Home IT spring cleaning
I need to do some spring cleaning on my laptop. Here are my notes Read More
I need to do some spring cleaning on my laptop. Here are my notes Read More
It seems I have not stated that I acquired a THECUS N3200Pro a couple of years ago. I have been using it happily since then, but today, my W10 system upgraded to SMB 2 and my connections failed. Here’s my notes …. Read More
On ISO 27001, much of my work now requires an understanding of this standard, the gold plated standard for IT security, well I say gold plated, more accurately reasonable endeavours. I believe that it will become an essential part of the defence to charges that one’s failed to adequately protect data. Nothing new here yet! Read More
I bought a Raspberry Pi to act as a Media Server in the home. I bought a PI, case, SD card and power source. As ever here are my notes. Currently, getting started (or 1st boot), 1st customisations, and early days with the media browsers and XBMC/Kodi. I have BBC, ITV and YouTube working, Channel 4 is going to be very hard and so is Sky, since among other things since Silverlight is deprecated.
I have given up, and bought a Roku stick. In addition to the challenges of getting all the channels I want, even v3 of the Pi struggles with iplayer HD; it might be the CPU, it might be the BT broadband plus speed but it’s too hard. I shall reconstruct the page and use comments, as one of the purposes of making a notes page was collecting the various web pages that helped me get to wherever I got. Read More
Originally written on the death of my first XP system. My problems were compounded when I moved and with the expiry of Windows XP, I need to move my desktop systems on, to Laptops it seems! 😎 Read More
Checking out another Dell for a friend.
I want a laptop and docking bay.
If a Dell, it needs to be a Latitude, they’re the only machines they ship with the old fashioned docking bay interface. We don’t want to connect a screen using USB and we want the machine to be closed while using the desktop periherals.
Here is the Dell E6530 configure page. Here is the docking station link. The laptop needs the E-Series Legacy Expansion Port added in the “Accessorize my Dell” section.
It also needs the O/S version upgraded to 64 bit. It comes without MS Office, soi this’ll need to be added. Wonder if the still do educational discounts, looks like not, since Office 365 seems about the same price.
Maybe the docking station isn’t worth it. Get a cheaper laptop, with a screen port, and buy a new screen with a newer interface standard.
How big is it, how much does it weigh?
Do Laptop Power sell docking stations?
Building a new laptop is always a fraught exercise and in this case I am upgrading from Windows Vista to Windows 7 Professional. I am also upgrading from a Dell Latitude to HP Probook 5320m. Read More
I have some problems with my family Dells. Dan’s Dell Inspiron has a Hitachi Travelstar disk. Given that the computer won’t boot, it’s a bit tricky to recover the data. So here are my notes. Read More
On 13th July 2013, I upgraded to BT Infinity, and my HH was replaced with a V4 Hub. This page is completely outdated.
BT are the largest provider of broadband lines in the UK. They provide a hub/router as part of the package. This is was my bliki page detailing my use and knowledge about the hub, we’re talking V2. here. I cleaned the page up in March 2010, when I simplified the content on this page, mainly be shifting the Vista & Wifi stuff to “filesaveas.com”. Read More
It needs to be done, badly, has done for years, but is the DE bill an incentive to replace it with an appliance to act as a router/firewall etc. I am planning to move the internet facing services to a web hosting company’s server, but do I need something small and UNIXy.
How would one perform the initial boot?
I also wrote about the qube on my blog, originally at Sun and then latterly on my blog. The style is pretty pompous, but i suppose I’ve got to get used to it, that’s a bit of me.
I eventually had to get rid of it when both disks went in a couple of months. I eventually transferred the bliki to an AWS machine.
I built a Sun Virtual Box VM based on Centos 4.7. June 2009. Read More
This was originally entitled “Our New XP Box”. I changed the title when I copied the snip across to WordPress in July 2013. I marked the snip as deprecated in June 2019, added a picture to remind me. Here are my notes; the tags give a pretty good idea of what I needed to write about. This was an XP system and I wrote about external devices, anti-virus, fax and video capture. Read More
This needed rebuilding. I need to re-install Windows XP.
Use F12 to enter the BIOS and configure the order in which the BIOS looks for a bootable image and make sure that the DVD is before the HDD.
I tried to use the microphone to make video’s on the Dell and the sound track is inaudible. Sound Recorder also creats inaudible tracks. I have tried to discover how to audit the sound drivers. There is a Dell Community thread. 17th January 2009
I have just attempted to use both a Creative & Trust microphone on both the rear and front microphone ports of my Dimension 5150C & the Alienware. I am having zero success on the Dell. I bought a new labtec microphone and this works fine on the Dell.
I get an intermittent error with CTMBHA.DLL on system boot. I have investigated this in the Dell forums and via google. This seems to be a ‘feature’.
I bought one of these in February 2006 and it went bang for the 2nd time in the Summer of 2014. I could probably get it repaired but I can’t be arsed. Read More