From the category archives:

Utility

Turn Windows 7 into a wireless access point

February 26, 2010

For years now I have been able to share my Verizon wireless connection with friends and family using my Apple running OSX. Linux can do this too.
It has not been possible with Windows until now. Microsoft has added some features to 7 that allow a wireless card to be put into promiscuous mode and [...]

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Add checkboxes for file selection in Windows 7

February 18, 2010

From time to time I will have a folder that I need to clean out. Usually with a large number of files. The problem is that I want to select only specific files or folders:

This is easy to do by holding down the CTRL key, but I always find that halfway through my selection process [...]

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Find drivers for an unknown device

January 13, 2010

The worst thing about a format and reload is that sometimes, it is impossible to find all of your drivers.
Usually I have lost the driver disks. If it is a “White Box Special” that I built from NewEgg…well I will have no idea what components I put into it.
I have found an excellent solution – [...]

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Get notified when a service fails

January 5, 2010

No matter what company I have worked for, there is always a Windows service that crashes once in a while – like clock work.
The problem: The service that crashes is important, does real time processing, and must always be active.
I came up with a quick and easy way of getting notified when your [...]

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Troubleshoot Windows 7 with the “Problem Steps Recorder”

December 9, 2009

While digging around, I found this very cool utility included with Windows 7. It is called “Problem Steps Recorder”.
The program allows you to record a set of actions, and then save it as a zip file, and allow someone else to see what you did.
This is perfect when trying to troubleshoot an issue, but [...]

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An easy move from XP to Windows 7

November 27, 2009

I was contacted a few weeks back by Laplink. They gave me a free license of their PC Mover to try out.
Usually, I throw these requests away, but I have used various utilities from Laplink since the early 90s (Anyone remember those Laplink cables!?), and I really like this company. Still…it is a risk [...]

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Send mail from your bat files

November 17, 2009

Two weeks ago, I wrote about backing up a remote windows machine using Remote Desktop.
One thing lacking from this solution is email notification. How do we know if the backup job started? Or finished?
There is a free and open source tool that can be used to solve this problem, it is called blat. It consists [...]

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Date and time stamp in your batch files

November 11, 2009

Update 11-12-2009: Looks like I made a typo. The date should be extracted with this line:
%date:~-4,4%%date:~-10,2%%date:~-7,2%
I have updated the article below, and thanks to Jim.G for noticing it!
There has been some activity recently in an old 2007 post I wrote about creating a date and time stamp in your batch files.
Well, the [...]

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Secure remote backup using remote desktop

November 5, 2009

I have been playing around with a few ideas on how to backup a server I have that is on the other side of town.
One of the problems I have is that the Internet provider blocks VPN traffic, and most other ways I know of getting a secure connection.
The one thing I can do [...]

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Windows 7 – Why your computer won’t go to sleep.

October 28, 2009

I have been playing around with the powercfg utility built into Windows 7, and I came across an interesting command line option:

powercfg /requests

What it does is list the reasons why your computer failed to go to sleep. I had the sleep function enabled on my desktop PC, and I noticed when I came back after [...]

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