Walker News » Windows

Handy Backup Offers Reliable Backup Solution For Home And Enterprise

Walker — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 15:09:17 +0000

Handy Backup is one of the few reliable backup software for Windows and Linux system (requires WINE). Developed and released as freeware for home users in 2002, the little backup software never stop to evolve over the years.

Now the latest Handy Backup 6.5.2, marketed by Novosoft LLC, is build with great backup capabilities that meet requirements from home to enterprise users.

Although it is no longer a freeware, there are three editions target at home and small office, small and medium business, and enterprise, with price tag ranges from $39 to $599.

Regardless the 3 different editions, beware that there are two versions of Handy Backup:

The latest Handy Backup is offered by Novosoft LLC, which actively develop the said backup software to work with the latest Microsoft Windows OS, e.g. Windows 7 (compatible with both 32 and 64-bit system)

A legacy version of Handy Backup offered by Novosoft Inc.

With reference to Handy Backup 6.5.2 functionality, I bet you will agree that Handy Backup indeed is a Swiss Army knife, i.e. almost all sort of backup requirements are tackled by Handy Backup (it certainly deserved for that name)!

If you’re interested, download a 30-days trial copy to test and prove it yourself.

How To Turn Off Or Disable The Citrix Beep Sound?

Walker — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:05:28 +0000

I am mad and frustrated by the annoying high pitch beeping tone when using application via Citrix XenApp (an application delivering system).

The Citrix beeping whenever I hit unnecessary keystrokes in the Vi editor or Linux command prompt through Putty remote access program!

While listening to Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.5 (I find classical best when I am seriously working on something), that flipping beep tone just too bad and makes everyone seated near to me feels uneasy :-(

Because I was rushing on a remote Linux machine, via Putty program delivered by Citrix XenApp Web Plugin, so I just turn off the Dell Latitude speaker that no doubt effectively solved it in no time.

Obviously, that fix is not good at all and too “costly”, as turning off speaker means no more Beethoven’s classical music playing too :-(.

So, I need a proper trick and thus briefly looking around Windows settings in the hope of fixing it myself. But, none of these works:

1) Turn off the “Windows Sounds” found in Vista SP2 Volume Mixer dialog box.

2) Set the Windows sound theme to “No Sounds” scheme

3) Edit the Launc.ica and set the “ClientAudio=Off”.

I am pissed off and went to ask Google for help. Luckily, locating the solution is quick. Indeed, the Googling is much speedy than trying various Windows settings myself.

Credit goes to Leroy Spencer:

As you can see, the trick is fairly simple and easy to remember. For Windows Vista (or perhaps Windows 7), you need to run an elevated mode of Command Prompt window and execute this command to temporarily turn off or disable Windows beep service (looks like a kernel mode driver):

sc stop beep

If you desperately want to turn it off in a persistent mode, run this command after stopping it:

sc config beep start= disabled

Thus, to re-enable beep service to its original start up mode (in this case, SYSTEM_START), execute

sc config beep start= system

Please take note that you need a space between the equal sign and the option value (valid START option values are boot, system, auto, demand, disabled, delayed-auto).

Thanks Ross Williamson for highlighting this. For more information, type sc config.

To query the Beep driver configuration-related information, execute:

sc qc beep

To query the beep driver running status in Vista SP2, execute

sc query beep

I prefer to keep it running so I won’t miss something else in future. Having said that, I need to execute sc stop beep each time running Citrix XenApp Web Plugin.

How To Disable Keyboard Power Button?

Walker — Sun, 03 May 2009 15:10:59 +0000

I was using the good old “mechanical” keyboard made in 90s. Although there is no Windows key to trigger Windows Flip 3D in Vista, I never thought to make a change as I like the feel of pressing those “hard” keys for so many years.

Now I have to replace this old buddy as my wrist getting pain just recently :-). I went to shop a replacement and finally took this A4Tech X-Slim Multimedia keyboard.

It’s not better than Wearnes keyboard made for MS-DOS, but I like its compact layout, where the size is almost matching my Dell Latitude D410.

Other than lacking of ergonomics features, I kinda dislike the power button that seated right above F1 key. Because of this terrible power button, I had accidentally shutdown Vista while there were tonnes of job running on the Desktop.

In order to avoid third “accident”, it must be disabled immediately before I have time to uncase and break the circuit!

Steps to disable the keyboard power button in Windows Vista

Click the Vista Orb (Start button), type power options in Start Search text box and hit ENTER key to open Power Options window.

Click the Change Plan Settings of the active power plan follow by Change Advanced Power Settings.

Locate the Power Buttons and Lid option and set the Power Button Action to Do Nothing.

Please take note that this option not only disables the keyboard power button. Indeed, it will disable all power buttons, including the one comes with CPU casing.

That is fine for me, as I never press the power button to shutdown Windows. However, I appreciate if you could share with me a better way to disable the power button on a keyboard only, preferable by tweaking existing Windows settings without relying on third party software (definitely not to break the key physically).

How To Play WV File Or WavPack Media File?

Walker — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 17:11:40 +0000

I call the Storm Codec as an ultimate codec pack for Windows. Nevertheless, the Storm Codec 2007 Perfect Edition in my Windows Vista Desktop is not able to playback WV or WavPack media file :-(

The latest Storm Codec 3.5 might supports WV file format, but I am not going to install this Chinese UI software right now, although I can read Mandarin and my Vista Ultimate SP1 perfectly supports non-Unicode Chinese program.

I will, when they release the version with English UI (Hopefully, there will be this day)!

So for now, in order to playback WV or WavPack media file, I must install another media file decoder. From Google search, I found this WavPack DirectShow filter for download:

In the download page, locates the download link of WavPack DirectShow filter from CoreCodec.org. At this time of writing, the exe version is 1.1.1 and file size is merely 104KB.

After download, double-click the executable file to start installation. As seen in the screenshot (above), the setup extracts two ax files (DirectShow filter file extension in Windows) into the System32 folder, unregister existing ax files (if any) and register the extracted copy.

It can be done in a manual way as well. For example, copy these two ax files and paste to System32 folder of another Windows machine, open Command Prompt window (for Vista, open the Command Prompt window with elevated privilege), change working directory to C:\Windows\System32 and register both DirectShow filters:

regsvr32 WavPackDSDecoder.ax
regsvr32 WavPackDSSplitter.ax

Once the installation is done, you can playback the WV file with Windows Media Player (in my case, it’s WMP 11) or Media Player Classic (open source freeware).

So, if you happen to have just downloaded a “new” media file ended with WV file extension, don’t panic. This WV file is actually WavPack media file, known as Hybrid Lossless Audio Compression format.

Sound complicated? Just think of it a media file format that provides high quality audio will do. Best of all, it’s free. Bad thing is, there is another media file type out of hundreds :-(

IE8 Groups Tabs Of Same Domain With Colour

Walker — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 17:21:24 +0000

I cannot remember there is this feature in Windows web browser earlier than IE8. In fact, I just realized that IE8 groups all tabs of same domain with colour, as shown in the following screenshot.

Occasionally, this could be useful for users who used to open 10 or more tabs in one window, like myself :-).

Imagine that there are 10 tabs open in a IE8 window, 2 of which are rendering pages of same domain (e.g. walkernews.net) and thus these two tabs appear with a different colour, say for example this is yellow.

Apparently, the colourized tabs complement favicon feature when there is no such web icon associated with the domain.

How To Fix Windows Live Messenger Login Error Code 80048820?

Walker — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 16:43:39 +0000

I am not sure that this trick works for all of you who are Google-ing help related to Windows Live Messenger key ports failure or error code 80048820.

However, see it and believe it, as I have just made another “silent” screencast for reference.

Problem: I was able to sign in Windows Live Messenger at Starbuck before crawling to office this morning.

However, the login failed after connecting the same laptop I used at Starbuck to corporate network and started to online via proxy server.

No matter how many times I tried to login with different “tweaks” applied here and there, the darn error code 80048820 (extended error code 80048416) keep pops up to upset me :-(

The Connection TroubleShooter showed “key ports” failure and suggested that could be caused by improper proxy server or firewall settings:

However, proxy server was not the culprit, as Connection Tester indicated a successful remark. It’s not firewall of any kind too that cause this problem.

So, what will be the likely cause? How to fix the “meaningless” error code 80048820 or extended error code 80048416?

After filtering hundreds of Google search result, I got this useful link from MSN@China.

Out of few solutions stated in the page, I found that by disabling Check for server certificate revocation option in IE8 works out well for my case (login via office network with proxy server and firewall):

How To Restart VNC Server After VNC Service Hangs or Stops Unexpectedly?

Walker — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 10:32:55 +0000

How difficult is to restart the VNC server or service? Well, there is certainly no difficulty at all, if you’re in front of the server.

Now, imagine that server is at few hundred miles away and nobody is there to restart that bloody machine.

Worst still, simply reboot the machine might not able restart the VNC server.

So, what could you do in order to get the VNC server back to work? Precisely, if you can’t VNC to the remote server, how could you attempt to restart the VNC service?

OK, here are the tips and tricks for VNC server running in Windows or Linux machine.

To apply this method, however, there must be network connection between you and the remote server.

Restart VNC service of a remote computer running Windows 2000 or above

You must do the following steps on a computer running Windows 2000 or above as well. Let say this is a Windows Vista Ultimate machine.

1) Click the Vista Orb (Start button), right-click on Computer and select Manage option from the pop-up menu. This will open Computer Management window.

2) Right-click the Computer Management (Local), the top node on left pane, and select Connect to another computer….

Alternatively, click the Action menu to find the same option.

3) In the Select Computer dialog box, opt for Another Computer and type the computer name in the text box.

If you can’t remember the computer name, click Browse button follow by Advanced button and click Find Now to list all computers detected.

Now, hopefully this step will be succeed. Otherwise, it ends here :-(

Once you’ve connected the remote computer, click Services and applications node on the left pane of Computer Management window. From there, locate the VNC service on the right pane and restart it.

Restart VNC service of a remote computer running Red Hat Enterprise Linux

With Linux, this job is easier :-)

Other than network connection, you must able to remotely login the Linux server, be it the vulnerable telnet or secure SSH protocol.

After login to Linux command prompt (via telnet or SSH), just execute service vncserver restart, if the VNC server is configured to auto-start when Linux boots up / reboot.

If there is no auto-start setup, then do the manual ways as you’ve done:

1) If the VNC server process stills exists, and it was started with DISPLAY:1, then kill it will command vncserver -kill :1

2) Start it again by executing vncserver :1

Now, you can confirm the VNC server is up again by executing netstat command:

netstat -tulpan | grep vnc

If the VNC server is started for DISPLAY:1, the netstat result should shows Xvnc listening to three different ports: 5801, 5901, and 6001.