the Help Desk Blog: 04/01/2008

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

URLs from 4/29/08

Windows XP Speech Recognition troubleshooting
--Windowshelp.microsoft.com
--Support.microsoft.com

Printing through a Hawking Print server model PS12U through a Dlink DI-624 router
--Macosxhints.com
--Cruzio.com
--Mac.com
--Faughnan.com
--More from Guy Moore: "I would test things connecting your computer directly to your modem. See if the problems all go away...if not then the problem is not in your router. If the problem does go away then we need to look at the router more closely. For the router, you would need to go into the web setup and look at the firmware version of the router. That would allow you to see if there is an upgrade available. I have had new routers with outdated firmware, since they may sit on the shelf for a long time.
--Forums.linksys.com
Another thought might be that DNS service is taking a long time. So when you first try to access anything on the site it takes forever. Once it finds the site it is faster.
--News.com
--Ask-leo.com
--You could try OpenDNS and see if it makes any difference."

RAID array for a photographer
--PCguide,com
--Granitedigital.com

New iMacs
--Insanely-great.com
--Apple.com

Boot camp update required SP3 for Windows XP

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

URLS from April 22, 2008

Easily show the contents of password fields

Reveal password hidden under asterisks

AVG free personal use antivirus program

Viewing picture previews in Windows XP:

Click the view menu, then select thumbnails

Did you feel the earthquake? Here is some information on the new Madrid Fault (not computer related).

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

URLs from 4/15/08

What cameras does iMovie support?

Can you put your keyboard in a dishwasher to clean it?

Backing up Macs to external drives
--Carbon Copy Cloner and other solutions at Mike Bombich's useful site
--Apple's advice
--All the Mac users on the show endorse upgrading to Leopard (OS X 10.5) and using Time Machine to back up on an external FireWire drive. Piece of cake.

Problems with Time Sync in Windows Vista
--Howtogeek.com
--Techguy.org
--Akadia.com
--Tutorials-win.com
--Greghughes.net
More from Wayne Stone:

I had the same problem and did a Google search and found the solution. It turns out the Windows default time servers don't seem to work for a lot of folks. The U.S. Navy runs one that does seem to work for everyone. To solve the problem:

Choose Start, Run, type regedit and hit ENTER (to edit the registry).
Navigate to:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/DateTime/Servers]

Right click on the first line and choose "Modify" and change the data element to 1.
(This will select the first time provider on your list as the default provider).
Right click on the second line, choose "Modify" and change the data element to:

tick.usno.navy.mil

The backup server for tick.usno.navy.mil is tock.usno.navy.mil. These are the servers I use.

You can add more time servers if you wish, for example:

"2"="time-a.nist.gov"
"3"="time-b.nist.gov"
"4"="128.105.37.11"
"5"="europe.pool.ntp.org"
"6"="clock.isc.org"
"7"="north-america.pool.ntp.org"
"8"="time.windows.com"
"9"="time.nist.gov"

Closing the registry editor will automatically save your changes.
Open the Date and Time Properties/Internet time and scroll down the new list.