2010 -
02.27
Tags: D600, Dell, password, recovery Category Geek | No Comments »
My Pa was recently given a Dell D600 laptop which was locked with a bios power-on password, it was his to keep for free because there was no way of removing it with software and Dell had said that the owner would have to pay to have it removed but also show proof of purchase.
That wasn’t going to happen. I consulted the internet for ages, coming up blank. My Pa pulled the BIOS battery and normal battery, dumped it in the freezer for 4 days and see if it would forget about the password as had been suggested as this does work on car stereo’s, well, it used to. Needless to say it was a fruitless effort.
Today I came by and he said he was about to dump it so I decided to have another look around and see what I could see. Turns out that the way Dell store BIOS configs is in a flash chip. The flash chip on this particular model is the 24C02 and is located just beneath the PCMCIA bay. All you need is a paperclip or hair pin, a small screw driver and some balls to actually rip apart the lappy.
You can find a fanastic guide on how to do this here: http://www.weeklygripe.co.uk/a709.asp
Proof of the pudding, my Pa now has a working Dell D600 laptop that is currently installing Mint Linux. If you get stuck just request some info here and I’ll help as much as I can.
If it helps though, find the 24C02 chip located below the PCMCIA bay under the black tape (peel it back), short pins 3 and 6 with a paperclip or hair pin, hold it in place while you push the mains power in and then push the power button on the lappy.
Wait 10 seconds or so, pull the power. Then take out the jumper, push it back in and turn on. Hopefully you’ll be greeted with this screen instead:
Tada. Put it back together and away you go.
2010 -
02.24
Tags: 8, 9.04, 9.10, alsa, gloria, karmic, mint, pulseaudio, Remove, Ubuntu Category Geek | 2 comments
I don’t know about you but I’m a little narked at Ubuntu forcing the PulseAudio issue. It sucks; big sweaty nut sacks worth of sucks!
I’ve seen a whole bunch of threads saying “don’t remove it, it’ll destroy your soul and rape your nasal passages” but that’s a load of tosh. I’ve removed it on Ubuntu 9.04, 9.10 and Mint Linux Gloria (8) without any issues. Actually, by removing it and going back to ALSA I now have a working sound in Skype, Urban Terror and WormUx where as I never did before.
Here’s what you do:
Fire up Synaptic
Quick Search for Pulse
Remove PulseAudio, it’ll remove a ton of dependencies
Quick Search for Alsa
Install gnome-alsamixer and alsa-oss
Click apply. Reboot your PC and it should still start up with sound. Skype will need to be reconfigured to use ALSA but the games will automatically have audio again.
2010 -
02.21
Tags: 8, 9.10, bug, intel, mint, Ubuntu, xorg Category Geek | No Comments »
The other day I upgraded a mates laptop. By upgrade, I mean I removed Vista and installed Linux. Everything worked pretty well apart from the sound card, but this was fixed in a new kernel. Being that I’d used the only CD I had knocking about, I’d installed Mint Linux 7. No probs, I thought, I’ll just go through the upgrade process to version 8.
I did everything to the book, it all went well. Rebooted and then just hung. Thing is, it was actually working, I couldn’t see the screen or swap in to the terminals. After much rooting around I discovered it was the screen driver.
Editing xorg.conf, I thought I’d just pop in VESA and all would be well… how wrong was I. Turns out the Intel driver for the Intel cards can be pretty pants and to fix it is just to add this line to xorg.conf video driver section:
Option “NoAccel” “true”
Obviously you’ll be wondering how to get to be able to do this if you’re a newbie. When Linux boots, select recovery mode, from the menu select drop to root shell. Type “nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf”, then edit away.
Reboot and enjoy ;)
2010 -
02.20
Tags: 8, amsn, gloria, linux, mint, skype Category Geek | No Comments »
For anyone that knows me, you know I’m one of the biggest Linux fans out there. My background started in the DOS days, PC and MS versions and I’ve been a natural born CLI lover since. One of the things I used to love about Linux so much was living down and dirty at the Shell but I’m a bit down cast about the fact that Mint Linux is so tight on the GUI that you no longer need to drop to the Shell to do anything.
So you lot won’t see this as a bad thing, especially Windows lovers. One of the things I have found though is that my favourite apps and utils aren’t available as default installs. So, here’s my little list of things to install to set things right:
First up is Skype is missing. Simple fix, fire up Synaptic Package Manager, Settings, Repositories, Other tab, click the Add button and drop in this line:
deb http://download.skype.com/linux/repos/debian/ stable non-free
Click close, Reload and then you’ll find Skype in the list. Check it and install.
Next on my list is a distinct lack of MSN with webcam enabled software. For this you will want aMSN, it’s already in the list, check that too. CD burning, well, there’s only one non-commercial app I’ll trust for that and it’s K3B, check that. If you want, uncheck empathy and Brasero as they are installed by default but you don’t require them as you’ve just installed replacements.
I code for websites, no tools for that either, so check Bluefish. It’s not WYSIWYG as I believe that it’s more What You See Is Not What You Get Or Anywhere Near It. If you do love some WYSIWYG action though, check Komposer. Any one with a little DreamWeaver usage under their belt will feel right at home. To go with my web work, I’m also a heavy GIMP user (Gnu Image Manipulation Program). It’s a very powerful package and comparable to Photoshop but being GPL there are lots of additions to it. Grab the extra packages by checking gimp-data-extras, gimp-save-for-web and gimp-plugin-registry.
Hit Apply and wait while your software downloads and installs. You’ll be a happy bunny when it’s done.
2010 -
01.31
Tags: 2003, 2007, exchange, smtprelaytotirg Category Geek | No Comments »
I installed a Windows 2007 Exchange server in to my 2003 environment this week. All went well apart from that the mail sending from the 2007 test mailboxes ended up in a queue called smtprelaytotirg. The error message given being 451 4.4.0 Primary Target IP Address Responded with (501 5.5.4 Auth Command Cancelled).
This queue is basically where 2007 is failing to deliver because it can’t route correctly.
The resolution in this case for me was easy. All the connectors were in place as they should be, but the transport for SMTP on the original master 2003 Exchange server had limited access to certain IP addresses.
I added the IP address for the new Exchange 2007 server and bang, 20 mins later the queue is empty.
Just a minor hurdle :) Oh, the other one to watch out for is making sure it can resolve either by IP or FQDN for the SMTP server, it’ll fail on netbios or just a single name. Anyone still relying on WINS needs shot in the face with a screw driver.
2010 -
01.26
Tags: DL, Hardware, HP, IPI0001, Proliant, unknown, Windows, x64 Category Geek | No Comments »
I’ve just blown away and rebuilt an HP DL185 G5. After installing all of the drivers from the HP website for the model, using Windows Server x64 R2 SP2, there is still 2 devices which are wanting drivers.
One is a raid, the other an Unknown.
The raid driver required is the Broadcom HT1000, you’ll find that easy enough on Google.
The unknown is a bitch to find. HP couldn’t tell me what it was. Turns out it’s for a Remote ILO board, even though the system doesn’t have one. You have to install this beauty to fix it:
IPMI infless Install
Yes, it’s not even for the same model, but it’s a NULL patch to shut it up complaining. It’ll then go in as HP NULL IPMI Controller. The device hardware ID is ACPI\IPI0001\0.
I hope this helps someone :)
2010 -
01.20
Tags: css, edit, facebook, hack, look, style Category Geek | No Comments »
With millions of people on Facebook, you would have thought the most they would allow you to do is change the layout to be a little more fun or interesting. Better yet, do the MySpace way and allow you to customise your personal profile.
No, Facebook users, they won’t even give you this little privilege. Well, there’s an awesome hack available for Firefox users called Stylish from those wicked people over at http://userstyles.org. Go and install the add-on, then restart your Firefox. Now go to http://userstyles.org and select from one of the many awesome Facebook layouts available.
It only adjusts your Facebook look, it doesn’t affect the page at all for anyone else. Mine now looks like this:
Facebook after Stylish
The Style I’m using is Dark Static, Transparency.
Enjoy folks.
Stylish
2010 -
01.17
Tags: Gnome, Panel, Places, Remove, Shortcuts Category Geek | No Comments »
I’ve noticed this one boggling a few people and a few are frustrated that you can’t just right click and delete from the Gnome Panels Places menu.
To remove the shortcuts which are actually stored as bookmarks within Nautilus (the Gnome file manager), click Places, then click Home Folder. From the dropdown list, click Bookmarks and then click Edit.
Changes you make here directly affect the Places dropdown.
2010 -
01.15
Tags: imagex, join domain, sysprep, Windows 7, working Category Geek | No Comments »
I’ve seen a lot of people having issues with Windows 7 sysprep at the moment and Microsoft’s new and ridiculously complicated rollout system. Here’s a quick breakdown of how to make a Windows 7 image:
Create a Windows PE disk with ImageX on it
Create an answer file called unattend.xml using the Windows Installation & Administration Kit (WAIK)
Configure Windows how you want it
Drop the unattend.xml in to c:\windows\system32\sysprep
Drop to a command prompt in that directory and do:
sysprep /oobe /generalize /shutdown /unattend:unattend.xml
Once she’s down, boot on the Windows PE disk and take an image.
Edit my unattend.xml file which is attached using the WAIK and change things like Key, usernames, etc. This version tries to join to a domain, you may want to delete that section.
Good luck!
2010 -
01.09
Tags: adsl, broadband, increase, speed Category Geek | No Comments »
I’m amazed that this actually worked, but it’s true!
I live in a little village not to far away from a main town, but due to this some people are on Virgin Media cable and others are not so lucky having to suffer abysmal speeds of British Telecom’s non-financially rewarding 1/2Mbit broadband. A few of my friends pay for Talk Talk and BT to supply them with up to 8Mbit but can get no where near this speed due to the local hub never being upgraded.
Now, this is not actually the case at all it seems. There is a ring wire (orange) inside of the Master socket which, when disconnected, seems to increase your speed by a fair amount.
With a Philips screw driver, remove the front panel of the master socket, pocket it out, and then pull the orange wire(s) out of the clamp. Now, tuck them back neatly and jobs done.
I’ve just witnessed a leap from 0.5Mbit to 3.12Mbit and another similar to 1.6Mbit. This works and doesn’t effect your phone system, unless you have an old analogue phone which uses the ring wire to literally do just that, ring. Anything digital doesn’t require this and since most homes are now digital phones it should not be required :) Happy speed increasing.