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| Recover Your Scratched CDs |
| Tuesday, 24 July 2007 |
Every one has had trouble with a scratched CD. Scratched data CD can't be read properly and in case of audio CD ,the CD skips when we play it.
The first thing to do with a CD which gives a reading error, is to clean it; to check that the error is not being caused by a dirty surface. You can try cleaning the CD with a soft cotton cloth by wiping its surface . Start at the center and rub gently straight outward towards the edge. In case of a stubborn stain,you can try using warm water with some mild soap.Avoid sponges since they can scratch the CD.
A CD's data is recorded on a metal layer inside it. This metal layer is inset in a transparent plastic covering (polycarbonate) which is used to protect the CD's metal layer and to allow printing a label on the side not used for reading.
A CD-ROM drive uses a laser beam to read the metal layer. This laser beam crosses the plastic layer and reads the metal layer. If the plastic layer is scratched, the beam will be unable to pass through it as it will get deviated, resulting in a read error. The data to be read still lies in the CD, the trouble lies in the layer of plastic.
So how to repair this CD which holds your favourite Elvis Presly track?
As the CD's contents are preserved, a scratched CD can be recovered by polishing its plastic surface.
The aim is to make the laser beam reach the metal surface which holds the data, in a straight line, without any deviations and change in intensity which may otherwise arise in a scratched CD.
Try polishing your CD with a "toothpaste"(baking soda toothpaste).Polish the scratches with a cotton swab. Rub gently the paste-imbued swab over the scratches until they disappear or until you notice that you have removed them as far as possible.Do all the cleaning gently.Do not apply pressure.After clearing the scratches, wash the CD in water.Let the water evaporate by itself.Do not keep the CD in sunlight.Keep it in a cool and shady area.
DO NOT USE A GEL TOOTHPASTE.
If the scratches still persist try using a metal polish (Brasso) in the same way as described above. Rub Vaseline on the CD, very gently (do not press hard).Rub from the centre to the rim. Wipe excess off using clean, soft, lint-free cloth in a radial (inside to outside) motion.
Test disc again. If the Vaseline does the trick, burn a new copy of the CD immediately. The Vaseline method is only a temporary solution.
Go ahead..Enjoy your favourite Elvis Presly track.Labels: hardware, tips, tricks, tweaks |
posted by ND @ 10:27 am  |
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| Increase your Browsing Speed |
| Friday, 20 July 2007 |
Here's a great tip to speed up your browsing of Windows XP machines. Its actually a fix to a bug installed as default in Windows 2000 that scans shared files for Scheduled Tasks. And it turns out that you can experience a delay as long as 30 seconds when you try to view shared files across a network because Windows 2000 is using the extra time to search the remote computer for any Scheduled Tasks. Note that though the fix is originally intended for only those affected, Windows 2000 users will experience that the actual browsing speed of both the Internet & Windows Explorers improve significantly after applying it since it doesn't search for Scheduled Tasks anymore.
Here's how :
Open up the Registry. To do that, go to Start -> Run, and type "regedit" (without quotes). The Registry Editor opens up. Now go to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Explorer/RemoteComputer/NameSpace Under that branch, select the key : {D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF} and delete it. This is key that instructs Windows to search for Scheduled Tasks. If you like you may want to export the exact branch so that you can restore the key if necessary. This fix is so effective that it doesn't require a reboot and you can almost immediately determine yourself how much it speeds up your browsing processes.
Disclaimer:Try this trick at your own risk. Thank you Harsha, for this article.
Labels: hack, tips, tricks, tweaks, windows |
| posted by ND @ 11:30 pm |
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| Acronis Disk Director Suite v10 |
| Tuesday, 17 July 2007 |
Acronis Disk Director Suite v10 Acronis is a leading software company that specializes in storage management solutions for mission-critical situations. Acronis provides technically advanced (but simple to use) applications for: disaster recovery, backup and restoration, hard drive partitioning, boot management, data migration and other storage management products. Acronis's line of disk management software has won many prestigious awards from top-notch publications, including PC Magazine, CNet.com, ZDNet, PC World, and many others. And Acronis Disk Director Suite version 10 is no exception! Description Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0 is a comprehensive suite that combines a number of popular Acronis products into one complete hard disk management solution. The package includes: - Acronis Partition Expert: allows you to resize, move, copy, split, and merge hard drive partitions (drive letter) -- and without losing any data! Having more than 1 partition can be a *very* handy in terms of backing up critical data.
- Acronis OS Selector: is a multi-boot software utility that allows you to install multiple operating systems on your PC. Install Windows 98 and Windows XP on the same PC for backwards compatibility -- or perhaps you'd like to installing a free version of Linux? With Acronis OS Selector, it's no problem at all!
- Acronis Recovery Expert: allows you to recover accidentally lost or deleted partitions: a very welcome program to have in case of a severe virus attack or catastrophic event!
- Acronis Disk Editor: is a disk drive repair tool that allows you to perform advanced operations on your hard disk drive, such as restoration of boot records and hexadecimal editing. The latter certainly won't be of any use to a newbie, but backup and restoration of the Master Boot Record (MBR) can get you out of some very sticky situations (especially if you've ever encountered the dreaded "Operating System Not Found" error message that often means formatting the *entire* hard drive if the MBR has not been backed up!!).
Partitioning as a Backup Strategy Acronis Disk Director Suite is the ideal tool in the combination with Acronis True Image backup. Here's how you can take advantage of these two products together: - Using Partition Expert, you can split your C drive into 2 (or more) drive letters: set up your C drive for Windows files only (say, 10 GB or more). Then, set the remainder of the drive as your D drive. Use the D drive to store all your user data (such as downloads, installed programs, etc).
- Now, when it comes time to create an image backup of the Operating System (Windows), all you need to do is backup the C drive and you could (theoretically) leave the D drive alone. By partitioning the hard drive in this manner, you'll save a lot of a time because there won't be as much data to backup. This also translates to less space used to create the backup image -- which also means less CDs and DVDs to use if you're backing up onto a secondary medium!
- You can also take this strategy a step further and create scheduled backups from your data partition [the "D" drive] by selecting specific files you need to backup on a regular basis (example: your Simply Accounting Data files).
Thus, using the combination of these Acronis products, you will always have an image of your system and backup of your user data! Seriously, it WORKS!!!
Requirements Acronis Disk Director Suite works with: Windows 98 SE, ME, NT4.0 Service Pack 6 (SP6), 2000 (SP4), and XP (SP2). A floppy drive or CD-RW/DVD-RW drive is required, and a mouse is definitely recommended!
Conclusion By itself, Acronis Disk Director is a must-have suite of utilities for anyone interested in setting up and organizing their data on a separate drive letter, installing another operating system, or wanting a little extra insurance incase disaster strikes. Disk Director Suite is especially useful for existing True Image users when it comes to reducing the time and media required to create a backup. Get It! If you are a hardcore PC/Laptop user , then this is the product for you! Though the package costs a whooping $49.99 , its worth it!
Blog reader Harsha, Thank You for this article.
Labels: review, software, tips |
| posted by ND @ 9:41 am |
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| Internet Explorer Title Bar Hack |
| Friday, 13 July 2007 |
 This is a small registry tweak that lets you personalize your Internet Explorer's title bar.Title bar is the blue bar which appears at the top of the screen when you open Internet Explorer.It contains the name of website you are visiting or some text which the web designer wants to display. This text is followed by the letters "-Microsoft Internet Explorer".
Below you can see BinaryShack followed by "-Microsoft Internet Explorer".
 Incase you want to give a personalized look to the title bar and instead of displaying "-Microsoft Internet Explorer" want to show some other text, do this.
1.Goto start->Run.
2.Type "regedit"(without quotes)in the Run box and hit enter.
3.Browse to the following folder in the registry(just double click each sub folder):
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\INTERNET EXPLORER\MAIN
4.Right click "Main" ->New->"String Value".A new string value will appear in the right hand side window.
5.Right click the new string value and rename it as "Window Title".
6.Right click "Window Title" and choose modify.In the Value data field,enter the text you want to display in the title bar. eg. "geeks rule"
7.Click save and close the registry. You are Done.
8.Open IE and notice the change .
Incase you want to roll back the change, just delete "Window title" string which you created ,by right clicking on it and selecting delete.
Disclaimer:Try this hack at your own risk.
Labels: hack, tips, tricks, windows |
| posted by ND @ 9:54 am |
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| New Age Spam |
| Tuesday, 10 July 2007 |
Spamming is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk messages, which are generally undesired. While the most widely recognized form of spam is email spam,the term is applied to similar abuses in other media as well.
Spamming is economically viable because advertisers have no operating costs beyond the management of their mailing lists, and it is difficult to hold senders accountable for their mass mailings.
Hotmail,Yahoo,Gmail and other popular email services,in order to fight spam, have enhanced their junk email protection considerably.Most of the spam is rightfully kept within limits of your junk box and not allowed to reach your inbox along with regular mail.
So how does your junk filter do this?
When you receive a mail,the junk filter automatically scans your email for certain blocked words.These blocked words are those which are regularly used by spammers to advertise their products.Over a period of time your junk filter program builds a dictionary of such blocked words and increases your spam protection.An example of blocked
word is viagra.Often,in order to prevent easy detection,such words are incorrectly spelled.eg.Viagra is spelled as V.iagra, vi.agra or viagr@, etc
But,with enhanced protection,mails containing this form of blocked words are directed to junk box.
The latest in spamming is image spamming.Given below is an example of image spamming.
 Fido stood on its hind legs-then jumped high into the air despite
In image spamming, an image advertising the spammer's product is sent to you.The junk filter program cannot verify the text within the image and allows it to pass.Certain junk filter programs use OCR(optical character recognition) , which recognizes characters within images to block such spam.However ,spammers have found a way around this as well.You will notice that their are light colorful streaks in above image.Such streaks fool the OCR software.
The text within the email body is completely unrelated to spammer's product and contains no blocked words.(given in bold and italics below the image)
As there are no links ,the spam receiver may be asked to goto a particular address specified in the image.
Thus,in this way, spammers have found a new way to invade your inbox.
The above image spam was received in an Hotmail inbox. |
| posted by ND @ 2:14 pm |
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| OCZ Trifecta |
| Friday, 6 July 2007 |
OCZ Technology was built around the determination to manufacture the best high speed DDR and RDRAM. OCZ Technology has been an innovator in many areas. They were the first manufacturer to make Dual Channel optimized memory available to the public.
Most people know OCZ for their performance memory modules, but the company does actually produce several other things. Besides the traditional memory for PC enthusiasts they also provide performance memory modules based on USB 2.0 or SD standards for use in cameras and Mp3 players.
The Trifecta card is special in many ways. It's compliant with both the SD and micro SD standard. Besides that it also has a USB-connector which means that you don't need any card reader in order to get data on or off the card. This feature is really neat if you are on the go and don't have time to mess around with a card reader.
Specifications from OCZ Technology:
- Available in 66X Speeds
- Dimensions: 32 x 24 x 2.1 mm (L x W x H)
- Official Secure Digital™ (SD)Compliant
- microSD™ Compliant
- High-Speed USB 2.0
- 5 Year Warranty
As with most of the OCZ SD-Cards, the Trifecta comes in a blister package. On the front of the package you can see the card and get an idea about all of its unique features. It states that the card is 66x speed, most people don't really know what this means, but can probably guess that the higher the number the better.
The x factor was first introduced when the CD-drive came on the market. 1x means that the drive (or memory card) is capable of producing a read bandwidth of 150KB/s. In other words the theoretical maximum read speed of this microSD card is 9.9 MB/s .
( [150KB/s * 66] / [1000 KB] = 9.9 MB/s).
One of the downsides of using the microSD-cards is that they are quite expensive considering the performance level they offer. The microSD form factor rather different compared to traditional SD or miniSD cards. The only thing the microSD standard shares with its bigger brothers (miniSD and SD) is the amount of gold plated connectors on the back of the card.
Speed Comparisons (FROM WEBSITE) :
Conclusion:
The OCZ Trifecta 1GB sells at $28.68. I would give it a thumbs up to its design, versatility, compliancy to three different standards (SD, microSD and USB 2.0) and its low access time. But a big no-no to its"average performance" and price.
Thank you Harsha for this article.Labels: hardware, review |
| posted by ND @ 2:14 pm |
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| Lovely Windows Shortcuts |
| Friday, 29 June 2007 |
Windows comes packed with a bunch load of small shortcut key strokes that enact the same commands available in the menus of a program. They are quicker and more direct, and usually involve two or three keys depressed simultaneously.Quite a few of them are listed in the Windows Manual ,but hardly anyone refers to the manual.Here are some important shortcuts which will enhance your Windows experience.
1. WindowsKey + d = >Minimizes all applications and open windows to reveal the desktop.
2.WindowsKey + L => Logs you off and lets you switch users.
3. Ctrl+Esc immediately followed by Alt+ M =>Instantly minimizes all open windows.Its similar to shortcut 1 but then its good to know.
4.Windowskey+E =>Brings up the Windows Explorer.
5.Windowskey+R =>Brings up the Run box.
6.F6 => automatically highlights the URL in the address bar.
7.Alt+Tab =>Switches to previous window.If multiple windows are open, holding ALT while repeatedly hitting TAB, tabs through all open windows.
8.Ctrl+Tab =>Tabs through pages in a properties dialog box.
9.Alt+Print Screen =>Copies only the active application window to clipboard.
10.Switch to the TaskBar =>Press Ctrl-Esc at any time to bring up the Start Menu.
Once the Start Menu appears, press Esc to close the menu while keeping the Taskbar active.
Then, press Tab to switch to the row(s) of running applications on the Taskbar.Labels: tips, tricks, windows |
| posted by ND @ 1:00 am |
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