“Peggy” from “Computer Support Department” just won’t give up. He called me again at about 8 PM this evening. This time, I played along. I had a thrift-store junker PC for him to infect with his malware. The only problem was, the hard drive wasn’t connected and neither was the power cord. So I quickly [...]
All posts tagged Control Panel
How I accidentally found a way to mess with “Peggy”
Posted by Dave Farquhar on May 20, 2013
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2013/05/how-i-accidentally-found-a-way-to-mess-with-peggy/
Non-derailing Marx switches
The Marx 1590 is the best O27 switch ever made. It’s durable, works well with all makes of trains (just put a track pin in the center rail where the switch pivots so that Lionel trains can pass), and can run off accessory power without modification. The only downside is that it (allegedly) can’t be [...]
Posted by Dave Farquhar on February 1, 2013
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2013/02/non-derailing-marx-switches/
The Insignia Flex’s long-lost brothers
I had a chance to take a look at the Insignia Flex tablet, Best Buy’s $249 house-brand Android tablet. If you need a basic dual-core tablet that’s reasonably well-built, it’s not bad. I found it responsive and usable–there just wasn’t anything flashy about it. The two things I found I didn’t like were that the [...]
Posted by Dave Farquhar on November 24, 2012
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2012/11/the-insignia-flexs-long-lost-brothers/
Toggle between two registry settings with another simple script
On the heels of yesterday, the same technique that swapped hosts files can be adapted to toggle registry settings too. Perhaps you want to be able to toggle your screen saver timeout from the default of 1500 to a value of 9999. That way, you can easily choose between the screen saver interrupting you or [...]
Posted by Dave Farquhar on September 22, 2011
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2011/09/toggle-between-two-registry-settings-with-another-simple-script/
Upgrade diary: Compaq Presario C552US
The Presario C552US shipped from the factory with a 1.6 GHz Celeron M single-core CPU, 512MB of RAM, and Windows Vista Home Basic. It’s the most miserable computing experience I’ve seen in a very long time, if ever. I don’t know how they ever sold a single one of these machines, performing like that. Fortunately, [...]
Posted by Dave Farquhar on July 9, 2011
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2011/07/upgrade-diary-compaq-presario-c552us/
How I fixed an infuriating printer problem
Windows 0.7 Windows 7 and my HP Laserjet 4100 weren’t getting along. And I was pretty livid about it. I paid $125 for my Windows 7 upgrade, and for that money, I got to mess around for 4 days trying to get better-than-1997 functionality out of what’s supposed to be the latest and greatest. I [...]
Posted by Dave Farquhar on February 9, 2011
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2011/02/how-i-fixed-an-infuriating-printer-problem/
Fixing choppy audio in Windows XP SP2
So I’m sitting at this 2 GHz PC with 2 GB of RAM and a reasonably fast video card, and the audio in Railroad Tycoon 3 skips and sounds a little bit distorted.
It’s maddening when the game played fine on 400 MHz systems. I did some digging, and bad audio seems to be a common problem in XP SP2, but solutions are rare.
Posted by Dave Farquhar on November 21, 2007
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2007/11/fixing-choppy-audio-in-windows-xp-sp2/
Basic Windows printer troubleshooting
I "fixed" a printer this weekend. It took me about a minute.
Chances are I can teach you how to fix printers in minutes too–assuming the problem is more software than hardware, like it was in this case.
Posted by Dave Farquhar on March 27, 2005
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2005/03/basic-windows-printer-troubleshooting/
Squeezing some life out of an aging Windows 2000 PC
I can safely say I really did write the book on Windows optimization (Optimizing Windows for Games, Graphics and Multimedia, O’Reilly, 1999, ISBN 1565926773) but that was five years ago and covered Windows 95 and 98.
Windows 2000 and XP are a different animal, and are as similar to the obscure OS/2 operating system from IBM as they are to Windows 95/98.
Here’s what I did when my work computer slowed to the point that I could no longer do much work.
Posted by Dave Farquhar on September 16, 2004
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2004/09/squeezing-some-life-out-of-an-aging-windows-2000-pc/
Shopping an estate sale for trains
My girlfriend loves shopping at yard sales, flea markets, thrift stores, and basically everywhere people look for bargains.
I’m not into that all that much. I’m a guy. So I just asked her to keep an eye out for tools for me if she happened to be garage sale-ing.
This week she found an estate sale with tools and trains. It started at 7:30 this morning. So I dragged myself out of bed to go.
Posted by Dave Farquhar on May 1, 2004
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2004/05/shopping-an-estate-sale-for-trains/