Recent Posts

3801

Living Room / Re: NAS Recommendations?

« Last post by 4wd on April 26, 2012, 06:52 AM »

Here it is, almost full:



The two HDDs up top are held using a Nexus Double Twin and there's a 2 port SATA card I had lying around in one of the slots.

The modded BIOS gives Hot Plug ability across all the motherboard ports, (contrary to what the stickers say).  Still have one port free, (maybe small SSD for the OS), and the eSATA port is still free.

3802

General Software Discussion / Re: how to create bootable cd iso

« Last post by 4wd on April 25, 2012, 04:38 AM »

It would help if we knew what type of bootable CD you require but Bart has good step-by-step guides for various types here.

3803

DC Gamer Club / Re: Be Mine 2 - 6 Games, 1 Movie, 2 Comics, 4 Albums...

« Last post by 4wd on April 24, 2012, 08:37 PM »

But I guess that just shows that the games are of good quality.

-Deozaan (April 24, 2012, 05:19 PM)

Or that you have bad taste 

 

3804

Living Room / Re: I'm Going to Build a PC. Suggestions?

« Last post by 4wd on April 22, 2012, 01:10 AM »

Oh, haha...well, somehow I read "change product key" and it completely left my brain, so I did do the activate now.

-MilesOhToole (April 22, 2012, 12:51 AM)

Well put it this way, one of those links will accept the cd-key - that's the only way I've done it.

I've never had to call Microsoft even though I'm using Upgrade media for Clean install, (since you need to Clean install anyway if you had XP, I don't see much point in installing XP first just to verify that I'm Upgrading XP).

3805

Living Room / Re: I'm Going to Build a PC. Suggestions?

« Last post by 4wd on April 22, 2012, 12:41 AM »

Well, I did what you said and now it's coming up with "The Software Licensing Service determined this key is...for upgrading, not clean installation."

-MilesOhToole (April 21, 2012, 11:50 PM)

That's what I usually get...wait, I think I got that the wrong way round.

Click the Activate now link, select Activate online now and then enter the key.



Sorry, the Change Product link if for you buy an Upgrade to Professional or Ultimate - you just enter the key and the requisite features are enabled.

Actually, it says 2 more days before automatic activation.  So, will it automatically activate without me having to do anything?  I don't really understand that.

It will go into trial mode which lasts for 30 days, after that time you have to activate it, remove it or rearm.

As you can see from the pic above, there's 22 days left to activate, (WHS 2011), when it gets close to 0 days I can enter the following at a CLI prompt, (assuming I haven't bought it by then):

slmgr.vbs –rearm

After reboot, I'll have another 30 days grace period - I can do this 3 times for a total of 120 days activation grace period.

3806

Living Room / Re: I'm Going to Build a PC. Suggestions?

« Last post by 4wd on April 21, 2012, 07:38 AM »

Do I have to install the 32 bit first?

-MilesOhToole (April 21, 2012, 07:15 AM)

No.

Install went fine, but when I tried to type in the registration key, it was denied...twice.

Right-click Computer->Properties->Change Product KeyActivate Now

Enter your key there and it should register just fine - I have to do the same thing because I'm using an "upgrade" DVD to do a scratch install.

As a side note to your build, I picked up the February issue of Australian PC User from the local library the other day and they had a feature on upgrades:
Intel Core i5-2500K (PCUser Best Buy) - Comparing it to an i7-2700K:- Only until they overclocked the i7 to 4.4GHz was it able to get ahead of the i5 @ 4.4GHz in their benchmarks - that's got to say something about the sheer grunt the i5 has.
As they put it:

Ask yourself which do you want: 5% more speed or AU$140 in your pocket?

Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 (PCUser Best Buy)
Radeon HD6850 or HD6870 - Best cards under AU$200

3807

General Software Discussion / Re: No more WinPE?

« Last post by 4wd on April 20, 2012, 10:24 PM »

Only available in the following products:

Paragon Boot Media Builder is delivered with the following products:
 
Hard Disk Manager 12
    Suite
    Professional

Hard Disk Manager 11
    Server
    Virtualization Add-on
 
Partition Manager 11
    Professional
    Server
    for Virtual Server
 
Backup & Recovery 11 Home
 
System Backup 11
 
Drive Backup 10
    Server
    Small Business Server
    Workstation
 
Drive Copy 11 Professional
 
Migration Suite for Server
 
Rescue Kit 11 Professional
 
Disk Wiper 11 Professional
 
Virtualization Manager 12 Professional

Macrium Reflect also got hit by the licensing:

This is correct. Unfortunately, MS has pulled the plug on Windows PE licensing globally. Our license with MS expires in 6 months time and after that we will no-longer be able to distribute a pre-built WIM.

The Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) will still be available for download and we will integrate the WAIK installation and WIM creation more tightly within Macrium Reflect.

This will also affect any AV product that distributes a ready-made WinPE.

3808

Living Room / Re: List your (wireless) router and experiences

« Last post by 4wd on April 20, 2012, 09:31 PM »

I ordered the RT-N16 from Amazon but it does mention it "...support USB-Hard Drive and Printer and Open source DDWRT", so it most likely has DDWRT as its firmware.

-J-Mac (April 20, 2012, 11:06 AM)

I think that means you can flash it with DDWRT firmware, mine came with standard ASUS firmware.

I've currently got a 4GB flash drive plugged into one of the USB ports, this has a couple of optware packages on it and also serves as a small space to FTP files to and have the RT-N16 download to.

I had a printer plugged into it, (Epson Stylus 760), but since that printer has gone to the Great Recycling Centre in the sky I haven't got around around to having the new Canon PiXMA plugged into it.

As for reboots, mine are purely due to one of two things:
1) power fluctuation which an UPS would cure but I don't really need one, and
2) changing something in the configuration which specifically requires a reboot - most just restart the appropriate service, eg. FTP, NAT.

3809

General Software Discussion / Re: BitDefender

« Last post by 4wd on April 20, 2012, 09:09 PM »

oh, pretty useless then :/

-kalos (April 20, 2012, 05:20 PM)

Not really, I think it's the only free option if you want to run an AV on Windows Home Server 2011.

I'm running it currently on WHS2011 but there is one very annoying 'feature' that will probably make me uninstall it: you have no say in what to do with any supposedly infected files - they will be deleted, disinfected or no action taken.  Absolutely no user decision is asked for.

In fact, it has the most useless settings section of any free AV I've ever seen.

So, if you want something with a little more interaction, then almost any other free AV is probably better.

3810

Living Room / Re: List your (wireless) router and experiences

« Last post by 4wd on April 19, 2012, 11:38 PM »

4wd: So how are you liking your Asus RTN16? I'm looking to upgrade from my old but very reliable Linksys WRT54GL. I'm hoping to gain a littler speed and from what I read the RTN16 gets roughly 3X over the Linksys. Pricing is fantastic so I might as well get one now.

-J-Mac (April 19, 2012, 02:05 PM)

The RT-N16 has performed flawlessly, (under Tomato-USB anyway, didn't use the original firmware for more than a day or two), since I got it about a year or so ago.  The only hiccups have been the need to occasionally reboot it due to local mains power fluctuations doing strange things.  One day I will buy an UPS....well, let's call it a definite maybe...

It just sits there and works which, quite frankly, is all I want the thing to do.  I haven't had much need to do anything other than the occasional port mapping.  It worked reliably while I was overseas for 4.5 months last year, never once screwing up access back to a computer via RDP or requiring remote human intervention to reset it.

Also, I'm thinking about running cable for a few connections where I use wireless currently. This will result in needing more than four wired connections. Has anyone done this and if so is it better to use a switch? Or another router, connected inline with the first.

I used to have a basic Netgear 5 port Gb switch plugged into, worked fine until the switch died    Don't buy the Netgear GS605 switch, apparently these things are prone to overheating and have limited heatsinking on the chip inside - it's not a case of if it will die, it's a case of when.

Haven't bought a replacement switch yet as I'm in the midst of rearranging my network appliances so I might not end up needing one.  Netbook, WDTV Live and two android phones connect via WiFi and a total of four computers connected to the wired ports, (one via PowerLine networking), two of them W7HP x64, one XP Pro x86 and a WHS2011 server.  They can all talk to each without any problems, there was a FreeNAS box but that's been replaced by the WHS2011 machine.

3811

General Software Discussion / Re: looking for web program

« Last post by 4wd on April 19, 2012, 05:10 AM »

FireFox and Adblock plus, with filter set for your region, is what I use.
Dont know if it's better, but I'm sure it's a whole lot easier...

-tomos (April 19, 2012, 05:07 AM)

Add in Greasemonkey, (for the ability to modify web pages), and you've almost got a complete replacement for the filtering features Proxomitron provided.

3812

General Software Discussion / Re: looking for web program

« Last post by 4wd on April 19, 2012, 04:58 AM »

Proxomitron ?

The Author
Scott R. Lemmon originally developed the Proxomitron for his own use.  He then decided to release it to the public and made himself available to users via email and in several Proxomitron user-discussion groups.  His support, like his program, was always free.

With the release of Naoko 4.5, Scott discontinued all further development and support of his program and pulled the official home of Proxomitron off the Web.  We respected his decision to move on and wished him all the best -- which is, after all, what he consistently gave to us.

Sadly, one year later, Scott died -- but his brilliance of mind and spirit lives on.  Simply put, Proxomitron is a reflection of its creator:  To know Scott's program . . . is to know Scott Lemmon.

3813

Living Room / Re: Top 10 Survival Tricks for When the Zombie Apocalypse Hits :: Lifehacker

« Last post by 4wd on April 19, 2012, 04:52 AM »

The Zombies in "I Am Legend" were fast. Guess a better defense against them is this:
 (see attachment in previous post)

-Renegade (April 19, 2012, 04:37 AM)

Hmm, just you and four thousand zombies on a ship...with no firearms....I'd watch that for a dollar!  

Though if there's one of those bad Filipino bands on the boat, you could be in for worse horrors than just zombies...

And if it's captained by the Captain of the Costa Titanica, I think a bad band will be the least of your worries.

3814

Living Room / Re: Arrested and Convicted for Tweeting in the UK!!!

« Last post by 4wd on April 18, 2012, 03:03 AM »

I simply see vulgarity where you see obscenity.

-Renegade (April 17, 2012, 11:31 PM)

Not quite, I don't see anything as either vulgar or obscene - I don't care enough to regard something as anything more than what it is.  I'll quite happily use four letter words all day long but as soon as I hit public spaces the curse gland automatically turns off due to self-preservation instinct

All I was doing was presenting a different spin on events, ie. trying to see things as though from a different point of view rather than the one presented.  Something that had little to do with supposed political skulduggery.

AFAIAC, he was just plain stupid to phrase a statement like that in a public arena.

3815

Living Room / Re: Top 10 Survival Tricks for When the Zombie Apocalypse Hits :: Lifehacker

« Last post by 4wd on April 17, 2012, 11:07 PM »

Myself, I have a detailed plan of how to secure the huge indoor market thats very close to my home, and contains enough supplies to last for quite awhile in such a situation, and very very easy to secure.

-Stephen66515 (April 17, 2012, 08:36 PM)

You've just made yourself a neon hi-vis target to every gun-toting, kill-happy, "I want what you've got!" freak.

I prefer stealthy......of course a Stryker^w would help.

3816

Living Room / Re: Arrested and Convicted for Tweeting in the UK!!!

« Last post by 4wd on April 17, 2012, 10:56 PM »

We'll probably never see eye-to-eye on this. Oh well. To each his own.

-Renegade (April 17, 2012, 08:49 PM)

You're right of course 

That may be so but the method used in this case of standing on a platform and shouting out, "That person is a c***!", really isn't the way to do it, (unless, of course, they deserved it and you're willing to accept the consequences of doing it that way).

-4wd (April 17, 2012, 08:10 PM)

If that isn't the way to do it, then what is? Not a good road to go down. Who am I or who are you (or anyone else) to tell someone what they can and cannot say?

The point I was making, (in my roundabout fashion), is that the word c*** is still considered an obscenity in quite a few countries and publicly inferring someone is one is likely to get you in trouble.

The correct non-obscene way would have been: 'Which vulva lives in a house like this. Answers on a postcard to #bexleycouncil.'

But, of course, probably close to half the population wouldn't know what that meant and the other half would have thought they read 'volvo' 

3817

Living Room / Re: Top 10 Survival Tricks for When the Zombie Apocalypse Hits :: Lifehacker

« Last post by 4wd on April 17, 2012, 08:23 PM »

They seem to have missed listing a gunsmith in my area though.......oh well, the less people who know about him, the more ammo for me!

-4wd (April 17, 2012, 07:33 PM)

I'm counting about 5 gun shops in Melbourne on that map.

-Renegade (April 17, 2012, 07:57 PM)

When the apocalypse comes I'll be sure of a ready supply of ammo from the knowledgeable people at:

3818

Living Room / Re: Arrested and Convicted for Tweeting in the UK!!!

« Last post by 4wd on April 17, 2012, 08:10 PM »

Not taking sides here, (because, quite frankly, I don't give a s**t), but how is this different from:

While standing in a street you point to a house and ask the person next to you, "Which c*** lives in a house like this.  Write the answer on a piece of paper and put it in his letterbox.", oblivious to the fact that both the owner of the property and a policeman are within earshot.

By inference you have called the owner of the property a c*** which could be marginally considered as slander.

-4wd (April 17, 2012, 07:26 PM)

It's very different.

First, tweeting is not analogous to putting a letter in someone's mailbox. A tweet isn't sent to a specific person - it is posted to your own account. A letter that is put in someone's mailbox is directed at them.

-Renegade (April 17, 2012, 07:40 PM)

In my example, you are not putting a letter in someone's letterbox - you are asking the public to do it.  The same could be said for the twitter post, you are asking a question in public and directing them to send the answer to the person targeted.

Second, the tweet was directed at a politician....

The tweet was directed at the public, (twitter is not a private Q & A forum), targeting the politician.  If it was directed at the politician, it would have been an email or a question posted in a public forum specifically asked of him.

We have different standards there. Public figures are open to scrutiny in ways that private people are not.

That may be so but the method used in this case of standing on a platform and shouting out, "That person is a c***!", really isn't the way to do it, (unless, of course, they deserved it and you're willing to accept the consequences of doing it that way).

What can I say, he got his 15 minutes of fame - why is he so unhappy.

3819

Living Room / Re: Top 10 Survival Tricks for When the Zombie Apocalypse Hits :: Lifehacker

« Last post by 4wd on April 17, 2012, 07:33 PM »

http://www.mapofthedead.com/

-rgdot (April 17, 2012, 04:31 PM)

Cool!  Good to know I'll get some shooting practice in where I'm living  

They seem to have missed listing a gunsmith in my area though.......oh well, the less people who know about him, the more ammo for me!

3820

Living Room / Re: Arrested and Convicted for Tweeting in the UK!!!

« Last post by 4wd on April 17, 2012, 07:26 PM »

Not taking sides here, (because, quite frankly, I don't give a s**t), but how is this different from:

While standing in a street you point to a house and ask the person next to you, "Which c*** lives in a house like this.  Write the answer on a piece of paper and put it in his letterbox.", oblivious to the fact that both the owner of the property and a policeman are within earshot.

By inference you have called the owner of the property a c*** which could be marginally considered as slander.

3821

Living Room / Re: Xvid Video converter for Windows 7 x64 - any ideas?

« Last post by 4wd on April 17, 2012, 05:17 AM »

4wd, I like the idea of the network media player, but I find myself with an embarrassment of riches at the moment, in that, I have spare computer gear I`d like to use if it would improve on the Xbox setup. In the meantime, thanks for the reference on container formats.  A lot to digest and I`m finding a lot of it inexplicably difficult to grok.

-Daleus (April 10, 2012, 07:25 PM)

Having just acquired a HP Microserver I decided to see what WHS 2011 could do in the way of DLNA serving - not much.  Seemed to only cater for a limited set of media, eg. MKVs weren't showing up on the WDTV Live.

However, I've installed SERViiO along with the SERViiO Add-in and the WDTV Live now sees everything, as well as a couple of Android phones being able to access it all.

Now to put the thread back on track: Any luck Carol?

3822

General Software Discussion / Re: In search of ... a flexible merge software.

« Last post by 4wd on April 17, 2012, 04:52 AM »

Perhaps if the software in question has a merge function, (or a boring old copy/paste), you could automate the process somewhat by using AutoHK/AutoIt to simulate keys/menus/etc.

Otherwise, choosing software that has a flat file database is your best option for what you want I would think.

3823

General Software Discussion / Re: RAMdisk on XP 32bit - brainstorming!

« Last post by 4wd on April 13, 2012, 07:41 PM »

I notice that the SoftPerfect RAM disk is coming up at BdJ tomorrow ($9)

-Dormouse (May 15, 2010, 09:22 AM)

This is up on Bits again today.  Any comparisions from our techies ?

-Steven Avery (April 13, 2012, 09:26 AM)

Just looking at the specs would seem to indicate it can't make use of the unused portion of 4GB RAM, (512-768MB), on x86 systems:

•    Any number of RAM disks. In practice, up to 26 disks due to the number of drive letters available.
•    Any RAM disk size on 64-bit systems. Up to approximately 3.5 GB on 32-bit systems.
•    Persistent RAM disks with an associated on-disk image.
•    Volatile RAM disks whose content disappears on shutdown.
•    Built-in disk image manipulation tools.

This alone would put it one below the likes of free alternatives imdisk and Gavotte IMO.
The Persistent RAM disks are easily achieved via Logon/Logoff scripts.
The Built-in disk image manipulation tool sounds nice but in reality you could just load the RAM disk with image and then save it out after changes.

3824

Living Room / Re: NAS Recommendations?

« Last post by 4wd on April 12, 2012, 10:26 PM »

If you're interested, I bought from these guys: DessyTek for $242 to your door.

They have both non-bundle and a bundle version, (difference is they throw in the DVD-RW), for the same price but you need to wait 2 weeks for them to get more stock of the DVD-RW, whereas the non-bundle they can ship the next day.  Considering a DVD-RW can be had for $18, I'd rather the thing was shipped the next day

Non-bundle
Bundle

I've only dealt with them the once but it arrived 8 days ahead of what they stated on their website so I give them  

Addendum: Should mention - if you're expecting to use Wake-On-LAN under a Linux-based OS you may have to jump through some hoops to get it to work, (something to do with the S-state NIC goes into when the system goes to sleep, if I read it correctly), but if it's going to be on all the time then it doesn't matter.  Windows based OS has no such problem.

3825

Living Room / Re: NAS Recommendations?

« Last post by 4wd on April 12, 2012, 05:38 PM »

Looks like it (the HP mini-server) comes with Windows on it...

-Renegade (April 12, 2012, 07:43 AM)

It comes sans OS unless you specifically bought it with one.

Can anyone recommend anything better? What would be a good OS to run if you only want to use the box as NAS?

Currently, I've installed WHS on mine - this was purely to see what it was like, how easy it was to install/use/maintain, etc.  Apart from one annoyance it seems to be reasonably good so I might end up sticking with it, (AU$50 is cheap enough).  Also loaded the modded BIOS to get full speed from the 5th SATA port, (that was easier than many motherboard BIOS flashes).

If you only want a basic NAS function, then FreeNAS, (based on BSD), is simple, easy and reliable.  I'm using v7 on my old 'NAS', v8 wouldn't work out of the box without recompiling but it's moved on a fair bit since then.

OpenMediaVault is a spinoff of FreeNAS but based on Debian if you prefer something Linux based.

Both can run from a USB flash drive, so you can plug that into the internal USB port on the Microserver which frees up the need to have a separate OS drive, (in FreeNAS' case anyway - beats me why they can't let you use the unused portion of the OS drive for storage without going through a load of rigamarole to do it).

For more info on this little box of goodness:
HP ProLiant MicroServer Owners Club!
HP ProLiant MicroServer N40L Owner's Thread
HP Proliant Microserver - Purchase, Upgrade & Setup Guide

Addendum: There's also NexentaStor Community Edition which runs on it.