Saturday, June 22, 2013

Need more space for hard drives or solid state drives?

 ORICO PCI25-2SORICO PCI25-2S
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA1DS0FR8898&Tpk=ORICO%20PCI25-2S

I can't believe I hadn't seen these until just recently, it's a 2.5" drive mount that fits in an extra expansion card slot. I've got a Cooler Master Elite 360 case which fits perfectly in my home theater setup, but it doesn't have nearly enough space for all the SATA connectors my motherboard has. This worked just perfectly for adding a SSD to my setup without sacrificing my 2 TB drive. I have the second slot empty for now but it feels like it might be sturdy enough to hold the weight of a conventional 2.5" hard drive as well.

Works even better in my Cooler Master case because the power supply is mounted right behind the expansion slots so the cables don't even have to stretch that far. It's a shame the Elite 360 got such a bad reputation for doing this, it's honestly not a problem if you find the right video card (my Zotac GeForce GTX 660 AMP 2GB fits with room to spare).

BONUS:
Power on your pc using a remote control (or Logitech Harmony)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811999191

The Antec Mult-Station Basic Internal IR receiver was another item that worked perfectly for my Cooler Master case, it was somewhat of a hassle to set up (there's a special 24 pin motherboard power connector cable with a tiny cord that supplies power to the unit) but it's certainly worth it once everything is up and running.

There are other options like the Wesena IR receiver (http://shop.perfecthometheater.com/IR-receiver-IR-receiver.htm) that supposedly works just using the power switch connector on your motherboard, but no matter what I tried it just would not work with my setup. I ended up having to return it for a refund, minus a 15% "restocking" fee...

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Getting rediculous amounts of free space (8+ GB) with SugarSync

Ahem, and now for a shameless plug in an effort to reap the benefits with everyone else.

I recently discovered SugarSync after my sister used it to share photos of her twins with the rest of the family, in a nutshell it allows you to share files and have them instantly uploaded to your personal online storage and any computer running the SugarSync software (including friends you invited to share your folder with). DropBox does something similar (and only gives 2 GB free), but I've found I like SugarSync better and you get more space. Not much of a cheat or hack for SugarSync, but the results are still good!

The breakdown:

5 GB: Opening a Free Account

+500 MB: Getting a free account through a referral...
**STOP! If you sign up for a 30 GB or more plan (they start at $4.99/month, or $49.99/year) right when you first sign up after clicking on the referral link you can get an additional +10 GB of space that's yours to keep even if you switch back to free after the first 2 months (30 day trial + 1 paid month)** - FAQ

+625 MB: For completing the getting started tasks

+250 MB: For completing the getting started "game" on Android or iOS, follow this article

+2 GB: Limited time offer, send a referral link to 20 of your contacts in Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, or Hotmail. They don't have to actually join.

+500 MB: Everyone who joins using your referral, whether by email invite or link gives you this bonus. Free users are capped at getting an additional 32 GB this way, but paid users have no limit to the amount of extra space they can get (and keep).

=8.34 GB without any accepted referrals.

Only the files you own count against your quota unlike DropBox, so share folders with your friends! All the links to sign up are referral links intentionally, don't be afraid to use them, they benefit us both ;)

Saturday, June 30, 2012

ASUS Xonar Essence STX suddenly not working

Argh, so I bought a new ASUS Xonar Essence STX pci-e sound card so I could have Dolby Digital Live with my cheapo 5.1 surround sound system that only has one optical input (currently used by the tv out) and one coaxial digital in. Today it stopped working after I installed the drivers for my Creative E-MU Xmidi 1x1 saying windows cannot verify the digital signature. No matter how many times I tried reinstalling the drivers.

Here's what finally worked on Windows 7 x64:

Download the drivers from the website and extract them somewhere
Have the ASUS drivers installed like normal using setup.exe
Reboot if you needed to reinstall them
Open device manager, select the sound card (it should have a yellow ! by it)
Right click and choose uninstall
Check the box that say remove the driver as well
Reboot
Open device manager, select the sound card (unknown multimedia device or similar)
Right click and select update driver
Select browse my computer for driver software
Navigate to the location where you extracted the drivers and open WIN7\SoftwareDriver\driver
Continue installing the driver, if a box comes up asking to trust the developer check always trust
Reboot again for good measure and make sure it works.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

More PS3 controllers on the cheap!

If you're a new Playstation 3 owner and cringe at the thought of buying new controllers at $54 a pop, but you have a couple PS2 controllers lying around, you might want to consider buying USB adapters instead.  Keep in mind that the PS2 controllers don't have motion control or pressure sensitive L2 and R2 buttons so you won't be able to use them for games which require those.  If you're like me and just want something to play with your friends on Little Big Planet this will work just fine.  Not many people know that the PS3 can use regular computer controllers in place of the official bluetooth controllers Sony sells, in fact third party manufacturers take advantage of this fact to make their products cheaper.  If you've ever noticed how the Logitech wireless controllers have a little USB dongle, now you know why.
 
I went with the Dragonplus PS2-USB adapter for PS3, it works just fine on my slim console with firmware 3.15 despite what other people say. This model is missing support for rumble and access to the PS button, but that's not a big deal because if you need to reassign the number all you have to do is set up the other controllers first and plug it in after you have your order set. Just be sure to press the analog button to make the light turn on so you can use the joysticks.  The best thing is, you can use this adapter on your PC too if you wanted, I tried on Windows 7 64-bit and it was detected automatically and all the buttons worked.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000NPSAJU/ref=oss_product


I haven't used this one, and I would have liked to buy this instead but I could never find it. It's version 2 of the model above and adds rumble and the analog button acts as the PS button.

http://www.consoleshop.com/product.php?productid=20700

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Adding cheap internal bluetooth to your desktop

I originally got the idea from pages like this and this showing how to add internal usb bluetooth adapters to laptops, and it got me thinking about that nice open usb header I had left on my HP Pavillion a6600f's motherboard.

Walmart sold a really tiny and cheap bluetooth adapter by IOGear that worked well for the space I had available inside the case. All I had to do was find a female usb-a to motherboard header (I actually got mine from my local Microcenter) to connect the usb device inside the case. I ran into a problem once I finally found the cable though, the empty pin was on the wrong side of the connector and couldn't plug into to my motherboard so I had to grab a flat head screw driver and carefully pry the wires out of the end so I could rearrange them the right way. All that was left to do was grab a twisty tie and secure the end of the usb cable with the bluetooth adapter on the inside of the case behind the front usb and headphone jacks. Windows recognized the adapter right away and my bluetooth mouse still worked from the same distance, quite a nice way of keeping usb ports open and hiding the bright blue glow from my bluetooth adapter.

Awesome free disk defragmenters

Not much to be said about this one, these are two really great disk defragmenters I've used on both my machines.

Auslogics
This one is really nice if you just want something simple, it has an auto defragmentation mode that can run in the background and defragment your files in real time. There's also a screen saver version if you're feeling particularly lazy or just leave your computer on all the time. It's pretty fast, but it seemed like I would have to run it a couple times to get the best result.

Quicksys Disk Defrag
This one kind of reminds me of Diskeeper, but without the price tag. Higher system requirements but it doesn't require the 15% free space on the drive like most other defragmenters do, and it has a "Quicksys Intelligent Clusters Allocation" (QSICA) mode that's basically just another way of arranging your files on the hard drive so there's less chance of fragmentation. I've switched over to this one from Auslogics because it seems like it's a little more flexible even though the optimization mode is really slow.

Friday, December 11, 2009

Installing Windows 7 Professional x64 on a Toshiba P105-S9722

This is a work in progress, eventually screenshots and step by step instructions will be provided.

Upgrading the BIOS:
Adding new features to a 3 year old laptop? Impossible!

First you'll need to update your BIOS to v4.70, if you want Intel hardware virtualization support (intel-vt) install Europe's 4.80. Intel Virtualization is required* to use the XP Mode virtual machine in Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate as well as the new Virtual PC software. Users without Intel-VT hardware support can get the same functionality with the free VMWare Player, which is faster and supports limited DirectX functionality for games. Make sure to enable the Execute-Disable Bit option under Advanced in the BIOS so Windows 7 won't revert to using the slower, software DEP.

*This information is now out of date, an update has been released (kb977206) that allows computers without Intel-VT to run XP Mode. You can find direct links to XP Mode and Virtual PC here.

Original (Does not support Intel-VT)

EDIT: Apparently Toshiba of Europe has a v4.80 BIOS that has the option to enable Intel-VT, however they only provide a Windows based flash program (it's generally considered bad and more error prone to do this than with a bootdisk, it's also impossible with their software if you're running x64 Windows). I've seen mixed reports of this breaking the gpu fan (again) and since there is no update/change log, I have no way of knowing what, if anything, was changed besides adding Intel-VT to the advanced menu. I have tested v4.80 on my American machine and have not noticed any problems.
Applicable Models:
Satellite P100-ST7111, P100-ST7211, P100-ST9212, P100-ST9612, P100-ST9412, P100-ST1071, P100-ST9732, P100-ST1072, P100-ST9762, P100-ST9772, P100-ST9752, P100-ST9742, P100-ST9712, P100-ST9012, P105-S921, P105-S9312, P105-S6074, P105-S6034, P105-S6124, P105-S6114, P105-S6104, P105-S6102, P105-S9722, P105-S6062, P105-S6022, P105-S6084, P105-S6064, P105-S9339, P105-S9337, P105-S6227, P105-S6217, P105-S6158, P105-S6148, P105-S6207, P105-S6197, P105-S6187, P105-S6177, P105-S6167, P105-S6157, P105-S6147, P105-S6134, P105-S6024, P105-S6054, P105-S6014, P105-S6004, P105-S6012, P105-S6002, P105-S931


Booting from USB:
Wait, you mean this thing actually supports booting from flash drives?!

How to boot from USB drives, from a now lost Toshiba help page, with a little revision:

Attach the Bootable USB Memory Stick and Enter the BIOS Menu (2 ways to enter the BIOS Menu)

1. Press and hold F2 immediately after powering on the unit
OR
2. From the Boot Menu (F12) highlight "" and press Enter.

- Use the side arrows to select the "Boot" section.
- Expand the HDD title
- Select the "USB Drive" (name may vary) and move it to the top (F5 and F6 Key)
- Exit Saving Changes

UNetbootin
TODO: write instructions for making bootable bios flash usb


Installing the Express Media Player function:
The little known feature that lets you start playing DVDs faster and without booting into Windows.

Seeing how this software will only boot and install on laptops licensed to use it, I see no problem uploading it as a convenience for users who haven't previously made the backup CD and don't want to waste time restoring the XP installation just to get it.

ExpressPlayer.iso - Extract with 7-Zip and burn the iso to a disk or use UNetbootin.
If you're doing a clean install, boot from the disc and select delete all partitions. (Make sure your data is backed up first).
If you have an upgrade liscence, it would probably be easier to use your Windows XP recovery disc to restore Express Media Player and delete the XP partition during installation.


Preparing the Windows 7 install

Windows 7 USB/DVD Tool
Save the drivers from the list at the end of this post to
X:\sources\$OEM$\$1\Toshiba
Boot from the USB drive to install Windows 7, unplug the usb drive at the first restart.

Or use a normal Windows 7 installation DVD, you'll need to copy the drivers to the hard drive yourself.


First, some explanation about what we're doing
Admins and OEMs and Syspreps! Oh, my!

For our recovery set, we'll be making an image that has all the device drivers already installed but will bring you to the Out of Box Experience (oobe; setting up accounts, naming the computer, connecting to the network, etc.) screen like how OEMs (Toshiba, HP, Dell, etc.) ship their machines. To accomplish this we're going to use a tool called Sysprep, which is basically a tool used to audit a machine and reset the installation for the customer. There are more complicated ways of using this tool through the use of the Windows Automation Installation Kit (AIK) but we're going to save time and just keep things simple. If you're only going to be using this image for one machine (this should be most people, unless you have multiple laptops with the same model), then it's a good idea to pre-activate your copy of Windows so each time you re-install you won't have to worry about it ever again. If you're deploying multiple machines or you're using a volume license, you'll have to use the generalize option in Sysprep to make the installation independent of the hardware. So what exactly is audit mode? Well, audit mode logs you into the normally disabled built in Administrator account before setup is completed so you can make changes without creating a new user. When you exit audit mode, the Administrator is disabled once again.

  1. Once you get to the Windows Welcome screen press SHIFT+CTRL+F3 to enter audit mode.
  2. Ignore the Sysprep window for now, when you need to restart you'll load into audit mode automatically.
  3. Install the drivers and programs located in C:\Toshiba
  4. You can also run Windows Update and activate your installation (Microsoft TechNet: "How SysPrep Works") if you choose (**Do not select generalize if you activate!**)
  5. When you're done, select oobe and shutdown in the Sysprep window and click ok.
  6. The laptop will turn off, press the media button to launch Express Media Player.
  7. An error message will come up saying the partition table is wrong, press the power button to fix it.
  8. You're now ready to make your recovery discs.

PING (Partimage Is Not Ghost)
TODO: Write instructions for making the recovery cd set.

PING-3.00.iso - The bootable iso, can also use UNetbootin to make USB
PING_Howto.pdf - most recent instructions, html version on site is out of date

Create_New_Image
Select Windows and Express Media Player (251mb) partitions (select and press space bar, then enter when done)
Partimage
bzip2

Files needed for the recovery dvd:
initrd.gz
kernel
isolinux.bin
logo.16
boot.msg
isolinux.cfg
TODO: List of files from inside the image folder, sda something

CDRTools for Windows (mkisofs.exe)
"mkisofs -r -b isolinux.bin -boot-info-table -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -o ../BurnMe.iso ."


List of drivers:
Instead of wasting hours hunting through other model's download pages, find them all here!

All drivers and software were found freely on Toshiba's website using the available search options unless otherwise stated. The Conexant HD Audio drivers are from Toshiba of Canada.

32-bit Only - Items that won't work on x64 Windows:
They're just tools to change settings in the BIOS from Windows, never used them in Vista.

HDMI Drivers - DVI-D to HDMI?
I don't know if they work, but Toshiba's site lists them.
 
Drivers for other laptop models?
Came here looking for help with a different P100/P105 model? No problem.