Tips

Friday, January 11, 2013

USB disk Security 6.2.0.30

From Zbshareware Lab:

USB Disk Security provides protection against any malicious programs trying to attack via USB drive. It delivers high level of protection against theft and accidental disclosure of confidential data, and prevents unauthorized persons from stealing your data. USB Disk Security is the best security software to protect offline computer without the need for signature updates. This light and easy to use solution is compatible with other antivirus software and doesn't slow down your computer at all.

What's new in this version: Version 6.2.0.30 fixes some bugs in the installation.

USB disk full version download here

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Removing your Windows 7 installation, partition

This process is essentially the same as the previous page, but using the third-party tool GParted instead of Windows’ Disk Management utility. Be sure to have your XP CD on-hand to repair potential boot loader complications.

Download the latest copy of GParted here, and then burn it to a disc as an image file. 

After you've downloaded and burned your image of GParted, pop it into your optical drive and reboot. Shortly after booting off the disc you'll have to choose your preferred language, keymap and screen resolution.

Once the partition software has loaded, right click the partition where Windows 7 resides (it's probably the second partition on “dev/hda1” if you followed our previous guide) and choose “Delete”. You should now see unallocated space on your hard drive where Windows 7 once called home.

Right click your original (and likely only remaining) partition, choose “Resize/Move” and fill in 0 for both the free space preceding and following to occupy the entire unallocated space.
 Be sure to click apply up top or no changes will be made.
Repairing XP's boot loader:

Now, you may or may not be able to boot into XP as you've just potentially botched your boot loader (don't worry). Even if you can access XP and want to get rid of the OS selection during boot up continue reading.
Boot using your Windows XP CD and after the initial loading process you should be met with three options; “Enter” to setup Windows, “R” to load the Recovery Console and “F3” to quit without doing anything. We want to hit “R”.
The Recovery Console will search for instances of Windows and ask you to select one (there will probably only be one). Enter the number pertaining to your XP installation, and you'll be prompted for the Administrator password (if you're not sure what it is you likely don't have one, just hit enter).
Now, enter “fixmbr” (confirm with “y”) and upon completion enter “fixboot” (confirm with “y”).
 Enter “exit” to reboot your system. Remove your XP CD and you should be good to go.
Done.

Dead Power Supply Unit (PSU)? How to be sure ?

So you turn on the computer and nothing happens, it could be a broken case switch and therefore the PSU never gets the signal to turn on. Or it could be a dead PSU or something else dead pulling down the output of the PSU.

 Here's what you do:

1) Unplug the leads to the case switch at the mobo and jumper them with a small piece of wire. Now turn on the main power switch at the back of the PSU. If nothing happens, we're a long way to proving the PSU is dead.

2) If above procedure caused nothing to happen, now we get a little more into it. Remove the 20pin PSU connector and the 4pin CPU connector to the mobo, all other psu connections can stay put. Using a small wire (a paper clip will do) jumper pins 14(the only green wire) and any BLACK wire (let's say pin 13 or 15) on the 20 pin PSU connector. Now turn on the main PSU switch. Your PSU should come to life (HDD spins up, and fans spin).

Below is a pic of the 20 pin connector 
From the pic you can see that pins 13 and 15 are ground pins, that's why you can use either one. You want to ground pin 14.
This is all the case switch does via mobo traces out to the case switch leads. Well it does go thru a FET or Bipolar transistor to make the actual connection, this is how Windows can soft shut down the PC.

3) If nothing still happens then start removing 4 pin molexs one at a time, starting with the video card (if it has one). This will eliminate any peripherals "holding" or "pulling" down the PSU. After all connections are removed and still nothing, then your PSU is dead for sure.

4) Edit: I forgot this possibility. If after step 2, all fans spin up and HDD spins, but at step 1 nothing works, then it's most likely a faulty mobo. And most likely that little FET or Bipolar transistor or at least the circuit that turns that on. Either way at this point you're best to take it in for service or RMA your mobo back if applicable.

Hope this helps