2007 December | Kevins Crate.com/Blog

Add An Onscreen Keyboard to Win XP

Dec 312007

Windows XP comes with a virtual onscreen keyboard that you can use in an emergency if your regular one fails, but only if you have a shortcut to it that you can click with your mouse. This has saved my bacon once already so I thought I�d pass it along. Now I�m not saying its a pleasure to use but in an emergency it will do. To check it out do the following:

Click the Start button > Run
Type OSK into the Run dialog box.

To make a shortcut icon on your desktop to the on�screen keyboard:

Right�click the desktop.
Point to New, and then click Shortcut.
Type osk, click Next.
Type a name for the shortcut, and then click Finish.

That’s it! When you need it, the shortcut to the on�screen keyboard utility is right on your desktop. Now if your keyboard goes kaput you can just click the Keyboard icon and finish what you were working on.

How To Remove Orphaned Entries In The Add and Remove Programs List

Windows Tips Crate, XP No Responses »

Dec 302007

It happens to almost everyone, you use Add and Remove programs to uninstall a program and next time you go back the deleted program is still listed. The most likely cause is a incomplete uninstall or a badly written uninstaller. Here’s a way to get rid of that entry for good. All you need to do is a quick Registry edit.

Always create a System Restore Point before editing the Registry, as a save guard.

Click the Start Button and choose Run.
In the Run Dialog type in Regedit and click Ok.
In the Registry editor Navigate to the following key.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Uninstall
In the uninstall folder is all the programs that are listed in the Add and Remove programs utility. Click each entry and look in the right hand pane for the Display Name and under Data value will be the name of the program.
Search for the offending program and and right click its folder and choose delete.
Close the Registry editor and your done.

To see Screen shots for the process, Click the Read the rest of this entry link.

Windows XP Service Pack 3 Release Candidate Available For Download

Microsoft, Windows Tips Crate, XP No Responses »

Dec 262007

Service pack 3 is now available for download form Microsoft, get it here if you dare, is it a craps shoot, probably, I don’t think I’d install it on a production machine but that’s up to you. its about a 340 mb download. I have it installed on one of my test machines and haven’t found any problems associated with the install yet. Some people are reporting a 10 to 15% boost in performance,but jury is still out on that one, more testing is required.

If you have problems and want to uninstall it just use the Add and Remove Programs utility from the Control panel. Happy computing.

Merry Christmas Everyone

Site No Responses »

Dec 242007

I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas.

Kevin.

Scott Sigler’s Infected Hits Book Stores April 1st 2008

Podcast Crate 2 Responses »

Dec 232007

Ok listen up junkies, you listened to the Podcasts for free, so here’s a chance to pre-order the book and help out that sick twisted Sigler push more content to us. Infected will hit the bookstores on April 1st 2008. Click the link below and pre-order the book on Amazon and lets make that ~~fucker~~ a top 10.

Check out Scott Sigler.com for all his free Podcast’s and more and here’s a Christmas present for the junkies. Download 50 hrs of gore on DVD plus all the artwork. Check it out

Change The BSOD or Blue Screen Of Death To A Different Color

Windows Tips Crate, XP 7 Responses »

Dec 222007

Everyone’s seen them before the dreaded BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death) Hopefully they don’t happen too often. But did you know that you can change the background color and the text color, so if you wanted you could have RSOD (Red Screen Of Death) or a GSOD (Green Screen Of Death) or many other colors.

Here’s how: First create a System Restore Point
Then.

Open My computer and navigate to the folder where you have Windows installed (Normally C: Windows)
Scroll down to you find system.ini
Right click system.ini and choose open with > notepad.
Look in the [386enh] section for the following text.MessageBackColor=
MessageTextColor=

If there not in there go ahead and add them.
Here are the color codes to use after the = sign

0 = black
1 = blue
2 = green
3 = cyan
4 = red
5 = magenta
6 = yellow/brown
7 = white
8 = gray
9 = bright blue
A = bright green
B = bright cyan
C = bright red
D = bright magenta

EXAMPLES:MessageBackColor=C Background color will be bright red.
MessageTextColor=2 Text color will be green.
Save the system.ini file to the same location as you opened it from.
Restart your computer, and wait for the next crash.

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Hang Things with ease Using The Accu Mark Gecko Grip Level

Gadget Crate No Responses »

Dec 212007

Black & Decker’s 36-inch Accu Mark Gecko Grip Level is designed to perform any basic leveling job with ease. Now you can hang pictures, shelves, decorative items and much more with all the precision of a professional — and none of the guessing and re-guessing that damages walls with repeated drilling or nailing. The BDSL10 is a lightweight, handy home device that’s packed with the high-grade durability and convenience features you expect from an industry leader like Black & Decker. Check it out

FloorPlanner.com, Create The Perfect Room

Website Crate 3 Responses »

Dec 192007

Buying a new home, rearranging your room, or moving into a new office? You can save time and have more fun if you lay out your ideas ahead of time.
Floorplanner is the easiest, quickest, and best looking way to create and share interactive floorplans. Using point-and-click, drag-and-drop tools, you can make your floor plan in minutes, and rearrange it as often as you want. Then you can save, send, and print your designs to share them, or place them on your own website.
It’s easy to use and works in almost any modern browser, no extra downloads required. Plus its Free. Looks like a cool site I can spend hours on.

If Corporations Ran Christmas

Laughs No Responses »

Dec 172007

An oldie but a goodie. sent in by Stan33.

If Microsoft ran Christmas…
Each time you bought an ornament, you would have to buy a tree as well. You wouldn’t have to take the tree, but you still have to pay for it anyway. Ornament/95 would weigh 1500 pounds (requiring a reinforced steel countertop tree), draw enough electricity to power a small city, take up 95% of the space in your living room, would claim to be the first ornament that uses the colors red/green together. It would interrogate your other decorations to find out who made them. Most everyone would hate Microsoft ornaments, but nonetheless would buy them since most of the other tree types wouldn’t work with their hooks.

If Apple ran Christmas…
It would do everything the Microsoft ornaments do, but years earlier, and with a smaller mouse (not stirring of course).

If Silicon Graphics ran Christmas…
Ornaments would be priced slightly higher, but would hang on the tree remarkably quickly. Also the colors of the ornaments would be prettier than most all the others. Options would be available for ‘equalization’ of color combinations on the tree.

If IBM ran Christmas…
They would want one big Santa, dressed in blue, where kids queue up for their present-processing. Receiving presents would take about 24-36 hours of mainframe processing time.

If Dell ran Christmas…
Wait a minute? Isn’t IBM running this Christmas..?

If Fisher Price ran Christmas…
“Baby’s First Ornament” would have a hand-crank that you turn to hang the thing on the tree.

If The Rand Corporation ran Christmas…
The ornaments would be large perfectly smooth and seamless black cubes. Christmas morning there would be presents for everyone, but no one would know what they were. Their service department would have an unlisted phone number, and be located at the North Pole. Blueprints for ornaments would be highly classified government documents. X-Files would have an episode about them.

If the NSA ran Christmas…
Your ornaments would have a secret trap door that only the NSA could access in case they needed to monitor your tree for reasons of national security.

If Hewlett-Packard ran Christmas…
They would market the Reverse Polish Ornament, which is put in your attic on the weekend after Thanksgiving, and placed out for viewing the day after the January Bowl Games.

If Sony ran Christmas…
Their Personal Xmas-ing Device, which would be barely larger than an ornament and flat, would allow you to celebrate the season with a device attached conveniently to your belt.

If the Franklin Mint ran Christmas…
Every month, you would receive another lovely hand-crafted item from an authentic Civil War pewter ornament collection. Each ornament would weight about seven pounds, and require you to pay shipping and handling charges.

If DEC ran Christmas…
We used to have Christmas back in the ’70s, didn’t we?

If Cray ran Christmas…
The holiday season would cost $16 million but would be celebrated faster than any other holiday during the year.

If Thinking Machines ran Christmas…
You would be able to hang over 64,000 ornaments on your tree (all identical) at the same time.

If Timex ran Christmas…
The holiday would be cheap, small, quartz-crystal driven, and would let you take a licking and keep on shopping.

If Radio Shack ran Christmas…
The staff would sell you ornaments, but not know anything about them or what they were for. Or you could buy parts to build your own tree.

If you have a joke to share send it to jokes@kevinscrate.com

Use Testdisk To Make Your Non-Booting Disks Bootable Again

Program Crate, XP No Responses »

Dec 162007

TestDisk is a powerful free data recovery software! It was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software, certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally deleting a Partition Table). Partition table recovery using TestDisk is really easy. Get it for free right here be sure to choose the correct version for your operating system.

TestDisk can

* Fix partition table, recover deleted partition
* Recover FAT32 boot sector from its backup
* Rebuild FAT12/FAT16/FAT32 boot sector
* Fix FAT tables
* Rebuild NTFS boot sector
* Recover NTFS boot sector from its backup
* Fix MFT using MFT mirror
* Locate ext2/ext3 Backup SuperBlock

TestDisk has features for both novices and experts. For those who know little or nothing about data recovery techniques, TestDisk can be used to collect detailed information about a non-booting drive which can then be sent to a tech for further analysis. Those more familiar with such procedures should find TestDisk a handy tool in performing onsite recovery.

TestDisk is OpenSource software and is licensed under the terms of the GNU Public License (GPL).