Category Archives: Geek Friday
Geek Friday: Running Ubuntu on Windows 7 Using VirtualBox
I like Linux. However, due to various reasons, I spend the majority of my time in Windows 7. It can be a pain to reboot in order to switch because there are some processes I just plain need running the majority of the time (Skype, for example).
I was reading about Windows 8, and some were advising running it in a virtual machine (VM). That sounded like a great idea to me, but for running Ubuntu rather than Windows 8. I pondered why I hadn’t thought of it before.
Actually, I know why. It is bound to suck down the memory, and, sure enough, in the end it did. But, it is possible to do!
Geek Friday: Fixing a Major Cause of Slow PCs
You know the drill. That PC you bought a year or two ago runs like molasses running uphill in the winter time. Worse, it takes forever to boot up.
There can be many causes for this, and different things will slow down different actions. I remember one user complaining that “Microsoft loads slowly”. I really had to prod. Was it Windows? Office? No, she was referring to Internet Explorer. It turned out that she had no less than six toolbars loading up when Internet Explorer starts up. While this was an extreme example, I’ve seen others with four or five toolbars that they don’t even know how they got installed. However, the most common complaint isn’t IE but Windows itself.
A recent PCWorld article concentrates on why “Windows Takes Too Long to Boot”. Simply put, so many software developers want their particular application to look snappy when it starts up, so they put some sort of stub program in the Windows startup to make the loading of the main program go faster. This is a shell game, as it only offloads the time to Windows startup. When enough programs do this, Windows takes longer to load because in addition to itself loading, it is loading all these services and stub programs. Worse, these are items you may or may not even use in an average day.
Do be careful, though. Some programs like QuickBooks are written so badly that they won’t run at all unless they can put something into your Windows startup. Trying to keep its hooks out of startup might keep the program from running at all.
It requires some research, because not all autostart programs are very obvious at what they do. Some have no information on Manufacturer in the MS Config (aka System Configuration), which makes it harder to determine whether or not it is even a legitimate program. Google is your friend (at least in this case).
Geek Friday & Review: LogMeIn
I have VNC running on my home computers, which is a lot handier than running up and down the stairs. I was using UltraVNC, but it had some really bad issues with freezing up a lot. Sometimes, it would refresh after several minutes, but sometimes the only remedy was to kill VNC and restart. TightVNC was somewhat better, but I still had that problem on my home theater personal computer (HTPC). Sure, I have the remote keyboard, but the characters on the screen are a little difficult to make out at a distance (my TV isn’t really that big).
So, I thought I’d give LogMeIn a chance, and at first it was great! I could do all sorts of thing without it freezing up.
Geek Friday: iFixit Troubleshooting and Repair Resource
There are various, and useful I should say, web resources for repair manuals and items out there. However, rarely do you see one site where you can both order tools and download videos/manuals. Well, when I heard of iFixit, I assumed it would just be another site with tear down videos, and I did specifically want to see one on there. However, I noticed that they also have parts and tools, manuals and forums to ask about troubleshooting.
They don’t just have computers, either. In fact, I wanted to see an iPad teardown. They also have guides for cameras, phones and game consoles. They even have a vehicle repair section! Now, how cool is that?
Geek Friday: Do You Really Know and Understand Resolution?
A pixel is a picture element, and the higher the number of pixels the higher the resolution, right?
Well, I learned how little I really know about image resolution when I read the How-To Geek article “HTG Explains: Everything You Know About Resolution Is Probably Wrong”.
Resolution really can mean different things in the storing and in the displaying of image data. To confuse matters even more, printing and monitors have different considerations in the display of images. There are limits and techniques that can be applied to each of these to deal with the issues of resolution.
If you are into digital graphics, computer art or digital photography, the above is a good read.
Geek Friday: Accessing Support Ticket Systems While on the Road
I have had an interesting week. However, it was a week that got me thinking. It also ties in with my increasing disappointment in Intuit in just about every area. To boil it down: How do I create invoices while on the road without breaking the bank?
I hope to look at some of these in the future. For now, I’m listing some of the more interesting. While I am specifically looking at support ticket systems, there’s a lot of overlap with any contractor that travels to customer sites, I’m sure.
Having Quicken on my laptop is nice, but there are times when whipping it out and emailing an invoice isn’t always all that convenient or cheap. The 3G stick is dead slow, but it will work … sometimes … when the signal is good. Furthermore, Quicken isn’t exactly a ticket system.
Geek Friday: WordPress Missing Scheduled Posts
When I moved the blogs around, I had forgotten this one little detail, and so I’m going to document it. I’m on Omnis Network, but I assume this will pretty much cover anywhere. Sometimes hosting sites turn off the cron jobs that cause posts scheduled for a specific time to get posted. This is a handy feature in WordPress where you can schedule an article to be posted at a specific time. This can come in handy, say for example, you want to post up a Geek Friday post the night before so that it isn’t too early.
So, what is “cron”, why should you care, why do hosting companies turn it off and what can be done about it?
First off, the why you should care only applies if you have some interest in running, updating, writing on a WordPress site. If you are only a reader, this might not interest you all that much unless, of course, you are planning to one day host your own company or personal website/blog on WordPress. In that case, perhaps you’ll want to bookmark this post somewhere in case the problem comes up.
Geek Friday: Removing Crapware
Many (not all, but many) people pull a computer out the box, hook it up and just go through whatever menus are provided to get it set up and running, and simply accept whatever comes with the box. If McAfee or, forbid, Norton comes on the computer, then that is what they will use. However, that also means there are a lot of other trialware type of programs on there that might never be used or even get in the way of doing real work on the machine.
Now, if you have experience with these programs, you might know which ones are useful and which ones aren’t. Perhaps you spend hours online looking up unknown programs to make sure they aren’t some type of spyware or junk. Some people aren’t willing to do this, and it can take quite some time.
Geek Friday & Review: WinAudit
Well, I like lists and checklists and what-not, but it is sometimes difficult to keep track of where you started in order to know where you are going. There are tools that help, like Secunia Online Software Inspector, which is nice for check for out of date software. It is especially nice because it will even catch those pesky out of date Flash OCX files that don’t show up in Add/Remove Programs.
However, it really would help to have a list of programs, and even a list of devices, just to get an idea of what you are starting with. There are tons of programs out there that do this, but they are expensive for the most part. I just wanted something to list the program and the version – nothing fancy. In addition, I want to be able to carry it on a memory stick (aka thumb drive, flash drive, etc.) and not have to actually install it.
Well, it turns out that WinAudit fits this bill quite nicely. Not only that, but it is free. For that price, all I expected was that it would produce a text output that I could print out and cross items off as I go. However, while it will produce a text report, it can also create a comma separated file (CSV) to import into Excel or an HTML to bring up in a web browser.
It is a nice, down-and-dirty program that cuts to the chase. It reminds me a lot of how software used to be written back in the 640k days. If you want bells and whistles, then this isn’t the program for you, but if you just want something quick and easy to use, then give it a whirl.
Between these two utilities, WinAudit and Secunia OSI, it should be easy to keep your PC clean and up to date. Don’t forget that Secunia also has a Personal Software Inspector that runs on your own machine and provides you a more thorough inspection.
Geek Friday: User-Friendly Application for Ubuntu Grub Settings
I previously covered a little bit about editing the grub boot program for Ubuntu systems in “Windows XP Recovery Partition 4: Install Clonezilla”. That’s all fine and well if you can remember where the files are and aren’t in the habit of forgetting to run update-grub2. You would think there would be a program for this, right?
Well, it turns out there is! The How-To Geek site did an article on “How To Easily Change Your Dual-Booting PC’s Default OS” in which they use StartUp-Manager to manipulate the grub menu to select time-out, default OS and other options. The article covers the basics quite well, but the program documentation also covers removing options for recovery mode and memtest86+. Sounds like the tool for me! I’ll have to try this out next time I find a need to play with grub, which admittedly isn’t every day.
