Wireless XBOX controller keeps turning off
Symptom: your XBOX controller keeps turning off while you are playing; although it can be turned on instantly, but the mood is gone.
Cause: Firstly, check if batteries are empty or not. If not, it can be assumed that a contact in the battery compartment is moving. Thus your controller will shut off when the contact surface doesn’t touch the battery. It’s all about hardware, nothing is related to software or driver at all.
Solution: don’t try to bend the metal contact since it will be weaken the metal. What you need is something to put in underneath the metal contact and make sure of the contact will stay close to the battery at all time. Below figures are a dirty way to do so; it doesn’t look nice, but works nicely =)
Popularity: 1% [?]
XP/Vista cannot load CD driver
If you have a problem that your CD/DVD-ROM cannot be seen in my computer or exclamation mark on CD in device manager and you can do nothing about it, it can be fixed.
How come does this issue happen? conflict happened when you have >1 CD drivers related installed. It might be from CD/DVD burning app, such as Nero Burning ROM, Roxie, or daemon app like Virtual CD, MagicISO and such.
How to fix: First, uninstalling anything won’t help, neither will updating. What you have to do is getting into Registry editor (start | “regedit”)
Then, find “LowerFilters” and/or “UpperFilters” and delete them. Look carefully, you have to delete only ones in HKLH\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E966-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} whose Class key is CDROM. However, you don’t have to worry much if you delete in others, you might have to restart more than once since Windows will have to detect and install the hardware driver again.
After deleted those 2 keys, just restart once. Your CD/DVD will come alive.
Popularity: 1% [?]
While most video streaming web sites have moved to flash based, some stuck with WMP. Then the problem is likely to be more complicated than just installing newer version. If you have the problem like no video & audio, but it says buffering then “ready”, then the way that might help is forcing WMP to use HTTP protocol only and all multicast by following procedures.
1. open WMP
2. Menu: tools > options (if you can find it, click "alt" on the keyboard)
3. Tab: Network
uncheck RTSP/*, but leave HTTP checked under protocol section
check "allow to receive multicast stream" below.
4. Done!
happy watching whatever you want =)
Note: if you are one of Thaitv.tv followers and have this issue, this definitely helps.
Popularity: 3% [?]
Disable Adobe Updater
This was not my issue until today. I just got my hand on tx2500z and as usual HP provides us tons of good & crap pieces of software. I decided to live with this configuration for a while and see how HP manages on its own image. So that I could review it as it really is out-of-the-box. However, one annoying thing I found so far was Adobe Updater from Acrobat Reader was popping up to download newer version all the time. It was quite a big file, so I could cancel it before it finished. By the way, after restarting it was still showing again and again.
So I needed to fix this so badly. The problem was Adobe Updater didn’t have a shortcut available for easy access. You guys might find this after completing first update and be able to disable it. But if you are not that patient, so you have to get into
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Updater5
You will see AdobeUpdater.exe file which oddly have no beautiful icon for even regular size. Seems like Adobe doesn’t like us to find this really. When you open this little app, you have to click "Preference" to customize its behavior.
Once you uncheck this, Adobe Updater will never bother you no more.
Popularity: 2% [?]
Thinkpad X61 Tablet and Photoshop are friendly eventually
Well, a long time passed since the last time I posted about this problem and the way to solve is just what I haven’t thought it would work, but it works–99% great. I have tried on every situation from messed system to after clean installation, and it still works properly.
This is what I did:-
- uninstall every drivers about touch + Wacom digitizer — restart once.
- download driver here
- then install. That’s it.
- download Wacom bamboo driver from Wacom directly
- then install it, now you will be able to use your pen, not your finger
- now you’ve got to have your multi-touch in hand and install it.
- At this point, everything should be ready.
I have tried on Windows 7 64-bit. It works like a charm for both digitizers, no luck, no drama ever again–just work. However, you have to use only Photoshop (32-bit), not 64-bit one.
This is unbelievably easy, isn’t it? I don’t know why I could not get it work at first. If you still have the issue, get into device manager (start >> “devmgmt.msc”) then you have to see something like this;
the yellow asterisk ones are what Photoshop is looking for (bamboo driver). The rest is from multitouch driver. You’ve got to have both to get both passive and active work together.
If you have a problem, just ask. I might be able to help
Note: rarely yet I found that Photoshop doesn’t recognize the Wacom pen properly. I mean the pressure doesn’t register at all. You just have to re-open Photoshop, then it will be all set. This is waaaay better than restart your system.
Popularity: 8% [?]
First take: fixing loose Fujitsu S2110’s power jack
Actually, if you have Fujitsu laptop, you are likely to have this problem since this is just a bad selection of power jack, or I could say that it’s a bad design instead. Nonetheless, it has been served me very well since late last year. No one wouldn’t disagree how good Fujitsu is though.
The problem is when you plugged the power jack, it randomly disconnected. You had to move the power adapter tip a bit to get it work properly again. Since I’m setting a brightness when plugged in and on battery differently, so I found this problem is really bothering me; it just keeps switching brightness back and forth any time I move my laptop. In my opinion, it is because the power adapter tip isn’t that smooth at the edge and when you plug it in, it does have some trigger (to avoid loosing power jack perhaps). That, however, it’s the bad part; the more you plug in and take out, the more power jack on the print circuit (and/or its mechanism) is loosing. I bet you won’t find this problem with Apple Magnetic power adapter and many other manufacturers.
Well, I don’t know if I’m good at explaining this situation. But I know that the picture says thousands of useful words.
You may know what is the cause of this problem now and you might have a solution already too. As you know, this is a first take; I won’t do anything much since I found that soldering of DC power jack is still good enough, there is no need to take it out and find a replacement. At first, you have to get this part out. (if you don’t know how to do, take a look at this. It might not cover this part truly, it gives you an idea though.)
I took a look at this part to see how to fix this for a while.
I found that if you could fill two holes I showed above to prevent DC power jack moving, it might help. You know? I tried that but no luck; I had nothing that can fill that out. Thus I came up with another idea which is finding something to put in between DC power jack and print circuit making it more solid and securely attached.
It’s working beautifully by inserting a paper (in fact, I should find some non-arc thing like plastic) between them. I haven’t found any random power disconnection for few weeks by now. I know this is not permanent solution, but the phrase, “If it works, don’t fix it,” is always a good solution. When this problem shows up again, you will see another solution indeed.
Popularity: 3% [?]
Network problem??
This is just the case I still wonder now what the cause really is. By the fact that there is 5 clients and 1 server in the network behind a router. All of clients are running Windows XP professional and the server runs Windows Server 2003 for file backing up and file server.
The problem is only one-pair of them has a problem. The computer x1 rarely sees the x3 one and sometimes x3 is accessible but with very sluggish speed–almost 2 minutes waiting just to browse the file in explorer. Nonetheless x1 is accessible on x3 perfectly.
You may want to know that any other pairs don’t have this problem. Even though x1 and server or with x5 or x3 with anyone. ping is good, time is less than 3 ms with anyone except the problem pair.
To alleviate the random problem like this, I really have no idea much. So, I have tried to change the file sharing to be more advanced and add the user ‘everyone’ and ‘administrator’ into the share permission. I forget to let you know that every single computer on the network uses ‘administrator’ as a login and they have the same password but the x3 one which normally use another user name as a login and administrator doesn’t have any password. However, I have changed the password of administrator to be the same as others already. For you guys who wonder about firewall on x3, it’s installed Norton Firewall and I did turn off to prevent a problem but frankly the problem was not gone.
But, then, it still has the same problem. I really frustrate with the windows network for the first time, not because it’s working or not working, but because the symptom happens randomly so I couldn’t figure out why it really is. When I go fixing, it seems works just fine. Nonetheless I use the alternative–set the x3 as a fixed IP–to solve this and it seems help.
After that, I haven’t heard they have a problem again which could mean two things: the problem was solved or they don’t believe me fixing that again :-/ ha ha ha if anyone passing by has any idea or else, please let me know. Thanks!
Popularity: 3% [?]
What is the digital speaker really?
All questions from a previous post has been answered since I bought Boston BA735 myself. well I will start from what is the difference between a analog speaker and a digital one? then go to signal and interface consecutively.
the speaker itself does not have things different because it’s still plain speaker as we all know–you can still buy a bare speaker unit and change by yourself; however, what makes these two types distinct is the DAC inside the digital one while there is no any DAC in the analog speaker. In other words, the digital speaker will receive only digital signal which contains information of 0s and 1s, then translate that signal into analog by the DAC unit right before transmit to a speaker. This process differs to the analog one because normally a computer will transmit the signal to speakers directly by sound card which has the DAC built-in. You may think like I do why and what is the advantage of the digital speaker over the analog one. All can I say is almost none–in most cases–these days. It might have one significant advantage which is almost none CPU utilization because the CPU doesn’t have to do anything about sound–just help transmitting throughout a digital port. The digital speaker will take care of the rest. Nonetheless, if you have such a great sound card like Sound Blaster Augidy or whatever so, you already have a very low CPU utilization and you will not take any advantages of your sound card at all by using the digital speaker. You may get the idea what it really is now, but this is the idea. I will show you about when using this what you have to do other than normal one.
The real problem of the digital speaker is you need a digital signal. You may think this is just simple because every single computer use digital to process anyway. Nevertheless, the default of sound output in every computer is analog. You may find hard to set it as a digital output. Most of modern sound cards have a digital output as a feature–not all of them though. For me, I find it very difficult to use this speaker. My on-board sound card doesn’t have digital-output support, although its name is digital bla bla bla, so I have to use one of my spare SB Live! just to use this speaker. Believe it or not, I cannot work this out with my Linux box yet.
For a performance, I had Boston BA635 (analog) which is predecessor of BA735 before. I can’t notice any different between two of them–maybe my ear is not that good though LOL.
For the connector, my misunderstanding is, for the digital output, it should be SPDIF or an optical port–the one I never ever have a chance to use. However, it’s wrong. There are 2 types of digital connector–coaxial and optical. So it could be both optical and electrical signal that carry digital output. In my case–BA735, it use just plain cable. On one terminal is coax; another one is just mono headphone jack to connect with my PC-box. There is no significant differences between analog and digital at all. That should be the reason why only a few web sites mentioned this.
What you have to do to use this kind of speaker
You have to have a sound card that has digital output capability. The easiest way to know this is get yourself into Control Panel >> Sound and seek for “digital output only” feature in every single page. If you can find it, you’re good to have a digital speaker. If you can’t find any, go to manufacturer’s web site and find its detail tech spec. You may get a good information.
Analog or digital speaker is just choice of preference. A performance is also on the same factor: price, model, and brand. All we have to do is understand what it really is and uses it efficiently.
Popularity: 2% [?]
A weirdo case–can surf only on ie, while others have no connection.
This is my first time that I can’t get computer works as I want and in the time I work. Oh! darn! I really don’t have any idea how to do it since I have no another computer with me. No excuse I can’t fix that.
The symptom is it works almost the same as usual but you cannot connect to the internet at all (but LAN is connected to DSL modem successfully) except ie which you can surf to the internet almost perfectly. That thing is there is something blocks the popular mail site for logging in. I mean I can login to Yahoo! Mail via mobile site and go to http://mail.yahoo.com without any problem! What the heck is that? that makes me stupid for a while.
What I had done is trying to disable almost everything unnecessary from startup; the result is LAN is connected as usual; I mean I can login to Modem via HTTP (192.168.1.1) but I can’t go to other sites at all. Then I set the startup as default; what I got is slow (surely) and only ie that can connect the internet, besides most web-mails.
x Hosts file
x Startup program
desperate me, I never think of this moment but I won’t give up.
Now I have 1 suspect which is expired Norton Antivirus that I can’t uninstall at first due to broken registry and lots of spyware & worms. I mean I really can’t uninstall or re-install by common way. So I might need a backup–but who else around me can help this! (Norton remove tool and how to manually move Norton out of the system) I will try these two ways to see if it works. Keep up!
Popularity: 2% [?]
Digital Speaker with analog connecter really works?
I don’t know that much about the digital speaker since I never have one yet. All I wonder is if digital and analog signal are really different when they all are from computers which use digital signal as a base. If it’s really output as digital, then the digital speaker must have DAC too. Does that sound weird? and why should we have to have a sound card anyway–just to have a digital connector?
That’s what I have to figure out next. Surely, I will get one of those soon.
However, what I want to say today is I had a chance to fix one of my friends’ computer; he had Sony VAIO with SoundMax AC’97 onboard. There are 3 common connectors–line in, speaker, and mic in. Moreover there is one SPDIF as well. The strange thing is he had plugged the RCA coax + converter to stereo plug to line in connector. He claimed that it worked randomly. I really had no idea how it works; I thought it might be the same as my creative audigy ZS which one connector can handle both digital and analog output. By the way, I have no luck to make it work. All I can find is plain drivers which allow sound card to work properly–there is no option to tweak only a bit. At that time, I’m almost pretty sure of that’s his mistake. But I don’t know really because I never have this experience. All a guide book, whatever documents from sony.com don’t help.
After having no hope to tweak those connector to work digitally, I asked him that he had to have a new cable. Fortunately, he gathered all stuffs from his cabinet and found old computers. What I found is Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 2. Yes! it has S/PDIF output as well and that port is not optical but electrical which is working very well for his cable. Ultimately I can solve his problem then.
Only the question left in my mind: if it’s an electrical connector which needs electrons to carry the signal–is it digital really? or it’s analog signal with digital encoded inside. If so, it should consider as digital or just analog as same as telephone signal?
Oh I don’t believe that I’m an electrical engineer :’( because I think everything is analog by the way Digital is just for any calculations or processes in circuits. Whenever signal-to-noise ratio does matter, thus digital is all the way. (analog is just what we don’t realize it’s underneath in every single steps)
Popularity: 2% [?]
