Sep

26

Fix Hibernate in Windows XP

Filed Under Fix, Howto, Windows | Leave a Comment

Usually in Windows XP when you click Start -> Turn off Computer you have following options:

  • Stand by
  • Turn off
  • Restart

But there is another option called Hibernate. As name suggests when you choose that option your computer goes in deep sleep. This is different from Stand by mode and Shutdown and actually is in between.
In that mode Windows XP does the same as Stand by, but in addition writes memory dump on the hard drive and turns off the PC.
After you power up the PC the memory dump is loaded in the memory and computer resumes operation as after stand by.
It takes a bit more time for that operation, but is much less hat initial power up.

How to enable Hibernate?

  1. Make sure that you are logged in with administrator account. You can do that by going in Start -> Control Panel -> User account
  2. Go to Power Options and choose Hibernate tab
  3. Check Enable hibernation
  4. Now you are able to hibernate your computer

Troubleshooting:

  • I do not have hibernate icon

If on turn off menu you do not have hibernate icon it means that you have newer computer BIOS that supports Stand by by lower power option.
If you want to hibernate you need to press Shift button until hibernate icon appears.

Sep

10

How to disable VLC Media player system tray popup

Filed Under Fix, Howto, Linux, Windows | 8 Comments

Sometimes is annoying having all this popups when VLC is minimized and track changes.

Here is how to disable them:
Go to Tools-> Preferences -> All -> Interfaces -> Main Interfaces -> Qt
and uncheck Notify on track change.

Aug

8

Acrobat and arrow keys (fix)

Filed Under Fix, Howto | Leave a Comment

For long time I was frustrated form inability to use arrow keys in Adobe acrobat reader to move up and down the page.

Instead of that the cursor was moving in the text.

Finally I realized that this is used to select text. And surprisingly enough I was in Select mode.

Right click and change to Hand tool and I now have the desired behavior.

Hope this will help someone.

Mar

28

Random name folders in Windows

Filed Under Fix, Windows | Leave a Comment

After updating my Windows machine I found that few folders with cryptic names are created in root directory.

They look like this:

28/12/2006  07:33 PM    <DIR>          1822a56c32dc8dbcf5
11/02/2009  09:42 PM    <DIR>          89b3b50a7b1b96838a89
30/08/2007  06:19 PM    <DIR>          a8ccd1e2d466bc402f

I’m used to the folders created after update in \WINDOWS and after I’m sure that there is no problems with the update they could be safely erase, but this was something new.

After browsing the contens my initial thougths were confirmed those were temporary folders from windows update.

So I erased them…

Jan

28

-bash: /usr/bin/find: Argument list too long – Fix

Filed Under Fix, Linux, error | Leave a Comment

I had a strange problem when trying to list all files i a folder.

I typed:

 find . *.gz

And received:

-bash: /usr/bin/find: Argument list too long

After searching on internet I saw a lot of similar problems, but then I remembered one of my old posts

bash: /bin/rm: Argument list too long – How to fix it

After reviewing it for on more time I found my mistake

Correct syntax is:

find . -name "*.gz"

Dec

12

Fixing vim/vi arrow keys behavior

Filed Under Fix, Linux | 2 Comments

In case your arrow keys do not work as usual when you enter in “insert” mode try this:

:set nocompatible

And if this fixes the problem add:

set nocompatible

to your ~/.vimrc file.

I had this problem in FreeBSD 7.0 and this fixed it.

Found here.

Nov

27

How to repair Linux(CentOS) software RAID

Filed Under Fix, Howto, news | Leave a Comment

Sooner or later hard drives fail…

That’s why we use RAID arrays. The best solution is to use hardware RAID – one assisted with specialized processor on the board. In that category I do not include cheap (called Fake RAID) solutions integrated on the motherboard.

But unfortunately sometimes real RAID controllers are too pricey – here on help comes software RAID.

The good news is that it is included in most of the recent OS. Linux does not make an exception and the software included is really well optimized and even recommended to achieve better performance over Fake RAID.

…

Now in case of failure we are protected, but RAID 1 and 5 will protect the data in case of one drive failure so it is better to replace the failed drive as soon as possible, but on other side you do not want to stop the machine right now.

NOTE: If you have IDE HDD do not use following procedure. IDE drives are NOT HOTSWAPPABLE and removing it may cause MORE DAMAGE.

This is valid also for ordinary s-ATA and SCSI drives.

In case that you have hotswappable drive SCA or similar you can replace the drive when the machine is working.

If you are not sure check the documentation that come with your hardware.

And now after all this precautions let’s start:

Determine the failed drive

To check what array and what drive have problem simply type:

cat /proc/mdstat

Here is sample output:

md2 : active raid5 sdd2[4](F) sda2[0] sdc1[2] sdb2[1]


106221312 blocks level 5, 256k chunk, algorithm 2 [4/3] [UUU_]

In this case the problem is sdd.

Check drive size and type

For the size type:

fdisk -l

And look for sdd in the output.

To check exact drive model type:

dmesg|less

and again look just before SCSI device sdd:

Next step is to obtain replacement drive

(ideally the same model)

Dump the partition table from the drive, if it is still readable:

sfdisk -d /dev/sdd > partitions.sdd

Remove the drive to replace from the array:

mdadm /dev/md2 -r /dev/sdd2

Look up the Host, Channel, ID and Lun of the drive to replace,

by looking in

cat /proc/scsi/scsi

Remove the drive from the bus

echo "scsi remove-single-device 1 0 3 0" > /proc/scsi/scsi

Verify that the drive has been correctly removed

by looking in

cat /proc/scsi/scsi

Physically replace the drive

Unplug the drive from your SCA bay, and insert a new drive
Add the new drive to the bus:

echo "scsi add-single-device 1 0 3 0" > /proc/scsi/scsi

(this should spin up the drive as well)

Recreate the layout

Re-partition the drive using the previously dumped partition table:

sfdisk /dev/sdd < partitions.sdd

If failed drive was unreadable here you need to create new partitions

Add the drive to your array

mdadm /dev/md2 -a /dev/sdd2

You can check if the operation was successful by issuing

cat /proc/mdstat

Inspired with modifications from

Nov

21

GPU acceleration in Acrobat

Filed Under Fix, Windows | 1 Comment

I did not notice right away, but since version 8 of acrobat there is GPU hardware acceleration. For now only 2d and no CUDA or AVIVO, but still a step in right direction.

Unfortunately Adobe did not enable it by default so you need to do it.

Here are the steps to follow:

Start Acrobat

Go to Edit -> Preferences -> Page Display

If your video card is supported in the rendering section you will find “Use 2D GPU Acceleration”. Just check it as shown below and enjoy.

Nov

18

Upgrade HP/Compaq Presario 1950NX

Filed Under Fix, Windows | Leave a Comment

My PC is HP/Compaq Presario 1950NX and it come with integrated Video Card (Nvidia 6150) and 1G RAM.

Even it has good CPU (Athlon XP 3800) lack of memory and slow video card did not allow me to use high detail settings even on older games.

To improve the performance of the system I’ve added 1G of RAM (~$50) for total of 2G (4×512M).

And added PCI expressx16 video card from DiamondMultimedia Viper HD 2600 XT 512M (~$65).

As usual the upgrade was not flawless.

I’ve disabled the driver of NVIDIA card as noted in installation document that come with the card (always read those documents they contain important instructions) and set from BIOS PCI express as primary video controller.

After that I’ve installed the card and then the drivers from the CD.

Up to here no problems…

But after I started video player I noticed that simply there is no sound. As usual I verified the cables – so many times I simply did not plug them, but everything was OK.

Then I opened control panel -> sound and audio devices to see for my surprise that the sound card was set to none.

Next step was to check Device manager – only one adapter was listed – ATI Function Driver for High Definition Audio…

After seeing this It light up – The Video card has HDMI output and is capable to transmit audio via that connection. This was counted as sound device and since in BIOS onboard audio was set to AUTO it was disabled.

Simply setting it to Enabled bring back my sound.

Oct

24

WordPress 2.6.3

Filed Under Fix | Leave a Comment

A vulnerability in the Snoopy library was announced today. WordPress uses Snoopy to fetch the feeds shown in the Dashboard.

Even it does not seem as high risk vulnerability it is recomended to upgrade.

For more information.

Next Page →