After playing around with iDeneb 10.5.5 distro, I ended up messing around with iPC OSx86 10.5.6 Universal Ed. on my little Sony VGN-BX660P this Monday. It is working flawlessly so far! This version has the support for 1280x800 resolution display, which fixes my display issue with the white band under the dock.
Before going into the details, check out my Sony BX660P's specs so that we are on the same page. Also, Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG will not work but everything else will work including Verizon PC5750 Broadband Access card (as far as I have tested). I used Linksys WPC54GS (V.1.2) which has the Broadcom chip for my wireless, and Airport recognizes it as soon as you plug in.
DON'T rush to your laptop and boot into Mac OSX Installer yet. If you still have Windows XP/ Vista running on your system, type msinfo32.exe to open up the system information window first. Then do a save as of *.nfo file as well as exporting the system information to a text file. Keep it on a flash drive. It will become very useful when you install Marvell Yukon 88E8055 network adapter.
If you are a noob like me, see my previous post with step-by-step on booting from DVD all the way to partitioning the disk using Disk Utility. When you get to the Install Summary page, click customize and select the following drivers and patches ONLY.
1. iPC OSx86 10.5.6 Base System
Under iPC OSx86 10.5.6 Intel AMD SSE2 SSE3
2. Drivers> Video Drivers> Intel> Intel GMA950
3. Drivers> Chipset Drivers> Intel ICHx SATA Drivers
4. Drivers> Audio Drivers> Other Audio Drivers> Azalia Audio
5. Drivers> Ethernet Drivers> Marvell Yukon 88E8056
6. Drivers> Wireless Drivers> Broadcom Driver (for Linksys WPC54GS)
7. Drivers> Power Management> PowerManagement Package
8. Fixes and Patches> IOPCMCIAFamily
9. Fixes and Patches> PS/2 Device Support> PS/2 Keyboard Fix
10. All Applications except AMD related items.
That's it. Reboot the computer. Make sure to press F8 and boot with -F -v boot flags when you reboot. This is to ensure all the kexts are loaded for the first time.
At this point, everything should be working except wireless and Marvell Yukon ethernet adapter. Read this post of Sophitia on how to make Marvell Yukon 88E8055 work. You will be replacing the value of IOPCISecondaryMatch, which is the SubSys ID of your device. Remember that *.nfo or *.txt file created in Windows earlier? You can find that SubSys ID for your Marvell Yukon under Components> Network> Adapter.
I call mine "MacBook Ghetto". :P
Important note: This guide is intended only for testing and educational purpose. If you like to use Mac OS X Leopard, buy the real Mac. Nothing is better than original hardware and software.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
MacBook Ghetto
Saturday, June 06, 2009
Apple and me
Got a Sony BX660P laptop and not sure what to do with that junk? Load Mac OS X Leopard. :) Here's how to do that.
You will need iDeneb v1.3 (Mac OS X 10.5.5) DVD to get started. ImgBurn was used to burn the ISO image. It's a great free program. Using Roxio Easy Media Creator 10 caused me a few days of troubleshooting with "/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.boot.plist not found" error and I could not even boot into the installation screen. The problem was Roxio only burned the boot loader part of the image and not the rest.
Here's the specs of my Sony laptop.
Model: VGN-BX660P
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 (2GHz)
Chipset: Intel 945 GM
Video: Intel GMA Graphics (internal graphics)
Sound: Realtek High Definition Audio
Ethernet: Marvell Yukon 88E8055 Gigabit Ethernet
Wireless: Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG
Everything is working great except the following minor items.
1. Wireless - There's no kext (driver support) for this wireless adapter though this might work for you.
2. The usable screen resolution is 1280 x 768 though the actual display has 1280 x 800. There will be a small white band under the dock.
3. Sleep mode - the screen will go blank and never come back up. So you will need to disable the system standby.
Step-by-step installation guide
1. Boot from the DVD, and press F8 to use boot options. At the boot prompt, type -v and hit enter. This option is useful in case if you have any trouble booting.
2. If everything is OK at boot, you will get to the following screen. Click next arrow.
3. Now go to Utilities> Disk Utility. Two partitions configuration is ideal for me because one being used for OS and the other one being used for Time Machine backup. You can also use Disk Utility later to create a gold image of your OS drive in case if you need to restore the entire OS drive back.
4. Select the entire hard drive on left and go to Erase. Select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) for format and click erase.
5. Click Partition and select 2 Partitions. According to some of the install guides, name with spaces will not work, so keep it short and simple. I used OSX for my OS drive. Use Mac OS Extended (Journaled) for format and set the size you prefer to use. Do the same for second partition. DON'T click apply yet.
6. Click Options on the bottom of the Partition window. Select GUID Partition Table. Click OK.
7. Click apply and click partition on the confirmation message. When Disk Utility is done with partitioning, close Disk Utility.
8. Now you are back in the Mac OS X Installer screen. Click next to proceed with the installation. Click Agree.
9. In this next window, you will see two partitions created earlier. Click OSX and continue.
10. DON'T click Install on Install Summary page yet. Click Customize option to select drivers that will work with Sony BX660P.
11. Check the following options. I installed all applications because there are tools that might come in handy when you need to fix kexts.
12. Click done and install. Skip the media check. Once it's done, you will see the green check mark. Restart the computer.
13. After reboot, first thing you will see is the gray apple screen. Then a splash screen but the display might look messed up and divided into six tiles. That's fine. Ignore it. This will be fixed once you finish with initial setup.
14. After entering all information, you should now be on Desktop. Open System Preferences and open Displays. Choose 1280x768, 75Hz for Resolution, and that should fix the display issue.
15. At this point, everything is working and usable except the network port. Go to System Preferences> Energy Saver and pull the slider to Never for computer's sleep mode. Also, if you turn the wireless switch on, the Bluetooth seems to be working though I have not fully tested the functionality.
16. Now it's time to fix the Marvell Yukon 88E8055 Gigabit Ethernet. Lono's Fixme article, Sophitia's post on InsanelyMac Forum and PCIDatabase.com helped fix this issue, so the credit goes to them.
After reboot, everything should be working except WiFi and Sleep Mode.
/Contents/PlugIns/AppleYukon.kext/Contents/Info.plist
Enjoy your Hackintosh! :P
Important note: This step-by-step guide is intended only for testing and educational purpose. If you like to use Mac OS X Leopard, buy the real Mac. Nothing is better than original hardware and software.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Floola and EphPod for iPod
အသိတစ္ေယာက္... iPod တစ္လံုး ဝယ္လာတယ္... ေကာင္းတာေပါ့... ဟင့္အင္း... မေကာင္းပါဘူး... သူ႕ iPod ေလးၾကည္႕ၿပီး သြားရည္က်ေနရတာ ေကာင္းမလားဗ်... iPod ထဲ သီခ်င္းေတြ ထဲ့ဖို႔က တစ္ေၾကာင္း၊ ဘယ္လို စလုပ္ရမွန္း မေသခ်ာတာက တစ္ေၾကာင္း.. က်ေနာ့္ဆီကို ေရာက္လာပါတယ္... သူ႕ iPod ေလးကို အိမ္မွာ ထားခဲ့ပါေလေရာ...
iPod နဲ႔ အတူပါတဲ့ iTunes ကို က်ေနာ့္ရဲ႕ Vista အစုပ္ပလုပ္ေပၚလဲ မတင္ခ်င္ဘူး... အိမ္မွာ႐ွိတဲ့ Macbook Pro မွာပါတဲ့ iTunes ကို သံုးၿပီး ခ်ိတ္ေတာ့လဲ iPod ကို ေဖၚမက္လုပ္၊ ၿပီးမွ music library ကို ျပန္လုပ္မယ္ေျပာေတာ့.. သူ႕မွာ နဂို သြင္းထားၿပီးသား သီခ်င္းေတြကိုလဲ မဖ်က္ခ်င္ဘူး... ဒုကၡ... လွလွကေတာ့ ဘယ္ေရာက္ေနမွန္းမသိ...
ေတြ႕ၿပီ... EphPod ဆိုတဲ့ freeware ေလးပါပဲ... ပထမက EphPod 2.77 ကို တင္လိုက္မိေတာ့.. အဆင္မေျပဘူး... ေနာက္မွ ဒါဟာ stable version မဟုတ္ပါဘူးလို႔ ေရးထားတာေလး သြားဖတ္မိတယ္... ႐ွိေစေတာ့... EphPod 2.75 ကို တင္လိုက္တယ္... မဆိုးဘူး... သီခ်င္းေတြကို iPod ကေန ကြန္ျပဴတာ.. ကြန္ျပဴတာ ကေန iPod.. အားလံုး mp3 ေဖၚမက္ပဲ... ဘာမွ အကန္႔အသတ္မ႐ွိ...
စိတ္ဝင္စားတဲ့ iPod ပိုင္႐ွင္မ်ား... www.ephpod.com မွာ download လုပ္ႏိုင္ပါတယ္... က်ေနာ့္ Vista မွာ တစ္ခါတစ္ေလ နည္းနည္း ေၾကာင္တတ္ေပမဲ့ သီခ်င္းေတြကို လိုခ်င္သလို အကန္႔အသတ္မ႐ွိ ကူးႏိုင္တဲ့ ပ႐ိုဂရမ္ေလးပါပဲ...
Update: အခုေလးတင္ ေလွ်ာက္သြားေနရင္း ပိုေကာင္းမယ္ ထင္တဲ့ software ေလး တစ္ခု ထပ္ေတြ႕လာလို႔ update လုပ္လိုက္ပါတယ္... Floola ဆိုတဲ့ software (free) ပါ... ဒီတစ္ခုက install လုပ္စရာ မလိုပဲ ဒီအတိုင္း run လို႔ရတာမို႔ ပိုအဆင္ေျပမယ္ ထင္ပါတယ္... အေသးစိပ္ကိုေတာ့ Life Hacker မွာ ဖတ္ႏိုင္ပါတယ္...
Saturday, December 15, 2007
How to activate Akismet plugin for WordPress
// If you hardcode a WP.com API key here, all key config screens will be hidden // If you hardcode a WP.com API key here, all key config screens will be hidden
WordPress မွာ Akismet ဆိုတဲ့ comment spam filter ပါ ပါတယ္... ျပသနာက WordPress.com မွာ အဲဒီ Akismet plugin ကို activate လုပ္ရင္ ဘာမွ အခက္အခဲ မ႐ွိပဲ ခ်က္ခ်င္းသံုးႏိုင္ေပမဲ့ အျပင္ web host တစ္ခ်ဳိ႕မွာ တင္ထားတဲ့ WordPress blog ဆိုရင္ activate လုပ္မရပဲ အခက္ေတြ႕ရပါတယ္... အခု ေရးသားထားတဲ့ Howto ကေတာ့ ဒီလို အျပင္ web host ေတြမွာ တင္ထားတဲ့ WordPress blog ေတြက Akismet plugin ကို ဘယ္လို activate လုပ္ရသလဲ ဆိုတာကို တစ္ဆင့္ျခင္း ေရးထားတာပါ...
၁။ ပထမဆံုးက Akismet ကို သံုးဖို႔တြက္ WordPress.com API key လိုပါတယ္... WordPress.com မွာ account ႐ွိတဲ့သူအဖို႔ ကိုယ့္အေကာင့္ထဲ ေလာ့ဂ္အင္ လုပ္ၿပီး My Profile ကို သြားလိုက္ရင္ စာမ်က္ႏွာရဲ႕ အေပၚဆံုးနားမွာပဲ API key ကို ျပေပးထားပါတယ္... ေကာ္ပီကူးလိုက္႐ံုပါပဲ... API key မွာ ဂဏန္းႏွင့္ အဂၤလိပ္ အကၡရာ ၁၂လံုး တြဲထားပါတယ္... WordPress.com မွာ အေကာင့္ မ႐ွိေသးရင္လဲ အခမဲ့ signup လုပ္ၿပီး API key ရယူႏိုင္ပါတယ္...
၂။ အျပင္ web host မွာ တင္ထားတဲ့ blog ထဲကို ေလာ့ဂ္အင္လုပ္ပါ... ၿပီးရင္ Plugins ကို သြားပါ (Presentation ေဘးမွာ ႐ွိပါတယ္)... Akismet ကို အက္တီဗိတ္ မလုပ္ပါနဲ႔ဦး... Plugin Editor ကို အရင္သြားပါ...
၃။ ပိုစိတ္ခ်ၿပီး အမွားအယြင္းျဖစ္ရင္ ျပန္ျပင္ႏိုင္ေအာင္ akismet/akismet.php ဆိုတဲ့ ေအာက္က code ေတြကို Notepad ေပၚ ေကာ္ပီအရင္ကူးထားၿပီး save လုပ္ထားလိုက္ပါ... akismet.php ကို backup လုပ္ထားတဲ့ သေဘာပါပဲ...
၃။ WordPress.com က ရထားတဲ့ API key ကို ေကာ္ပီလုပ္လိုက္ပါ... ၿပီးရင္ akismet.php ထဲက ေအာက္မွာျပထားတဲ့ စာေၾကာင္းေလးကို ႐ွာပါ... အေပၚနားေလးမွာတင္ ႐ွိပါတယ္...
$wpcom_api_key = '';
၄။ ေကာ္ပီကူထားတဲ့ API key ကို ' ' ၾကားထဲ ထဲ့ေပးလိုက္ၿပီး Update file ကို ႏွိပ္ၿပီး save လုပ္လိုက္ပါ...
$wpcom_api_key = 'Your API Key Here';
၅။ Plugins ကို ျပန္သြားၿပီး Akismet ကို activate လုပ္လိုက္ရင္ Akismet plugin ကို အဆင္ေျပစြာနဲ႔ စသံုးလို႔ရပါၿပီ...
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Optimize your blog or web site
ဒီရက္ပိုင္းေတြမွာ WordPress blog တစ္ခုကို XtreemHost ဆိုတဲ့ free web host သံုးၿပီး ေလွ်ာက္ကလိေနခဲ့တယ္... ဒါနဲ႔ပဲ ေနာက္ထပ္ Cyber Sandbox တစ္ခု ထပ္တိုးလာတယ္ ဆိုပါေတာ့ (ေနာင္တစ္ခ်ိန္မွာ ျမန္မာျပည္က စာဖတ္သူမ်ား သြားရလာရ လြယ္ကူေအာင္ ထားမလားလို႔ေတာ့ စိတ္ကူးမိတယ္.. ဒါမွမဟုတ္လဲ WordPress themes ေတြ plugins ေတြ ေလွ်ာက္ကလိလို႔ ရတာေပါ့)... WordPress မွာ ေ႐ြးခ်ယ္စရာ themes (templates) ေတြက စံုလွသလို.. CSS Style Sheet ကိုလဲ စိတ္ႀကိဳက္ျပင္ႏိုင္တာမို႔ ေတာ္ေတာ္ေလး သေဘာက်သြားတယ္ဗ်ာ...
တစ္ခုေတာ့ ႐ွိတာေပါ့.. ဒီလို ျပင္ႏိုင္ဖို႔ လုပ္ခ်င္တယ္ဆိုရင္ေတာ့ က်ေနာ့္ သူငယ္ခ်င္း ေမာင္သႀကၤန္ ေျပာသလို WordPress.com မွာ blog လုပ္ထားတာမ်ဳိးေတာ့ မရဘူးေပါ့... အျပင္ web host ေတြ သံုးၿပီး တင္ထားတဲ့ WordPress blog ဆိုရင္ေတာ့ စိတ္ႀကိဳက္ themes ေတြ လဲႏိုင္သလို.. plugins မ်ဳိးစံုကိုလဲ ထဲ့သံုးႏိုင္ပါတယ္... CSS ကိုလဲ လြတ္လြတ္လပ္လပ္ ျပင္ႏိုင္တာေၾကာင့္ ေဇာ္ဂ်ီ အတြက္ စိတ္မပူရေတာ့ဘူး...
ဒီလိုနဲ႔ က်ေနာ့္ WordPress blog အတြက္ themes မ်ဳိးစံု ေလွ်ာက္႐ွာရင္း ေခါင္းထဲ ဝင္လာတာက web site optimization ပါပဲ... လူအမ်ားစု သတိမျပဳမိတဲ့ အခ်က္ေလး တစ္ခ်က္လဲ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္... မ်ားေသာအားျဖင့္ ကိုယ္ႀကိဳက္တဲ့ ပံုေလးေတြ.. Flash object ေလးေတြ.. background ပံုေတြ.. စသည္ျဖင့္ ကိုယ့္ရဲ႕ ဘေလာ့ဂ္ (သို႔) web site ေပၚမွာ တင္ၾကပါတယ္... လွလဲ လွပါတယ္... ဒါေပမဲ့ ကိုယ့္ရဲ႕ စာဖတ္သူ အမ်ားစုဟာ အင္တာနက္ ေကာ္နက္႐ွင္ ေႏွးတဲ့ ေနရာက လာရမယ္ဆို သူတို႔အတြက္ စာမ်က္ႏွာ တစ္ခုတက္ဖို႔ အၾကာႀကီး ေစာင့္ရမွာ မစြံလွပါဘူး...
ဒါေၾကာင့္ က်ေနာ့္ ဘေလာ့ဂ္ရဲ႕ မူလ စာမ်က္ႏွာဟာ အင္တာနက္ ေကာ္နက္႐ွင္ေပၚ မူတည္ၿပီး စာဖတ္သူဆီကို ေရာက္ဖို႔ ဘယ္ေလာက္ ၾကာႏိုင္မလဲဆိုတာ WebSiteOptimization.com မွာ လင့္ခ္တင္ၿပီး စမ္းၾကည္႕ပါတယ္... ေအာက္မွာ ျမင္ေနရတဲ့ ဇယားေလးက အင္တာနက္ ေကာ္နက္႐ွင္ အမ်ဳိးစားေပၚ မူတည္ၿပီး ဘယ္ေလာက္ ၾကာႏိုင္သလဲ ဆိုတာ ျပထားပါတယ္... ဒါက က်ေနာ့္ရဲ႕ Cyber Sandbox ဘေလာ့ဂ္ပါ...
Download Times* (full report)Connection Rate Download Time 14.4K 266.34 seconds 28.8K 134.47 seconds 33.6K 115.63 seconds 56K 70.42 seconds ISDN 128K 23.37 seconds T1 1.44Mbps 4.40 seconds
ဒီရလာတဲ့ အေျဖေတြနဲ႔ ႏႈိင္းယွဥ္ဖို႔ ေနာက္ ဘေလာ့ဂ္ တစ္ခုကို ထပ္စမ္းပါတယ္... ေၾသာ္.. ဘယ္သူ႐ွိမလဲ... စပ္မိစပ္ရာ ေပါ့... အေျဖကေတာ့ ေအာက္မွ ျပထားတဲ့ ဇယားေလးပါပဲ...
Download Times* (full report)Connection Rate Download Time 14.4K 2125.07 seconds 28.8K 1068.34 seconds 33.6K 917.37 seconds 56K 555.06 seconds ISDN 128K 178.04 seconds T1 1.44Mbps 26.05 seconds
ဒီလို ကိုယ့္ဘေလာ့ဂ္ (သို႔) web site ရဲ႕ page loading speed ကို ျပန္စစ္ႀကည္႕လိုက္ရင္.. ဘာေတြလိုေနလဲ.. ဘာေတြေလွ်ာ့လို႔ရမလဲ.. ဘယ္လို စာမ်က္ႏွာ ျမန္ျမန္တက္ေအာင္ လုပ္ေပးႏိုင္မလဲ ဆိုတာေတြ ထြက္လာပါတယ္... က်ေနာ့္ ဘေလာ့ဂ္မွာ ဆိုရင္ ေအာက္မွာ ေရးထားတာေလးေတြကို ျပန္ျပင္ထားပါတယ္...
ဒီလိုေလးေတြ ျပင္ၿပီးတဲ့ ေနာက္မွာ page loading speed ဟာ ေတာ္ေတာ္ေလး အဆင္ေျပသြားပါတယ္... broadband သံုးေနရသူေတြ အဖို႔ ဘာမွ မသိသာလွေပမဲ့ 56K သံုးေနရသူ စာဖတ္သူေတြ အတြက္ေတာ့ အဆင္ေျပသြားတာေပါ့ဗ်ာ...
Update: I found another website called RankingToday.com, which has a easier to use interface and many more tools to optimize your site.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Want to convert Myanmar fonts?
ကိုေမာင္လွရဲ႕ ဘေလာ့ကေနရတာ၊ ျပန္ၿပီး သံုးဖို႔ ခြင့္ရခဲ့တာေတာ့ ၾကာပါၿပီ... အကုန္လံုးျပင္ဆင္ၿပီးမွ ဘေလာ့ေပၚတင္ဖို႔ ေမ့ေနတာနဲ႔ အခုမွပဲ တင္ျဖစ္ပါေတာ့တယ္... ေဇာ္ဂ်ီ font ကေန ဝင္းျမန္မာကို အလြယ္တကူ ေျပာင္းေပးႏိုင္သလို၊ ဝင္းျမန္မာ ကေန ေဇာ္ဂ်ီ font ကိုလဲ အလြယ္တကူ ေျပာင္းယူႏိုင္ေအာင္ ျပင္ဆင္ထားတဲ့ web page ေလးပါပဲ... Java script ကို support လုပ္ႏိုင္တဲ့ browser ႐ွိရင္ သံုးလို႔ရပါၿပီ...
ေနာက္ အသံုးဝင္ပံုေလးတစ္ခုကို ႐ွာေတြ႕ထားတာကေတာ့.. အဲဒီ text box ေလးကို သံုးၿပီး ဝင္း (သို႔) ေဇာ္ဂ်ီ ကို ႐ိုက္ၿပီး ေကာ္ပီကူးႏိုင္တာပါပဲ... တစ္ျခား program ေတြ ဖြင့္ဖို႔ မလိုအပ္ပဲ browser ကေနဖြင့္ၿပီး အသင့္သံုးႏိုင္တာမို႔ တစ္ခ်ဳိ႕ေနရာေတြမွာ အဆင္ေျပလွပါတယ္...
1. Zawgyi (Zawgyi-One) to Win Converter
2. Win to Zawgyi (Zawgyi-One) Converter
3. Win to Zawgyi Converter (on the fly)
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Do you have the Time?
| တစ္ခါတစ္ေလမွာ သူငယ္ခ်င္းေတြကို ဖုန္းေခၚဖို႔ ေတြးမိတယ္... ခက္တာက သူငယ္ခ်င္းေတြက ကမာၻႀကီးရဲ႕ တစ္ေနရာစီမွာ ပ်ံ႕က်ဲလို႔ ေနေလရဲ႕... အမိႈက္စကေလးေတြလိုပါပဲ... သူတို႔ ေနထိုင္ေနတဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံ၊ ၿမဳိ႕ေတာ္ ေတြမွာ ဘယ္အခ်ိန္ေရာက္လို႔ ေရာက္ေနမွန္းမသိ... World Time Server က နာရီေတြကို ဆြဲခ်ၿပီး တင္ထားလိုက္တယ္... မွတ္ကေရာ... Blogger ေပၚမွာ နာရီေတြ အကုန္လံုး အဆင္ေျပေအာင္ စီစဥ္လို႔မရတာမို႔ က်ေနာ့္ရဲ႕ Google Pages ေပၚမွာ သူငယ္ခ်င္းေတြအားလံုး ၾကည္႕ႏိုင္ေအာင္ တင္ထားေပးလိုက္ပါတယ္... Gu Gu's Clocks |
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Portable Apps for USB Drives
ေသေသခ်ာခ်ာ သံုးမၾကည္႕ရေသးေပမဲ့.. ဒီ software မွာပါတဲ့ application ေတြကို ေသေသခ်ာခ်ာ ၾကည္႕မိတဲ့အခါမွာေတာ့ ေတာ္ေတာ္ေလးကို အသံုးတည္႕မဲ့ application ေတြအျဖစ္ ေတြ႕ရပါတယ္... ၿပီးေတာ့ ဒီ software ေလးရဲ႕ အားသာခ်က္က ႐ွိသမွ် application ေတြ အကုန္လံုးကို USB Drive (a.k.a Flash Drive) ကေနပဲ သံုးလို႔ရတဲ့ အခ်က္ပါပဲ... installation ေတြဘာေတြ လုပ္စရာမလိုတဲ့အတြက္.. အလုပ္သိပ္မ႐ႈပ္ရပဲ ေပါ့ေပါ့ပါးပါး USB Drive/ Memory Card/ iPod ထဲထည္႕သယ္သြားၿပီး ႀကိဳက္တဲ့ ကြန္ျပဴတာေပၚမွာ သံုး႐ံုပါပဲ... ကိုယ္လိုခ်င္တဲ့ applications ေလးေတြပဲ ေ႐ြးထည္႕ၿပီး သံုးခ်င္တယ္ဆိုရင္လဲ.. တစ္ခုခ်င္းစီကို download လုပ္ယူႏိုင္ပါတယ္...
တစ္ခ်ဳိ႕ေသာ application ေတြကေတာ့ Administrator သို႔ Administrator လို account မ်ဳိး ႐ွိမွသာ run ႏိုင္မယ္လို႔ ထင္ပါတယ္ (ေသခ်ာေတာ့ မသံုးၾကည္႕ရေသးလို႔ မသိေသးပါဘူး)... Network/ Systems Admin ေတြအတြက္ troubleshooting လုပ္ဖို႔ application တစ္ခ်ဳိ႕႐ွိသလို၊ ေန႔စဥ္သံုး အသံုးဝင္တဲ့ application ေလးေတြလဲ ပါေတာ့ စာဖတ္သူတို႔လဲ စိတ္ဝင္စားရင္ ရယူႏိုင္ေအာင္ PortableApps အျပင္ကို တစ္ျခား software ေတြပါ ေအာက္မွာ ထပ္ေရးထည္႕ေပးထားပါတယ္... အားလံုး Freeware/ Open Source ေတြပါပဲ...
1. List of portable software on Wikipedia
2. 100 portable apps for your USB stick (Windows and Mac)
3. Portable USB Programs
4. Duplicate File Finder
Saturday, September 08, 2007
Vista: Activation overkill
Vista's product activation part of the OS drives me crazy. I just upgraded my main C drive with a larger capacity hard drive. Used Ghost to copy the partition. Done deal.
Nope. After the second reboot, Vista is now asking me to reactivate the product. Now I am stuck because it won't let me use my CD Key (probably it was downloaded from my school's MSDN site and have one activation only).
Luckily, I found a CD version of Vista key at MSDN web site for me. So, I used it and it worked.
Be very careful with hard drive swap if you are using Vista and your license is similar to mine. This time, extra CD Key saved my sorry little behind but no more keys for me for the next time. Damn Vista.
Friday, August 17, 2007
Verizon DSL with Westell WireSpeed 2110
Lately, I have been having connection problems with my Verizon DSL line. My internet connection drop intermittently and come back again about 30 seconds later. It happens throughout the day randomly.
I borrowed my friend's DSL modem (also a Verizon customer) which is Westell 6100, and it works fine the whole day. So I figured it could be Westell 2110 I have is causing the connection problem. I started looking for a way to update the firmware of this modem, and it took me longer than I thought because I couldn't find the firmware and instruction for the 2110 I have. Finally, I found it on Verizon's site. How ironic?
Follow this link to Verizon's download site where you will find the firmware and instruction. If the site no longer exists, then download them from the links below. I hope this will make your life easier if you are a Verizon customer and looking for Westell 2110 firmware upgrade.
Westell WireSpeed 2110 Modem Firmware Upgrade Process (PDF)
Firmware for Model: A90-210015-04 (Version: 01_00_35)
Firmware for Model: B90-210015-04 (Version: 01_00_35)
Friday, July 27, 2007
Pharos iGPS-BTII and TomTom
Just received my Pharos iGPS-BT II (Bluetooth GPS Receiver) a few days ago for my Dell Axim. It looks great. The Bluetooth GPS Receiver has its own battery and car charger and USB cable are included in the package.
So, I loaded TomTom 6 for US into my SD card, installed it on my Axim, and created a Bluetooth link with the GPS unit. When launched, TomTom kept saying it could not find a GPS device. I tried different settings for the GPS but TomTom could not find the GPS device at all.
After trying many different configurations, I realized that I had not rebooted the PDA yet. Hit the little button in the back and reset the PDA. Launched TomTom again. This time, TomTom found the Bluetooth GPS Receiver. Now it's time for me to start testing this unit between home and work. I hope it will work as expected tomorrow when I go to work. Wish me luck!
Friday, May 25, 2007
Vista: Day 6 - How to install Zawgyi keyboard
Today, my favorite Native Myanmar is down. So I don't know what to do (kind of lost) and end up adding more programs on my Vista. Ever since I got Vista installed, I have not installed the Zawgyi keyboard, which I need to use to write some stuff here. It took me a while to remember what I did for Zawgyi keyboard installation in Windows XP. So I decided to write this little how to article to help beginners.
၁။ ZawgyiKB_installer_I.zip ကို ဒီမွာ download လုပ္ပါ။ ၿပီးရင္ေတာ့ zip file ကို WinZip သို႔ WinRAR သံုးၿပီးဖြင့္ပါ။
၂။ ZawgyiKB.exe ဆိုတဲ့ program ကို run လိုက္ရင္ ေဇာ္ဂ်ီကီးဘုတ္ကို install လုပ္ၿပီး ျဖစ္ေနပါလိမ့္မယ္။ ပထမဦးဆံုးကေတာ့ Taskbar မွာ ဘာကီးဘုတ္မွ ေတြ႕ရမည္မဟုတ္ပါ။
၃။ Start ကိုႏွိပ္ၿပီး Control Panel ကို ဖြင့္ပါ။ ၿပီးလွ်င္ Regional and Language Options ကို ဖြင့္ပါ။
၄။ Keyboards and Languages ဆိုေသာ tab ကို ႏွိပ္ၿပီး Change keyboards ဆိုတာကို ႏွိပ္ပါ။ Text Services and Input Languages ဆိုေသာ window တစ္ခု ထပ္ပြင့္လာပါလိမ့္မယ္။
၅။ Add ကို ႏွိပ္လိုက္လွ်င္ ပံုမွာျပထားတဲ့အတိုင္း Add Input Language ဆုိေသာ window တစ္ခု ထပ္ပြင့္လာပါမယ္။ English (United States) ဆိုတဲ့ ေနရာထိ ေရာက္ေအာင္သြားၿပီး Zawgyi Myanmar Unicode Keyboard ဆိုတာကို ေ႐ြးလိုက္ပါ။
၆။ ၿပီးလွ်င္ အကုန္လံုးကို OK ႏွိပ္ၿပီး ပိတ္လိုက္ပါ။ Taskbar မွာ ကီးဘုတ္ပံုငယ္ေလး ေပၚလာပါလိမ့္မယ္။ ေဇာ္ဂ်ီကီးဘုတ္ကို စတင္အသံုးျပဳႏိုင္ပါၿပီ။
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Vista: Day 5
Day 5: Vista's interface (all the bells and whistles) looks real nice but it gives me the feeling of slowness. Sometimes when I open a program such as Adobe Photoshop CS3, Symantec Backup Exec, or RealVNC, it will take forever to load that program. In some cases, it would take more than 30 secs to load VNC which is a small program.
Yesterday, I installed Adobe Creative Suite CS3 (Design Premium), Adobe Acrobat Reader 8, and Nero 7 Ultra on Vista. It's very slow to open Adobe Photoshop as mentioned above, and in addition, it takes a few seconds to see the selection box if I try to use select tool in Photoshop. It's a very slow response if one is doing photo editing. I haven't tried other tools in Photoshop. (Update: For some reasons, when I use Adobe Photoshop today (05/25/2007), it works fine and not slow at all except opening large image files. ???)
When I tried to install Adobe Acrobat Reader version 8, I got an error "The Temp folder is on a drive that is full...". Even after cleaning up and checking file permissions for that Temp folder, it still won't work. Finally, I found a resolution from Adobe that says my UAC (User Account Control) is turned off, and thus Adobe Reader can't be installed. Great! It's so annoying that I had to turn that UAC off. I chose to run in Windows XP (SP2) compatibility mode for setup and then I was able to install it eventually.
Nero installation also gave me some troubles. I ended up going with the new version of Nero. Actually, I can force Vista to run older version of Nero in Windows XP (SP2) compatibility mode but I rather go with a newer version that is Vista compatible.
FYI: My system is AMD Athalon 64 X2 3800+ (939) with Asus A8N-E motherboard. The graphics card is nVidia's 6600GT (128MB). The RAM is 2GB DDR PC3200 in dual channel mode.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Vista doesn't like Alcohol
Today is my second day with Windows Vista (Business Ed.). My little AMD Athalon X2 3800+ with Asus (A8N-E) mobo got Windows Experience Index of 4.6, so the overall performance is great and smooth.
However, I just ran into a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) this evening when I tried to install Alcohol 120% (Version: 1.9.5.3105). It happened when Alcohol tried to install the virtual CD-ROM drive. I got the stop error code 0x0000007E and I couldn't boot into Windows at all.
Thanks to System Restore. I booted from the Vista installation DVD, selected to restore my system, and chose the restore point before Alcohol installation. Back into Windows but lost some of the installed plug-ins and programs.
Windows Vista help gives the following recommendation.
Windows Vista does not support DAEMON Tools 3.47 and 4.0
This version of DAEMON Tools 3.47 and 4.0 is not compatible with Windows Vista.
Recommendation
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Microsoft recommends that you do not use DAEMON Tools 3.47 and 4.0 with Windows Vista at this time and that you remove DAEMON Tools 3.47 and 4.0. If this is not possible, please contact DAEMON Tools for support information for running DAEMON Tools 3.47 and 4.0 on Windows Vista.
Well, that forces me to find a newer version of Alcohol and found Alcohol 120% v.1.9.6.4719 on Alcohol Soft's web site. I hope this one will work but I have not installed it yet. I will post more information about Vista as I run into more issues (most will be application compatibility).
So far, I have Office 2007, Firefox, Google Talk, McAfee Site Advisor, Avast Anti-Virus, and WinRAR running without any problems (not yet).
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Daylight Saving Time patch and the running admin
What a great day! My phone was ringing constantly for the entire morning of this Monday. All these people were calling IT Dept. because they couldn't change their Daylight Saving Time settings on their computers. One of the users tried to change his time and Outlook 2003's dates went back to 16th century for most of his e-mails.
Our network admin had already patched all Windows XP machines with Microsoft's KB931836 using SMS push on Friday of last week. It didn't work on most computers after the time had actually changed in the US. I started troubleshooting by checking if the patch was properly installed. Yes, it was there but whenever I tried to adjust the time and rebooted the computer, it would show some strange time or it would go back to the wrong time. Some of the Windows XP SP1 computers worked fine with the patch but almost all of the SP2 computers wouldn't accept the new daylight saving time setting.
Finally, I got a registry patch that helped me fix this issue. The following are the steps I used to resolve this issue.
1. Save the TZupdate.reg file on a network shared folder. Download the TZupdate.txt file from here and rename it to TZupdate.reg. (Note: This is only for English builds of Windows and for the US. If you are working on non English builds of Windows, follow the links provided at the end of this post. If you are updating the DST on a single Windows XP SP1/ SP2 machine, save it on the C drive.)
2. Create a system restore point or backup the registry first if you are updating a single machine.
3. Run TZupdate.reg to update the registry's time zone information.
4. Go to Control Panel and open Date and Time. Click on Time Zone tab.
5. Select anything other than your current time zone. Click Apply. Then choose your current time zone. Click Apply. The time should be automatically adjusted to your current time now. Reboot the computer.
Important note: This is somewhat a quick fix for those machines with SP2 that would not change after patching. However, I found that this registry update alone worked on my home computer (Windows XP Pro SP2) without installing the update KB931836. For a production environment, one should consult Microsoft knowledge base articles below and test on a few PCs first.
References:
1. How to configure daylight saving time for the United States in 2007
2. February 2007 cumulative time zone update for Microsoft Windows operating systems
3. Daylight Saving Time Help and Support Center
Sunday, February 04, 2007
Create a hot key or shortcut for system standby mode
I can no longer press Sleep button on my keyboard to put my system in standby mode because my new keyboard doesn't have that key. I am stuck. So, I start looking for a hot key to do this without Sleep button. I found a forum thread to do this trick.
Here is how to create a batch file, a shortcut, and a hot key to launch standby mode.
1. Open notepad. Copy and paste the following command line.
rundll32.exe powrprof.dll,SetSuspendState 0,1,0
2. Save the text file as *.bat. (e.g. standby.bat)
3. Cut and paste the batch file into C drive.
4. Create a shortcut to the batch file. Make sure to save the shortcut on Desktop or one of the folders in Start menu. Saving the shortcut in any other folders will not work for the hot key. (e.g. Save in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Accessories folder.)
5. Right click on the shortcut and select Properties.
6. In the shortcut key box, press Ctrl + Alt + "your choice of key" as shown in the figure.
Other sources:
1. Windows Tips: Top Techniques for Putting Windows on Hold
2. Hibernating / Suspending the machine from the command line
Monday, January 29, 2007
How to customize your drive icons
This short article will help you customize your drive icons and labels by adding some registry entries in Windows XP. By default, after a media reader/ writer has been plugged into the USB port, Windows XP will assign default drive icons and label them as "Removal Disk". It is confusing because you don't know which one is Compact Flash or SD or Memory Stick.
Important note: Even though this will not corrupt the windows registry, make sure to back up your registry in case you mess up something while adding registry entries. The best thing is to create a system restore point before proceeding to the next section.
Follow the steps below to change drive icons and labels.
1. Find out the drive letters currently assigned to Compact Flash, SD, MemoryStick, etc. slots. Write it down somewhere.
2. Find the numbers assigned to drive icons in shell.dll. To find these numbers,
(a) Right click on desktop and choose Properties.
(b) Click on Desktop tab and click on Customize Desktop button.
(c) Highlight Recycle Bin and click Change Icon. This will open a small window showing all icons in shell.dll.
(d) Count the icons starting from top left (top to bottom and move to next column) until you get to the drive icon which you want to use. Start from 0 when counting the icons. In my case, Compact Flash icon is in position 189 and SD icon is in position 193 in shell.dll. Write down the numbers for each icon somewhere.
(e) Click cancel to close all windows or you might accidentally change your Recycle Bin's icon to something else.
3. Copy the following codes to notepad and save the file as *.reg file. (e.g. drive_icons.reg)
REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons\K] [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons\K\DefaultIcon]@="C:\\windows\\system32\\shell32.dll,193"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons\K\DefaultLabel]@="SD Card"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons\D] [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons\D\DefaultIcon]@="C:\\windows\\system32\\shell32.dll,189"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons\D\DefaultLabel]@="Compact Flash"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons\L] [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons\L\DefaultIcon]@="C:\\windows\\system32\\shell32.dll,192"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons\L\DefaultLabel]@="MemoryStick"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons\J] [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons\J\DefaultIcon]@="C:\\windows\\system32\\shell32.dll,194"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons\J\DefaultLabel]@="Smart Media"
4. Replace the drive letters and icon position numbers with the ones from your note. The code provided is for 4 in 1 card reader, so you may add or delete each registry entries group to match with the slots of your card reader. You may also change the labels (highlighted in red).
5. Open/ Run drive_icons.reg file once. You should see the drive icons have been changed in My Computer window.
Source: Dave Mathews' "Customize Your Drive Icons", PC Magazine.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Notification Error after removing Code City's CityTime program
This one is a very annoying error message. I have a Dell Axim 51v with Windows Mobile 5. I removed CityTime program the other day because I decided to go with WorldMate Pro 2006. Right after I launched WorldMate, I got a notification error saying "Could not start \Programs\Code City\CityTime.exe".
I tried to soft reset my PDA but it kept showing the same message when I launched WorldMate. Using Resco Registry Editor to find that entry in my registry was also a no success.
Finally, after about 30 mins of Googling , I found this forum thread http://discussion.treocentral.com/archive/index.php/t-126614.html. Even though this one is not for Windows Mobile 5, it gives me an idea of what to use and where to look for that error message.
All I need to do is install MemMaid from DinarSoft, and then remove that bad notification pointing to citytime.exe. Just open MemMaid, go to Notification Queue (second tab from left), find that \Programs\Code City\CityTime.exe, check the box next to it, and clean it from the queue. Problem solved.
SK Tools also has a similar program to clean up junk files and bad registry entries from your PDA. I think it's worth checking it out.
(Important note: Just remove the bad notification from the queue but not the other entries. Do not remove other entries if you don't know what they are for.)
