Archive for the ‘Tech’ Category

Generally if we are taking some program off our PCs, we don’t give it much thought. Just run the uninstall that the program itself  provided and that’s it. The problem is that these programs rarely remove all traces of themselves. Over time, these file fragments can cause issues and add to the general slow down of our PCs that come with age.

That’s where Revo Uninstaller by VS Revo Group comes in. Running Revo in ‘Moderate’ mode first runs the programs own uninstall. Then Revo finds all files, links and registry references that were left behind. I was amazed at all the fragments it found during a recent application purge. It does exactly what it says it does and doesn’t overly complicate or lengthen the process.

More »

Been meaning to do this for a while (two months), but I have finally put up the photos from the recent (two month ago) build of my new (two month old) PC. This is not the first as I typically build one every two to three years. In that time though, I tend not to keep up with all the new technologies and have to relearn specs, compatability, assembly – whenever the rig doesn’t catch fire on first startup, I am utterly amazed.

All PC troubleshooting is made easier with the right tools. These tools should be easy to use, easy to install, do as advertised and preferably be free. One tool that comes with Windows that I always felt was lacking was Task Manager. While it shows process memory consumption and process CPU usage, it does little to tell you which process is causing you all the problems. And what if the problem process locked up your PC? You would never know what was slowing your system.

More »

It looks like the folks at Valve have something in the works for Team Fortress 2. While it had recently been announced that the sniper would be the next character to get an update, it was much more interesting to read what is being said in the Valve forums. While researching some information, I came across misterdevious’s post that summarizes this new information very well.

So what’s this all about? Well in short, there will possibly be new items in Team Fortress 2; the first clue, you may have already seen. In the character loadout screen, there is a section for “Head.” That, along with the information found by Dracula Guy in one of the coding sections for menus, makes a compelling argument for headgear being added.

More »

I can’t remember the last time I thought “Wow” for a screen saver. But in searching for dual monitor programs, I came across this page: reallyslick.com is a website by Terry Welsh who created OpenGL screen savers as a hobby. It looks like he hasn’t done any in years but these screen savers of his are still quite amazing. Download them and you won’t be disappointed. Highly customizable, they can be pushed to use today’s computers to look better than when they were originally made. The above image is from “Hyperspace.” His website has been going down so here is a link to the SourceForge download for all of the screensavers in a single zip.  Download here.

This is high on the PC geek scale, but something I find that many people who consider themselves computer geeks have never heard of. I’m going to be talking briefly about Alternate Data Streams(ADS). First off, let’s discuss what it is. ADS is an undocumented feature of the NTFS file system used by Microsoft operating systems, including XP and Vista. It was added originally for compatibility to a Mac file system called HFS. Windows’ files use the file extension to determine the file type. This older Mac file system used a file within a file system to determine file type. ADS was added as a means to deal with the different processes.

More »