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How-To Create a UBUD

I just made that up. UBCD is a great tool for tracking down hardware and software problems with non-Apple computers. To be honest I am not sure if it works on Apple computers but I assume most of the tools would not work even if it boots on the hardware. UBUD is my abbreviation for UBCD on a USB Disk (a.k.a. thumb/pen/flash drive).
I ran into a problem on my last road trip fixing someones computer and I was without any CD’s to burn UBCD to. So I ran across these instructions at pendrivelinux.com and they worked perfectly for turning my USB drive into a bootable UBUD.

USB Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD) prerequisites:

* ubcdfix2 (does the USB conversion) <--I found that this file doesn't download so you can get it from the link above
* UBCD ISO
* USB flash drive (fat32 formatted) Sorry there is no download link for this.
* A windows host PC to perform the build

UBUD How-To:

1. Download and launch UBCDfix2.exe, a UBCD folder is created
2. Download the UBCD ISO and move to your UBCD folder
3. From the UBCD folder, click fixubcd2.bat and follow the onscreen instructions. I ran into one problem where it said I needed to run the program again because I was using Vista but really I didn’t have to. So if it gives an error in Vista go ahead and try rebooting anyway.
4. Reboot and set your computer to Boot from the USB device

I hope this helps with any problems you may run into when you find yourself without a blank CD.
Let me know in the comments if there are any other tools that you always keep with you on the road for fixing those random computer problems.
Also, has anyone tried UBCD4Win? It seems like it could be interesting for Windows specific (a.k.a. virus/spyware) problems.

MediaSmart server advanced Twonky settings

With a new MediaSmart server I was excited to get the TwonkyMedia server up and running to be able to stream all my music and videos over to my PS3. I have some experience with Twonky from my Buffalo NAS and it was the best DLNA server I have ever used. I was a bit disappointed that the server configuration was dumbed down and limited to the MediaSmart console.

Access is restricted to MediaServer configuration!

To enable to regular Twonky configuration pages you need to do the following steps.

1. RDP onto the server using mstsc.exe from a run command. If you have a version of Windows without remote desktop you will need to find a way to install it (I don’t know how) and open up C:\TwonkyMedia\twonkyvision-mediaserver.ini
2. Locate the line

# Web access
enableweb=1

3. Change it to

# Web access
enableweb=2

4. Save the file
5. Restart the TwonkyMedia service by opening services.msc from the run command, find the service on the list, and click restart on the left column.

Now all you need to do is browse to your home server in a web page and go to port 9000.
http://hpserver:9000
You should be greeted with the normal Twonky configuration settings now.

I hope this helps someone, it certainly helped me.

My 2009 predictions

I have never done this before but I thought I would take a swing and making some predictions at what I think is going to happen this year with technology.

Computers:
1. Smaller, faster, better. Duh. That is obvious but I think there will be some big improvements in “alternate” input for computers. Apple is rumored to release a multi-touch imac. Windows 7 has multi-touch support and is just waiting for hardware/software to take advantage of it. In 2009 I expect to see the biggest improvements in multi-touch software. Games will probably be first, with the iPod touch and iPhone helping with lots of ideas, and then we will get some cool browser and media solutions. I for one would love to see cooliris with some multi-touch support. After multi-touch will probably come touchless input but I don’t think that will gain a lot of ground in 2009.

2. GNU Linux will gain at least 1% (double) market share (putting it up to 2%) before the end of the year spearheaded by Ubuntu. At this point I believe every major computer retailer (except Apple of course) offers GNU Linux on at least 1 model line, and when people see the boot speed and stability improvements of the next Ubuntu release more and more people are going to start “giving it a shot”.

3. 2009 will be the year of Microsoft solutions. I know Apple is gaining on Microsoft’s market share and they still will for a good part of 2009. But I don’t think market share ever really tells a full story. All I hear about now is how Apple is the coolest thing since super cooled capacitors, but I sense a bit of a change in the wind. I think Windows 7 will launch in 2009 and will greatly restore faith in Microsoft as a company. I also think that the next version of Windows Mobile will finally catch Microsoft up in the mobile platform market. The Windows Mobile OS won’t surpass what is currently out with Android or iPhone but it will make it respectable in what it can do and how it looks. I also think that the Windows Home Server market will gain popularity and the Xbox line will continue to grow. Finally, I think Zune sales will skyrocket (mainly cause Zune media player will be in Windows Mobile 6.5). Right now the Zune is in spot 3 behind Scandisk and Apple. I think as more and more people become unhappy with their iPods but they don’t want to upgrade to iPod touches or iPhones they will turn to the Zune. Last I checked Zune had 5% market share, but by the end of the year I see that number doubling to 10% of the mp3 player market. A big jump but it is truly a worthy mp3 player in my book.

Video games:
1. The Wii will crash. They have enjoyed a crazy amount of sales for far too long and they haven’t come out with any good software for months. I am so glad this day will finally come because I haven’t liked the Wii from the start. They will quickly be outsold for a few months by the Xbox 360 and the Wii will drop in price (my guess is to ~$180). Either way it will be hard to recover and it will probably just die out until Nintendo unveils the Wii HD or something ridiculous. By this time the Wii will not be “the console to have” and most people will finally see the console for what it truly is.

2. The PS3 will jump in sales. I already see this at my work. Two of my co-workers who previously bought Wii’s finally want to either A. Play real video games again or B. Watch Blu-ray movies. Their obvious choice was the PS3. Although the price is a big jump, people will finally realize all the features you get out of a PS3 and will start buying them mainly for Blu-ray players and eventually for gaming systems. The PS3 will also start to gain popularity because the Xbox 360 will run out of juice (aka. storage space) and the PS3′s potential will finally start to be tapped into. Sony will begin to push out better programming tools and maybe even Valve will come to the dark side and program their own crap for the PS3.

3. Online systems will be key this year. Xbox Live is fantastic but costs money. More and more people are getting tight on money and Xbox Live will probably suffer because of that. The PSN has been mediocre at best, but at the cost of free I think more people will sign up for this than ever before. Also Nintendo will realize the error in their ways in not offering a online service and will make plans for it with the Wii HD.

4. I think the PS3 will offer 3D gaming to some extent. Most people don’t realize their Samsung HDTV can display the 3D content and the market is ripe for the picking. I think the PS3 will be the only console that can really handle the amount of power it will take and storage space to contain 3D content.

Other:
1. February 17th will be a very dark day for a lot of people. Best Buy will be crowded as hell, and people will be very upset their antenna doesn’t work anymore. The biggest impact will be in low income/minority neighborhoods. There will probably be some bill passed to make sure they are not forgotten about in the future. HDTV sales will continue to decline until after February 17th when they will get a small kick in the pants until the economy levels out.

2. Because of the DTV transition online television distribution systems will benefit. Hulu, Vudu, Boxee, Apple TV, Windows Media Center will all see a lot more users than ever before. It is going to be a big quantity over quality issue but the amount of free content online will win in the end. After online distribution systems gain some ground they will start to push better quality to the users.

3. Displays are going to rock. Not just TV’s either. Laptop displays, computer monitors, projectors are all going to improve. OLED will make a big push (“organic” isn’t just for your foods) and I think we will probably see some sort of built in projector for a laptop this year. Pocket projectors will also finally become something worth looking at.

4. The internet will have a new awesome site. There will be some new MySpace/Facbook site for 2009 and it will include all the other sites in one. It will finally truly be able to combine your online accounts (at least social accounts) in one place. I have a feeling this site will be run in some way by Google (or at least bought by Google in the end). I think the first step to this will be Google NOT buying Facebook. If they do buy them then there would be no point in making an all inclusive social site. Their new site will easily tie in with YouTube, Blogger, Google Calendar, etc. The next step would be for Google to buy Twitter.com. As more people don’t have time to blog, they will turn to Twitter to allow them to blog on the go.

Well that is it. I know it was a heck of a lot of reading and I thank you for reading it (or at least skimming it). I will hopefully follow up 1 year from today to see how these predictions were met.
Let me know your predictions in the comments or if you agree/disagree with any of mine.

How I stay digitally organized: downloads and files

I was inspired by download squads post on getting a hard drive organized and I thought I would post how I keep all my many computers organized. I hope to follow this up with a couple other posts about how I keep my cloud life organized and how I keep my media files organized but, first lets tackle local files.
To explain how out of hand my files can get, here are the computers and storage devices I use regularly: work laptop (with 2 OS’s), work desktop, home desktop, MythTV computer/NAS, wife’s laptop, wife’s desktop, numerous memory cards, 2 external hard drives, a home NAS, network drives at work (8), backup CD’s, a original xbox (which stores more than you’d think), and obviously this website/server and more email addresses than I want to admit to (or even know exist).
So lets start with how I keep my files organized on the computers I use the most. My work laptop and work desktop.
The first thing I always try to remember on my work computers is anything and everything on my work laptop and work desktop are counted as files I can lose at any time. I do not keep them backed up as often as I should because I use these computers mostly for work purposes. If I lost my job or either of my hard drives failed all of the files would be gone and I am fine with that because all of my important files are backed up somewhere else. Both of my work computers are running Windows Vista and I had to create some extra folders in my user profile to stay organized.
The first folder I make is install. This is where I keep my most used program installers that are not updated too often. Programs like Firefox, Filezilla, and Pidgin are all updated far too often for me to keep installers for them but more random/large installers I want to keep around for future use so they go in this folder. Inside my install folder I have the following subfolders: Backup, Game, Hardware, Operating System, Software, and Windows Mobile. The backup folder is not where I store backups from the local computer but usually backups for other computers/memory cards. This folder structure is almost identical to one of my external hard drives. The external hard drive keeps a much more permanent set of installers and backups but my laptop is just for programs I install often. The other folders in my Install folder are pretty self explanatory.
The second folder I create is a scripts folder inside my user folder. I have debated naming this projects because it is where I keep scripts/programs I am writing and general tools that I make for myself. For now though I just put scripts in that folder.
The last folder I make is my work folder under documents. This folder is simply for work related documents (pdfs, spreadsheets, etc.). I don’t keep a lot of work documents on my laptop because they are generally stored on my network drives at work. This folder is just for documents that relate specifically to me such as expense reimbursements, system logs, and checklists.
The last set of folders I make are in my downloads folder. Inside downloads I create a Firefox, torrent, FTP, and dropbox folder (the desktop and Starcraft folders in the screenshot are only specific to my laptop and are there for quick access). I then tell each appropriate program to put the freshly downloaded files in the correct directory (dropbox is a writable samba share folder). Once I have all the folders created I add a toolbar to the Windows taskbar for easy access because this is probably my most used folder. This is also usually my biggest place of disorganization because I download things frequently. I have found, however, with this organization it is very easy for me to go through old files and delete them with ease. I used to use Belvedere from Lifehacker but I found I did not like my files moving on their own.
My linux computers/partitions have similar folders in the home directory and my wife’s computers she keeps organized as she wishes but usually keeps important files on the NAS at home. I will go over organizing media files next.

Windows Vista temporary user profile

Sometimes when a user logs into their vista machine they are greeted with a temporary user profile. This is caused from a few different things but the main causes are
1. The computer cannot authenticate the user on the domain (usually because it did not get a respond from the domain controller). Or the computer is no longer a part of the domain.
2. The user is part of the Guest user group.
3. The user profile folder/user name was not available or the user already existed in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList
4. The login service failed to start on the machine prior to logging into the machine.

The main indication that the user is using a temporary user profile is all of their documents appear to be missing (desktop, documents, favorites, etc.). Any settings the user may have are also set to default (default background, screen saver), and the user will have this popup in the lower right hand corner.

The popup warns the user saying “User profile was not loaded correctly. You have been logged on with a temporary profile. Changes you make to this profile will be lost when you log off. Please see the event log for details or contact your administrator”

If this problem happens for a user the first thing that will probably fix the problem is restarting the computer (so the computer can connect to the domain controller). If that does not fix the problem please put in a work order so we can look at the problem and narrow down why this is happening.

One important thing to note when the user is logged into a temporary user is that their documents in their profile are not lost. Nothing has been erased they are just logged in as a different user. It is also important that the user does not save anything to the temporary profile. If they need to save a document they should email it to themselves using apumail.apu.edu, save the document to one of their network drives, or save files to a usb drive. If anything is saved to the desktop, documents, or favorites of the temporary profile it will be lost once the user is logged off.

Please see these links for more information.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940453
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947242/en-us
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/257580/en-us

How to set an external display as primary in Windows Vista

I posted this on my work’s wiki but I wanted to post it here so I can remember how to do it for later.

If you have your external display plugged into your laptop push Win+X to bring up the Windows Mobility Center. Then click on the Connect display button.

This will bring up the New Display Detected screen.

With that window open select “Show my desktop on the external display only” and hit ok.

Your laptop monitor should turn off and the external display will show your start menu and anything else you had open on the laptop.

Now right click on the desktop and go to personalize.

Then go to Display settings and select “Extend the desktop onto this monitor”

Go here for more information.

http://msthings.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!BFE88543FF6C8C5F!218.entry

Let me know if you have any Vista tips in the comments.

Remote assistance auto accept for Windows XP

I use remote assistance on a almost daily basis at my work. It is a built in tool in Windows that allows me to remotely control a users computer without kicking them off of the machine (like remote desktop does). One thing it did not do was let me take control if the user was not at their desk. The user must click two windows when going remote with them. First they must click to allow you to share their screen, and second they must click a button to allow you to take control. I have searched and found a few VB scripts that allow me to go remote without needing the user to click accept but today I just ran across something even more useful. The ability to go remote without the user there and without needing to use a special tool. Only problem is I have to edit a file on their local machine. I may play around with this some more in the future but for now I thought I would share it with everyone just so others can enjoy this ability.

First the file you need to edit is found on the computer you are trying to take control of at C:\windows\pchealth\HelpCtr\System\Remote @ssistance\helpeeaccept.htm. Open the file with notepad, or better yet Notepad++, and edit the following lines.

btnAccept.disabled = false;
btnDecline.disabled = false;
btnDecline.focus();

to this

btnAccept.disabled = false;
btnDecline.disabled = false;
btnDecline.focus();
DoAccept();

Next, open the TakeControlMsgs.htm and find the following lines:

idExpert1.innerText = vArgs[0];
idExpert2.innerText = vArgs[0];
idExpert3.innerText = vArgs[0];

Then just add these two lines right after

// Added to allow take remote control of PC
onClickHandler(0)

That’s it! now the next time you go remote with that machine it will auto accept for you to view the screen and also auto accept when you click “Take control”.
Because remote assistance is different in Vista this doesn’t work however. If anyone knows of a way to use remote assistance in Vista without user interaction please let me know in the comments.

Windows tools

So I thought I would clean out a few more pinned articles in my bloglines before I went to bed. By a few, I mean 9. Lets just get started with this.

The first one is real simple. This is how you can easily disable Aero before running a program. In many cases you would want to do this before running a 3D intensive game. All you have to do is find the shortcut, right click and go to properties, click the compatability tab and check the box that says “Disable desktop composition”. That is it. Aero will disable itself next time you launch the shortcut and enable itself when the program is done.

The next tip it two-fold. First there is a quick tip on how to backup your DVD’s with 1 click. Sure that 1 click is going to take you a few hours to complete, but all you have to do is click once. The second part is a bit more involved but shows you how to backup your DVD’s and play them easily on a PS3. Sure you could always put the DVD in the PS3 and play it but who wants to get up? This uses a great tool, which I have yet to use, called PS3 Video 9.

Next up is another two parter and this is all about extracting things you never knew you could extract out of Windows. If you want to use a icon that a certain program uses. You can use IconsExtract or if you want to extract all the drivers you are using, to save as a backup, you can use DriverMax.

One of the last useful updates I have is a visual tweaker for Vista. It is called Vista Visual Master and has a lot of very useful tools. It gave me the ability to use custom themes again after I installed SP1 and that is worth a download itself.

Here are a few that most people probably won’t find very useful but I am going to give them a try for various reasons.

To remove passwords from Excel documents you can either buy a tool called Excel Password Remover or you can run one of many macros that will remove the password for free. I want to link to the full article so you can see all the comments with the macro options.

The last two I have are random but I know I will need them one day. First is a way to disable cached domain logins in Windows. This also may work to increase the number of logins available when off the domain but I need to test with that. To do it all you have to do is open the registry and find:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

Once you find that just change the cashedlogonscount to whatever value you want. Note that 0 disables this ability.

This last one will come in real handy when making my classroom images. A tool called CleanHandler will clean up those autoplay options that pop up in Windows when a cd/usb stick are plugged in.

I feel pretty good after that update so I will leave you with that.

How-to set a screensaver before login in Windows XP/Vista

I haven’t fully tested this for Vista yet but it has the same key as XP so I am assuming it works the same. This is very similar to the setting up a default wallpaper but you use the SCRNSAVE.EXE key instead of Wallpaper.

Browse the registry to

HKUS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop

Just change the SCRNSAVE.EXE key to wherever your .scr file is located. There is also options for setting if there is any screensaver, ScreenSaveActive, the time out, ScreenSaveTimeOut, and if the screensaver is secure which seems dumb to me since no one has logged into the computer yet, but whatever.

How-to set wallpaper image before login in Windows XP

Open up the registry and browse to:

HKEY_USERS\.Default\Control Panel\Desktop\

edit the Wallpaper key to point to where ever you have your wallpaper stored (eg. c:\windows\wallpaper.bmp). The file needs to be a .bmp to show up but that is all you should need to do.
After a restart the background will show up behind the login window assuming you are not using the welcome screen.
If a user logs in and then logs out their wallpaper will show up instead. But this is great to keep things looking the same when computers are restarted often.