Archive for the ‘Windows’ Category
Saturday, May 4th, 2013
Whether you tried running simultaneously more than 1 Skype clients by clicking twice on Skype Desktop icon or invoking Skype via Windows Start menu; You already have figured out that Skype on Windows is set-up by defaykt to only support one logged in Skype user.
In case you wonder why on earth someone might need to run in parallel few Skype accounts on one Windows PC, possible scenario is;;;
You work for a company and just for clarity you have to communicate with clients from one skype name and with another skype name to communicate to company management.
In Linux in Skype version this is not so and thus for people like me who come from Linux it is rather uneasy to not be able to login in second Skype instance, whether you go to a friend who already keeps logged in with his Skype user …
Thus this triggered me to research a bit if simulatenous user login is possible?
Yes it is possible and very easy, to do so the user has to run manually Skype from command line like so:
On 32bit PC hardware with 32 bit of Microsoft Windows issue in win cmd.exe (command prompt) from:
START -> RUN -> cmd.exe
cd C:\Program Files\Skype\Phone\
C:\Program Files\Skype\Skype /secondary
or to directly paste in command prompt:
“C:\Program Files\Skype\Phone\Skype.exe” /secondary
If you are on a 64bit machine run in cmd prompt:
“C:\Program Files (x86)\Skype\Phone\Skype.exe” /secondary
To easily run few instances of Skype in parallel, you can make shortcuts on Desktop. pointing to any of both above commands.
That's all now you can login as many skype users as you like on 1 Win PC. All parallel logged in users can receive and write messages. However you should bear in mind that situation with answering Skype calls is a bit complicated as you cannot speak in parallel through different logged in skype users. Anyhow whether you have to react on Skype voice / video calls incoming in similar or same time from 2 skype accounts, you can use – Set Skype Call on Hold functionality and hence keep voice video in parallel with different skype accounts.
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Tags: clarity, company management, desktop icon, earth, instances, Linux, Microsoft, microsoft windows, pc hardware, Shortcuts, Skype, windows pc, windows xp
Posted in Everyday Life, Various, Windows | No Comments »
Thursday, April 11th, 2013
I had to repair Windows XP PC which got the annoying Active Desktop Recovery screen. I remember seeing this screen back in the days when I was still using Microsoft Windows 98. It was quite shocking for me to find out this stupid pointless Windows bug appears on NT based Windows as well…
As you can see on the screenshot there is a button Restore My Active Desktop but pressing this button doesn't change anything
People around the net recommend two ways to fix that one is through:
Control Panel -> Internet Options -> Advanced (Reset)
After this I tried the usual Computer Restart but unfortunately this not solved the problem.
Second suggested method was through a change in Windows registry from
C:\> regedit
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Software\Microsoft\\Internet Explorer\\Desktop\\SafeMode\\Components
Change the key value – DeskHtmlVersion REG_DWORD 0×00000110(272) to decimal zero.
Tags: active desktop, control panel, current user, internet options, key value, Microsoft, microsoft windows 98, screenshot, two ways, windows 98, windows registry, windows xp, windows xp problem
Posted in System Administration, Windows | No Comments »
Sunday, March 10th, 2013
Yesterday, I had to fix another Windows XP computer infested with Spyware and Viruses. Thanksfully I cleaned it up as usual using standard combination of Malware Bytes + Little Registry Cleaner and Avira. The PC haven't been updated recently and running still Windows XP SP2, thus to make Avira running I had to install SP3 as Avira nowdays depends on Win SP3. After clean up it worked much better, though it is not 100% sure if some kind of malicious software is still not on PC.
After all seemed fine on this Russian Windows XP, there was one thing still problematic – Skype. For some weird reason whenever user from Skype contact list is messaged, it was impossible to send the message with Enter key. I tried checking if all seems fine in Keyboard Settings and Regional Settings in Windows Control Center, cause XP version was with Russian Language Pack and I suspected the Language Pack might mess up something in how Keyboard keys are mapped but all seemed fine there. One important note to make here is PC is running on old hardware and had an old standard PS/2 Keyboard detected as PS/2 – 101 – 102 keys standard keyboard. I tried re-installing the keyboard driver, trying to auto-detect however driver detected for this keyboard seemed to be latest issued for PS/2 Keyboards from Microsoft so after update Skype can't send message bug was still present and respectively the only way to communicate with people from contact list was to Call the person and speak. I researched online on the problem and found a multitude of users complaining to face the same Skype messaging – Enter key not working, unfortunately noone online seemed to have found a solution. I've seen some suggestions to use Skype settings to re-map Enter key but on this Skype 6.2.0.106 the option to remap how Enter key reacts wasn't present. Thus I decided to try to downgrade Skype 6 to Skype 5 here is a mirror of Skype 5 -and try if this helps. After Uninstalling Skype 6 and installing Skype 5 – enter key started working again so mission accomplished 
If you happen to have the annoying Enter key not working in skype bug just downgrade to any below version to 6 and all will be fine. Drop me a comment if you experience the same bug with Win and Skype version.
Finally, be sure not to upgrade further Skype to avoid problems. Last but not least, there is even some advantages in older skype releases, the interface is simpler – making work with skype easier.
Tags: contact list, keyboard driver, keyboards, nowdays, old hardware, regional settings, registry cleaner, russian windows, Skype, Spyware, Viruses, weird reason, windows control, windows xp, windows xp sp2
Posted in Everyday Life, Various, Windows | No Comments »
Thursday, February 28th, 2013
If you end up with a low disk space, or a lot of broken shorcuts without knowing how this exaclty happened on Windows XP and you need to free some disk space on OS without manually bothering to delete Windows Temporary files. Check out a tiny Russian Program called Free Spacer. The program is a good substitute for the inefficient windows default app Disk Cleaner. Free Spacer is FreeWare and it can be just used "as it is" but unfortunately access to source code is unavailable as well as use for commercial purposes is prohibited.
I've used Free Spacer multiple times on messed up PCs and always it does good, it is an excellent piece of software. Any Windows-Admin knows Cleaning some disk space from unnecessary junk files, makes PC work faster. Free Spacer is very useful to run on Virus infested PCs, together with SpyBot , Malware Bytes and some AV soft like Avira.
As software is Russian, unfortunately menu buttons are in Russian too. Even non-russians can easily orientate as the most important buttons are first two from up to bottom and the last which is exit. The first button on from top onwards starts searching for garbage and obsolete and temporary files you can afterwards delete with the second button Удалить – meaning Delete in Russian). A note to make here is on newer Windows than XP Pro or XP Home FreeSpacer does not work well; even though it installs and runs on x86 Windows Vista and Win 7 it hangs up during scan.
For latest version of FreeSpacer check Free Spacer's Official version here, only available in Russian. As of time of writting this post FreeSpacer's latest version is 1.67, I've created mirror of FreeSpcer 1.67 here.
Here is description of what FreeSpacer "features" translated to English:
- Powerful cleaner drive of unnecessary files.
- Cleans efficient found "garbage." files
- A large number of masks for the detection of unnecessary files / folders.
- Cleanup folders with temporary files, not only Windows / Internet, but about 30 popular programs.
- Search for invalid shortcuts.
- Search system restore points.
- Search for missing files and folders.
- Support Exclude files and folders.
Tags: 2c i, inefficient windows, junk files, low disk space, Malware, masks, menu buttons, mirror, multiple times, russian program, Shortcuts, spacer, unnecessary files, windows 98, windows xp
Posted in Everyday Life, Various, Windows | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, February 26th, 2013
After testing F.lux on Mac OS X, I decided to install it and test it on a friend's Windows XP OS. Up is a screenshot from the program right after installed.
Just like on MAC OS X F.lux auto set the Geographic Location and started changing the Gamma of the screen to reddish at night. As you can see the change of Screen Color gamma can be set in various intervals with default of auto changing monitor backlid gamma every 20 secs.
On early day, when usually outside you see the day light because Sun Light shines on our planet, the color gamma is auto-configured to the normal light one.
I think in short future all computer vendors should think of embedding F.lux or some similar application to every Desktop PC, laptop, Phone and Tablet.
When F.lux is active a tiny icon with the F.Lux logo is visible on Taskbar like in below screenshot. From there you can view f.lux settings, see in what Color gamma mode the program works at present or to manually set custom color gamma. Enjoy
Tags: computer vendors, configured, desktop pc, gamma, geographic location, intervals, laptop, mac os x, os x, screenshot, secs, sun light, tiny icon, windows xp
Posted in Various, Windows | No Comments »
Sunday, February 10th, 2013
A friend of mine who is a dedicated gamer, asked me to install some piece of software capable of capturing video while in Game play. He mostly plays in Steam (online gaming platform), stuff like Men of War.
After a quick research online, I found Fraps – Real time capturing and Benchmarking app.
As long as people write in steam forums, as of time of writting Fraps is the best software to capture in-Game videos. There is one other software called WeGame – which allows you Watch, Record and Upload videos in InGame.com website Storage, however WeGame is still inferior choice to FRAPS.
FRAPS is especially designed for in game video capturing of PC Games using DirectX and OpenGL Graphics technology. Another good use of it is to benchmark CPU hardware and measurement between PCs, as well as the possibility to create easy Screenshots while in Game with no need to everytime paste in MS Paint, GIMP, Photoshop or whatever Image Manipulation soft.
I didn't tested it but on FRAPs website it is said it has support for ultra-high screen resolutions (7680×4800). To give FRAPS fetch it from fraps.com
The only problem with FRAPS is it is paid proprietary software. Thanksfully, there is also Free Software (Open Source) alternative program – Taksi.
Taksi is in early development – still haven't reached at ver 1.0 as of time of writing this post Taksi is at version 0.7.7.9.
Just like FRAPS Taksi supports well (DirectX, OpenGL, or GDI).
Taksi is simplistic and with very easy interface.
Videos captured by Taksi are stored in standard AVI files (using VFW) codec.
Though performance might be a bit degraded, Taksi is nice free soft Video capturer.
Tags: benchmark cpu, benchmarking, directx, fraps, Gamer, gaming platform, graphics technology, men of war, ms paint, opengl graphics, pc games, screen resolutions, steam, wegame, win 7
Posted in Entertainment, Everyday Life, Various, Windows | No Comments »
Saturday, February 9th, 2013
If you happen to be running DJVU Solo version 3.1 and you have some documents saved with DJVU Mozilla Firefox browser plugin you might end up with an error:
"djvu decoder cannot decode djvu files with version >=25"
The error is well known and described on djvu solo's website. Though the reason is explained and a work around in future files downloaded via the DJVU browser plugin is suggested. The page doesn't suggest a way on how to open already downloaded .djvu files failing to via DJVU Solo.
Thanksfully there is a fix, get away from DJVU Solo and start using STDUViewer –
Here is description of STDUViewer taken from their website:
STDU Viewer is a free viewer for multiple file formats. The goal of this software is to replace the multiple document viewers with a single one simple application. STDU Viewer supports TIFF, PDF, DjVu, XPS, JBIG2, WWF document formats. These are the most popular formats for scientific and technical documentation.
Additionally STDU Viewer supports FB2, TXT, Comic Book Archive (CBR or CBZ), TCR, PalmDoc(PDB), MOBI, AZW, EPub, DCX and image (BMP, PCX, JPEG, GIF, PNG, WMF, EMF, PSD) files.
Well enjoy opening all your DJVU files formats with superior STDUViewer.
Tags: comic book archive, djvu files, document formats, document viewers, epub, mozilla firefox, multiple file, page doesn, palmdoc, solo version, technical documentation
Posted in Everyday Life, Various, Windows | No Comments »
Thursday, February 7th, 2013
If you are student or just a researcher, you already know most of the good books you can find are on books.google.com. Google Books's is nice, but not all browsers support it well. Older mobile phones has big troubles with it, plus it is always nice to have a stored copy of book on your PC for later review or just to refresh your memory on books previously read.
Thus if you get to task to download Books from Google a quick research reveals few programs claiming to support downloading Books from Google in PDF;
1. Google Books Download standalone application for Windows and Mac OS X
Google Books Download is said to support Save of Google books in PDF, JPEG or PNG format.
This program works good whether you need to extract only certain book pages, however with complete books it often hangs. Other problem is it is proprietary software, (freeware), so pages book pages it downloads in PDF had a big red color stamp complaining the program is trial.
There is a cracked version available on Piratebay.se's website. But as Piratebay is filtered from here. To test it I had to google it via piratebay proxy: - with "piratebay google books download".
Google Books Download, standalone app from Piratebay is at current version 3.1.308.
As you can see from screenshot Google Book Download has two modes of work, one is;
Download Manually – This is used for manual download a pages from a complete book and converting them to PDF.
Download Automatically – Is purposed to download a complete book from books.google.com and converting it to PDF. Downloading a complete copy of book using this mode is sometimes, hanging, plus it is really, really slow. The reason is each of the pages from the Book is first scanned using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology page by page and later after all pages are downloaded in pictures, they're converted to 1 PDF file.
Because Download Automatically loops at certain pages, this makes Google Books Download almost useless for people looking to store a full copy of books on Books.Google.com ….
2. Downloading PDFs from books.google.com with Firefox Greasemonkey and Google Book Downloaderjavascript
a. Install GreaseMonkey Firefox add-on
If you never before heard of Greasemonkey is a Mozilla Firefox Extension that allows users to install scripts that make on-the-fly changes to web page content after or before the page is loaded in the browser (also known as augmented browsing).
b. Install Google book downloader GreaseMonkey javascript
After a FF restart, you're ready to download any book from Books.Google.com.
To use it open the book you want to download and on the left upper corner you will see a Download this book button, press it and the book will be scanned in OCR and saved in PNG picture format. Below is a screenshot showing a sample book to download from books.google.com;
After each book page is succesfully download in page on the left pane you get a download status;
You should keep in mind that the download links of Google Book pages, will have a time expiry, so if you don't hurry up to save the pictures for later use soon links will become inaccessible and showing as broken from Google – I'm not sure how much exactly is google's max expiry time set of links but I guess it should be something 5-10 mins.
The pages of PDF, gets fetched as pictures one by one so it takes 20 secs or so to get all links to pages. Since Google Books Downloader only provides links to PDF pages it is necessery to either save each of the pictures manually (quite a lot of effort) or Install and use lets say DownThemAll! FF download extension. Using DownThemAll does not completely automates picture downloads, as you need to manually select all pictures for downloading, but at least selecting pages saves some time. To download all book pages with DownThemAll click with right mouse button on the left pane where links to pictures appears and choose download with DownThemAll!. After that tick on all links pointing to books.google.com……. to make them have the green tick as shown in below screenshot;
Once you have all PNGs saved on the PC you need to then convert them to unified PDF file. One way to do this is using ImageMagick's convert command line tool.
To do so install imagemagick for Windows downloading Win binaries from here
There are a bunch of binaries you will need to install named like ImageMagick-*-x86-static.exe
Run cmd.exe, change dir (cd) to folder where the just download book is saved in PNG and issue:
C:\Downloads> convert *.png pdf/my-book-from-pictures.pdf
Tags: character recognition, complete books, cracked version, current version, good books, google, greasemonkey, mac os x, memory, Mobile phones, modes, os x, png format, proxy, researcher
Posted in Various, Windows | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, January 29th, 2013
I'm just coming from being a guest to dear friends. They're having a bit old hardware PC running Windows XP and some old ATI Radeon model video card. A video was played in youtube so I noticed the video is displaying very slow. The PC hardware was good enough to play videos with no delays and image chops, so I give it a check.
My guess was something is wrong with Video driver and to make driver is installed okay I take a look in:
Control Panel -> System -> Hardware -> Device Manager
For my surprise there all was fine, so my next guess-es were:
- Mozilla Firefox Browser is out of date
- Computer resolution is set to too high for the old video adapter hardware
- Something is wrong with Adobe Flash Player
- Computer has Viruses or Spyware loading CPU creating the video lags
I check Mozilla Firefox and it was latest version; Help -> About Firefox As of time of writting Firefox 18.0.1 The computer Monitor was a huge 21 inch LCD HP display and Windows was configured to display on a very high resolution ;
- 1280×1024 (32 bit Colors)
I've earlier, seen old Computer hardware creating similar video delays and chop issues with Played videos thus to see if this will solve the issue lowered down video resolution 1024×768 with 16 bit color depth. Video continued to be showing slowly in every few seconds and display "choppy", so I excluded it as cause.
To make sure something is not wrong with Flash Player, I check in browser about installed plugins by typing in URL Address bar;
about:plugins
Very surprisingly the Flash Player was not installed! I hurried and install – googling, "install flash player" and following the trivial install procedure.
Then I give Firefox a restart and tested video with Alexander Nevsky Russian Movie (which btw is an interesting one to see for people who value art and history). The movie chops continued, I checked Flash version clicking on the video again just to determine, weirdly still Youtube was displaying videos usiong HTML5 (WebM) format!
I check once again if flash player is properly installed in about:plugins and weirdly all seemed fine I had on the PC properly working installed Adobe Flash 11.x.x. Now this was weird ?
For a first time I had a situation, where even though I installed Flash Player, Youtube continued to show videos using HTML5 WebM (open source video format). Now I should say I'm a big fan of HTML5 and open technologies, so HTML5 is great, the only problem is it still not production ready so for ordinary user Flash Player is still better – Flash's video buffering is much better, its compression is better, it is less buggy etc. etc.
It took me a bit of pondering Why Youtube was showing videos in HTML5 instead of using the Installed and working Flash Player?? After about 5 minutes of googling, I came to conclusion the person who fixed their Software, some months before had on purpose choose Youtube to be displayed with Experimetnal HTML5. I was not sure how to check if HTML5 is set as a default player in Youtube, so looked on the net, The page to change it is found by googling for "youtube html trial".
The URL to tune this as of time of writting is on;
http://www.youtube.com/html5
I had to click on;
Leave the HTML5 Trial – to stop using experimental Youtube HTML5 support
After a FF restart and lowered resolution to 1024×768 in 32 bit color depth, video started playing nice & smoothly 
Tags: adobe flash player, ati radeon, computer monitor, dear friends, device manager, hardware pc, inch lcd, old computer, old hardware, resolution 1024x768, video adapter, video delays, weird problem, writting, youtube
Posted in Everyday Life, Flash Player, Various, Windows | No Comments »
Thursday, January 10th, 2013
I had to fix one Notebook Compaq CQ71-330ED which was failing connecting to a home Wireless Router. The notebook was running 64 Bit Windows 7 installed from scratch just few weeks ago. The PC could connect normally via a LAN cable to the Internet, but can't connect to the Wireless Router. I thought the issue might be due to the Wireless Router, thus checked with my laptop if I can connect to the WPA2 network with the pass key. Being able to connect from my own PC make it clear the problem is somewhere in Windows 7 (most likely the drivers). I checked in
Control Panel -> Device Manager
to make sure the Wireless drivers were appearing as properly installed, there all seemed fine, Wireless was detected as:
Intel (R) Centrino Wireless-N 1000
I tried playing with Wireless settings from
Control Panel -> Network and Internet
stopped Wireless Power Saving, as I know with some wireless devices it creates problems. Also tried settings the default wireless network support from A B G N to A B G. I tried playing with changing the Workgroup name to WORKGROUP., Disabling / Enabling the Wireless Network, checking if settings for IP obtain for IPv4 are not messed up etc., but all seemed okay and still the PC weirdly was unable to connect to Wi-fi network.
I suspected, the drivers though reporting as properly installed and working with the Wi-Fi card are the point of failure. So removed driver for Wireless card and tried re-installing.
As the model of laptop was COMPAQ Presario CQ71-330ED, I looked for this model driver, but again strangely CQ71-330ED was not among the Presario models on www.hp.com drivers section.
I improvised and dfecided to download 64 bit Wi-Fi drivers for the model which seemed to be closest to CQ71-330ED – Compaq Presario CQ71-120ED.
Install the Intel 64-bit Wireless Driver for notebook CQ71-120ED solved the Wi-Fi Router connection issues. Re-connecting once again to the WPA network just worked
A mirror of Wireless driver that worked for me . After installing the driver the Wireless was detected as:
Intel (R) Wifi Link BGN
Tags: 64 bit windows, compaq presario, device manager, failure, lan cable, laptop, model driver, notebook compaq, pass key, presario models, scratch, wi fi card, wireless router, workgroup name
Posted in Everyday Life, Various, Windows | No Comments »
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