I have a lot of stuff on my hard drives. Not all of it is entirely necessary. I have dozens of old 3d studio max files and other projects that have long since been completed or abandoned over the years.

I like the idea of having an off-site backup of non-mission-critical data. When I heard that Microsoft increased their online storage capacity on SkyDrive to 25GB, I became very interested. They have a cap on the filesize, 50MB per file. To work around this, I elected to use my favorite archiver — WinRAR.

Why WinRAR? The incredible compression and ease of creating spanning archives. All I do is right click on the folder I want to archive and select “Add to Archive”; when WinRAR pops up, I check the following:

- Create solid archive
- Test archived files

Then we gotta set the “compression method” from Normal to Best (this makes an enormous difference depending on the type of files you’re archiving). Next, we set the “Split to volumes, bytes” to a custom size of 45,000k (45MB, comfortably below the 50MB limit; we obviously don’t need to do this if the entire folder is less than 50MB) so that each archive will upload to SkyDrive successfully.

Before, Microsoft had an ActiveX plugin that enabled you to click and drag files into the browser to upload using only IE; now, they’ve made it work using Silverlight so it can work on all browsers. Hopefully they’ll use some fancy HTML5 stuff in the future. Since you’re going to be uploading a lot of files, use their silverlight plugin. It makes the uploads much more reliable and lets you view the progress. Below, you can see my progress uploading a lot of photos complete with nifty progress bars.

The navigation “breadcrumb bar” for SkyDrive no longer makes sense as far as I can tell. When you first load up SkyDrive, it clear indicates that you are at the beginning by displaying Username > SkyDrive. However, once you navigate inside of a directory, it then displays Username > Office > Folder. If I try to go “back” to the root SkyDrive folder by clicking the new “Office” button, it takes me to this Office “recent documents” area and a “Messenger social” — I don’t understand the reason for this bizarre linking scheme, but it appears to be a way for Microsoft to expose users to more of their online offerings.

The only way I can see to get “back” to SkyDrive from here is to hover the mouse over “Windows Live” on the upper left, and then clicking SkyDrive to get back to the root. Extremely bizarre. If it wasn’t for the 25GB of free space, I wouldn’t be recommending it here as your first choice for archiving large files. There are dozens of other “free” online cloud drive offerings, however, anything with any serious size like SkyDrive come and go frequently. SkyDrive has been around for a relatively long time and since it is offered by Microsoft, they have the luxury of running it for years without ever turning a profit… kinda like MSN Search, I mean, Windows Live Search, errr, I mean… Bing!

Ouch.

Here is what a series of RARs looks like uploaded to SkyDrive successfully:

I’ve found SkyDrive to be the perfect solution for this, if you know of any other large, reliable cloud storage solutions please by all means let us know.

Sam
admin@variableghz.com

Having just (relatively) recently begun using Windows 7 in a complicated and demanding work setting, I can truly see why it takes businesses years to upgrade to the latest from Microsoft. My office uses a series of encrypted volumes, which are mounted and then shared across our network. It’s not terribly complicated since there are no multiple domains or active directory stuff, but it does need to have effortless n0-nonsense sharing and be totally reliable.

So I installed Windows 7 on my primary office system which acts as a bustling hub of data. Several computers access and search across hundreds of gigabytes of data from multiple encrypted volumes. For this reason, this particular system is mission-critical and downtime must be minimized; as a result, I stuck with XP since 2007 because Windows Vista was simply not up to snuff at the time and launched only a few months after I built it.

Windows 7 beefs up the security significantly over Vista. It still retains certain quirks I find obnoxious, like UAC. For example, UAC continues to prompt me every time I launch CCleaner — while I can of course completely disable UAC, there’s still no simple checkbox to “never ask again” for individual programs. That kind of thing makes me want to disable UAC for good, however, I’ve noticed that some programs won’t install correctly if you have UAC disabled so for that reason I am leaving it on for now.

In Vista, to share an encrypted volume all I had to do was mount the volume using TrueCrypt, go to Computer, right click the drive and hit Properties, go to the Sharing tab and then click Advanced Sharing then click `Share this folder`, click Permissions, then click Allow for full control for “Everyone” (or enter in the individual computers as necessary). A lot of steps, sure, but at least it worked immediately without any other fiddling around.

In order to allow sharing of a volume in Windows 7, you must take ownership by entering your “username”, which is different than your hostname or computer name. (You can quickly determine your hostname by opening a command prompt and simply typing “hostname”; or, right-click Computer on the start menu and clicking Properties, you’ll see it under there as “computer name”). The username — the name you set for yourself which appears on the login screen — can be identified quickly by hitting the Windows Key + L to “lock” the screen. So, I can take ownership of the drive by typing in my username, or by typing “everyone” if I trust my network. In addition, Windows 7 does not provide “Everyone” there by default, making this necessary.

Without taking these steps, you get the dreaded “Windows cannot access \\hostname [...] The network path was not found.” This is particular infuriating error since the network path can obviously be found, since the system is clearly visible on the network and Windows provides very little information on how to resolve this newfound problem which did not exist on any prior versions of Windows. So, the photo below shows how I enabled full root access for Everyone on the network to ensure foolproof access.

The good news is that you only need to do this once, even when you dismount the volume Windows will still remember your ownership settings. So once we’ve taken ownership of the volume, we can then enable sharing like before.

To get the sharing done, we have to right click on the drive, click Properties, then navigate to the Sharing tab. Because we’re attempting to share an entire drive, and not just a folder, Windows 7 disables the simple “Share…” button (see below), so we must click Advanced Sharing and then click “Share this folder” checkbox. Then we can select Full Control – Allow for Everyone which will allow everyone on the network full root access to the drive with no questions asked.

Under the Share Permissions, you can enter different usernames of specific systems you wish to share the volume with. Unfortunately, if this is an encrypted volume, you will need to do it again for each time you mount the drive which can be a hassle. For physical hard drives, Windows 7 should remember your sharing preferences each time you plug in the drive.

Post comments below if you run into any trouble.

Sam
admin@variableghz.com

While VariableGHz is primarily a PC enthusiast sort of site, and by extension its gaming articles primarly focused on PC gaming, I envision a world in which consoles and PCs may live together in harmony. And as a pioneer of gaming equality, I did some research on uniting the two as seamlessly as possible. The primary reason why somebody would want to do this is for a cheap alternative to an HDTV. With the 360 and PS3 both capable of HD resolutions, you’re truly missing out if you’re still hooking them up to your old tube TVs. Unfortunately, HDTVs are still fairly expensive, but many people already have widescreen LCD monitors with their PCs.

For my setup, I wanted to be able to route the console’s video through the monitor, and the sound through the computer speakers. It wasn’t easy to find very reliable information out there; I found lots of forum posts asking how to do this. They were receiving very few definitive responses, and it sounded like a lot of folks were just guessing. So, I decided to make my own guide with as much detail as possible. The end result became a little lengthier and image-heavy than I anticipated, so I’ll be dividing it into two parts for each system.

Next week, I will cover the instructions for connecting an Xbox 360 without HDMI.

Here are a few additional things for you to consider:

• I’m entrusting you, the reader, to know already what basic terms like HDMI, DVI, and VGA mean. If not, hopefully the images will be detailed enough for you to recognize things visually.
• In most cases, buying cables through an online retailer is easier and cheaper. Most brick-and-mortar stores only have a few, if any, choices for cables and they’re also overpriced. Monoprice and Newegg are two great online vendors.
• I would not suggest doing this with a non-widescreen monitor, especially with the PS3. The Xbox 360 will automatically letterbox based on the resolution you choose in the setup menu, but the PS3 will not.
• Additionally, the PS3 only supports a 16:9 ratio, which is seen more in HDTVs than widescreen montiors, which are usually 16:10. There are 16:9 monitors available, but they’re pretty much brand new and fairly small in size. So, unless your 16:10 monitor has 1:1 pixel mapping (which is model specific and can’t usually be counted on) you will lose a little bit on the left and right of the frame in your PS3 games, but it’s not at all noticeable.

Let’s get goin’.

For starters, you’ll need an HDMI-to-DVI cable. Pretty straightforward:

Any longtime gamer will be familiar with this next item. It’s a PlayStation AV cable, which is the exact same thing that was used for the original PSOne and the PS2. You probably have a bunch of these laying around collecting dust. If not, you can get one branded for the PS3 for about ten bucks. We need this for the red and white audio connectors:

Lastly, we’ll need an RCA-to-3.5mm adapter. This will allow you to send the audio through your computer, and thus, through your computer’s speakers.

Let’s start by connecting the PlayStation AV connector to the RCA-to-35mm adapter. Insert the red plug into the corresponding jack on the adapter, and the white plug into the white jack. The yellow plug will not be used, since that’s for transmitting video and that’s going to be sent via HDMI.

Now, you should have your AV cable with the attached audio adapter, and your HDMI-to-DVI cable. These two cables will be what you use to connect your console.

So let’s insert the HDMI plug of the HDMI-to-DVI cable into the HDMI port of the PS3. Then, insert the AV cable into the port marked AV Multi Out.

Then plug the DVI end of the HDMI-to-DVI cable into the DVI port of your monitor. If you’re lucky, you might have two DVI ports, and a switch on your monitor that lets you select which one you want to display. If not, you’ll have to unplug the DVI cable coming from your PC and plug in the one from the PS3 whenever you want to play your console, so get practicing. It’s not a huge deal unless you hate getting out of your chair for a few seconds.

Lastly, find the line-in jack on your computer, and plug in the 3.5mm jack from the AV cable. It’s usually located next to the line-out jack, which is where your speakers or headphones are usually plugged.

Open up the sound control panel in Windows. Find the Line-In device, select it, and hit “Properties.”

Make sure “Listen to this device” is checked, and that “Playback through this device” is the same as your current Line-Out device (usually referred to Output). Hit “OK” and exit the control panel.

This should be all you need to have the PS3′s audio come through your computer speakers. Another bonus with this method is that if you’re using a multimedia keyboard with your PC, you can use the volume control buttons on the keyboard to affect the volume of the audio coming from your PS3.

Now we need to configure your PS3′s video to display properly on your monitor. To make things as easy as possible, we’re going to reset your PS3 video settings to default. to do this, hold down the power button on the console for about 5-6 seconds. You will hear a single beep when you first touch it, and then a second when you’ve successfully reset your video settings. Now, turn on your PS3 and make sure the HDMI-to-DVI cable is inserted into your monitor’s DVI port. Remember, if you have two ports, you should have a button somewhere on your monitor that lets you choose which port you want.

Once the PS3 is powered on, navigate to the Settings icon on the XMB. Then scroll down to Display Settings and hit X to confirm.

Next, select Video Output Settings. You will be asked to select the type of connector on your TV. Pick HDMI.

You will then be prompted to pick between an Automatic or Custom setting method. Pick Custom. The next screen lets you check any and all supported resolutions. Check all you can except 1080i. This will force all games to render in the highest progressive mode they support.

You will be presented wth a summary of your selections. Hit X to confirm. If everything went well, you should now be ready to play.

If you have a newer or high quality LCD monitor, another thing you can try is navigating to the RGB Full Range option in the Display Settings menu and setting it to Full. This will improve your black levels and give you some richer colors. If your monitor can’t support this feature, you’ll actually get a crappier image quality, with lots of black crush – i.e. making the image too dark with loss of definition. Experiment and set to your taste. I have this setting enabled and the colors are fantastic.

Enjoy your new, all-in-one gaming setup.

Got any questions? Please leave a comment or send me an e-mail and I will do my best to address them. The most likely difficulties, if any, are going to be related to audio. A host of issues can keep audio from working correctly. Make sure all your audio devices are properly detected in the Device Manager and that their drivers are updated. Of course, make sure you’ve got the adapter plugged into the correct port.

Remember to check back next week for instructions for the Xbox 360.

Cameron
cameron@variableghz.com

All of my years of experience with proxies doesn’t much help those who want the benefits of a proxy, yet don’t have the technical wherewithal to accomplish it. As such, I set out in search of a sure thing, a foolproof proxy that anyone could use with minimal setup. I was surprised to find Vidalia.

Vidalia has proven by far the simplest (free) proxy solution. By GUI-ing Tor & combining a Torbutton for Firefox, it couldn’t be simpler. Here’s how to anonymize your Internet activity in just a few minutes.

- Go to www.whatismyip.com and take note of your IP address.

- Go to the download page.

- Select the Installation Bundle for Windows.

- Install with default options. Install the Torbutton extension for Firefox. Restart Firefox.

- Let Vidalia connect — it should connect in about 10-15 seconds.

- In Firefox, go to View > Toolbars > Customize; find the Torbutton icon, click and drag it somewhere to the right or left of the address bar. Single click it to enable Tor. At the bottom right it’ll say “Tor Enabled” in green.

- Go to www.whatismyip.com again to verify that you are indeed browsing via another IP address. All done.

In my experience, performance has been acceptable — not blazing fast, but not entirely sluggish either. I’ve read that it is horrendously slow for some, your experience may vary.

admin@variableghz.com

Some of my job functions require a large volume of record gathering for several cases simultaneously. At first, I was dealing with this task by using a Word or WordPerfect text document (“record disposition log”) with tables indicating the name of the location and what had transpired between my phone calls/faxes to them and their responses to me. Sometimes I contact 10 to 20 different places in one day and unfortunately must leave an innumerable number of voicemails; when people start returning my calls, I would often have difficulty locating their entry on my text documents or even knowing which case they were calling about — quickly. The text documents would soon begin to look like a real mess, and there was no quick way to link scanned information to a particular table without using some cumbersome feature like Link Object in Microsoft Word.

One day, after fumbling through a series of notepads and text documents trying to locate a phone number, it occurred to me that there had to be a better way to manage large volumes of interconnected information. What I needed was a surface, a canvas that would enable me to map out the process of gathering and collecting information as well as being able to keep a detailed catalog of notes for each area of interest. I tested a wide variety of software; ConceptDraw, NovaMind, Pimki, FreeMind, Compendium and a whole bunch of others.

Ultimately, I found VUE. The Visual Understanding Environment, developed by Tufts University. What struck me about VUE to be different than the alternatives was the straight forward interface. Despite the relatively crude UI, VUE doesn’t have any curves or gimmicks. It provides exactly what is needed: a blank, robust slate to make connections and store infinite notes.

By using a series of simple keyboard shortcuts for VUE in combination with Yod’m 3D, I am now able to maintain quick access to a staggering amount of information without impeding my workflow. (Yod’m 3D enables me to dedicate an entire “screen” to VUE. It’s decidedly old school, but it works rather reliably.)

In VUE, I store information as necessary (such as locations I call, names of witnesses, etc.) in nodes and connect those nodes using lines. Nodes are preferred to text boxes because they can contain more than one series of information, such as a web-link, a link to a file and a visible pencil icon which appears when a node contains notes — which is a key feature. The system I use is simple, green for completed tasks, red for outstanding tasks. Blue, yellow and orange nodes indicate different things, such as names, notes and subcategories.

It’s not all simple, though. Once I’ve received crucial records, I scan them and then click and drag the PDF directly into the node. Instantly creating a mini-node which is hard-linked to that PDF document. Ready to be called up immediately.

To get started, keyboard shortcuts are vital to keep things moving rapidly — that is the whole point of this, after all. The main keyboard shortcuts are:

New Node = N

New Line = L

New Text Box = T

Pan = Space

Zoom In/Out = Alt + Scrollwheel

I think it’s important to become as fast as possible with the latter two, pan and zoom. Those two enable you to move brisky about your VUE map. I ran into various problems when testing out newer versions of the VUE, for that reason, I have decided to stick with the older version, version 2.2.8, you can download it right now from SourceForge.

admin@variableghz.com

In this article, I am going to quickly walk you through the process of assembling a relatively basic computer system.

Here’s a quick checklist of what to remember when purchasing computer parts:

- How many watts does your power supply (PSU) need to have as a minimum? Use a Power Supply Calculator.

- When choosing a case, make sure it isn’t too small for your configuration. For example, if you’re building a system with 2x GTX285′s in SLI and five hard drives, you might want to avoid a mid-size tower and go for a full otherwise you’ll be really cramped in there with hardly any room to work and risk the likely possibility of overheating your system.

- Your motherboard — AMD or Intel based?

- Before purchasing the motherboard, check to make sure it has enough SATA ports, USB motherboard headers, and see if it supports onboard RAID and any other features you might need.

- Your CPU must match the socket type of the motherboard.

- Speaking of CPUs, make sure you have a heatsink of some sort.

- Your memory (RAM) speed and type must be supported by the mother board. If you plan to overclock, make sure the motherboard can handle it.

- Use NewEgg so you don’t get ripped off.

Building a computer isn’t necessarily difficult, but it does involve a lot of things to remember and there is really nobody to blame if something goes wrong because it’s up to you to determine what component failed and to replace it. Also, Always wear electrostatic protection when touching electronic components or at the very least ground yourself by touching some exposed metal such as the power supply.

Now, let’s get started. First, let’s have a look at your case. When you get your case, it should come with a box including a variety of screws, proprietary connectors and sliders (if applicable), and most importantly, motherboard mounts.

The motherboard mounts are incredibly important and a real pain to fix if you mess them up, so pay attention and don’t mess this up. Open the side panel of the case and lay the motherboard down so you can see all of the holes. Unwrap your motherboard and look closely where the screw holes are (or review the manual if you’d prefer). You’ll see there are usually between 6 and 8 screw holes.

There are essentially two different types of motherboard mounts, metal (brass coating) and plastic. I strongly suggest the metal ones and to avoid cases that come with the plastic ones. This is mostly personal preference, I believe that the plastic ones just won’t hold up.

Once you have screwed in your motherboard mounts into your case, it should look something like this:

I also suggest that you tighten them with pliers just enough to ensure that they won’t loosen up after a number of years. Remember that even the slightest motherboard grounding issue can cause a tremendous amount of unexplainable and likely intermittent problems in the future. Grounding issues can cause the computer to seemingly randomly shut off, have video card malfunctions, BSODs (bluescreen “stop” errors) and the like, so this is a critical time to double and triple check your work. Make sure nothing is loose!

Install the I/O panel shield that comes with the motherboard. If your case came with one, do not use it if the motherboard already comes with one.

Look carefully over the motherboard to ensure that you’ve screwed in every screw tight, but not too tight as to strip the screws.

Now to install your processor. This particular processor came with a stock heatsink. You may want to use your own custom heatsink if you plan to overclock or just to reduce temperatures further. Do not touch the processor on the top or bottom. Your fingers contain oils which will disrupt the integrity of the thermal grease necessary to dissipate heat. If you are adding your own heatsink you will need to apply thermal paste; since this system I assembled here already came with a stock heatsink, the thermal grease is pre-applied to the heatsink.

Different CPUs have different ways of being installed. These AMD CPUs have a “gold triangle” corner which you line up to the CPU socket which makes it easy to identify which way to line up the CPU. Be sure to read the manual for your CPU prior to installation and do not drop the CPU!

Install the heatsink carefully. Don’t let it slide around. It’s best if you can avoid lifting up the heatsink after initially placing it. Lifting it up causes the possibility of “bubbles” in the thermal paste which can also adversely affect the performance of the heat dissipation. So, to avoid this risk, read the manual on your heatsink and understand it prior to placing it on the CPU. Don’t rush it, it will only take a minute.

Most motherboards have a preferred order they want the RAM (Random Access Memory) sticks installed. Check the motherboard manual to see where to place your RAM sticks. Obviously, if you have four sticks then it doesn’t matter. But in this case, I had a 1x2GB stick and had to be sure to place it in the correct slot.

Every computer case comes with front panel I/O headers. These little wires plug into your motherboard (usually the lower right corner) and tell the computer which button is responsible for turning it on/off, reset as well as which lights are to be used for flashing the HDD activity LED and power LED. In addition, there is usually a connector for the “PC speaker” which will give a single POST (Power On Self Test) beep if the system is OK when starting, or Morse-code style beeps if something is wrong, such as a video card failure. For that reason, I recommend making sure that your motherboard actually has a PC speaker built in, or if not, be sure to plug one in and stick it on the corner of the case somewhere, away from your hard drives.

The front panel I/O headers are one of the most aggravating aspects of assembling a computer for me. They require you to look at the tiny print that tells you which pins are for which function and it is never really clear which wire is the “ground.” The white wire is ground, and the colored wire is the positive connector. Start by plugging in the bottom row first, then do the top row to avoid having to look under your previous wire. It’s much easier. Moreover, leave yourself room and work carefully around these I/O headers after you’ve plugged them in because it’s easy to hit a snag and unplug all of them by mistake and it’s a real pain to start over.

Install the power supply. Different cases have different mounts for power supplies but no matter where it’s supposed to go there’s always a slot in the rear of the case that will accomodate the back end of the PSU. There are two cables that are generally the most important; the first being the CPU power (12v cable, 2 black and 2 yellow) and the second is the main motherboard power cable (big thick connector) which must be plugged in or else the computer won’t start at all — so don’t forget ‘em.

So, now you can begin plugging in your CD/DVD/BR drive. Then your HDDs which will likely be SATA. Note the fragile front I/O cables below.

OEM hard drives are swell. They usually cost a bit less than a retail boxed drive and are perfectly fine. Sometimes, however, they don’t come with any screws so it would be wise for you to always have extra standard octagonal screws for just such an occasion.

Most computer cases these days are “tool-less” and require you to screw in little sliding thingies to make it easy to swap hard drives and CD/DVD/BR drives. Call me oldschool, but I still prefer using just regular screws. Anyway, the slider thingies come with your case and look like this:

These days, molex connectors on hard drives have been replaced with SATA power, which should come with your power supply. If not, use an adaptor… or get a different PSU. Another note, be sure not to plug your drive into the wrong SATA bank. Some motherboards have SATA sockets reserved for RAID — plugging them into the wrong SATA bank may prevent the OS or BIOS from detecting the drive properly.

Now it’s time for the finishing touches. Install any case stands that may have come with your case.

For my systems, cold cathode lights are a must — so I always install them:

You’ll note that this particular system doesn’t have a separate video card. That’s because it is primarily for office use — no games. So, a video card would be overkill for such a system. It runs Vista Ultimate x64 and it’s lightning quick for just about everything; but no, I haven’t tried to run Crysis on it if that’s what you’re thinking. =)

For all of my systems, I perform a battery of tests — the first being a full level-4 SpinRite 6 hard drive scan to ensure that every last bit on the drive is performing as it should. The second is a full memory test using the Windows memory diagnostic tester (comes with Windows Vista (F8), or can be downloaded for free.) When you run the Windows Memory test, make sure that you run the extended tests. Also, go into the BIOS and set the computer to boot from the CD drive first. This makes things like running tests from SpinRite and the Windows disc easier in the future. It just makes more sense for the computer to check the CD drive first before trying to boot from the OS.

Get into the BIOS by hitting usually either F2 or DEL right away. Hit up the forum with any questions or e-mail me if you need any help.

admin@variableghz.com

Imagine you’re trying to merge two partitions together using a utility like GParted from a live CD and everything is humming along nicely until the power gets cut. Once the power permanently interrupted the merge, Windows would no longer boot, and all of the important data on the drive was inaccessible. At the time I was performing this recovery, I was short on time and had to relocate. I had a quick flash of what had to occur in order to be able to recover every last bit of data from the laptop. I would need an SATA/IDE to USB adapter; a screwdriver; a few bootable CDs (such as Acronis Disk Director bootable disc); and a large external HDD to store the data that would be recovered.

This time around, I decided I’d go with Runtime Software’s GetDataBack (NTFS) because I have had such dismal results with other recovery suites such as Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery and a few others that I probably shouldn’t mention. After futzing around with trying to set up a remote connection using GetDataBack’s HDHost, I realized it wouldn’t work since I couldn’t even boot into even the most basic of Windows, nor would I want to, since it could conceivably corrupt the data on the disc even further. So I did it the old fashioned way, as I mentioned in my post entitled, How to Recover Data From Old Laptops, I took the drive out using my toolkit and plugged it directly into my spare laptop.

Plugging a laptop HDD directly into a computer running Windows Vista is a mistake if you intend to perform sensitive data recovery such as forensic data recovery — you must have a write-block in place to prevent the possibility of writing data back to the drive or altering its contents in any way. For my purposes, I wasn’t too worried about it.

With my mobile recovery rig in place, I set the parameters to recover all it could find — I cannot tell you what settings to choose here because your needs depend on what you are trying to recover and what level of file damage your drive has sustained.

This was a 200GB+ drive which was recovered completely by GetDataBack. Although it took quite some time (over two hours for just the initial scan, and another three to four hours for the recovery portion), GetDataBack performed very well. At all times it was stable, reliable and surprisingly informative.

I checked the reliability and completeness of the scan. Sure enough, every single file that had been lost was recovered in its entirety. My experience with GetDataBack has been nothing short of positive and I will continue to recommend it.

admin@variableghz.com

From time to time, a lot of people wonder why their computer is running “so slowly.” The usual reasons for this are as follows: (1) using virtual memory resulting from a lack of physical RAM (Random Access Memory); (2) too many programs utilizing a lot of CPU threads; and/or (3) bottlenecks that can be in the form of a CPU bottleneck, a slow spinning hard drive (5,200 RPM and less, for example), or even a full hard drive. For instance, a 500GB hard drive with a fresh installation of Windows Vista will be more responsive than a similar fresh install on a 50GB hard drive of the same speed. The reason for this is because larger hard drives generally have: (1) more platters; (2) smaller magnetic flux reversals; and (3) greater aerial density. The smaller flux reversals are what allows the head of the hard drive actuator/arm to move shorter distances, and thus providing a noticeable speed difference.

My hard disk activity LED is going crazy, the actuator arm is thrashing back and forth crunching away for hours at a time. What is my computer doing? How can I find out what exact data is being retrieved and what program(s) are responsible? We need to identify just what, exactly, is running. For this purpose, look no further than Microsoft Sysinternals’ Process Monitor (procmon).

ProcMon is capable of quite a few things, but its key feature is identifying and listing in detail what each process is doing — in realtime.

To stop/start the auto-scroll feature, hit CTRL + A. You may need to do this frequently because your computer is doing a lot and very quickly, probably a lot faster than you can read.

With this software autoscrolling, you can see the individual processes that are racking your hard drive or occupying CPU threads.

It’s important to not only take note of what processes are running, but to identify if they are actually necessary or not. For example. qttask.exe starts every time you boot windows, but according to various process tracking websites, it is hardly necessary.

Using the Windows Defender Software Explorer feature, you can — and should — terminate this task from ever starting in the first place. To track and control startup processes, I also recommend Sysinternals’ Autoruns program, which essentially does the most comprehensive root-canal of your Windows startup programs ever. As I understand it, Windows 7 no longer contains the Software Explorer feature of Windows Defender, I am unclear as to why they would remove this useful feature, but you should use Autoruns in its place.

Of course, identifying what is loading and occupying RAM is only going to get you so far — if, for example, you are running an old Pentium 4 with 512MB of RAM and are attempting to run Vista Ultimate with Firefox, Flash, anti-virus, and rendering an HD scene with 3d studio max — you can forget it. No amount of optimizing is going to help you.

I’m talking about bare-bones Internet and office work, this is where computers have really outpaced themselves. It’s very possible to run a Pentium III with a stripped down version of XP (and a lot of unnecessary services stopped), at blistering speeds for an average Internet user. These are the kinds of folks who do not need upgrading, but rather an optimized computer. Think of it as a 30,000 mile service — for your PC.

Here, I can track down anything that is unnecessarily sucking away at my PC’s performance and do something about it.

admin@variableghz.com

Situation:

2GB SD card no longer registers as ‘visible’ to the digital camera and is barely readable within the Vista OS.

Potential Loss:

~1.5GB worth of photos and videos of Hong Kong.

Diagnosis:

Download and install PhotoRec. (permanent archive)

Navigate to the ‘win‘ directory and run “photorec_win.exe” — you will be presented with a similar screen to the following:

Now, on my laptop here, there are essentially two drives that PhotoRec sees: (1) the hard disk, which can be easily recognized as the larger of the two (160GB); and (2) the SD card which weighs in at an easily-discernible 2002MB (2GB). On a desktop system with many hard drives and devices plugged in, this selection screen can be a little tougher on the eyes — so be sure you are selecting the right media.

Next, PhotoRec will ask you to select the “partition table type”; for our purposes, we’re using an “Intel/PC partition.” On next screen, PhotoRec needs to know which partition you want to scan, whether it be the a specific partition, or the entire disk. The default is for it to do the largest partition, I believe, but just to be sure I instruct PhotoRec to scan the entire volume:

(the partition selection screen for PhotoRec, note the default is for the partition, and not the whole volume?)

With “[Whole disk]” selected, I do not change any options but instead hit Enter to “[Search]” and because I selected [Whole disk]; PhotoRec asks me the filesystem type, I simply select “Other” which was the default which encompasses FAT/NTFS, etc. All normal for an SD card.

Now, as a final measure, PhotoRec asks where you want to save the recovered files. This screen is confusing for most people who are not accustomed to DOS-style screens. Look through this screen slowly:

(PhotoRec asks where you want to save the files. Notice the ever so subtle [Y\N] prompt, however?)

As you can see, I launched PhotoRec directly from my downloads folder in Vista because I am not particularly concerned about the location right now. I don’t mind if it stores the files in the directory indicated in the photo, so I can just hit Y on my keyboard and let it scan the volume. However, if you did want to change directories, it would be helpful for you to know that two periods (..) in DOS syntax means “up one directory” — So, using your arrow keys, you can navigate through your directory structure in Windows to find the correct place to put your files. All the way to the right of the screen you’ll see, right near the top, two periods. Those periods let you go back all the way to the root of the drive. Also known as \ or simply the drive letter and a colon.

For my purposes, I hit the Y key and just write the files straight in the downloaded location since I will be moving them later with Windows Explorer anyway:

(PhotoRec, scanning sectors for recoverable data)

Once completed, it will indicate as such on screen. Simply close or quit from the command prompt window. Assuming you left the defaults in place as I have, the recovered data will be in one or more folders inside of the ‘win‘ directory labeled “recup_dir.*”:

(the recovered data from PhotoRec, deposited into the recup_dir.1 directory)

Scrolling through all 41 files, it appears as though that’s about everything. All photos and videos before the card became corrupt and was no longer readable by the camera or the computer. As such, I will not need to pursue further recovery methods which include but are not limited to, the following applications: (1) Stellar Phoenix Data Recovery; (2) GetDataBack; and (3) EnCase Forensic as a final measure.

Good luck.

I was terribly busy working on a case this week. Many of the documents in the case were scanned in .TIF (also known as TIFF, Tagged Image File Format) format. So, browsing through the documents in this manner proved terribly inefficient and I didn’t have enough time to look into third party programs that might help me look through .TIF files faster. So, my solution was simple: I would take the CD full of sequentially numbered .TIF files and create a PDF out of them.

As I begun adding blocks of .TIF files to Adobe Acrobat, near the end of the disc, in the 6000′s, Acrobat would freeze up and hang and eventually result in a crash unless I ejected the disc. My assumption, was that certain files on the disc were corrupted either due to scratches or aluminum erosion/decay (they are very old discs).

Of course, there is no way to tell which files are corrupted this way. So, I decided to copy the entire folder of .TIF files to my hard drive to take note of the corrupted file(s). Big mistake. As Windows XP ran into corrupted files, it would halt for a tremendously long time, and then finally return an error:

Cannot copy 00006337.tif: Data error (cyclic redundacy error)

After I press “OK” I then had to re-select all of the uncopied files, avoiding the corrupted file, and then continue. This proved futile since there were various corrupted files scattered throughout the disc. (As a side note, a couple of fantastic tools for recovering data from damaged discs that I have personally tested are: photorec and object rescue). So, this seemingly simple task of “copy usable data from disc, ignoring corrupted files” has suddenly become a big problem on Windows XP and I am seriously short on time.

Without hesitation, I opened a new command prompt. I navigated to the directory of the files on my faulty disc and typed the following command:

XCOPY *.* “C:\CASES (Sam)\Clair\FPD CDs\FPD” /C

What does *.* mean? Well, it essentially means “wildcard dot wildcard,” meaning that I am stating any file with any extension. I type this because I am too lazy to type *.TIF since it’s the same thing. If, for example, I only wanted to copy the 00006000′s, I would type “00006*.*” Simple enough.

Note how I placed my destination folder in quotations? That stems from a long history of inconsistency dating back to the early DOS days when you had a 8 character limit. That was eventually extended in Windows95 which allowed for shortcuts for long directories in DOS like “C:\PROGRA~1″ for “Program Files.” Putting quotation marks prevents (prevented?) DOS from interpreting a space as an end to your command.

Now, for the flag: /C. Doing a /? on XCOPY indicates:

/C           Continues copying even if errors occur.

Exactly what I was looking for, right? Right there, in DOS, built right in. All you need to know is where to look to save lots and lots of time. After executing the command, it worked flawlessly without the need for any further user intervention:

(simple xcopy solution for bypassing erroneous data)

Hopefully you won’t have to put this technique to use, but if you do, it’s nice to know you have the right resources and knowledge at your disposal should you need them.

See also: Vista’s robocopy

As always, comment or e-mail with questions.

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