Life Burner

Windows OS

Microsoft Vista updates fail dramatically, again.

by Tom on Jul.29, 2009, under Windows OS, Windows Vista

Microsoft updates, not really something that you can rely on, downloads updates, reboots to install, and then gets stuck in a continuous loop! I thought the first time this happened back in SP1, it was something conflicting with my system, but after fixing that and upgrading to SP2 months later the continual reboot has struck again!

The system message when updating gets to “Configuring Updates Stage 3 of 3 100% complete”.

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Installing Flash Player to firefox without admin permissions

by Tom on Jul.14, 2009, under Windows 7, Windows OS, Windows Software, Windows Vista, Windows XP

So today i installed FireFox 3.5 onto a machine at work, later realizing that you have to have admin privileges to install flash! daym! but with a few quick steps, flash was working in 3 minutes.

  1. Download the XPI of the Flash Player plugin. An XPI is generally a plug-in for FireFox which is in fact a ZIP archive.
  2. (Rename to .zip if you want and) extract the files in the XPI.
  3. Go to Start » Run » enter “%APPDATA%” » OK
  4. Navigate to Mozilla\Plugins\, if this directory doesn’t exist, create it.
  5. Copy flashplayer.xpt and NPSWF32.dll from the extracted files to %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Plugins.
  6. Restart FireFox and flash will be installed!

Thanks to ce3c.be.

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Load and Play Wii games from USB external HDD on system 4.0 menu

by Tom on Jun.09, 2009, under Games, Wii, Windows OS

before i have even have a chance to test out “how to store/load wii games via USB HDD” the guy that wrote the article has already created a new, up to date version for the 4.0 menu upgrade that came out recently for the Wii, here’s the New updated guite with links to all you need.

There seems to be a lot of steps, and would probably need to be done on a rainy day, with plenty of coffee!

I assume, once this delicate tutorial has been completed, one could easily download game backups elsewhere, and run them straight from the external HDD without having to burn it to DVD..

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Idea: Team Fortress 2 Live Stats, intergration with real world

by Tom on Jun.09, 2009, under Games, PC, Theory, Tom Lewis, Windows OS

With all this new technology appearing, especially in the gaming world, i keep getting random ideas for real world interaction with games, imagine using an electric shock/ruble body suit to interact with online FPS games, such as Team Fortress 2, or Counter-strike: source. These valve games already have pretty advanced stat systems, picking up head shots, arm shots, what angle they came from etc, when they happen and put this data into pretty graphs and 3d torso’s.

What would be cool is if this data was taken live and inputted into your electric shock suit!

Boom headshoot! would seem a lot more realistic!

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How to install a full xampp webserver inside windows for development

by Tom on Mar.14, 2009, under Website Design, Website Development, Windows Software

There are multiple reasons that you might want to install a fully working web-server inside windows, the reason that I started off using stand-alone servers was for website development, if your a fully fledged website developer, designer or want to learn how to create dynamic websites these tools will make life so much easier! Cutting development time down.

I have tested many many stand-alone server packages out there and the best by far is XAMPP which runs on Windows 98, NT, 2000, 2003, XP and Vista and includes;

Apache, MySQL, PHP + PEAR, Perl, mod_php, mod_perl, mod_ssl, OpenSSL, phpMyAdmin, Webalizer, Mercury Mail Transport System for Win32 and NetWare Systems v3.32, Ming, JpGraph, FileZilla FTP Server, mcrypt, eAccelerator, SQLite, and WEB-DAV + mod_auth_mysql.

Now lets get an understanding of those tools included…

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How to really free up Hard Disk Drive Space properly

by Tom on Jan.15, 2009, under Windows 7, Windows OS, Windows Software, Windows Vista, Windows XP

diskutility

Now, there are many ways to freeing up space on your hard drive, and this is just a bunch of method’s combined work well, Best with Microsoft Os’s is to use the built in software first, then finish the job with some free 3rd party apps, im gonna focus this on four applications, get a cuppa and lets begin!

I recently covered how vista’s shrink hard drive volume is crap (resizing partitions on hard drives), I had about 30GB free on my hard drive and it was only letting me shrink up to 75MB, I kinda fixed this by defragging my computer, it took about 9 hours, but then again i haven’t don’t this, ever? 
One thing i wasn’t expecting from defragging, was it to clean up disk space, and somehow 30GB managed to appear from nowhere, i was amazed!

So Here we go, first we want to go through manually, and delete all the old rubbish that we have accumulated over the years, old music we don’t listen to, old trailers to moves, old pod-casts on Itunes, un-installing games we haven’t played in years, also if you have steam you can un-install a game, and re-install it at any time on any PC, if you play online games, Like Counter-strike: source, you download gigabytes of maps, music, skins and extras, you can clean this up (steam games only) with steam cleaner.
While your at it, Organize your documents, put things into folders, and backup things you really need, and would be gutted if you lost, pictures, documents, creative pieces etc etc. 

Steps, Programmes and Downloads after the jump.

 

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More than 5000 most amazing free Photoshop Tutorials, Brushes, .PSD’s and Resources

by Tom on Jan.05, 2009, under Photoshop, Resources, Tutorials, Website Design, Windows OS, Windows Software, Windows Vista, Windows XP

photoshop_logo

So i was digging around like i do most days, and i came across a article that documented well over 5000 Amazing resources for photoshop, and these are not just any odd load, these are the best, the most downloaded the free’est, one of the best “round-um ups” of this year.

So if your looking for a ton of the best free;

Photoshop textures, Photoshop patterns, tutorials, brushes, actions, down-loadable .psd files and photoshop cheat sheets, then look no further than this hyperlink;

http://www.noupe.com/photoshop/60-most-wanted-photoshop-tutorials-brushes-psds-and-resources.html

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Serious security flaw found in IE 7 use alternative

by Tom on Dec.16, 2008, under Windows Software

Serious security flaw found in IE 7, also known as zero-day exploit.internet_explorer_7_logo

With the web browser being the main application that many people use the majority of the time while being on a computer, hackers are always trying to find new vulnerabilities that can exploit, and they found a big one recently.

Internet explorer, which is shipped with Microsoft windows, has the largest user audience of all web browsers, steaming ahead with 46% (this November from W3Schools) which is a great surprise to me, as I still thought IE still owned 80% of the browser market!

Now, this is scary since this security flaw is pretty harsh, as it allows hackers/ criminals to take control of people’s computers stealing there passwords and login credentials.

Other browsers are safe from this exploit, including Firefox, opera, safari and chrome, you are advised to switch as soon as possible, how about now?

Firefox is a very secure and an amazing web browser, plus it’s FREE, also being supported by 44% of the world’s web accessing people, which is pretty neat.

Just click this button to get going!

Spreadfirefox Affiliate Button

For more information reguarding this security issue you can visit:

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Make your computer faster and reclaim vital storage with Ccleaner

by Tom on Dec.13, 2008, under Windows Software

Ccleaner; also known as crap cleaner, does exactly what it say’s on the tin, it deletes all that unused junk that accumulates in the hidden back end of your computer system, its the best, safest completely free cleanup software available for windows.

from internet explorer, windows explorer, system files, Firefox, many many other applications, multimedia, internet, utilities and the operating system itself, cleaning that unused junk from all this software frees up hundreds of megabytes of data on your HDD.

This temporary data is usually created from a mash up of all these programs and utilities, just running, performing updates downloading whatever, but it all adds up to clogging your system up.

Now, i have been using Ccleaner for well over two years now, There are tonnes of reasons that i still love it for one; its so easy and quick to use, you can right click on your recycle bin and there’s a link to the program! in a couple of seconds you can load the program and run it! seconds later that’s everything cleared “just like that”, i normally do this once every two weeks to keep things tidy, and it really does make a difference in your system, the first time a ran this program cleared a whopping 2gb crap off my system, i was dead chuffed.

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