Ken's Tech Note

I tried to update my Intel-based Mac's Windows partition with the latest SP3. But it complained it did not work properly. A search in Google yields the answer . Turns out the hardware architecture has a compatibility issue. Adding an entry in the registry fixed the problem.

The Dell Latitude D430 is a solid worker bee but the Vista Basic installed on it is not. Over time, the operating system becomes slower and slower - it takes approx. 7 min. for a complete boot from start. This becomes a good reason to install the new Windows 7 (RC) to see if performance is improved. This is a good weekend pastime. The installation was done from an external USB DVD Writer (generic brand) and installation is a breeze. All hardware was recognized saving a lot time trying to reinstall drivers. I hate driver installation because sometimes we need to install in a particular order to get things work. (Dell Recovery/Driver CD does not have an automatic installation scripts that would install the drivers.) But again this is not an issue because all hardware was recognized - even the Security (Trust Computing Platform) After basic installation, I have installed some key software that makes the laptop capable of doing some real work. 7-zip AVG Free 8.5 K-Lite Mozilla Firefox + Th...

See how the CBS "60 minutes" reports the story on dealing with Conflicker. Watch CBS Videos Online

From time to time, I receive email with attachment "winmail.dat". This is because the sender is using Microsoft Outlook. It encodes attachment into a proprietary format ( TNEF ) making other e-mail clients fail to display the content correctly. Interestingly, this includes Microsoft Outlook Express. A quick Google research solves the issue. Thunderbird - use an add-on called Lookout . It decodes winmail.dat automatically in the background and put the attachment in the attachment pane. Mac OS X - use TNEF2.0 which is a free decoder written by Josh Jacob. Windows - use freeware Winmail Opener .

After upgrading / reinstalling Windows and commonly use software on a PC, I ran into a problem of unable to get XAMPP to run properly. It's a virgin Windows Vista with 7-Zip, Skype, FileZilla, K-Lite Codec, Firefox, Thunderbird... essentially non-server-related apps. Then I installed XAMPP with the aim to set up a small testing environment for simple PHP applications. However, Apache refuses to start, complaining that port 80/443 were in use. Windows Firewall has been configured properly to allow Apache to run. On browsing 127.0.0.1, the browser returns a blank page (but not an error). It turns out that Skype by default will use port 80 and 443. So it is blocking other applications such as Apache to use these 2 ports exclusively. Turning off the 2 ports in Skype solved the problem. It is also interesting to note that MSN Live Messenger uses port 80/443 as well. But Live Messenger/Windows Messenger was removed after the virgin installation.

There are multiple ways to Block web advertisements. On Firefox, AdBlock extension is one the best out there. It comes with a few lists that you can subscribe to so users can start right away without much configuration. I have successfully configured AdBlock to remove many web banners from local web portals. Google ads, on the other hand, are pretty hard to beat because it is text-based. Here are 2 ways to remove Google text ads: 1. AdBlock: create a new filter: http://*.googlesyndication.com/ * 2. Modify the system hosts file: (also prevents Google to capture your web activities using Google Analytics) # [Google Inc]127.0.0.1 pagead.googlesyndication.com127.0.0.1 pagead2.googlesyndication.com #[Google AdWords]127.0.0.1 adservices.google.com127.0.0.1 ssl.google-analytics.com #[urchinTracker]127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com #[Google Analytics]127.0.0.1 imageads.googleadservices.com #[Ewido.TrackingCookie.Googleadservices]127.0.0.1 imageads1.googleadservices.com127.0.0.1 imageads2.goo...

Last year I had been struggling with this for an office relocation and machine upgrade project. This job is challenging because it involves many differences to be tackled: 1. E-mail client (Outlook to Apple Mail) 2. File format (.pst to .emlx) 3. Filing system (NTFS to HFS+) 4. Operating system (Windows XP/Vista to Mac OS X Leopard) It turned out version numbers also mattered because newer version provides more tools and introduced new complexity. For example, Apple Mail under Tiger and Leopard has great import tool for .mbox while it introduced new file format .emlx. The problem was solved via a few days of research and trial and error and countless time waiting for import because the file archive is more than 4GB. At that time, a great article helped. A new, suggested steps are posted below: 1) Use Thunderbird on PC to convert .pst to .mbox (via the Import wizard). 2) Locate the Thunderbird mail folders - “Local Folders.” and rename the mailbox (i.e. files without any extension) to ...