Recent Posts

1651

Living Room / Re: Used Computer, $116,000 or Best Offer

« Last post by Shades on May 24, 2013, 07:32 PM »

At least you could see how far Jobs would go to create a very minimalistic design for "his" creations...

1652

General Software Discussion / Re: Help needed with computer problem

« Last post by Shades on May 24, 2013, 07:29 PM »

My personal computer (self-built, also Asus) has a similar problem when it is turned on and a power failure occurs. No POST, no error beep(s), nothing works except the LED on the mainboard and the CPU fan spins up.

Before I became smart and read the manual of the mainboard I had to disconnect the power supply cable from the mainboard and leave it lying around for two or three weeks (no joke!).

However, when reading the manual after the third or fourth time this happened (you would think I had enough time to do so the first time this happened  ) I saw that my mainboard still came with a jumper to clear each and every setting in POST/BIOS. I honestly thought they didn't do that anymore.

Anyway, when I placed that jumper in the "clearance" position (I removed the battery on the main board as well) and left it like that for 10 minutes. Then I put the jumper back in its original position and placed the battery back. The system came back if nothing had happened to it.

The solutions from the previous posters I would try first as they will likely solve your problem. But sometimes a really hard reset can work wonders too.

1653

General Software Discussion / Re: What does: "service termination timeout is out of admissable values" mean?

« Last post by Shades on May 10, 2013, 06:00 PM »

That is the typical MO of any anti-virus company, after all that is their bread and butter.

1654

General Software Discussion / Re: What does: "service termination timeout is out of admissable values" mean?

« Last post by Shades on May 09, 2013, 01:39 PM »

Do the pages:

http://support.kaspe...vzscripts/tsw.avz.51

and

http://forum.kaspers...ndex.php/t81420.html

explain the problem/reason why kis throws the error message sufficiently for you?

Read through all the comments available on the second link to get a clearer picture..

1655

Living Room / Re: Movies or films you've seen lately

« Last post by Shades on May 07, 2013, 06:14 PM »

I regretted spending money on the second GI-Joe (3D) installment. Admittedly, I am not that familiar with the background story, for me it was too much of jumble.

1656

Living Room / Re: Adobe drops the gauntlet - going forward it's cloud - or nothing.

« Last post by Shades on May 07, 2013, 06:07 PM »

Why would I pay for subscription if no new features were to be added? That would diminish my incentive to get a subscription.

Don't get me wrong, for a lot of (types of) software a subscription model would be beneficial for both user and company. Custom made software would be a good example.

For my intents, purposes and interests the Adobe products do not.

Not that long ago they did a nice thing with their CS2 (or was it 3?) product give-away and now they do this. Ah well, lets hope this move will make them see how the bottom of their "war chest" looks like.

1657

Living Room / Re: What to do with an SSD after it fails

« Last post by Shades on April 25, 2013, 04:45 PM »

Not to be bad or anything, but replace the resistor with what? You know which kind and capacity of resistor needed for replacement? I assume that Intel is not happily spreading that kind of info to everyone. Of course, if Intel does share, hats off to them.

Too bad that SMD soldering tools are expensive (and very hard to come by in this part of the world, I might add!). With parts so small it is not advisable to fill yourself up with lots of coffee / mountain dew before going to work 

On instructional videos that were shown on the school I went to, they showed that components are mechanically glued to the PCB and that the PCB then (very briefly!) dumped in a soldering bath. Worked way faster and less error prone.

1658

Living Room / Re: What to do with an SSD after it fails

« Last post by Shades on April 24, 2013, 07:09 PM »

Just a few minutes, let me open up my failed Intel X25-E and grab a couple of snaps for y'all.

-f0dder (April 24, 2013, 07:44 AM)

It is the first time I see a SSD from the bottom. Normal hard disks have a relatively small PCB which connects to the insides of the hard disk. The connection point contains only a few (8 or so) contacts. If you unscrew the PCB, you'll see that the PCB comes off without any problems. No glue or whatsoever.

At least, this is the case with all the Seagate HD's I have lying around here. Hence the suggestion of a controller swap.

But you are right, your Intel SSD controller looks kinda scary 

1659

Living Room / Re: What to do with an SSD after it fails

« Last post by Shades on April 23, 2013, 05:56 PM »

For the tinkerer (and possibly destroying your PC)...you could swap out controllers from a similar (same batch if possible) SSD and retrieve your data.

Last ditch solutions are always risky 

1660

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by Shades on April 12, 2013, 05:55 PM »

I took offence to something? News to me...When the hell do I take offence to ANYTHING  

Tinman, I know you didn't aim it specifically at me

-Stephen66515 (April 11, 2013, 09:50 PM)

Another bad joke:
Do you really have to aim specifically with a 12-gauge? 

1661

Living Room / Re: Movies or films you've seen lately

« Last post by Shades on April 09, 2013, 08:21 PM »

Two days ago I saw The Fairy. Normally I'm not into French art house movies, but as this one is from the French speaking part of Belgium so I could resist the urge to turn it off immediately. And I am glad I did.

The actors in the movie will not win any beauty prize (no, not even a '...., and all I got was this lousy t-shirt' constellation prize)...and there is not too much dialog, so most of the movie is just visual interpretation. But they were able to keep you positively engaged with the story. And it is actually funny in a lot of places.

It is definitely entertaining enough to recommend to the DC connoisseur.

1662

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by Shades on April 04, 2013, 07:33 PM »

Having lived for quite a while here in Paraguay, I can attest to the words of Tinman57, British humor is hardly appreciated here. Dutch humor is received even worse.

And for a lot of what goes for funny here, I can't even see or understand...luckily there is always 'schadenfreude' to fall back upon. That goes great all around the globe. 

1663

General Software Discussion / Re: Registry cleaning software debunked...

« Last post by Shades on April 03, 2013, 10:17 AM »

I really had to wait that amount of hours, the system was also very slow when doing this...hence my comment about the state of the hardware, which in my case is a 4 year old heavily used common standard (not server grade) Seagate sata 2 disk.

There is also my suspicion that Seagate doesn't ship their best performing commercial grade drives to the South American markets (where I live). Unfortunately, it is also the only brand on sale here in Paraguay. You want a different brand, order it through internet in Brazil or North America (to keep shipping costs a little bit in check), which means I have to wait quite some time for arrival, which also means that I have to travel to the only postal office here in the capital several times to see if it arrived/passed through customs.

Oh, before I forget, I should also mention that Paraguay does not use any form of postal code, so it is not possible to have direct delivery at your house without a local courier service (again adding to costs). Computing hardware is also very expensive here in the capital. When I need to build a system for someone, it is actually cheaper to travel 600 km (1-way!) to a city bordering with Brazil and buy the hardware there.

Yeah, welcome to different world...

Ah well, luckily this country is stacked with beautiful women, parading around during the months that the sun shines (9 months) and beer is sold in 1-liter bottles. 

1664

General Software Discussion / Re: Registry cleaning software debunked...

« Last post by Shades on April 03, 2013, 08:26 AM »

Yes, you can align when a partition has content already, though it would be advisable to make a backup first (especially of the partition your computer boots from).

It takes a long time though. My 400GByte partition (with over 200GByte of free space) on a SATA2 drive took about 8,5 hours to complete (with Minitool partition wizard).

When you have storage space to spare, you could move data temporarily from partition 1 to partition 2, align partition 1 and move the data again to partition 1. Which method would be fastest, is a good guess and very much depending on (the state of) the hardware in your computer.

1665

General Software Discussion / Re: Help Wanted: Develop A Beautiful Desktop RSS Reader

« Last post by Shades on April 02, 2013, 09:38 AM »

Although I do not like to associate (any kind of) religion with my person, I do have to admit that Kabbalah has one thing right. 80% of all the problems you encounter in life are your own fault.

Not wanting to sound too much as a self-help guru, but fixing your own flaws either dissolve these problems or make them much more manageable. Besides, if you cannot take a look in a mirror and have a good laugh about that meets you...you are taking things way too seriously.

1666

General Software Discussion / Re: thunderbird alternative

« Last post by Shades on April 02, 2013, 08:54 AM »

Foxmail, originates from China, but don't hold that against it. It is definitely a decent piece of software. I myself used version 5 of it for quite some time with 7 mail accounts that each received a relative big amount of messages (50+) daily and that version at least didn't choke on that.

I don't know if that is sufficient for your needs. Ah well, it's free and there is even a portable version you can download. I see also that it even can hook up with an Exchange server as well. Might be interesting to try it again, as I am not satisfied with the search capabilities from Thunderbird lately.

1667

General Software Discussion / Re: Registry cleaning software debunked...

« Last post by Shades on April 01, 2013, 05:27 PM »

ERUNT for registry backup is an excellent suggestion. More people should take that to heart. If you really want to speed up your XP/2003 PC, check for partition alignment. Chances are that the partitions on your hard disk aren't. I did do this alignment on my XP PC and it does make a noticeable difference.

Reading and (mainly) writing to an aligned partition can increase the speed of your PC 5-10%. When checking numbers in Process Explorer you do notice that I/O drops (duh!) but also that you lose a lot less of resources on interrupts. Because of the drop in I/O you will also expand the longevity of your (SATA) hard disk as a bonus.

Best of all, with a free tool like 'Minitool partition wizard' you can do the alignment. There are a lot more Partition managers who offer the similar functionality. 'Minitool partition wizard' is just the software that I used for this.

Of course, when compared with an SSD it hardly makes a difference, but for the ones without the funds, alignment does make working just a bit longer with the 'old clunker' more bearable...and will leave more time to save for the real speed upgrade  

1668

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by Shades on March 28, 2013, 05:26 PM »

Thanks kyrathaba 

1669

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by Shades on March 28, 2013, 03:46 PM »

I am always interested in adding free ebooks to my collection. Should help battling boredom when waiting for the (second) bus that takes me home.

1670

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by Shades on March 28, 2013, 03:35 PM »

^ I cant stop laughing out loud

-tomos (March 27, 2013, 05:44 PM)

Yeah, his knife block should be interesting, though 

1671

Living Room / Re: Google data centers

« Last post by Shades on March 25, 2013, 05:16 PM »

Content appears to be blocked from Paraguay. Crap.

1672

Living Room / Re: unmountable_boot_volume error = is there a fix?

« Last post by Shades on March 22, 2013, 04:52 PM »

You could also dismount the hard disk from the laptop and hook it up to a normal PC. If the hard disk is SATA, there is no problem with cabling. If it is still IDE/PATA, there are cables that convert between the 3.5" IDE connector on the motherboard to the 2.5" IDE connector on the hard disk.

You can even make these conversion cables yourself if you have the inclination to do so. All it takes is a standard 40 pins IDE cable and a female 2,5" connector that you either connect directly onto the cable (I connected my Amiga (A1200) hard disks always in this way and that worked beautifully) or spend some time soldering the cables from the 3.5" cable to the 2.5" connector.

Here is the pin-out you will need.

Hard disk to hard disk copy goes faster and has more chance of success. If you have the room on the hard disk in the PC that you use in this way, it is also a good idea to create an image from each partition on the laptop hard disk. Will save a lot of wear and tear on the laptop drive.

1673

Living Room / Re: Newly coined term, "internet fury"? A sad article...

« Last post by Shades on March 22, 2013, 04:16 PM »

@40hz:
About equality and privilege...you should read Nietschze. Already dead for so many years, but still manages to put the finger on the (politically incorrect) sore spot in society regarding equality and privilege. He also puts the blame for that where it belongs, if you would ask me.

As I have come to know you as a well-read person through this forum, I suspect you have read him already.

1674

Living Room / Re: unmountable_boot_volume error = is there a fix?

« Last post by Shades on March 20, 2013, 07:55 AM »

There is also: BartPE

Similar method of data retrieval as suggested by 40hz, but BartPE is Windows based, so it is definitely able to read files from the laptop.

The disadvantage is that you have to create the disk (or USB) yourself, while the distro's do not.

1675

Developer's Corner / Re: SourceTree for Windows in Beta

« Last post by Shades on March 19, 2013, 03:28 PM »

My emailbox is always filled to the brim in the morning...and there was a newsletter saying that the Windows version is now also available (out of beta).

Link in original post will lead you to the download.