http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/download

If any of you have a new system to test it on or have used it, I’d like to hear how useful you found the program and your opinion on how well it works.

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Click the link below to download DriverMax:

http://www.innovative-sol.com/drivermax/

Installation is straightforward. Just follow along the prompts on the screen.

During setup, you will be prompted with the following dialog box. Just click OK to allow DriverMax to index the drivers.

A pretty little window tells you that DriverMax is indexing the drivers on your system.

Once it’s completed, click ‘Finish’ to launch DriverMax

The first window will prompt you to sign up for a free registration code. I’d suggest you read up the blog post on ‘Disposable Email Address’ to register. http://www.hardwareproblems.com/software-solutions/disposable-email-address.html. I’ve chosen just to ‘Continue evaluation’.

So we’re finally at the start page for the program. You can look over the other interesting features of the program but for this post I’m just showing off the driver backup feature of the program.

Move the mouse pointer over ‘Driver operations’ to view the options. Click ‘Export drivers’.

This opens the ‘Export Drivers wizard’. Click ‘Next’.

Once the system has found all the drivers (76 total in my case), you’ll notice that it also includes all the default Windows drivers which should not be required to backup as they are already on the Windows CD. So to limit the search, click the ‘Settings’ button to the lower right.

This will bring up the following ‘Display settings’ window. Uncheck ‘Show Windows drivers’.

This should bring the number of drivers down to a more manageable number (15 total in my case, down from 76). Click ‘Select all’ and then ‘Next’.

*Note that in some cases you may come across a driver that can’t be backed up. Unfortunately, you’re on your own in this case.

Select the folder you want to backup the drivers to and click ‘Next’. If you need the files to be compressed to a smaller size, select to export the drivers to a zip file’.

You’ll be presented with a window showing the progress of the driver files being backed up.

Once it’s completed, click ‘close’.

So once completed, backup the driver backup folder or zip file to your choice of medium (USB flash drive, CD, etc). Make sure to back up a copy of the DriverMax program as well.

The process of recovering the drivers is quite simple. Once you’ve reloaded the operating system, you’ll need to reinstall DriverMax. Once you’ve completed the setup, it’s just a matter of selecting ‘Import drivers’ from ‘Driver operations’.

You are presented with the ‘Import Drivers Wizard’. Just click ‘Next’

Select the location and type of driver backup (folder or zip)

The next window is particularly of note. You can choose which drivers you wish to reinstall. This is extremely useful if you’ve changed hardware since you did your last driver backup as you do not want to install a driver that the system no longer requires. Just click ‘Next’ and once the files are imported back into the system, reboot the system once prompted. That’s it.

In conclusion, this is a great little free program. The only real limitation is that it’s unable to backup programs associated with hardware often included with sound cards and video cards.

The fact that another instance of IE opened up was puzzling at first, but after running the standalone Firefox browser in my trusty USB memory stick with Portableapps (www.portableapps.com) installed, I was able to determine that the issue was due to the browser and not the internet connection itself. After a couple choice expletives targeted towards the Windows OS, I figured that the issue was most likely due to the fact that Internet Explorer had been updated to IE7. I downloaded IE7 (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/downloads/ie/getitnow.mspx) from a different machine and installed it on the system and, sure enough, the problem was gone.

Up to now the XP repair option has been pretty good at resolving issues, even when the CD used for the repair was that of an older Service Pack. Unfortunately, it seems that when IE7 installs itself, it does so in a manner that it doesn’t allow IE6 to run correctly even after a XP repair. 

Alternatively, follow the instructions in the Microsoft Knowledge Base article below to resolve this issue:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/917964

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Some of you are probably thinking at this point, I know the differences between retail and an OEM CD and the different versions of XP that are available and that you wouldn’t be foolish enough to make that mistake. Well you’re right. You wouldn’t be able to get past the point where you need to enter the product key with the incorrect version. The problem lies with the fact that Microsoft has gone ahead and changed something in the media. I’ve seen it first hand with OEM versions of XP. OEM XP labels have gone through several changes in shapes and colors but the most recent incarnations comes with different media. Here is a picture of the most recent label:

You’ve probably installed XP using a CD from a different machine and assumed that you could just use that one thinking that they’re all the same. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case and the only resolution that I’ve come up with so far is completely reinstalling the OS using the correct CD.

If any of you have come up with another way to resolve this issue feel free to leave a comment and share the information.

I’ve also seen this issue with other P5Q series and the most recent BIOSes for these boards. Don’t know if it’s due to the board or the firmware of the video card but I’ve sent off a message to Asus and havn’t heard back yet. If they reply back, I’ll update this post.

If anyone else has seen this problem with other brands of 8600GT’s, or any other video card, please share, and leave a comment!

http://www.evga.com/support/drivers/

Select ‘Mainboards’ in the first column, then ‘BIOS Updates’ in the second column, and then ‘NF78 - Intel 780i SLI’.

http://www.codesector.com/teracopy.php

Just download and install the program. There’s one option that you should be aware of during the installation. You will be prompted if you would like to “Use TeraCopy as the default copy handler”. If you would still like to keep the Windows copy / move feature, I would suggest against selecting this option. This is especially so to make sure that there is no incompatibilities with other programs you may have installed in your system.

So here’s a quick guide on how to copy/ move files. In this example, I will be moving a 1.79GB folder to a completely different hard drive. The process is the same for copying files

Simply, right click on the file or folder you wish to copy or move and from the context menu, select ‘TeraCopy’. Once you’ve done so, the following screen should appear. If the bottom part of the menu does not appear, just click the ‘More’ button.

Click the appropriate option of either ‘Copy To’ or ‘Move To’. The following screen will appear.

Select the directory to where you would like to move the files to and click ‘OK’. The file copy or move should start.

You’ll notice you may interrupt the file action by clicking ‘Pause’.

When copying a small number of files, the process is not faster by much compared to the Windows copy/move function but when you’re moving a large number of files, this program can save you a lot of time and headache. Especially because it reports back a list of files it was unable to copy and passed over rather than stopping the whole copy process.

So here’s a summary of the features of the program right from the developer’s website:

• Copy files faster. TeraCopy uses dynamically adjusted buffers to reduce seek times. Asynchronous copy speeds up file transfer between two physical hard drives.
• Pause and resume file transfers. Pause copy process at any time to free up system resources and continue with a single click.
• Error recovery. In case of copy error, TeraCopy will try several times and in the worse case just skips the file, not terminating the entire transfer.
• Interactive file list. TeraCopy shows failed file transfers and lets you fix the problem and recopy only problem files.
• Shell integration. TeraCopy can completely replace Explorer copy and move functions, allowing you work with files as usual.
• Full Unicode support.

For $14.95 € or about $24.00 you can get the Pro version which gives you the added features below:

• Select files with the same extension/same folder
• Remove selected files from the copy queue
• Get free updates and priority support
• More features coming soon!

Think of your computer’s hard drive as a bookcase full of books. At first, all the books are neatly placed in order either by category or alphabetically.  As you take books out to read them, add new books, and throw some out, inevitably some books get placed back in the wrong place and gaps appear where books have been thrown out. As this occurs finding a book becomes more difficult and takes more time to find. The same thing occurs to the hard drive on your PC. To make it easier and faster to find the books, it’s important to reorganize the books on your bookshelf once in a while. On a computer, this process is known as defragmenting or ‘defragging’ for short.

All recent versions of Windows have come with their own built in defragmenting utility but they can be very slow and sometimes not as intuitive. It’s still good to run the Windows version if you are willing to leave the system on for a while but it tends to feel like a chore to get it to run. As such, I’d like to introduce a freeware alternative to use on a more frequent basis. The program is called ‘Disk Defrag’ and is by a company called Auslogics. The program is very simple to use, works quite quickly, and best of all, free. So let me show you just how simple it is to use the program. You’ll need to first download the program from the link below:

http://www.auslogics.com/en/software/disk-defrag/download

If you need help installing the program, just click back on the link above and read on further down the page.

Once you’ve downloaded and installed the program, click on the program icon to get it running. You should be presented with the screen below:

So before proceeding further, let’s take a look at the ‘Settings’ options which can be accessed by the link to the upper right of the window.

On the ‘General’ tab, it allows you the option of changing the language. It’s a straightforward option so let’s look at the ‘Defragmentation’ tab. You’ll want to place a check mark in ‘Remove temporary files before fragmenting’. It removes temporary files from C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Temp (or C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Temp), and C:\Windows\Temp and helps improve the defragmenting time. There is also an option to ‘Display removable drives’ allows you to defrag memory sticks and other removable media.  I would recommend you check this option if you have large memory sticks as they can benefit from being defragmented. You can also select the level of CPU usage depending on if you plan on using the computer while it’s defragmenting and set it accordingly. Once you’re done, click ‘OK’.

Once back at the main page, select the disk you want to defragment and click ‘Next’. You’ll see the following screen showing the progress of the defragmentation process.

The system I’m using for an example is a still quite clean as it’s just recently been reinstalled with XP, so the above is only intended as a sample of what the defragging process looks like.

The above screenshot shows the system reporting back the end result of the defragmentation of the drive. Hopefully, you’ll see an improvement in the performance of your computer upon completion of the defragmentation of the drive. As to how often you should defragment the system, it goes back to the analogy of the books in the bookcase that I presented at the start of the article. If you’re using and throwing out books on a frequent basis, it’s better you do it more frequently.

Finally, in regards to the program, there are a couple notable limitations. One, it requires contiguous space on a hard drive to move large files, and secondly it does not defragment the MFT.  The developers have stated on the website that they do plan on addressing this in future releases. If you’re looking for a more robust solution and don’t mind paying a few dollars for it, I would recommend PerfectDisk by Raxco Software.

As you’re probably already aware, one of the new features in Windows Vista called ‘Aero Glass’ This feature adds a level of transparency to the Windows taskbar. We’ll use a freeware program that adds does an admirable job of mimicking the feature. It’s called ‘True Transparency’ and it can be downloaded from the link below:

http://www.crystalxp.net/galerie/en.id.5139-truetransparency-lefreut-explorer-tools.htm

Once you’ve downloaded the file, it’s just a matter of extracting the file and running the ‘TrueTransparency’ application in the folder. There’s nothing to install.

In the ‘System Tray’ you’ll see a ‘T’ with an upside down ‘T’. Click it with the right mouse button and you’ll see the options as shown in the above screenshot. Here you can select the skin you wish to use, the language to use for the program, and finally to choose to have the program to run when the computer starts. You can also find additional skins for True Transparency on the internet. Just use your favorite search engine to look for them. One word of warning is that some themes (msstyles) that you may have installed may be ‘broken’ after installing this program.

Here’s a screenshot sample of the ‘transparency’ applied. Notice how the title bars of the applications are now transparent and you can see the picture underneath them. I’ve changed the desktop background so it’s easier to tell.

The second programs I’m going to introduce replicates a feature called ‘Flip 3D’ found in Windows Vista. You can download the program from the link below:

http://tokyodownstairs.blogspot.com/2007/11/winflip.html

Just like ‘True Transparency’, once you’ve downloaded the file, it’s just a matter of extracting the file and running the ‘WinFlip’ application in the folder. There’s nothing to install. Once you’ve done so, you’ll see a small blue orb with a white squiggle in it (it actually says ‘flip W’). Click it with the right mouse options to pull up settings options.

Here, you’ll see options for language, further options, anti-aliasing, display size, and texture quality. For anti-aliasing and texture quality, if you have a higher end video card, you’ll be able to turn up these settings. Just experiment to find what works best for you. Lets take a look at the ‘Options’ to see the other options available to you.

You can select from ‘Keyboard’, ‘Mouse’, or ‘Other’ from the left hand pane. The options for ‘Keyboard’ and ‘Mouse’ are quite straight forward so I’ll leave them for you to look over. Under other, if you so choose to have the program run on startup, you’ll want to click the ‘Run automatically’ button. Also, you’ll want to enable ‘Capture image when a new window appears’ so when you’re flipping screens they’ll show up rather than just a black screen that appears in some cases. So once you’ve made the necessary settings and clicked ‘OK’, let’s see the program in action. All you need to do is click the ‘Windows’ key and the ‘Tab’ key.

I wasn’t able to take a screenshot of the program in action… I’ll need to find a program that will do that. But in the meantime, here’s a screenshot from the developer’s website.

So this ends ‘DIY - Windows XP Facelift for Free - Part 2′. Come back again in a few weeks when I’ll have the final installment, Part 3 of Windows XP Facelift posted up. I promise not to take as long as I did to get this post up on the site.

Basically, with either a Phenom 9850 or 9950 CPU, this motherboard upon powering up will power on and off anywhere from two to twenty times before finally posting and booting to the operating system. Most would assume an issue with the power supply or just assume that the board is bad and needs to be replace when in fact all that is required a BIOS update. Some systems run fine for several days or weeks before the problem arises. So it would seem to make sense to update the BIOS beforehand.

The BIOS has been out since the end of May and some of you would question the necessity to post this now. The reasoning behind this is the majority of the Asus M3N-HT Deluxe motherboards available out in the retail chains still carry an older BIOS and you will probably need to update the BIOS when you receive it.