Computer tips

[baseline bum]

I'd like to make a thread with all kinds of computer tips. There are a couple of conditions:

1) No posting crap with spyware in it
2) Nothing illegal please
3) No shareware or limited-functionality software please

I'd like anyone here to add any tips you find particularly useful:

Now, on to business:

1) Tip #1: Download an entire website to your hard drive

Have you ever wanted to get every pic off your favorite porn.... err, porn site

Tool needed: wget (one of my favorite UNIX tools)
Windows users: http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/downlinks/wget.php
You can either:
a) Place the wget.exe file in your C:\Windows\system32 folder
- or -
b) put it in another folder, and add the folder to your PATH environment variable

If you use a UNIX-based OS, I assume you already know how to use this tool, and you most likely already have this installed.

Say you want to download everything from http://www.somesite.com

(for Windows users) open up cmd.exe, and assume you want to save this to the folder C:\somewebsite, assuming you've created the folder.

To open cmd.exe, hold the windows key and press r, type cmd in the open box, and hit enter.

From cmd.exe:
cd C:\somewebsite
wget -r -p -U Mozilla http://www.somesite.com

The -r tells wget to download recursively (i.e., all files in the specified folder of the website, including its subfolders)

-p tells wget to get all embedded images, stylesheets, flash files, etc in a webpage.

-U Mozilla tells the website you are using the Mozilla browser to access it, so that it thinks your download request is from a web browser, and not a download manager.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Note, you might get your IP blocked if you're constantly downloading massive amounts of info from a site. After all, all that bandwidth costs them a lot of money, and you can be sure a large site will block you if you're taking gigs from it in a short time period.

To get around this, set a wait time between getting individual files, say 20 seconds, and a maximum download rate, say 40 kbps, while downloading the site.

wget --wait=20 --limit-rate=40K -r -p -U Mozilla http://www.somesite.com

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is a very trustworthy program, as it's written by GNU, the project responsible for (very) much of what we now know as Linux. Almost all of the major utilities in Linux is GNU software, as is most of the core (aside from the kernel). Their programs are safe to use, as long as you get them from GNU's website, or any other trusted place (such as gentoo.org, openbsd.org, etc.).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Also, this is not a way to bypass a password for a site, or anything shady like that.

[2Blonde]

I have a question which I will eventually get to... We are moving into our new home next week and currently I have our home network of 3 PCs set up with mine be the central hub. I use Network Magic since it came with my D-Link Extreme-G Wireless Router. I love this system because it's easy to use and they seem to respond to customer input with upgrades quite often. But my husband just ordered me a new computer as a present for building our home. He bought me a Dell Latitude D820 Laptop with a docking station.
My question is, can my laptop still be the hub of the system since it may not always be docked in the station? Currently I have a 240ghz ext hard drive plugged in to my Gateway computer that we use to download all of our digital photos onto. Or will I have to set up my daughter's computer to be the hub. (This idea scares the hell out of me). There is no telling what functions she will lock us out of if she gets pissed off.
So just tell there's a way I can continue to be the queen of my computer castle and all will be right with the word.

2Blonde

[leemajors]

i'm not sure if i understand you correctly, but if you have a router you shouldn't need your computer to host the network. cable modem should plug directly into the router, then the connection is distributed from there. anyone who knows the user name and pw to log into the router can change the connection settings. there are others, such as bum who could explain this a lot better than i.

[exstatic]

Yeah, Network Magic comes with D-Link routers. Believe it or not, the router is the "host" of your network. Make sure you are encrypting and try not to broadcast your SSID if possible.

[boutons_]

lm is correct. the router is the connection point for all the PCs, both in terms of connectivity (wired or wireless), traffic routing, and services (DHCP, firewall).

In what sense do you think your, or any, PC is a "central hub"?

If the network is setup so that turning off one PC off disables the other PCs, something is terribly wrong.

A huge mistake made by many home users with wireless routers is to run the router with no access security, so the neighbors can steal access to Internet through your wireless router. And if you're depending on the firewall in the router to protect your PCs (bad practice), then your neighbors' pimply kids can attack your PCs directly.

[Xolotl]

I have a network question too..I have a Belkin Wireless Router hooked up to my compter, and have another desktop in another room that connects wirelessly. However we leave that computer on sometimes and then it wont be able to connect to the network.
For example, my brother was using the computer and the internet worked fine, but then an hour later I had to check something online and it couldn't connect to the network. I had to reset the connection, if that doesnt work I have to restart the computer and reset again...Is my network just timing out over there after a certain amount of time? Is there any way to fix so that it stays connected ALL the time?

[DarkReign]

I have a network question too..I have a Belkin Wireless Router hooked up to my compter, and have another desktop in another room that connects wirelessly. However we leave that computer on sometimes and then it wont be able to connect to the network.
For example, my brother was using the computer and the internet worked fine, but then an hour later I had to check something online and it couldn't connect to the network. I had to reset the connection, if that doesnt work I have to restart the computer and reset again...

Start > Control Panel > Network Connections > <insert your connection here, most likely called "Local Area Connection">

Right click it, goto disable....wait for it to grey out...right click again, goto Enable.....


done.

That resets your connection to the router without having to actually restart.


Is my network just timing out over there after a certain amount of time? Is there any way to fix so that it stays connected ALL the time?

Theres nothing you can do about it if you leave the computer on all the time. The router stops transmission as almost a "time out" feature. Its actually good that way.

[CubanMustGo]

sounds like you could be having a conflict with other wireless networks. When you scan for available networks, is yours the only one that shows up? If not, and if one of the other nets shares the same channel, you could be bumping against that. You might try changing the broadcast channel on the router to see if that might help.

Happens to me all the time because the houses are so close together that I can generally see 4 or 5 at any one time. The guy next door and I both are on channel 6 (or 8, can't remember for sure) - can't change because that's the only channel I can use with strong encryption.

[Xolotl]

Thanks Cuban I'm trying it right now, I think you might be right because I usually see about 4 of them at the same time. So if I change the channel does that mean none of the others will show up unless they're on the same channel?

[to21]

Does this happen when you walk away from the computer for a while?

If so, try this......

Right click My Network Places-->Properties-->Right click wireless network conntection-->Properties-->Configure-->Power Management-->uncheck allow computer to turn off this device to save power.

Jus something to try, all the other advice is good too.

[thispego]

Anyone here use RoboForm? that shits baaaad

[T Park]

how do i fix Vista from blue screening.

Im about to throw this Toshiba in the dumpster and get a loaded dell with XP.

[leemajors]

why don't you just format the toshiba with XP.

[KEDA]

why don't you just format the toshiba with XP.


will void the warranty


I wish it wouldn't but all the manufacturers are being bitches about Vista

vista sucks

[leemajors]

will void the warranty


I wish it wouldn't but all the manufacturers are being bitches about Vista

vista sucks

why would formatting to another os void the hardware warranty? that seems really odd. i imagine if you did have a problem you could format it back to vista.

[TDMVPDPOY]

why would formatting to another os void the hardware warranty? that seems really odd. i imagine if you did have a problem you could format it back to vista.

im pretty sure ur laptop came with a restore CD.....

[T Park]

why don't you just format the toshiba with XP.

how hard is that to do?

[Nbadan]

Nothing illegal please

Damn. That pretty much eliminates all my suggestions.

:lol

[2Blonde]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Yeah, Network Magic comes with D-Link routers. Believe it or not, the router is the "host" of your network. Make sure you are encrypting and try not to broadcast your SSID if possible.


lm is correct. the router is the connection point for all the PCs, both in terms of connectivity (wired or wireless), traffic routing, and services (DHCP, firewall).

In what sense do you think your, or any, PC is a "central hub"?

If the network is setup so that turning off one PC off disables the other PCs, something is terribly wrong.

A huge mistake made by many home users with wireless routers is to run the router with no access security, so the neighbors can steal access to Internet through your wireless router. And if you're depending on the firewall in the router to protect your PCs (bad practice), then your neighbors' pimply kids can attack your PCs directly.

A little better explanation is that my computer is the central hub of Network Magic. And I also run all the sharing of files through my computer. We download all the pics into the ext hard drive that's attached to my computer. After all the editing is done the pics make it back to my hard drive for filing. From there some of them make it on to our shared files that I maintain as "shared/for public viewing on the internet and others are for shared/password protected viewing" and some don't make it on to the internet at all. They are either just shared in our home network offline or not shared at all. But for these functions of Network Magic to work, I have to have my hard drive turned on. My question is... using a laptop, will it have to be docked? and can the ext hard drive be plugged into the docking station and be running when I have the laptop away from the office?

As for ecrypting my router and not broadcasting my SSID... That is the very first thing I learned how to do when I set up up my system. THe second thing I learned how to do is check and see what my neighbors were up to. I was surprised to learn we were the first ones on the block to encrypt our stuff. Well that was until my super secret service agent moved in. Did you know that they're not even allowed to use high speed internet service. Dial-up only. Less chance of hackers that way apparently. :lol

[ducks]

will void the warranty


I wish it wouldn't but all the manufacturers are being bitches about Vista

vista sucks

sell the computer if you hate vista
go online to stores like tiger direct and buy a refurmised xp laptop

[boutons_]

"can the ext hard drive be plugged into the docking station and be running when I have the laptop away from the office?"

No, you need PC and its OS to run the file and print server function.

If you want a always-on file server as central file storage and print server, use an old PC running Windows 2000, and plug in you external disk drive there. It does NOT have to be powerful nor have tons of apps on it.

Running NetBIOS on your LAN to run MS Networking means you absolutely must block access from Internet to the NetBIOS ports 137-139 of all you PCs.

netbios-ns 137/tcp #NETBIOS Name Service
netbios-ns 137/udp #NETBIOS Name Service
netbios-dgm 138/tcp #NETBIOS Datagram Service
netbios-dgm 138/udp #NETBIOS Datagram Service
netbios-ssn 139/tcp #NETBIOS Session Service
netbios-ssn 139/udp #NETBIOS Session Service

... along with tons of others ports to be blocked.

[CrazyOne]

Dang, I may be screwed. I was putting in a new second hard drive, and seemingly messed up the cable on my primary. So I got a replacement cable (ATA 133) but I plugged the cable backwards on the MB. By the time I figured out what I had done, it seems that my hard drive won't boot now, in fact the system doesn't even recognize it.

Now, did I just fry my hard drive, or did I merely mess up the IDE connection on the MB? Unfortunately, I'm over at a friend's house and won't get back to my computer for a while, but I'm trying to find out if I merely have some tech issues to work through or did I just wipe my unbackedup source of everything that is good?

[boutons_]

One of my clients bought a 1U box with ATA133 cable reversed end to end. When we found that and connected the cable correctly, the drive was ok.

ATA133 cables have a disk-end and controller-end. are your cable ends in the correct connectors?

[Re-Animator]

links removed

[JoeChalupa]

As for ecrypting my router and not broadcasting my SSID... That is the very first thing I learned how to do when I set up up my system. THe

I just got DSL with a wireless router. How do I encrypt my stuff and block my SSID?

[CrazyOne]

No, this was my primary hard drive. I'm using the one you gave me as additional storage.

Big sigh of reief.... I hooked the drive into the second IDE port where the CD drives are connectedd and it works... so I just have to figure out if the primary IDE port is dead or whether I just need to play with the cables and settings some more.

Thanks for the help y'all.

[Fat boy]

Hey Gary that program that takes out the song lyrics for karaoke came in yesterday from eBay stop by and pick it up when your ready. :wakeup

[CrazyOne]

Thanks. It'll either be today or tomorrow around lunch. I'll call.

[xrayzebra]

Why no shareware. How about freeware?

[Holmes_Fans]

I have a question which I will eventually get to... We are moving into our new home next week and currently I have our home network of 3 PCs set up with mine be the central hub. I use Network Magic since it came with my D-Link Extreme-G Wireless Router. I love this system because it's easy to use and they seem to respond to customer input with upgrades quite often. But my husband just ordered me a new computer as a present for building our home. He bought me a Dell Latitude D820 Laptop with a docking station.
My question is, can my laptop still be the hub of the system since it may not always be docked in the station? Currently I have a 240ghz ext hard drive plugged in to my Gateway computer that we use to download all of our digital photos onto. Or will I have to set up my daughter's computer to be the hub. (This idea scares the hell out of me). There is no telling what functions she will lock us out of if she gets pissed off.
So just tell there's a way I can continue to be the queen of my computer castle and all will be right with the word.

2Blonde


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------





A little better explanation is that my computer is the central hub of Network Magic. And I also run all the sharing of files through my computer. We download all the pics into the ext hard drive that's attached to my computer. After all the editing is done the pics make it back to my hard drive for filing. From there some of them make it on to our shared files that I maintain as "shared/for public viewing on the internet and others are for shared/password protected viewing" and some don't make it on to the internet at all. They are either just shared in our home network offline or not shared at all. But for these functions of Network Magic to work, I have to have my hard drive turned on. My question is... using a laptop, will it have to be docked? and can the ext hard drive be plugged into the docking station and be running when I have the laptop away from the office?



Sounds like this program is making you do alot of shit you shouldn't have to. Your computers should be able to be linked together via the router without any kind of BS software. Just hook them all up to the router, make sure they are all on the same network, and if you want to share files, select the hardrive and enable sharing.

I would suggest uninstalling any program you though you had to have. If your router makes you use it's software to work, then buy a new router. No computer should have to be the 'Hub', and if you don't want your daughter locking you out, then you don't give her the password to the router.

[Re-Animator]

links removed

[CrazyOne]

Dang, Mouse, that looks like you need 20 years of experience in the recording studio to figure it out. I'm looking for a point and zap solution.

[Re-Animator]

links removed

[nacho]

links removed

[sabar]

2) Nothing illegal please
There go all my suggestions.

How about some freeware with full functionality.

Clean temporary files and trash off your PC that would take much longer to clear manually. Don't scrub the registry unless you know the keys you're deleting are not needed.
http://www.ccleaner.com/

Stop Spyware in it's tracks.
http://www.safer-networking.org/

The best filter pack ever. Plays most media file formats and applies common codecs in non-conflicting ways.
http://www.cccp-project.net/

Look at images, mostly for file types like .tga that can't be opened in many programs.
http://www.irfanview.com/

Torrent client, java based!
http://azureus.sourceforge.net/

IM from the web instead of downloading bloated ad-infested client software.
http://wwwl.meebo.com/index-en.html

Let's see there must be more. If you can find RegScrubXP and RegCompact.NET those are awesome to cleaning and defragging the registry. Blender is excellent if you are actually into modeling, but I doubt anyone here is. Exact Audio Copy for ripping audio CDs works. There's OpenOffice.org but everyone knows about that.

I use CloneCD to copy game discs. Plenty of DVD rom emulation freeware but that's getting borderline illegal since it all has copy-protection bypassing.

Anyways it's all 100% free, no shareware or try-before-you-buy trash.

[Re-Animator]

links removed

[xrayzebra]

Hey sabar, the Irfanview I have used for several years. It is a
great freeware program and no crap downloaded with it. I wished
I knew how to use it more efficiently and all the stuff you really
can do with it. Know any good information on it.

Another good freeware program is Picasa, downloaded from
google. It doesn't have all the tools that Irfan has but it has
some great features. One being "free" with no junk attached.

One thing I have learned over the time I have had the old
puter is download everything to the HD run a virus scan on it
and then open it. So far haven't imported anything bad. But
maybe some others have better ideas.

One other question. On wireless networks, can you put the
printer into the equation so all computers can access it? If
so how

[2centsworth]

after reading this thread, I have an overwhelming urge to watch Star Trek.

[=RTM=]

=I feel like grabbing my pocket protector and going to radio shack to see what's new=

:wakeup

[Spock]

after reading this thread, I have an overwhelming urge to watch Star Trek.

That is a logical conclusion.

[Borosai]

1) Don't use Windows.

If you must use Windows:

2) Replace the default file manager (at least in XP) with xplorer2 lite http://zabkat.com/x2lite.htm. It's a dual-pane file manager...a nice improvement. If you don't like this one, there are others out there, but I haven't used them.

3) If you are looking for a decent anti-virus program, give Avast a try...it performs well and isn't a system resource hog (at least not in my experience). http://www.avast.com/eng/free_virus_protectio.html

4) Although I'm not a fan of it's default appearance, you might want to give VLC Media Player a try, especially if you have trouble playing certain videos. http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ I prefer MPlayer, but it doesn't perform very well in Windows (but works great in Linux).

5) Uhhh, don't use Windows.

I guess this turned into a very short list of applications that many people may already be familiar with (and possibly have already been mentioned in this thread), but others may find them interesting. And to those people out there, I say....yay.

[tw05baller]

wtf? this popped up after startup.
???



http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/4654/erroeiy0.png (http://imageshack.us)

[Re-Animator]

links removed

[tw05baller]

here
http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/5022/w444cq4.png

[nacho]

links removed

[baseline bum]

Until you fix them we can't move to step two. Unfortunately the topic starter said no sharing of code keys and does not want any free ware etc... so you do the math.

Freeware 's fine, but I hate bait and switch shareware.

[baseline bum]

1) Don't use Windows.

If you must use Windows:

2) Replace the default file manager (at least in XP) with xplorer2 lite http://zabkat.com/x2lite.htm. It's a dual-pane file manager...a nice improvement. If you don't like this one, there are others out there, but I haven't used them.

3) If you are looking for a decent anti-virus program, give Avast a try...it performs well and isn't a system resource hog (at least not in my experience). http://www.avast.com/eng/free_virus_protectio.html

4) Although I'm not a fan of it's default appearance, you might want to give VLC Media Player a try, especially if you have trouble playing certain videos. http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ I prefer MPlayer, but it doesn't perform very well in Windows (but works great in Linux).

5) Uhhh, don't use Windows.

I guess this turned into a very short list of applications that many people may already be familiar with (and possibly have already been mentioned in this thread), but others may find them interesting. And to those people out there, I say....yay.

I can't for the life of me compile Mplayer to do x264, which sucks since I have three of the 2005 Finals games in HD and compressed with x264 in a matroska container.

I've tried it with and without ffmpeg, letting MPlayer use its internal x264 and then I tried linking it against the official x264 shared lib... and I cannot get it to play x264. xine does it fine, linking against the x264 shared library. vlc too.

I got MPlayer to render to the framebuffer, to render to a terminal in ASCII (which is hilarious to watch a movie on), and everything else, but I've never gotten H.264 up and running on it. :(

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Stupid question, but is there a hotkey to hold or something to keep from screwing up the aspect resolution when you resize the display in gmplayer? I don't think I saw anything about it in the manpages.

[velik_m]

Media Player Classic is great for windows.
As far as file managers go i prefer Total Commander (it's shareware), it integrates IrfanView nicely too.

[Borosai]

I can't for the life of me compile Mplayer to do x264, which sucks since I have three of the 2005 Finals games in HD and compressed with x264 in a matroska container.

I've tried it with and without ffmpeg, letting MPlayer use its internal x264 and then I tried linking it against the official x264 shared lib... and I cannot get it to play x264. xine does it fine, linking against the x264 shared library. vlc too.

I got MPlayer to render to the framebuffer, to render to a terminal in ASCII (which is hilarious to watch a movie on), and everything else, but I've never gotten H.264 up and running on it. :(

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Stupid question, but is there a hotkey to hold or something to keep from screwing up the aspect resolution when you resize the display in gmplayer? I don't think I saw anything about it in the manpages.

As far as x264 files, I had never played them before (that I know of) with either program. However, I was curious to see if there was a problem, so I downloaded a couple of video clips of birds (only thing I could find) from http://www.hbw.com/ibc/, and they both played fine, although I wasn't very impressed with their quality. I'm running archlinux64 by the way.

While resizing mplayer/gmplayer windows, they have always maintained their aspect ratio...including the window frame, so I'm not sure about that.

EDIT: Oops, I just tested it again, and yep, gmplayer has that problem. When mplayer is launched from the command line, it doesn't. Weird. I don't use gmplayer much, so I guess that explains my ignorance. Just don't use the gui unless you are going to watch something full screen...problem solved. :p:

[baseline bum]

H.264 is the best MPEG-4 codec I've ever seen. I have 4 four games of the Finals in HD from the same source, same resolution, same bitrate, and so on, 3 using x264's H.264 implementation, one using XViD, and the difference in quality between them is night and day. I know the XViD rip isn't bad either, because it's consistent with the quality of a lot of XViD rips I did myself on two-pass encoding after doing a lot of experimenting to see what looked best when compressing it.

H.264 is what Apple uses in all their HD movie trailers, although H.264 still looks amazing at lower resolutions too. I have some Spurs games in something like 530 by 300 (or something along those lines) that look significantly better than 720x480 DVDs, while only taking about 1400 MB/game.

[baseline bum]

Media Player Classic is great for windows.
As far as file managers go i prefer Total Commander (it's shareware), it integrates IrfanView nicely too.

I think vlc is the best player I've ever used on Windows. MPC is nice too, but vlc is the only one I've seen on Windows that will play an arbitrary-dimension XViD file without color bleeding.

[Borosai]

Oh yes, HD Quicktime movie trailers are awesome...but the videos I saw didn't look like that...I suppose the source wasn't that good, I don't know.

[TDMVPDPOY]

wat a good dvd burnin software free, besides nero? its fuckn me system

[ducks]

wtf? this popped up after startup.
???



http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/4654/erroeiy0.png (http://imageshack.us)
seens lots of that lately at work

you have to replace that file
go online and download thzt dll file and replace the file
then it works
it is easy :clap :clap

[Steve Perry]

wat a good dvd burnin software free, besides nero? its fuckn me system


You want to make movies, or Burn Data? I know two good ones that specialize in each one. But you need to Pm me so we don't break any rules. :wakeup

[xrayzebra]

seens lots of that lately at work

you have to replace that file
go online and download thzt dll file and replace the file
then it works
it is easy :clap :clap

May not really want the dumb thing to work tho. It is
an active X helper program according to some info I
googled. It is just a pain to keep getting the box pop
up on start-up. How can you get rid of that thing, the
box?

[Re-Animator]

There are a few things you can do. one thing you can do I can't tell you due to the rules of this topic. But I feel leaving you with this problem is worst than any rule i may break, with that said................

Download this.


http://www.majorgeeks.com/downloadget.php?id=3155&file=10&evp=3304750663b552982a8baee6434cfc13

Then after you run the software find the box that is bugging you, click on the box to the left of the error and then hit ok. Your DLL warning is gone.
happy Easter :wakeup

[to21]

May not really want the dumb thing to work tho. It is
an active X helper program according to some info I
googled. It is just a pain to keep getting the box pop
up on start-up. How can you get rid of that thing, the
box?

Start-->Run-->type "msconfig"-->click "startup tab"-->uncheck the suspect program.

Or

Remove it forever by:

Start-->Run-->type "regedit"-->browse to: "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Run"-->delete the suspect key.

Warning: only mess w/registry unless you know what ur doing or you back up/export a copy.

Enjoy!