It seems that even when a first tooth is lost the tooth fairy still comes.
Alex's first wobbly baby tooth disappeared at school when he knocked it out during karate but nowadays a simple note to the tooth fairy suffices.
Wednesday, 11 January 2012
Sunday, 25 September 2011
Windows 7 Libraries
I've been driven to distraction over the last few days - Media Centre (64 bit Win 7) has lost its music and no amount of rebuilding libraries has helped.
Finally had to ask for help and cracked the problem by artificially adding then removing items from the library. Along the way I discovered that the performance of music in WMC is massively improved by stopping Windows Media Player from accessing the internet for album covers & info (set it manually and be done with it).
I also found that the default WMP on Win 7 64 bit is the 32 bit version (so you can change the short cut to point at the 64 bit folder rather than 32 bit, no problems there).
Also documented in the posts I made on The Green Button (title above is the link) are some checks to ensure folders are set correctly in the registry - they probably aren't if you've made drive / path changes.
Finally had to ask for help and cracked the problem by artificially adding then removing items from the library. Along the way I discovered that the performance of music in WMC is massively improved by stopping Windows Media Player from accessing the internet for album covers & info (set it manually and be done with it).
I also found that the default WMP on Win 7 64 bit is the 32 bit version (so you can change the short cut to point at the 64 bit folder rather than 32 bit, no problems there).
Also documented in the posts I made on The Green Button (title above is the link) are some checks to ensure folders are set correctly in the registry - they probably aren't if you've made drive / path changes.
Thursday, 14 April 2011
SQL Server Installation Problem
Another day and another install of SQL Server Developer Edition (2005 in this case). Installation complete & there's no way to connect to reporting services or analysis services. Strange, no icons, nothing in the object explorer connection.
Turns out SQL Server Express edition is installed and it is a higher version that I've just tried to install so I am missing the options.
The resolution was to install using SKUUPGRADE = 1 as a startup parameter and then when that install completed I had to refer to an earlier post because management studio was still missing.
Got there in the end.
Turns out SQL Server Express edition is installed and it is a higher version that I've just tried to install so I am missing the options.
The resolution was to install using SKUUPGRADE = 1 as a startup parameter and then when that install completed I had to refer to an earlier post because management studio was still missing.
Got there in the end.
Wednesday, 13 April 2011
Sql Server Reporting Services 2005 Issue
Again SSRS 2005 has stopped working.
This time it follows install of Sql Server 2008 developer edition on my machine so I've been trying to figure out how to get both working on the same box - it is possible according to the documentation but there is no mention of how.
Unfortunately I am getting the following message when attempting to connection to Reporting Services via SQL Management Studio "unable to connect to the remote server. No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it."
Now that's not very nice is it, I ask nicely & it does nothing.
Anyway after a few weeks of digging I've finally found my problem is not related to the Dev 2008 install - it is in fact our network wide security settings, they have been changed!
So the solution was to go into IIS Admin console, goto the properties of my default web site (which hosts my SSRS pages) and goto the Home Directory tab and then change the Execute Permissions to Script and Executables.
Job done.
This time it follows install of Sql Server 2008 developer edition on my machine so I've been trying to figure out how to get both working on the same box - it is possible according to the documentation but there is no mention of how.
Unfortunately I am getting the following message when attempting to connection to Reporting Services via SQL Management Studio "unable to connect to the remote server. No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it."
Now that's not very nice is it, I ask nicely & it does nothing.
Anyway after a few weeks of digging I've finally found my problem is not related to the Dev 2008 install - it is in fact our network wide security settings, they have been changed!
So the solution was to go into IIS Admin console, goto the properties of my default web site (which hosts my SSRS pages) and goto the Home Directory tab and then change the Execute Permissions to Script and Executables.
Job done.
Tuesday, 5 April 2011
Polarising filters
New camera, new screw in filter.
I've purchased a Panasonic Lumix FZ100 camera and needed a new 52mm threaded polariser. So one short trip to ebay later and I have ordered a Hoya Por1 Digital filter. Rather nice all in all - however, I now conclude it is the worst polarizer I've ever owned.
Why?
Well, the first thing I managed to do is get a finger print on the glass surface, polarisers are often pigs to clean and this proved to be the case and repeated wiping with a lens cloth has caused the coatings to start wiping off.
You can't see the current lost areas (both sides) on pictures yet but as the filter hasn't been out of the house yet I can't imagine it's going to last long as pretty sure I'll have to clean it again one day.
I've purchased a Panasonic Lumix FZ100 camera and needed a new 52mm threaded polariser. So one short trip to ebay later and I have ordered a Hoya Por1 Digital filter. Rather nice all in all - however, I now conclude it is the worst polarizer I've ever owned.
Why?
Well, the first thing I managed to do is get a finger print on the glass surface, polarisers are often pigs to clean and this proved to be the case and repeated wiping with a lens cloth has caused the coatings to start wiping off.
You can't see the current lost areas (both sides) on pictures yet but as the filter hasn't been out of the house yet I can't imagine it's going to last long as pretty sure I'll have to clean it again one day.
Thursday, 20 January 2011
All that glitters is not gold...
....and all that looks like icing on the Christmas cake isn't, ouch.
Tuesday, 4 January 2011
SQL Server 2005 metadata error when installing Reporting Services
Shiny new install of Reporting Services all done. Unfortuntately attempts to login to RS via SQL Management Studio give an html string error mentioning metadata problems with IIS. Attempts to access http://localhost/Reports result in an IIS error about changing permissions.
This is install problems with .Net Framework.
Just goto the v2.0.50727 folder (c:\windows\Microsoft.net\framework\v2.0.50727) and run
aspnet_regiis -ga aspnet
where "aspnet" is the name of the ASPNet user found in the list of users on the local machine.
This is install problems with .Net Framework.
Just goto the v2.0.50727 folder (c:\windows\Microsoft.net\framework\v2.0.50727) and run
aspnet_regiis -ga aspnet
where "aspnet" is the name of the ASPNet user found in the list of users on the local machine.
Wednesday, 29 December 2010
Acer Laptop Fan
I have an Acer Aspire 5920G laptop. By today's standards it is archaic, an early 2Ghz dual core processor, 4 Gb of 667mhz ram. However, the machine is brilliant - the screen is pretty good for the cost, it looks good, has good sound (for a laptop), works well (having now hosted Vista, Windows 7 Ultimate @ 3 bit & Windows 7 Pro in 64 bit, boy was Vista junk).
I've upgraded the hard disk to a faster larger model which makes a small amount of difference to performance but nothing worth worrying about.
The big downer is the fan. The Acer cooling system cools both the graphics card (Radeon Mobility 3470 - again, pretty high spec for a laptop when it was new) and the processor. Unfortunately it does this by running fast and loud and when temperatures go up it runs loud enough to be heard not only in the next room but downstairs too - frankly sitting at the desktop in from of the laptop it was deafening.
I've tried a couple of laptop coolers - I had an Akasa Orion laptop cooler but its fans were worse than the laptops, I had a block of wood - that worked pretty well but recently I've purchased a Cooler Master Ultra X3. Such a simple design - a nice looking bit of drilled aluminum (thin enough that if you don't rest your hands on the laptop when typing it does wobble annoyingly) with rubber bits to stop sliding. Added to that it has a USB powered (with pass thru port) fan system - 3 fans with a volume / speed control so you can choose how much air blowing is required. This works well because the fans can be adjusted so they are quieter than the laptops but they provide enough cooling to stop the laptop kicking into take off mode when the going gets tough. What's more the fans are mounted on the drilled holes on the aluminium sheet meaning they can be positioned to blow air directly at those areas of the laptop that heat up (along with some decent holes drilled in the case to let air in) this is a great solution.
Still, the laptop does heat up a bit though - from day one the processor has reported 51c on both cores as a normal temperature (that's using Speedfan which seems to report a little higher than most other products for some reason), whilst at boot the graphics card sits at 61c.
Delving inside has revealed those silly stick on thermal pads between the graphics processors and the heat sink. Waste of time, off they come and in goes some decent thermal paste (MX2, I've lost my Arctic Silver somewhere). No change in temperature there on boot, however, what I can immediately see is that heat transfer has improved because the temp does not rise much at all - I can also see that it is the GPU temp that is causing the fan to go into take off mode.
Still not happy though - the thermal pads were physically thicker than the paste and inspection shows that the gap between GPU chips and the heatsink is only just being bridged by the paste (caused by stand offs on the heat sink) - this also shows what a poor job the thermal pads are doing as one of the subsidiary chips had no contact at all.
Shims required but oh boy, they would be around £5 each for a 1cm x 1cm piece of copper from ebay. However, a 10cm x 10cm piece of copper (.9mm) was £3.99 via an ebay shop, a bit of elbow grease required and a new hacksaw blade. End result is I've now removed all of the thermal pads (GPU had 3, 2 chips next to the processor had 1 each and the south bridge had one - the CPU didn't) and replaced with custom sized copper shims and MX2 paste (I cheated and only cut one for the chips next to the CPU).
Was a good opportunity too to clean off the solidified cheap rubbish from the CPU and carefully dust everything.
The end result is that now the GPU temperature is 42c (around 39 on boot) and I haven't yet seen it approach the previous 61 degrees starting point), processor temperature continues to be around the same but falls more quickly whilst the fan simply does not kick into take off mode at all - all in all a good result. Interestingly the overall internal temperature has dropped - the hard drive not runs 2 degrees less than it did and the case over the cooling fan and hard disk bay noticeably doesn't get hot as it used to.
Any more to do? There isn't supposed to be a shim on the CPU (just paste when I rummaged) but if I ever take it apart again I'll be trying to wedge one in there (hoping I'll discover a cheap source of something less that .9mm by then) because I'm pretty sure the CPU should have a better connection - I think with nothing to start with wedging .9mm of shim in there would be a bit drastic but I think there is scope for improving the CPU temperature.
I've upgraded the hard disk to a faster larger model which makes a small amount of difference to performance but nothing worth worrying about.
The big downer is the fan. The Acer cooling system cools both the graphics card (Radeon Mobility 3470 - again, pretty high spec for a laptop when it was new) and the processor. Unfortunately it does this by running fast and loud and when temperatures go up it runs loud enough to be heard not only in the next room but downstairs too - frankly sitting at the desktop in from of the laptop it was deafening.
I've tried a couple of laptop coolers - I had an Akasa Orion laptop cooler but its fans were worse than the laptops, I had a block of wood - that worked pretty well but recently I've purchased a Cooler Master Ultra X3. Such a simple design - a nice looking bit of drilled aluminum (thin enough that if you don't rest your hands on the laptop when typing it does wobble annoyingly) with rubber bits to stop sliding. Added to that it has a USB powered (with pass thru port) fan system - 3 fans with a volume / speed control so you can choose how much air blowing is required. This works well because the fans can be adjusted so they are quieter than the laptops but they provide enough cooling to stop the laptop kicking into take off mode when the going gets tough. What's more the fans are mounted on the drilled holes on the aluminium sheet meaning they can be positioned to blow air directly at those areas of the laptop that heat up (along with some decent holes drilled in the case to let air in) this is a great solution.
Still, the laptop does heat up a bit though - from day one the processor has reported 51c on both cores as a normal temperature (that's using Speedfan which seems to report a little higher than most other products for some reason), whilst at boot the graphics card sits at 61c.
Delving inside has revealed those silly stick on thermal pads between the graphics processors and the heat sink. Waste of time, off they come and in goes some decent thermal paste (MX2, I've lost my Arctic Silver somewhere). No change in temperature there on boot, however, what I can immediately see is that heat transfer has improved because the temp does not rise much at all - I can also see that it is the GPU temp that is causing the fan to go into take off mode.
Still not happy though - the thermal pads were physically thicker than the paste and inspection shows that the gap between GPU chips and the heatsink is only just being bridged by the paste (caused by stand offs on the heat sink) - this also shows what a poor job the thermal pads are doing as one of the subsidiary chips had no contact at all.
Shims required but oh boy, they would be around £5 each for a 1cm x 1cm piece of copper from ebay. However, a 10cm x 10cm piece of copper (.9mm) was £3.99 via an ebay shop, a bit of elbow grease required and a new hacksaw blade. End result is I've now removed all of the thermal pads (GPU had 3, 2 chips next to the processor had 1 each and the south bridge had one - the CPU didn't) and replaced with custom sized copper shims and MX2 paste (I cheated and only cut one for the chips next to the CPU).
Was a good opportunity too to clean off the solidified cheap rubbish from the CPU and carefully dust everything.
The end result is that now the GPU temperature is 42c (around 39 on boot) and I haven't yet seen it approach the previous 61 degrees starting point), processor temperature continues to be around the same but falls more quickly whilst the fan simply does not kick into take off mode at all - all in all a good result. Interestingly the overall internal temperature has dropped - the hard drive not runs 2 degrees less than it did and the case over the cooling fan and hard disk bay noticeably doesn't get hot as it used to.
Any more to do? There isn't supposed to be a shim on the CPU (just paste when I rummaged) but if I ever take it apart again I'll be trying to wedge one in there (hoping I'll discover a cheap source of something less that .9mm by then) because I'm pretty sure the CPU should have a better connection - I think with nothing to start with wedging .9mm of shim in there would be a bit drastic but I think there is scope for improving the CPU temperature.
Tuesday, 30 November 2010
HP printers
I've had a number of Hewlett Packard printers, when I purchased the most recent an HP Photosmart D5460 it was the best print quality available for under £200.
Why is it that they have some enormous, complex, unreliable drivers.
It's connected by USB - when connected to the PC it works 95% of the time whilst on the laptop it works 10% of the time and I usually give up. Both operating systems are Windows 7 both work fine - it's only the printer that plays up.
I've now discovered a fix that seems to have worked successfully to date - so, when I turn the printer on the PC brings up the message "USB Device Not Recognized" and it rebooting doesn't change the situation.
What I've found is that deleting "USB Composite Devices" from Device manager solves the problem.
Simple.
Why is it that they have some enormous, complex, unreliable drivers.
It's connected by USB - when connected to the PC it works 95% of the time whilst on the laptop it works 10% of the time and I usually give up. Both operating systems are Windows 7 both work fine - it's only the printer that plays up.
I've now discovered a fix that seems to have worked successfully to date - so, when I turn the printer on the PC brings up the message "USB Device Not Recognized" and it rebooting doesn't change the situation.
What I've found is that deleting "USB Composite Devices" from Device manager solves the problem.
Simple.
Tuesday, 9 November 2010
Windows 7 Jump Lists
I've been having problems in that my jump lists seem to work perfectly except on Excel 2007 that I use all the time - it's jumplist contains one item that never changes & unfortunately is not something I use often.
It turns out that the jump list files can get corrupted, so the easy answer is to bin the whole lot and start again - so just delete the files in %AppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\AutomaticDestinations.
Alternatively, a more methodical but less reliable approach is to just delete the large files found in there -they appear to be files that have become corrupted.
It turns out that the jump list files can get corrupted, so the easy answer is to bin the whole lot and start again - so just delete the files in %AppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\AutomaticDestinations.
Alternatively, a more methodical but less reliable approach is to just delete the large files found in there -they appear to be files that have become corrupted.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
