A200 Toshiba Satellite Random Restarts / Freeze When on AC

Symptoms:

• Random restarts
• Boots ok on battery
• Toshiba A200 Satellite laptop
• Over 4 years old
• Works in safe mode
  

Solutions:

• Boot up in Safe Mode
• Start > Control Panel > System > Device Manager > Processors
• Disable both processors
• Restart the laptop
• Boot into normal Windows
• Should work fine, if not you may want to look at the rest of this blog
• This is apparently a temporary fix and your laptop will not last years and years without replacing a chip (see below)
  

Causes (Possible):

• Poor battery life and power switching between AC and battery
• A NEC chip on the motherboard that regulates power is deteriorating and causing the laptop to not power properly

Alternative fixes:

1. Set power settings to Power Saver
2. Set power to High Performance
3. Boot into BIOS and change Dynamic CPU Frequency Mode = Always Low (NOT DYNAMIC)
   
4. Charge up battery and only use laptop on battery

More Info (Google key words such as):

• a200 toshiba random restarts
• Satellite A200 freezes or restarts anytime
• A200 restarts when plugged into AC
• Toshiba laptop freezing when charger is pluggded in
• Toshiba Random Freeze/ Shutdown/ Restart
• a200 toshiba NEC/TOKIN OE128 Proadlizer Capacitor problems
  

Can't Install ATI Catalyst on Laptop (Sony, Toshiba, Panasonic)

Toshiba, Sony and Panasonic laptops have drivers that prevent you from installing any other drivers from the graphics card manufacturer unless it is the version by the laptop manufacturer (obviously a modified version)

Now there is little problems with that, if you don't play games or chase after the latest mm of performance gain. BUT it could be a problem if you install Windows 7 on your laptop because Windows Vista that came with your laptop had Catalyst installed already right? but with Windows 7, you should be running a more generic driver or a Toshiba/Sony/Panasonic driver (which would be likely downloaded from Windows Update)

Anyway, now for my story, I realised without ATI Catalyst that my LCD screen can not be calibrated and made brighter (too dark). External LCD monitors can be calibrated through the buttons but laptops don't have buttons for the laptop.

SOLUTION: (Skip to this section if you don't want story or background info)

Go to: http://www.hardwareheaven.com/modtool.php

That's it really haha, all the info is there! Basically a program that modified the drivers so your laptop won't refuse them and if they not refused then ATI Catalyst will recognise the drivers installed as being the compatible ones and tada!

Remember, follow instructions on the site, I won't make a "in a nut shell" guide this time but basically need the latest ATI Catalyst install file and the Mobility Modder program.

Quick Laptop Buyers Guide Checklist

Obvious things:

• CPU speed and CLASS (a 3Ghz Pentium doesn't mean its faster than a 2.4Ghz Core2Duo)
• Graphics card, dedicated or integrated and memory
• RAM
• Hard Drive Space
• Screen Size
• DVD drives
• Operating system
  

Things you should come to this site to check:

• Weight of laptop
• Battery life
• CPU access panel
• TV/FM tuner cards
• Warranty
  
• Extended warranty coverage
• Sound card and speakers (is it Altec Lansing or Harman Kardons, HQ speaker)
• Size of carry bag you'll need
• Power adapter (Australian only or International)

You might need it but didn't think at the time:

• HDMI output (720p or 1080p)
• Bluetooth
• Firewire
• Wi-fi 802.11N-draft
• USB ports placement and quantity
• Kensington lock port
• Wi-fi switch
• Audio output ports and location
  

Feel Free to comment your own list or additions.

NHC (Notebook Hardware Control)

This is in relation to the event of Undervolting and Throttling


Current success:

• Yet another Fail
  

Reasons for (fail):

• The GUI is much more nicer and basic then the RM Clock application. Haven't got Dynamic switching working yet but no crashes so far. Might not be good for those advanced users who want to over control every single aspect ;)
• Haven't been able to get undervolting to work either, maybe its only for full registered users. Also didn't have suggested volts and multipliers installed by default so have no idea what to use without blowing up X|.
  

Reasons against (Fail):

• I get an error message saying "Error on changing the CPU speed" when trying to change anything. I can only manually set the CPU modulation which didn't reduce heat or save batteries.
  
• It made my computer slow, permanently even if NHC was turned off, after a bit of analysis and crying over my now 1.4Ghz laptop which is slower than my previous single core desktop and having 1998 HDD response rates, I went to check the BIOS and yep the software turned off dynamic switching and left my laptops CPU stuck on a low CPU frequency. So if you've noticed your computer being super slow then do that!

FINAL CONCLUSION (for the 20009 at least):

If you have a Toshiba laptop like mine and its loaded with enough power to blow up your house, then I guess don't try to limit its speed with throttlers you'll regret it, it will feel like the 1990's and it for me anyway, didn't save power or make the laptop cooler.

My solution:

1. Elevate laptop with a CD jewl case (not needed if you follow 3 or 4)

2. Get a deskfan from Target or somewhere for about $8, aim fan at air vents (not really needed if you follow 3)

3. Get a high profile laptop cooling pad (not sure it is works as well if you follow 4)

4. Buy a 8 Cell battery spare or replacement battery which will elevate the latop and add battery power and cooling effect! you can even save on the 20 cent CD case ;) (not needed if you just find a wall plug in, lol)

RightMark (CPU undervolting and throttling)

THIS IS NOT A REVIEW OF THE SOFTWARE ITSELF. JUST A PERSONAL SCENARIO TEST RESULT.

Undervolting - Using less power to power the CPU, usually less than manufacturer recommended or factory set and results in cooler CPU due to lower speeds and less electricity heat. Also results in damaged (slight chance) or unstable (more chance) system if done highly incorrectly.

Throttling - Not quite sure, dam why did I mention this one now i look like a moron IT student.


I do not recommend doing this if you've never thought about needing it cause you don't then!
I will also not post anything up about how to do it but now you know its call undervolting and cpu throttling and the name of RightMark software your free to Google it yourself. But due to my inexperience and high liabality I am not doing anything on this subject as of now.


I've tried to use RightMark(RM) to cool my CPU down on my laptop and it worked it was cooler as when the laptop was idle it used less power. But when I switch off RM or reverted back from Power On Performance to Vista controlled power settings I'd get a crash dump and BSOD.

Current success:

• Fail, unless using on battery and I really needed the extra life I wouldn't use the it.

Reasons:

• If your doing multimedia it can take a little while to respond and make jitters due ot constant fluctuations in CPU power? (normal as powering up back to full speed takes some sort of time frame) but launching programs aren't affected greatly by the half a second delay.

• The profile settings made are forgotten after RM is closed.

• AND of course it crashes my computer unless i have it on Power On Demand all the time until I shut the laptop down, which is what you'd do when running on batteries. But you would still have to deal with only launching the program when running on batteries.
  
  
• It doesn't have a formal uninstall process. You should run the ?????wipeout.reg file to remove any reg files still installed and then just simply delete whole folder.
  

Reasons against (success result):

• It has a really nice system status bar icons, showing Temp, CPU frequency, CPU load. But the general GUI interface is confusing for a non-undervolter user.

Hardware temperature monitors (freeware)

I want to monitor my Hard drives, CPU, graphics card temperature, for free!


My friend showed me a really nice app that does just all that. It shows me my:

* 2 CPUs
* Graphics Card
* 2 Hard drives


Its a very basic app but that's why its good simple and easy to use, shows you 2 figure number next to a hardware name! that's all you want!


I would though like to get one with a bit more fancy interface just for show and tell but if your looking at the temp for the health of your computer then this is all you need


Its called CPUID Hardware Monitor

- Just checking for a link on google, apparently I have the old version, The new version of CPUID HM is now super cooler and better. Its got fan and voltage stats too, which is not really needed by a general user which is slightly different to what i said above. But my simpler version was V1.0.5.8

One improvement though is that all the stats are opened when you start. The simpler version you had to view each hardware on separate tabs.

Another is max and min temp records. So you know how well your current cooling is in comparison to past.
______________________________________________________________

More Info

I think you may have noticed that recently I've been adoring my Toshiba laptop a bit. So if your a laptop user concerned about heat.

I just tried to lift up the laptop on a wedge using a CD case (thin ones) and I got a drop in temp of 3 degrees. If I put it on powersaver i can loss off about 7 degrees C. Try hard surfaces instead of fabricated.

If your a desktop user the big roomy tower box should give you enough air and cooling area to not need to use your computer in power saver or life it up or anything as fans are at the rear. Unless of course your a OC-user in which case you will already have a temp monitor.

Need drivers for HP Deskjet 3325 for Vista

I've installed Vista like i mentioned before and am yet to get my printer and scanner working.
I am developing a solution but haven't yet seen it working.

Don't install the CD like you do in Windows XP for this printer, instead make Vista detect the device and ask you for drivers, get it to search for drivers and then insert the CD and make Vista search around for it, it should find a Deskjet 3320 driver and install that instead of the 3325 one but its meant to be compatible (fingers crossed)

So far I haven't been able to the printer to respond to the computer. And I am not even going to bother with my scanner cause its so old.

My best solution for you is to dual boot with Windows XP and use it when you need to print, that's what I am doing as Vista provided better graphics card performance (doesn't make sense yes? well its not better performance but in XP i get graphics glitches)

I will see if I can get it working with the 3320 driver as you can imagine its very annoying to switch and restart OSes in order to print.

Post your comments if you've followed my instructions and got it to work some how.

Best Investment: Cleaning LCDs and laptops

How do i get rid of finger prints on my laptop?
How do i get rid of finger prints on my laptop lcd?
How do i get rid of finger prints on my lcd screen?
What do i use to clean lcd screens?

Is that the type of questions you want answers to?

The answer is simple get a microfibre cloth, buying this cloth is probably the best investment ever! You can usually get them in the cleaning section of shops, they may be in the mirror or car cleaning products section as these are other uses for microfibre cloths. These cloths have micro-fibre so they pick up everything and leave no scratched or cloth marks, hence being used for mirrors and cars for shine and clarity.

Just get a microfibre cloth and wipe gently to remove any fingerprints on shiny metallic paint looking surfaces on laptop fronts or even external hard drive cases. Recent fingerprints and even oily finger prints can be taken off lcd screens with microfibre cloths. For older prints, i wet the dirty part of the lcd screen with a damp tissue (barely damp) and then dry off with a soft tissue and than use microfibre cloth to clean up the remaining water. Remember unlike CRT (fat sized screens) screens water is really bad for lcds (so they say) so use my method at your own risk! I don't take any responsibility for what happens, different lcd brands/models may give varied affects.

Blury graphics and text

On my desktop, I've been having troubles running games, my gfx card would just turn idle and the screen would turn off. I then for some reason started to experience blurry text and out of focus graphics. When i used the auto focus button on my LCD screen, the whole screen would be displaced to the left by a couple of CMs.

This is what i did, it solved the problem but which attempt solved it? no idea

• Turn the resoultion down and then back up in Windows XP
• Turned off tower and monitor for a while
• Disconnected monitor cable from gfx card
• Used a paint brush and clean dust off card
• Re-connected cable and gfx card to tower
• Powered back on, all fine again :D

My ideas are maybe lose cable, and after cleaning i put it back on tighter or turning off the tower cleared something maybe? OR last explanation would be faires or nothing, just time fixed it {shrugs}

Don't throw away the mp3 player

Many people who have brought mp3 players when they first came out have most likely replaced it with one with GBs capacity. The old mp3 players are bulky and can't store enough of your favourite songs.

Some re-use it as a thumb drive as the flash chip still has many thousands of cycles to go. The problem is new thumb drives that are flashy, shiny and ever so easy to lose cause their small, thin and comfortable to carry. This makes their old mp3 player bulky uncomfortable and not prefered as a portable data travel mate.

I recently had this same problem as a 128MB and 256MB mp3 player got replaced with a 2GB player. I still wanted to use the flash chip even though 1Gb thumb drives are $10 these days because it is just bad to waste good technology no matter how the new marketing adverts make you feel about new technology.

My solution was simple, a case mod that makes the player slim. Method, break open the case and remove it. The hard part for me was my lack of knowledge for electronics and i was fearing that removing certain components from the circuit board would break the connection and operation of the drive all together (i.e. series circuit) in my scenario i was able to remove the buttons and LCD screen.

Now the hard thinking part what things will be fit for making case? many ideas on the net such as Tic-Tac box etc. won't work on my player as the shape and size of the circuit board was larger than most usb thumb drive boards. After a bit of trying i decided to just wrap it in duct tape, it is thick and strong enough for protection and feels light but thickly padded. Doesn't look cool but compared to a Tic-Tac box i would say I've made it fairly thin.

Yeah, I think I've just about covered it all, now i just have my portable apps with me on the drive. Haven't used it in public so not sure if people would say cool, what is that or wow your so cheap.....

NovaBench Update

I have been having slow downs where i have to wait for my computers hard drive instead of my computer wait for me to command.

I wanted to upgrade my RAM and i had a look at a program called FreeRAM XP for free RAM available. It seems that when i have a slow down i still have 100s of MB of RAM (by 100s i mean 100-200).
I asked some experts and they said that software like this is useless and actually flushes RAM to the hard drive kind of like Swapfiles. I then read reviews on FreeRAM XP and many people have said that they have had crashes (not really me), slow progress in swapping windows (yep, that's me) and someone also had jittery performance in a graphics intensive game (yep also happened, with MS flight Sim)

So yeah now I am trying to close it and not use it and see if there is any performance boost. I tried to NovaBench, yep got an extra point but then i tried with other pgorams and it seems that if you close a heavy program you seem to get one point anyway. So i guess the only way to test it is for me to notice the performance in the real world.

A note for those readers who are using NovaBench, as you can read from above you might want to compare your bench points when running basic programs or nothing besides Windows to give a fair test.

BIOS update

Horay, I did my first BIOS flash update, now just hoping that nothing goes wrong.

It was a bit scary at first as BIOS chips don't accept the CTRL + Z undo function if you update and flash it wrong the only way to fix it is to buy a new clip or re-program the corrupt one.

If it is so dodgy why update then? good question it was cause i had a cold boot problem (which the BIOS update might fix, some say it has, but for me there is only time to tell)
At first what i did notice was the cool new intro screen and the nice new logos that say that dual cores are now supported, not that my motherboard will accept dual cores, i think.
I also wanted to correct the temperature monitor that came with my motherboard, it was too highly calibrated, i think but now it is always under the room temperature so now i think it is even more wrong but i like the look of 13 degrees especially if i haven't got water cooling but i am almost certain the thermo. mon. is whacked but it is too scary to return to the old version.

I would only update the BIOS if you:

• Want something to be compatible
• Fix an error

What i would make sure you do is:

• Make a back up of your existing BIOS on a bootable floppy disk so you can try to recover a bad update without running Windows which will probably not run and also to recover when an error is detected down the track.
  
• Clear CMOS and unplug PSU after update for 2 minutes
• Fix CMOS settings or just date and time and save new changes
  
• Fix clock and date settings after update

Digital Camera check list

My check list for pre-purchase of a digital camera.


--

• Digital or optical zoom (optical is physical move zoom, digital is photoshop enlarge image style)

• CCD size or resolution of photos (4 mega pixels is minimum, 7 is good for serious photos)

• Lens (camera brand lens or dedicated lens from famous lens makers)

• Physical size (make sure it can fit in your pocket, you'll want to do that later on)

• Memory size (how much internal and slots for expandable memory, all modern cameras have slots)

• LCD size (find to suit your personal needs)
  

• Battery life (you'll want to find out how long your camera can last on a full charge, you may even want to find out how much extra batteries cost if you go on holidays a lot or if you do a lot of photos away from home.

---

Things you will have to go online and read reviews to find out

• Image quality and clarity
  
  
• Problems or bugs in camera or software

• Price comparison

• General product review (usually identifies some weak spots of the camera and some competitive features but you have to decide how important or creditable the reviews are)
  

and I think that's about it

Web Masters

So far in my holiday I've done some photoshop banners for my blogger sites and i think I am now going to fix my up web sites. I have a few websites, they're not great but they are ok but i think it is time to try and shed the armature web programmer look so I will try to improve some things or just re-design the whole thing!

In the course of doing so I will post about some of the free online services I use that are excellent and also give some tips and ideas for beginner web creator want to bes.

In my holiday if i don't waste all of my time, I also want to as I've mentioned before upgrade my PC and i hope i can blog about that too, what to be careful of, how to find the right parts etc.

First I've really been shredding my notes from school and packing up my good notes so i can pack it up in a box and put it in the garage to create more room in my room: the purpose -> to create better air flow of course. With my newer and more powerful computer in my small room it overheats on excessive usage but still survives but in summer when the room temp is 32 degrees C without the computer being on it will crash if i overdo the graphics a little or even process video, which is inconvenient. I have already moved things i rarely use into boxes and place them onto of my wardrobe but i think i may move the boxes into the garage to free up even more air flow. My only concerns are insects in the garage and pest that will eat anything so for now I've only place notes in there and packaging and boxes of my technology but if things work out i may even place some of my old hardware there, old ball mouses etc.

To free up air flow originally i move the tower further up. It use to be in a special place on the desk designed for tower like most desks so when you press the CD tray you could place the CD in at arms length but now i have moved the tower to even with the monitor (i now need to get up before placing DVDs into tray) and now the scanner goes where the tower was therefore i just swapped them around really.
To make even more air i have move my desk a little forward from the wall to give some air flow behind the desk and also moved the tower closer the the front of the desk. I have also opened the side panels of the tower by 1 cm so the panels are still on but there is a gap at the back where the panel is suspose to tightly touch, this allows air to be sucked in from the back.

There has been a lot of debate about whether taking the panels off completely is better than leaving them on in terms of cooling affects. The computer fans are suspose to suck in air from the room to cool the computer down because the air inside the computer is warmed up by the heating parts of the computer (hard disk, CPU etc.) so if you remove the panels you get an immediate room temperature inside the computer tower, a contrasting view is that maybe the fans are designed to direct cool air to certain parts or areas of the computer and that by opening the case it distorts the direction and flow of the sir produced by the fans.

In my experience, when it gets hot in summer, open windows, open case and place a desk fan aimed at hard drive if you downloading, cpu and graphics card if you playing a game or using an application. You could use a bigger fan but for me i think a desk fan will provide more desk space, less noise and less force which might be a better idea for fragile parts on on the computer board (to my experience and industry technology standards no computer parts will be damaged by a strong home fan but desk fans I feel are better but larger fan (especially those square ones) are better for all round cooling but if you only need to cool specific components then a desk fan will do.

Is my computer short or hight performance based

Recently this year I have tried to put my computer in the most healthy condition as possible and put it back into shape.

To do so I do internal dust cleaning, fan and heatsink cleaning using a large soft paintbrush and a vacuum cleaner. I also try to keep my desk as clean as possible and remove dust around it.

After I have physically cleansed the computer i have to move on to spiritual cleaning, not technically i really mean software as it is intangible.
I do a defrag on my hard drives using Auslogic
Do a registry repair and untangle with Regpair

and to keep my computer's ethics clean i do a Avast AV scan, Spyboy S&D scan, Ad-aware scan and finally and occasionally a Noadware3 scan. A firewall shouldn't be a cleaning process it should be on when ever electricity is running through your computer (excludes power off state) fine, when every your screen has the ability to display some sort of picture (hence cancelling out power off).

Check back often and i will do reviews on the software i have just mentioned above and i will also tell you where you can download them safely and free.



Recently i have planned to upgrade the memory and now with school out of the way, i really want to put some more muscle into the computer.
Maybe it is my computer craving for me RAM as it knows i am planning to put more in or maybe it is being runned down, my theory is that maybe i have set the swap files on partitions and is causing some sort of a hard drive slow down, occasionally i get a high CPU usage reading when loading something big and when the spike hits max i get a stutter of mind blank from my computer, I am not crossing the possibility of viruses (by the way you should really read my up coming review on Avast, you might be surprised)

Like anything though i can't really expect my computer to run like when it was brand new at least not after 2 years of servicing me, just like cars you can't really expect it to be as good as it was when it was brand new.

As schools out i have been playing games again and have noticed games under perform even on my AMD 64??? my IBM (P3 600mhz) didn't even do that bad but i am comparing different games. So i think i will get some more RAM and see how it goes, trouble is, it is almost Christmas so i hope they still have stocks.

I could probably reinstall Windows XP Pro but that is why i disliked the IBM, it always required a reinstall and i lost all my data continuously but luckily it wasn't too hard or long to install Win98se compared to XP. A problem was for some reason i always had problems getting Win98se to detect my printer, modem and scanner and that really bugged me when a reinstall had to happen.
If you learn something here on my blog, let it be do not delete system files from Windows 98se or your just asking for a reinstall, yep that's why in the past when i first started using Windows i had so many re-installs: trying to save space by deleting Windows, a Mac and Linux user would say your brilliant!! your a genius but if your a Windows users don't use that dam delete key unless you know the file your deleting is an ugly photo of yourself else don't delete it just cause you can.

My first computer mod

I posted about cooling my computer more with an extra cooling fan i had lying around. I've done it, the computer seems to be a bit more louder but now that I've closed up my case and bay covers it seems to be ignorable but a noisy computer is much better than a non-working one i guess.
I opened up the front cover of the tower first (didn't know i could do that) and not really surprising, there was groups of cotton ball like balls of dust from two years of operations. I also found that there is a place for my fan at the front of the computer on the bottom and that fan is ducted to the bottom of the tower. The problem i had with that idea was that there was a secondary hard disk in the way, i could work around it but didn't want to fiddle around with that in the future when it comes to cleaning time so i decided to use 2 5.5" bays to hold the fan. I could screw the fans to the metal plate that was there at the front but because the fan would be too close to the holes in the metal plates which it made it loud, i decided to place the fan a bit further back, there was no design for that so there was no holes but i managed to work-around this limitation by using ordinary string and string it trough the holes in the fan and the hold on the side of that bay which are used to screw CD drives in place, i did this on both sides to hold the fan in place in case if i need to move or shake my tower. I hope this design will bring me better cleaning procedures, more efficient cooling and better noise control. You'll hear me whine in future posts if my deign doesn't meet it's perfect intention.

On a different note, I have done something i though was very risky and dangerous. I re-sized my hard disk partitions so i can create a section of my disk to be dedicated to Spooling, Cache of browsers and virtual memory or swap file. These types of files are usually temporary and cause lots of fragmentation (wiki this word if you don't understand) if i can partition this type of data to a certain PHYSICAL area of the disk it can make defraging hard disk easier because the fragmentation is located in one place of the disk rather than all over the disk. Less fragmentation and especially less fragmentation all over the disk will cause faster and healthier hard disk operations which is important on the operating system (OS) disk (i.e. hard drive where Windows is installed) as programs and the OS performance will be affected by time lags of having to seach all over the disk for the other parts of a file stored on the disk.
I used Pmagic 1.8 as a bootable CD by downloading the ISO, the software was one of the best Linux based live CDs, previously when i tested out Linux operating systems it had bad loading times and response times but this software was fast and had excellent image and graphics, way beyond my expectations for a bootable program.
It was also fairly simple to use, which is really good for me as i am new to Linux and their graphical user interfaces. This program allows to you shrink the size of an existing hard drive and use that extra free space as a new partition. I have only used it once so i do recommend it but i also even strongly recommend that you back up ALL your data first ( i used an external hard drive ~ 1:1 size worth my computer but only backed up data, i.e. excluded OS and programs installed) as i can't say that nothing bad will or can happen to your case of using this software, what i also did before using the software was defraged my disks (with AusLogics Disk Defrag, which i am still trailing but so far provided faster results than Windows but lacked features like what files are defragmented and analysing if the disk needs to defrag but why do you need it? just use Windows defrag and then to actually defrag the disk use AusLogics)

After partiting my hard disks i decided to rename my partitoned disks, they use to be called 128, 74 and Gec Soft because the disls were 74GB, 128GB and Gec Soft data disk but now as i have partitioned as new disk the disk is no longer 128GB so i decided to rename all my disks to be more meaningful and now they are Win OS, Data Disk, Achieve and Vram (or virtual RAM as this new partition is intended for RAM or temporary data)

I am a clean freak inside and outside of my computer so now it is really eye sore, a dam Vram disk is showing in "My Computer" and cause i am impulsive and clumsy i know i will click on it so many times and waste time as i am use to Gec Soft disk being the last disk in the list of hard drives. A quick Google search and surely the use of Tweak UI from Microsoft's power tools can help me tweak the computer to hide the nasty icon that i won't need as the data in there should be written by software and deleted automatically when it is not needed or when the program closes.

By the way I use Google instead of Yahoo! because i dislike their business methods and social values, Google search "Yahoo communist" or along those lines to read about their law suits with revealing democratic activities on the net to the government of China which caused democratic fighters and freedom of speech practice-ees to be locked up in jail for 10+ years which i personally think is too much, not even a thief would be locked of for 10 years and they are actually doing damage to the community (not that they should be locked up in the first place). Anyway that's another chapter in this book.

Chow

EDIT:
Cool, Tweak UI can also get rid of MSN's stupid sharing folder in My Computer which is annoying cause i only send single files and don't need sharing folders, the program also allows me to remove Saved Files on this computer from My Computer "menu" (it is not actually deleted only the shortcut in my computer is removed) which is alos good because i didn't like Gecsoft's documents (shortcut to my documents) and all the other users documents showing in my computer. It kinds looks hollow now but i guess it is neater.

Re-use old speakers thanks to standard audio cables

Recently (in this school holidays) i have decided to get a stereo set, and two not very powerful old speaker boxes in the garage which was really only sitting there waiting for me to find a place where i can recycle my technology and electronics at no cost to me, i got a cable (audio cable, one black to one black and one red) that i brought a while back which i intended to use for recording LPs for my dad as he has moved on to digital and didn't want to listen to LPs no more. I found out that my LP recording plan didn't go so well because i didn't have an amplifier that had an output to my computer and the amp only had all inputs so i really couldn't get anything to my computer. So again ~$10 wasted on a cable.

In summary i re-used some old technology and a cable that i brought but didn't use to connect up my old computer (which is now the family computer), the PC is located in a rhombus room so it echos and the original IBM speakers that came with was weak and had bad quality and low volume. So i connected the speakers to the stereo set and connected the stereo set to the output of the computer and now i have loud and clear sound on the family computer which is really good as i just recently discovered online radio as i just recently had broadband.
I am fairly happy with the results because i can re-used the old stuff (I am a green supporter) and it really does a really good job, i can hear my sister listening to her music outside of the house (probably not good for health but it is now louder than my 5.1 surround sound set up in my own computer and it costed me nothing)

Its fairly hot today, i just opened up the cover of my 5.5" bay cover (the piece of plastic that covers up the empty space where a CD or DVD drive can be installed on a PC) i have a spare fan so i am hoping that i can make a big difference in cooling of the computer.s

Set Out

This is how I am planning to set out my posts:

Info: Help and discussion on how i will operate my blog

Event: Means an event or scenario in my life

Idea: Something i have done with technology that you could try too

View: My view point on things, corporate tactics of sales of technology, false advertising, predictions on technology, tricky conditions, warranties and promises etc.

Tips: Tips for software, hardware and general computer usage

Tutorial: This tag means my post will have some directions and instructions that you could try to follow to do something i have done, computer mod, problem solving etc. (most likely in basic detail)

Review: I am going to post personal reviews about Internet services, software and technology that I have used and what I think about them

Links: Useful websites or interesting sties i have come across

Resources: This is most likely going to be the same as "Link:" but if this label is on a post it means that the link goes to a site that provides a service or good (such as software) and will be more likely useful to developers such as web masters.

Misc: I am just going to use this label to cover my random posts