have all the backups needed to fully recover the server in case of a system failure.2. SHOULD document your current IT configuration including network setup, domain hierarchies, desktop configurations and server configurations. You should have documentation for your DNS configurations, DHCP scopes & scope options, IIS settings, database configur Read more:Windows
, Administrators
Build your own web site - Part I - Free company logos, free web site templates, and free flash templates! 2007-03-14 15:16:00 Do you need to make a small web site, but can't spend very much money on getting it made!?!? Well now you can actually make a very professional looking web site and actually not have to spend any money. Of course, I'm just talking about making it, you still have to get a domain name and host the web site somewhere, but with some new services out there, you can get a domain and host your web site for a year for less than $30! Now that's probably less than going out to dinner one night!There are some great sites on the web that are giving away web site templates for free! I've used them myself for my own web sites, so there really is no catch. Also, if you want a really nice web site, you can search through hundreds of web site templates that all range from $45 to $60. So why pay someone $500 to $2000 to get a web site done (and have all the restrictions too), when you can do it yourself! It takes a little time to learn, but you don't have to know any HTML because the site is alread Read more:Build
, company
Google Picasa Tips & Tricks - Creating a slideshow movie of your pictures that you can upload to YouTube or MySpace 2007-03-14 04:08:00 The newest version of Google
's popular Picasa
program now has a feature where you can select a folder or album of pictures and create a fully compressed yet high quality slide show movie
of the pictures! You can then take the small video and upload it to your Picasa web albums, YouTube
, or even your MySpace
account to share with family and friends. Here's how you do it:In Picasa, select a folder or album from the right hand pane first (if you're not sure what the difference between an album and folder is, read my other post below)http://aseemkishore.blogspot.com/2007/03/managing-photos-correctly-in-google.htmlOnce you select the folder, go to Create from the top menu and choose Movie. On the Create Movie options screen, you can choose the amount of delay you want between pictures. The default 1 second I find to be very fast and you don't really have enough time to see anything! I found 3 seconds to be ideal for me without being too long. However, if you're planning on creating a m Read more:Creating
, Google Picasa
Outlook Tip #2: How to use email rules to automatically move incoming emails into folders 2007-03-14 02:51:00 In this post, we'll take a look at how you can manage your email better by having incoming
mail automatically moved into separate folders. If you get a lot of email a day, this can save a lot of time rather than having to spend an hour once a week moving emails from the Inbox to your categorized folders. Email rules may seem complicated and it can be if you want to do some very sophicated things, but if you simply want to move John's emails to the John folder automatically, then it's a piece of cake.In order for rules to be useful, you should create some folders underneath your Inbox to categorize your email, maybe like Projects, Work, Family, Wife. You can create folders by right clicking on the main folder and selecting New Folder.Now to get started, open Outlook
and go to Tools and then Rules and Alerts.The Rules and Alerts main window will appear and from here you will click the New Rule button to get started with your first Outlook email rule.(I have many email rules that helps
Google Picasa Tips & Tricks - Creating Collections for your photos 2007-03-13 22:48:00 If you're like me, you've probably been using Picasa
with the default set of folders on the left hand side (Albums, Folders, Hidden, and Other Stuff), but it starts to become frustrating to search for photos
when you have thousands of photos and you didn't have the time to give every single picture a caption to be able to search on! So if you have tons of pictures and want to use Picasa more effectively, so you create your own Collections to sort out your pictures between Family, Friends, Travel Vacation, Cars, Dogs, or whatever you specific categories you would like to have!Doing it this way makes it a lot easier to sort through pictures because now you can simply go to the collection and you'll have only those folders listed in order of date without having to sort through all the other folders you might have around that same date! To create a new Collection, choose one of the folders in the left panel and right click on it. Choose Move To Collection and then choose New Collection Read more:Google
, Creating
, Google Picasa
Windows Vista Cool New Features & API's - Part IV - The new "Sleep" power state 2007-03-13 21:29:00 Raise your hand if you used Hibernation in the Windows
XP! It was always a really nice feature, but just too much hassle to actually worry about doing it. It was so much easier to just slam the lid shut and your computer would just go into StandBy without having to make 3 clicks of the mouse! It's kinda sad to say that, but 3 clicks is a lot of clicks if you're dying to get home after work!So no more StandBy and Hibernate to worry about! In Windows Vista
, the default mode for your computer when you close of the lid or press the power
button on your computer will be the new "Sleep
" mode. It basically takes the benefits of both StandBy and Hibernation and combines them into one.The advantage of StandBy was that your Windows session was store in the computer's memory (RAM) and so it could jump back to life very quickly. However, if you didn't plug in the computer for too long, the battery would die and you would lose your session. The advantage of hibernation was that even if your com Read more:Windows Vista
Outlook Tip #1: How to attach another Outlook item (email, contact, task, or calendar item) to an email 2007-03-13 16:13:00 Recently, I had to do two things that I've never done before and aren't very common, but can come in handy when the situation might arise. I wanted to send another business colleague a contact
that I had in Outlook
and also a few emails that I had recieved from that person. As I started to copy the information back and forth from several emails and from the contact card in Outlook, I thought to myself being a computer person that there had to be an easier way to do this!And there is! If you want to attach something within Outlook to an email, you have to attach an item and not a file. Here's how you do it. When have your new mail windows open, you'll see that the attach button that you normally use to attach a file also has a small down arrow button right next to it. Click that arrow and you'll see another option, Item.Click on that and you'll get another screen where you can choose ANYTHING from Outlook itself including a Calendar event, Contact card, any email messages, Tasks,
Be careful if you're a Microsoft OneCare user! 2007-03-13 15:42:00 According to a good number of recent posts, people are starting to get really mad because all of their email is being deleted by the OneCare
product! According to reports, if OneCare detects an email with malware in the attachment, it quarantines the entire Outlook PST file! And on top of that, for a lot of people it has deleted their the file from quarantine also! So if you're using Windows Live OneCare and this has not happened to you yet, TURN IT OFF and wait for the patch!! http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9012969&source=rss_topic125If you're one of the lucky ones or even if you don't have OneCare, you should still backup your Outlook email because you never know when it can get corrupted or deleted and you might lose years worth of emails!! Here's a link to the Microsoft
Outlook Backup Utility which will help make sure the file is safely backed up!http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA010875321033.aspx Read more:Microsoft OneCare
VBS Script for System Administrators - How to backup Outlook email automatically in a login or logoff script 2007-03-13 15:11:00 If you are a System
s Administrator for your company and everyone is using Outlook
or some other desktop email program, you've probably run into the situation where someone has lost all of their emails due to the fact that it's saved locally on the user's computer and not on the main servers. So if you're a small shop and can't afford to get Exchange server, then here's a simply way to automate the backup
of user's Outlook PST files onto your server in a login or logoff script.First here's the code and then I'll explain it:Set shell= WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")strUserName = shell.ExpandEnvironmentStrings("%USERNAME%")Dim fsoset fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")lnDayOfWeek = weekday(now())if lnDayOfWeek = 5 then If fso.DriveExists("G:") Then Dim lcDrive Set lcDrive = fso.GetDrive("G:") & Read more:Administrators
Tips for backing up your computer system and data files - Using the Windows Backup Utility 2007-03-13 02:57:00 In a previous post, I wrote how you can backup your computer data to various media such as CDs, DVDs, external hard drives or online storage, but all of these methods require a good amount of effort on the part of the user having to go through many different folders and copying that to the backup media. And if this is done on a regular basis, you can end up spending hours just backing up your data!Luckily Windows
has a built-in application that you can use to automatically schedule backups of your computer and it only requires you to choose the folders you want backed up ONE TIME. This makes backing up your data a lot less tedious and will make it much more likely to actually be done!So here are the steps to use Windows Backup Utility
.1. Click on Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and then Backup.2. You will be prompted to go through the backup and restore wizard. This is useful for beginners, so we'll go ahead and stick with it instead of going to advanced mode. Go ahead Read more:files
Windows Vista Cool New Features & API's - Part III - Windows DreamScene 2007-03-12 21:37:00 Another feature that everyone has been dying for, but has not really come to fruition on most people's computers because of various reasons is the ability to have a desktop that is animated rather than simply a static picture! There are applications that have been written that allow you to put animations on your desktop, but nothing really works that great and since it's not built into Windows
, the software usually has it's quirks that make it hard to implement easily.But Vista
looks like they are going to answer the prayer finally! It's called Windows DreamScene
and it's going to allow you to set your desktop background as not only a picture, but also a video! It can be a built-in video or you can even put in your own video! Though, constantly watching the same thing over and over might be disturbing to the mind, I'm sure people will come up with some very cool art videos with crazy graphics like lava flowing across your desktop screen or making your desktop in a ocean full with Read more:Windows Vista
Windows Vista Cool New Features & API's - Part II - You can run Vista in a Virtual PC on the same computer for free! 2007-03-12 17:35:00 If you've ever used Virtual PC to test out new software or browse scary internet sites or do anything that you didn't want to affect your personal PC, then you'll be glad to hear that WindowsVista
will now allow you to install a virtual copy of the operating system on the same computer using the same product key! No more having to go out and get another copy of XP, which was quite an expensive task for most people and that's why mostly only corporations ever used Virtual PC's. With Windows XP, the license stated that only one copy of the software could be installed on one computer. In Windows Vista
, the license agreement states that the licensed copy can be installed in a virtual pc on the same computer as the licensed computer. So now you can install Vista once and then install it again in Virtual PC without having to buy another license!!!However, this will only be available for Windows Ultimate or Business editions, not the Home or Home Premium editions! So if you're interest
Managing photos better in Google Picasa 2007-03-12 15:45:00 If you're a fan of Picasa
because of it's ease of use, search capability and great organizational power for your pictures, but you only use it's basic features, then it's time to learn some useful tips and tricks that will make your experience even better
!People tend to get confused as to how the images are stored and displayed when using Picasa. Basically, it comes down to two types of objects in Picasa: folders and albums. A folder is the most common element and that's usually the big list on the left hand side and is based exactly on what you have stored on your computer hard drive. So if you were to delete a photo or move a photo from a folder in Picasa, it would delete that picture or move that picture on your hard drive also. Picasa is just an application that manages pictures by creating a reference to those pictures, but doesn't actually store your pictures in the program. So if you delete the picture from a FOLDER, it's deleted off your hard drive! So be careful!What th Read more:Google
, Google Picasa
, photos
How to resize large digital pictures so that you can email them to friends and family! 2007-03-12 04:15:00 Now that you can buy a 5 MP digital camera off eBay for $130 or less, it's become a lot more common to see your digital pictures grow in size from anywhere between 1MB and 4MB!!! And so it's become a lot harder to try to email these photos or upload them due to the limitations on the size of attachments or simply the fact that it takes a long time to upload 10 pictures that are 2MB a piece in size! So I'm going to talk about two methods to send your digital pictures in a speedy and easy way!1. Windows XP has a built-in feature that will take your photos and automatically re-size them to a manageable size and then attach them to an email in your default email program. Using this method you need to have Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express or Windows Live Mail as your email program because it uses the setting from Internet Explorer's default for email programs and that list only has these three options. If you don't use any of those for your email, there is another way to re-size the Read more:large
Alternate Method - Using Google Desktop to track and monitor the activity on your computer 2007-03-12 03:06:00 I just read my post about trying to monitor what activity is occurring on your computer and realized that its way too complicated to get working and even if you get it working, it'll probably be far too tedious to go scrolling through a bunch of security events!!! So here's a much easier, more user friendly and an even better way to track and monitor your computer's activity.And it's always nice when it's free! Our program that will help us in this is GoogleDesktop
. You've probably already heard of this program because it helps you search your computer super fast. Actually some people have said it's too good and brings up too many results! And it lets you search for anything, including emails, photos, videos, files, web history, etc! So this search capability inherently has to keep track of EVERYTHING in order to provide this great results, which means it can also be used to just monitor activity in a timeline format.The really great thing about Google Desktop is that it has a
Windows Vista Cool New Features & API's - Part I - Restart Manager API 2007-03-11 22:17:00 I'm going to start a series on some very promising and cool features that will hopefully make WindowsVista
worth the 6 year wait! I'll explain these in layman's terms so that even if you are someone who will ever write a line of code, you'll at least understand some of the more intricate reasons why Vista is better than XP, other than the common stuff like it looks cooler and has better security.And what makes Windows better? Well one thing would be if you didn't have to restart your computer every time you installed an application! And considering it takes my computer 10 minutes from the time I shut it off to the time I can start using it again, this should be a great feature!The main reason why you have to restart after an installation is because there are files that need to be replaced, but are currently being used by Windows and hence cannot be replaced. Now when programmers write a software application that uses the new interface, the restart manager built into Vista will en Read more:Windows Vista
, Restart
How to track and monitor who and when someone accesses a folder on your computer! 2007-03-11 08:23:00 There's a nice little feature built into Windows that allows you to track when someone views, edits, or deletes something inside of a specified folder. So if there's a folder or file that you want to see who is looking into, then this is the easy way without having to buy any additional software.This feature is actually part of a system called Group Policy, which is used by most IT Professionals who manage computers in the corporate network using servers, however, this policy system can also be used locally without any servers.The term Group Policy basically refers to a set of registry settings that can be controlled via a graphical user interface. You enable or disable settings and these edits are updated in the Windows registry.To get to the policy editor, click on Start and then Run. In the textbox, type "gpedit.msc" without the quotes as shown below:Now you should see something that is similar to the image below:There are two main categories of policies: user and computer. As you
How to forcefully clear all jobs from a print queue 2007-03-11 08:12:00 All administrators should know how to clear the print queue in Windows when all the jobs get "stuck" and none of the jobs can be deleted. This will save you from having to restart a server (which is bad!).In order to get the printing services back up and running, follow these steps:1. Go to Start, Control Panel and Administrative Tools. Double click on Services icon.2. Scroll down to the Print Spooler service and right click on it and select Stop. In order to do this, you need to be logged in as Administrator. At this point, no one will be able to print anything on any of the printers that are being hosted on this server.3. Next you need to go to the following directory: C:WINDOWSSystem32spoolPRINTERS. Delete all the files in this folder. This will clear all print queues (it's a good idea to first make sure there are no other print jobs being processed on any of the other printers on the server because doing this step will delete those jobs also)4. Now you can go back to the Servi
HD DVD, HD Audio, and now HD Photo!?!? 2007-03-11 05:51:00 If you hadn't heard yet, there might be a new format for photos that's supposed to end the reign of JPEG! Apparently the new format that is being created by Microsoft will offer higher quality pictures with better compression. According the Microsoft, a high quality image will be half the size of a JPEG format picture and have better color and less distortion. As of right now the format is only supported by Windows Vista, but Microsoft is pushing hard to make this the next standard! However, it's not certain whether this will be an open standard or a propertiary format yet.Here are the list of features according to Microsoft:• Multiple color formats for display or print• Fixed or floating point high dynamic range, wide gamut image encoding• Lossless or high-quality lossy compression• Extremely efficient decoding for multiple resolutions and sub-regions• Minimal overhead for format conversion or transformations during decode Source: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/xps/wmphoto Read more:Audio
, Photo
Check which ports are open or closed on your computer REMOTELY 2007-03-11 05:25:00 Here's a cool tool I found when trying to fix a problem at a client's office. I needed to test whether a particular port was open coming from outside the network, but could not connect to my trusty remote computer at home to test it. So I did a search and found a website where you can remotely verify whether or not a port is open!Here's the link:http://www.canyouseeme.org/ Read more:Check
, ports
How to back up or save a Word document automatically before your computer crashes! 2007-03-11 03:45:00 I'm sure this has happened to many people before: you are writing away in Word for an essay or whatever and you decide to take a quick break and go check out a video on YouTube. So you load up the browser and click on the video and WHAM! The video is not loading correctly and suddenly you can't close IE and the toolbar disappears and then you just can't do anything...except kill the computer and lose your Word Doc!Well, if you take a little care in the begining, you can go ahead and shut the computer off and your document
might still be there when you open Word the next time around (We can't be certain, but you'll have a better chance if you follow the next steps than if you don't do anything!!!)First thing, there are several features in Word that look like they will do a lot, but really will not protect your document and may actually make it corrupt! So to check out all the options we have for saving our documents, fire up Word and go to Tools and then Options and click on the S
Does your computer power on, but your screen is completely blank!? 2007-03-11 02:42:00 I just fixed this problem on a guy's computer yesterday and it can be one of those tough to figure out what is exactly causing the issue type of problems! Basically, you press the power
button on your computer and the computer jumps to life and starts making all kinds of noise like it's going to load up just fine, but alas, NOTHING HAPPENS! The screen
is blank
and you don't even see the manufacturer logo pop up where you can press F2 or F12 to enter setup, etc, etc!So this can be a little scary for some people who are not computer junkies. Thankfully, though this problem is not MAJOR, nothing is actually broken. The cause of this problem is due to the fact that when the computer first runs it's own self check, it finds a problem with one of the devices connected to the motherboard and that is usually the RAM. Up to now, RAM is the only reason I have seen for this problem. Actually, that's not true...on my Sony VAIO, I had a bad RAM SLOT!!! Yes, the actual slot for the RAM was not Read more:completely
How to share a printer on your home network that doesn't have a network card 2007-03-09 23:16:00 Do you have a printer at home that's connected to one computer and whenever you need to print from another computer at home, you have to email yourself the file and then download it on the other computer just to print it!??! Well if you have that problem and would like to be able to print from any computer in your house, then here are the steps to doing it!First thing are requirements: In order to print from anywhere in the house, all the computer have to be connected to the same network
, which means either connected to the same router by wire or you need to have a wireless network setup in your house. That way all the computers can see each other on the network, otherwise if the computers cannot communicate, then there can't be any sharing!Step 1: First you need to make sure all the computers are in the same Workgroup. A workgroup is a Windows term that basically means a group of computers that have something in commom and can communicate together. So to make sure all the computers
Now you can sleep with your wife and your laptop! 2007-03-09 06:10:00 This will probably annoy the living crap out of your wife or girlfriend, but it's great for anyone who wants to be lazy and yet play on their laptop! I found this article from another blogger, Kevin Kelly, and the LapDawg, as it's called, looks sweet! Right now it's such a pain laying in bed with your laptop burning your legs up (I have a Dell Inspiron 9100, which is horribly huge and can be used as a damn frying pan!)!It's a little pricey at $100, but according to KK's blog, the other ones are more expensive! So finally I have found a way to use my laptop in my car and in my bed! Can't beat that!http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/001592.phpHere's another review of the product by Gizmodo:http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/lapdawg-wooden-laptop-stand-handson-working-from-bed-never-felt-so-easy-243643.php
Reasons to work for a small company if you're in IT 2007-03-06 01:07:00 Ok, so if you're in IT and you work for a small company
, you need to fight your way into getting any kind of decent compensation. Small companies are cheap when it comes to paying out to their IT people, which is completely not cool especially if you're the only man running the place!! But being at a small company has it's perks:1. You get to delve into any topic you are interested in (software, security, database, infrastructure) and there is probably going to be a lot of work to do in that area.2. If you're up for a challenge, then a small business is the place for you! Because there is absolutely nothing there to start with!!! You get to setup new servers, configure Active Directory, put in place a decent phone system, build out a redudant data system for your critical data, write all kinds of software to manage processes and workflow, etc, etc. But of course, this is assuming that you are ok with un-organized work places or work that is not handed to you, but instead you need t Read more:Reasons
How to unprotect only a portion of an Excel spreadsheet 2007-03-15 22:39:00 If you've protected Excel
documents before, you may have run into the issue where you wanted to protect most of the spreadsheet, but allow users to modify particular sections. Here's how you can allow certain parts of the spreadsheet to be editable: Let's say I have a simple table of numbers going down from 1 to 5 in one column and then I have 3 columns where I multiply each number by 10, 20 or 30. Now let's say I want to allow the users of my little Excel sheet to be able to change the number (1-5), but not modify anything else (such as the formulas). In order to do this, select the range that you want to allow to be editable, right click on the cells and go to Format Cells. Click on the Protection tab and uncheck the Locked check box. Now that those cells are "unlocked", we'll go ahead and protect the sheet. Protecting the sheet does not affect unlocked cells and therefore allows you to create partially modifiable spreadsheets. Click on Tools and Protection and Protect Sheet.In
3D RSS reader for Windows Vista! 2007-03-15 22:12:00 Microsoft has released a 3D RSS reader
for Vista
that uses the Windows
Presentation Foundation to transform your RSS folders and feeds into a 3D galaxy! Your folders will be represented as galaxies, and your feeds will be represented as stars that are cubes and spin and or smaller or larger depending on how many items are unread! And the faces of the cubes will display the current content and media for the RSS feed! As a Star Trek fan, I find this very cool!!And on top of that it's made to be like a game. You can "fly" through your feeds like you're in some space ship in all three dimensions. As you fly through, you can select an item from the feed and the cube will turn and display the content of that item. Right-clicking the mouse buttons brings you back out to the galaxy for more exploring!Unfortunately, since a lot of feeds don't have logos right now, the cubes will only show a generic feed icon, so if you really want to get the full visual appeal of the reader, you'll have to
Simple ways to increase your computer's performace - Configuring the paging file 2007-03-15 19:00:00 If your computer has begun to slow down after several months of usage, there a a couple of minor changes you can make to your settings that will help increase the performance of your computer. Tweaking Windows is essential to get the maximum performance for your computer. Even on a fast computer, if the settings are incorrect, the computer will perform poorly.Virtual Memory Settings:Virtual memory for your computer is hard drive space used by Windows when it fills up the physical RAM. Let's say you have a computer that has 256MB of RAM and you're running several applications at once that might need a total of 400MB of memory. Windows will fill up the 256MB and then use the free space on the hard drive to store the rest. This is called the Paging file or Virtual memory and Windows will increase and decrease the size of this file as needed. Writing to disk takes much longer than writing to physical RAM, so when Windows uses the paging file, computer performance degrades.That's why you Read more:Simple
No more Visual Foxpro after 9! 2007-03-15 18:20:00 I had to report on this because I've been using Foxpro for the last 3 years and find it to be a great product for a small IT shop. I love the fact that you can develop an application quickly, connect to the database with ease, deploy the application within a few minutes, and have many users connect at the same time without any issues. The learning curve was very small and the program had become very robust with transaction handling, custom report generation, and a host of other features.It will be missed! According to Microsoft, they will continue to support the product until 2015 with their normal support cycle. They are going to be moving the rest of the Foxpro team to other divisions related such as Visual
Studio and SQL Server.However, there is one hope of a product close to Foxpro and that is Sedna. It's apparently going to take the Foxpro enhancements to the next level and integrate better with Visual Studio, Windows Vista and Windows Longhorn.Source: http://keznews.com/2508_Mi
Remote controlled piegon brains! 2007-03-15 18:09:00 This article from Hacked Gadgets (though this is a hacked pigeon brain) describes how scientists from China have managed to implant micro electrodes into the brains of pigeons which allows them to "steer" the bird up or down and left or right! Apparently, the scientists send signals to the implants from a computer and the bird is forced to follow the commands.The research will help the military possibly use these new forms of technology to spy on hard to reach targets or places where they could never get into without being seen. The Pentagon has already tried this experiment by trying to create remote controlled sharks! What the hell were they planning on doing, convincing the enemy to jump into the water and then have the sharks eat them!!!I feel bad for the animals though! It reminds me of that movie Being John Malcovich where his brain gets taken over by these other dead people and he knows it's happening, but can't do anything about it! Scary thoughts!Source: http://hackedgadgets Read more:Remote
Recommend Site To A Friend
