Sunday, December 28, 2014

Ntldr Missing

If you ever get the message Ntldr Missing or corrupted when booting your windows XP Machine, it could be that the NTLDR file was accidentally deleted, or somehow got corrupted along the way which is a very common problem.
In order to fix this problem we are going to need a Windows XP installation disc which you get when you buy a new computer, just because we will be using the Recovery Console to fix this issue, below you will find all the steps to follow in order to correct this problem:

1.-In order to fix the Ntldr Missing error we are going to insert  the windows XP installation disc and try to boot from the CD, you may need to change your boot order on the BIOS in order to boot from the CD, other computers do this automatically depending on the settings  they came out from the factory.

2.-You will get the following message “Press any key to boot from CD” just go ahead and press Enter to continue.

3.-Windows will now start loading all the files necessary; this could take from 2 to 5 minutes depending on  the speed of your computer.

4.-Once all files are loaded you will be presented with the following options to choose from:

          -To set up windows XP now, press Enter

          -To repair a windows XP installation using
           The Recovery Console, press R

          -To quit set up without installing windows XP, press F3

5.-Go ahead and press “R” Once in the Recovery Console select the drive you want to fix, which is usually drive C:\ or it could be a different letter drive depending on how many windows installation you currently have on your computer, but usually its the drive C:\.

6.-You will be prompted to enter the administrator password, if there is no password just go ahead and press enter to continue.

7.-Once on the C:\windows> directory go ahead and enter the ntldr missing file like shown below:

8.-C: \windows>copy D:\I386\Ntldr C:\


The Ntldr Missing error should be resolved and now you should be able to boot into windows without any problems, something else you can try if you are still having trouble with your computer is to run a checkdisk  scan that you can also run from the recovery console or you can schedule within windows next time the computer restart just to make sure there is nothing wrong with your hard drive.

How To Make a Password Protected Folder

In this tutorial I will show you two different ways on how to make a password protected folder; that you don’t want anyone else to be able to open it without your permission.


1) How to Make a Password Protected Folder Using  zipped folder:


This is something that it’s already built into windows and all you have to do is the following:



Right click on the file or folder you want to protect and select ‘send to’             from the drop down menu and choose compressed (zipped) folder. Then      you will get a small window with the following question:



Do you want to designate compress (zipped) folders as the application for handling ZIP files?



Go ahead and click ‘yes’



You will now notice that windows have created a new ZIP file from the original and the icon will be a little different.



Now double click on the new zip file or folder, go to ‘file’ on the menu and select ‘Add a password’ Once you have entered the new password just click ‘Ok’ and you are done. Don’t forget to delete the original file or folder so only the ZIP file exists, because the original file or folder is not password protected. 



2) How Make a Password Protected Folder Using Axcrypt


How to Make a Password Protected FolderThis is a cool little utility that lets you password protect any file or folder on the fly; the way it does it is by actually encrypting the file or folder and adding a password to it that you choose; You can download it completely free for personal use, just do a Google search for it and install it.


Once you have installed Axcrypt, all you have to do is right click on any file or folder you want to protect and from the drop down menu select ‘Axcrypt’ and choose ‘Encrypt’ then you will be prompted to enter a new password; after you are done entering the new password, just click ‘Ok’ and you are done; the icon will change to a green shield with a key in the middle. From now on every time  want to open it you will need to enter the password you chose for the file or folder and also you will need to provide the password if you wish to remove the encryption. There a many other ways on How to Make a Password Protected Folder, but I like these two option because they are completely  free.


Difference Between PCI 2.0 and 3.0

Graphics Card Between PCI 2.0 and 3.0 Explained


A couple of weeks ago a client of mine wanted to update the graphics card to his computer which will allow him to play the latest games, but first I had to do some research about the difference between PCI 2.0 and 3.0 compatibility. The computer was a Dell Inspiron 580 with windows 7 home premium 64bits and a total of 8G of ram which is a pretty decent system, although the mother board can take up to 16G of ram, you need to have windows 7 Professional, Enterprise or Ultimate to access it.

When he bought the computer it came with a video card ATI  Radeon  HD 5450 and 1024MB of ram connected to a PCIe x16 v2.0 from the factory which is not one of the best graphics card. One of the problems that I had was that the latest and more advance video cards are PCIe x16 v3.0 and what I found out is that basically all graphics cards are backwards compatible, now it might not run to its full potential, but you can still plug a pci 3.0 graphics card to a pci 2.0 slot on a mother board and it will work just fine.

Keeping in mind the difference between PCI 2.0 and 3.0 I decided to buy one of the best graphics card he could afford, the Geforce GTX 650 Ti SSC which came  with 2G of ram which is a very powerful card at a very good price, another thing to keep in mind when buying a new graphics card is to make sure you have enough space inside the computer to accommodate the new graphics card, since they vary in sizes, the GTX 650 Ti basically takes two spaces, so if you have another slot next to the PCIe you will no longer be able to use that slot and also make sure you that your power supply can handle the load and depending on the card you get you will need  an additional  6 pin power connector coming from the power supply to connect to the graphics card which in my case I had to replace the stock power supply.

Now for power supplies the higher the wattage the more stable the system is; so I put a 700 watts Thermaltake power supply which can easily handle anything you throw at it.


So as long as you have a PCI express slot available on your motherboard v3.0, v2.0 or v1.0 you can plug any graphics card you like, because they are all backwards compatible, just like usb, so the only difference between PCI 2.0 and 3.0 is that the most advance graphics card may run slower on a 2.0 slot.

Computer Overheating Symptoms


Believe or not computer overheating is very common problem that everybody experiences at some point or another and it is mostly due to a clogged fan, poor air circulation or worst, the fan that cools the cpu simply stops working. There are many Computer Overheating Symptoms, besides the excessive heat, the most common one is that the computer just shut down by itself without any warnings and it usually happens minutes after you turn it on.

So if you have a desktop, most people tend to place the computer on the floor because of space, overtime the fan and everything inside the computer case gets clogged with dust and lint, blocking the air flow. You can tell when a computer is clogged with dust because the fan makes this really loud noise.

Computer Overheating Symptoms - Solution:


What I would recommend is that you buy a can of compress air, take your computer outside, because you don’t want all the dust inside your house. Open the side panel of the computer case making sure you don’t touch anything inside and just blow off the dust, make sure you hold the can of compress air in a upright position when blowing, if you have a laptop you will see some vents at the bottom or the sides of the laptop, just blow air through it and that should take care of it.
If you have an air compressor in your garage you could certainly use it, but make sure have a moisture filter connected to it, because you don’t want to be blowing moisture inside your pc that would be a bad idea.

Computer overheating Symptoms - Other causes:


Blowing the dust out of the case should make your computer run cooler, but if you still have some overheating problems, there is something else you could do, but do it only if you are tech savvy and have a great understanding about computers, because you could easily damage your computer if you don’t know what you’re doing.
Between the cpu and the heatsink(aluminum block on top of the cpu) you have thermal paste and its used to make a nice even contact between the two, over time though, this thermal paste gets sort of like a hard plastic, loosing all off its heat transfer properties and making your computer overheat. You can buy the thermal paste at your local electronics store or one of the major  electronic retailers online.


When you remove the Heatsink from the cpu you will see the old thermal paste, just clean it up with some isopropyl alcohol and let it dry before you put new thermal paste on it, you need just enough to cover the metal surface of the cpu. Now, if you have a laptop it’s a lot harder to do this, because this involve taking the whole laptop apart and if you don’t have any patience or the skills to do it, just find somebody competent to do it for you, you’ll be surprise on how much cooler your computer runs just by replacing  the thermal paste and the computer overheating symptoms are a thing of the past.

Earphones With Volume Control

This is something that I started discovering by accident as you all know all the iphones come with the  earphones with volume control. well I was using it like that without giving it a second thought, the same for listening to music. The way I came across this was when I was playing with my Ipod nano, there is a function on the ipod nano where you press a button twice and that makes it skip to the next song on the list, very useful especially when you are exercising. 
One day I was listening to music on my iphone while I was working, the thing about the iphone was that I had to get it out my pocket in order to change the song or so I thought. So out of nowhere I pressed the middle button twice and skipped to the next song, I was like no way! So I started playing and doing some more research and I found out some more great shortcuts:


- iPhone Earphones With Volume Control Shortcuts Complete List:


1. - For incoming calls, press the center button to answer, press it again to end the call.

2. - To ignore an incoming phone call, just press and hold the middle button.

3. - To swap between calls, press the middle button once. If you want to end the new call press and hold the middle button for a few seconds.

4. - If you have the camera on, press the volume up button to take pictures.

5. - For Siri just press and hold the middle button.

6. - If you are listening to a song press the middle button once to pause it, press it again to resume.

7. - To fast forward a song, press the middle button twice and hold it on the second press.

8. - To rewind a song, press the middle button 3 times and hold it on the third press.

9. - To skip a song, just press the middle button twice.

10. - To go back to a previous song, just press the middle button 3 times.

I hope that this iPhone earphones with volume control shortcuts have been of some help, Thanks for reading!

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Is The New iPhone 6 Really Too Big?


There seems to be a lot of excitement with the release of the New iPhone 6 and iPhone 6+ which took place on september 19th of this year with a record sale of 10 million units in a week. Apple is finally giving people what they really want as far as screen sizes go.

I always loved my iPhone, but one major complaint  I had was the size of the screen, especially if you like to watch movies on it or to just  simply surf the web, it can be a little frustrating with such a small screen. I personally like the 4.7-inch HD display of the new iPhone 6, the screen is big enough and yet still fits good in my hand. 

new iPhone 6

As far as the iPhone 6+ goes, it kind of compares to the Galaxy Note 4 in size; only a little smaller. I think there is a market for every phone, people have different needs.

One major improvement of new iPhone 6 is that it comes with a brand new desktop class 64-bit A8 chip architecture which is 25% faster than the previous A7 chip of the iPhone 5s and for the memory you can buy one now with up to 128g capacity , something never before seen on a mobile device which is great, but I only wish apple would come up with a phone that has a memory slot like any other smartphone on the market today.

There has been numerous claim of people complaining of bending issues with their new iPhone  whenever they put it in their pockets. If you think about it you can bend or break any phone if you have in your back pocket and then you sit on it, regardless of what the brand is. 

My only disappointment about the New iPhone 6 was the camera, I wish Apple would have done major improvements on it, at least a bigger resolution for taking pictures like 16 megapixels or so, there has been only a few some improvement, but nothing major.

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Tuesday, December 9, 2014

How to Recover Deleted Files

TWO SIMPLE WAYS ON HOW TO RECOVER DELETED FILES



If it ever happens that you deleted some files and empty the windows trash can afterwards, just to realize that you deleted some very important files and you don't know what to do to get them back. Well don’t worry about it, I will show you two simple ways on how to recover  deleted files from your computer.

You see when you delete a file; the file isn't really gone, windows just takes it out of the registry, think about it this way if you look through a book’s index or table of content and somebody  ripped one page out of it, that doesn't mean that the topic is gone on the book just the table of content, well windows also works on a similar way.

1) How to Recover Deleted files using Shadow copies


This option only works on windows Vista / 7 / 8 from time to time windows is constantly creating new copies of your files, which means that you can recover any file you have deleted. Now the only catch is that this feature is only available on the professional versions, to recover a file just go to the folder where the files used to be, right click on it and choose show previous versions you will see a list of the different copies created.

If you happen to have the home Editions there is another utility called shadow explorer that you can download for free and use to retrieve shadow copies, you see windows vista / 7 / 8 home editions have the shadow copies built in but they don't make it available for home edition users.


2) How to Recover deleted files using Recuva


Recuva is a Free Data Recovery Software that allows you to recover any deleted files including: Pictures, Music, Documents, Videos, Emails etc. It works a little different than shadow copies, because it searches for the actual file that was deleted so the sooner you recover the file the better, because since is out of the registry windows can write new data over the file you are trying to recover just go to www.piriform.com and download a copy, Recuva is free for personal use.


How to Recover Deleted Files

Friday, December 5, 2014

Macbook Pro Fan Speed Control

I decided to write this post today to show you how you can control your Macbook Pro fan speed; because for some time I have noticed that my laptop runs really hot, up to 90c when doing some intensive work and the fans don't really seem to kick in until it gets really hot.

I think I have an idea why the MacBook pro run hotter than a regular laptop; the problem is that Apple tries to make their products thinner and smaller every now and then which is fine with me, but the problem is that when you have Macbook pro with a Quad Core I7 processor or even the I5 processor, they generate a lot of heat and they need a lot of room to dissipate it and like I said before the fans don't really kick in until it gets to about 80c or 90c, This is a Macbook pro late 2013 Retina Display running  OS X Mavericks. 

After looking at Intel's data sheets for their Quad Core I7 processors, I found out that the max temp is about 100c,  a little too close for comfort if you ask me, so I started to do some research on how to  manually control the speed of the fans, so that my Macbook pro  would run cooler and make it last longer, because we all know heat is the enemy of computers.

There is a couple of Apps you can download to increase your Macbook Pro fan speed, but there is one in particular that I really like called Macs Fan Control which you can download for free and it allows you to control the fan in three different ways: automatic, constant and sensor base.


Macs Fan Control, MacBook Pro


Just go to www.crystalidea.com and download it ; once you install the app and set it up the way you wanted it makes a big difference on how cool your Macbook pro runs.

One thing you will notice is that the fans run a little noisier on cpu intensive work or video and audio editing, therefore the fans have to spin faster, but other than that I think it is a great App for increasing your Macbook Pro Fan Speed.


Macs Fan Control, MacBook Pro



Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Free Online Virus Scanner




If you ever wanted to check a particular file for viruses, trojans, worms and all other kinds of malware without having to install an Antivirus program; you can very easily upload the file to www.VirusTotal.com the neat thing about this website is that it uses multiple antivirus programs up to 50+ to scan the file and it’s completely free; this is particularly good, because we all know that there is not a single antivirus product that can catch it all, this lowers the possibility of having a false positive result.

Something important to keep in mind is that the file you are uploading can’t be bigger than 128 MB in size; another cool feature about www.VirusTotal.com  that  I like is that it let’s you check URLS too.

Remember that this only works for scanning individual files, if you suspect your whole computer is infected then I would recommend installing a good Antivirus software, check my previous article ‘best free antivirus programs’ for a list of programs that I personally like.

There are a lot cases when the computer is so infected that the malware doesn’t let you install any programs, that’s when a pre cleaning tool is recommended! I will be talking more in depth about this in future posts!