TF2 Update

Wooo!!! TF2 Update, Engineer updates!

HP Officejet 6310 Hassles.. (Over Network)

Hey guys,

Today I’ll talk briefly about some issues I had connecting my mum’s new printer to my laptop and desktop computer. First of all, for those who don’t know, the HP 6310 Officejet is a multifunction inkjet printer/scanner/faxer/copier with 100Mbps networking which is available for around $AU170. Some other features are PictBridge, and there are two scanners, a glass, and a flatbed autofeeder thingo on top, which is cool.

So when I saw this thing at DSE today, I thought yeah, looks pretty decent, and our printer didn’t work anyway, so why not. I got home and cracked it open to be absolutely bombarded with bits of paper and CDs from HP, of which I only needed 3: The quick start guide (I couldn’t figure out where all the gosh-darned trays went), the Mac OS X driver disk, and the Windows XP driver disk.

After I set it up, and aligned everything, first up was mum’s Macbook. The installation was painless, and took 10 minutes max. The only quirk I found was that the HP installer didn’t add the printer to the printer list, and needed to be done manually. All of the scanning software worked fine, I shot off a test page, and that was all.

Next was where the problems started to show: My desktop PC. The installation from the CD felt like it took forever, mostly looking like it got stuck on finding the printer on the network (I’d like to let you know now that the printer had a dynamically assigned IP from my router). After what felt like eternity (probably about 30 min) I got the “Restart me or else I won’t work” screen. So I rebooted my PC.

20 seconds later I was back on the desktop with the usual product registration crap and a lot of shortcuts on my desktop. I cleaned up all of the shortcuts and the start menu and opened up the central HP program for the all-in-one “HP Solution Center”.

I shot off a test page and it worked a treat, checked the ink levels etc. All was going good. Then I went to have a look around the “Solution center” and tried to set up a few things, only to get error messages telling me my printer isn’t connected. Hang-on.. I just printed a test page, that’s strange. Maybe it’s just because I’m running tinyXP and it’s missing a few bits and pieces the HP program needs. Fair enough, I’ll install it on my netbook I thought.

Following the same steps, I ended up with the same outcome on my netbook! Shame on you HP I thought, I just bought it, and it’s already not working properly!

There was indeed one hint to what was going wrong though. When you click on “Network Settings” it brings up a web browser with something along the lines of “http://hp001f297585b8/” in the address bar, but nothing loads up except a dns error.

Well.. maybe the HP Software is trying to communicate with the printer using it’s hostname instead of it’s IP, which of course should work and all should be dandy, but for some reason isn’t..

Easy fix. Go to C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\ and edit the file called “hosts”. At the bottom add a line like the example, where the ip is the ip of your printer on your network (check on the printer or on your router) and the hostname is where the HP Software tries to send you when you click on network settings and click save.

Voila, it works!

That was a bit of a hassle just to get an out of the box, brand new multifunction working..

I’ll admit, the process they use should work but for some unknown reason just doesn’t, I don’t know if it’s a fault in their programming/setup or if it’s a problem with my router/printer/computer not figuring out what the name points to.. Either way, it took me ages to figure it out, and I was starting to get rather annoyed.

That’s enough from me, let me know if any of you had the same troubles and if I helped you out, or if you’re having different problems and need a bit of help.

Thanks for reading!

~4zzdawg

Bloody Mongrels..

Hey guys,

In a bit of a foul mood, because last night my dad’s (almost) new DR-Z400 got stolen from right out of our driveway.
He’d got it brand new a few months back from springwood suzuki with an aftermarket exhaust, an aftermarket bashplate, and A pair of barkbusters.

We recently polished and fitted a brand new set of motard rims and tyres..
The thing looked absolutely smick with the new rims and tyres, and dad was about ride it to work, and it wasn’t there..

Normally it’s in our garage, but mum just got a new car aswell, so there’s no room for it anymore..

I guess all I want is that if any of you see it in a driveway or a shop, can you let me know.. please. I live in Edens Landing BTW, not far from beenleigh, yatala, eagleby, stapylton and all of that.

I’ve got a picture, but unfortunately it was before we fitted the motard wheels. It’s a start anyway I guess.

 

I’ll find out if dad’s taken a picture of it with the motard wheels. But what it basically is, is densely spoked wheels, and all of the spokes are polished.

Well yeah, thanks for reading, and I hope you can help out. And if you bastards are reading, get a life and earn things for yourself you scum. You can email me at 4zzdawg@4zzdawg.com

Cheers

How to set-up automatic file syncing with Live Mesh

Hey guys,

Just realised last night that Microsoft’s Live Mesh is now in some form of open beta, this is really exciting, I’ve been waiting for it for ages.

The ways it can be used are very useful indeed.

Most people these days have multiple computers, they’ve got their work computer, their laptop, their desktop, and normally a shared family computer. There’s files that are specific to each computer, like driver files, applications, games, but theres some things that you’d want to work on on each computer, things like documents for work, spreadsheets for your finances, things like that.

Up until now, the easiest way to do that was most likely:

 

1. Plug a flash drive in
2. Type document
3. Save to flash drive
4. Remove flash drive
5. Plug flash drive into other computer
6. Work on document and save it
7. Repeat from step 4.

 

And then of course you’ve got to worry about losing your flash drive, or forgetting it, and of course, just leaving it in one of the computers.

Now, with live mesh, you can automatically have all of those files syncronized between all of those computers, effortlessly (provided they all have an internet connection of course). With live mesh, you can select folders that you want to have in your live mesh account, and can choose to syncronize them with the other computers attatched to your account.

Now, you may ask, what If I don’t own the computer that I want to use, like a workstation at the library, well Microsoft’s covered that base aswell, with all of your files stored online on Mesh servers, you can access them and download them anywhere with an internet connection, which makes it very, very convenient.

Now that I’ve got that sales pitch out of the way, I’ll continue with how to set this wonderous piece of software up.

Alllright, here goes nothing, as an example, I’m going to use my desktop machine “Zendora” and my Aspire One “Zoom”.

I’ve got files for school on Zoom, which I normally just sync as a briefcase to my flash drive, then plug my flash drive into Zendora and edit them on there when I need to, save it back to the flash drive, etc. Which is basically a pain in the arse.

It’s so old it’s turned black and white..

Anyway, to install live mesh, simply go to http://mesh.com and click sign in. You can either sign up for a new account, or sign in with an existing Windows Live Account.

When you first log in, you will get a screen somewhat like this, except without the two computers I’ve got there, you will only have Live Desktop, and Add Device.

 

What we’re interested in right now is Add Device, so click on it, and the two will move around in the circle so that Add Device is at the front.

Note that from here on in, if your computer isn’t a Windows machine, it’s not yet compatible with Live Mesh, unless of course you only want to use the web interface, in which case, I’m sure your machine will work fine.

Once on the Add Device section, choose your version of windows and click on install.

Also note that support for Windows Mobile devices and Mac is in the works.

Just follow the wizard step by step, and at the end, enter the Windows Live ID you used to log into the Mesh website. Repeat this on every computer that you want to set up mesh on. Now, once the Live Mesh icon in the system tray settles down and stops moving and changing colour, you’ll notice a few things on your computer have changed. Lets take a look shall we.

When you roll over the new icon in your system tray, the Live Mesh “Notifier” appears, showing all of your computer’s status’s. Also, in your “My Computer” window, there’s a new Option under “Other” that says Live Mesh Folders.. Wonder what that could be all about.

Now, for what we’ve all been waiting for, setting up a folder to sync between all your computers and the Live Mesh desktop.

First, go to the computer that you want to sync a folder or files from. Open the folder containing that folder or file in Explorer, in my case, I’m going to sync my Cars Guide Special on Mitsubishi from Zendora.

Right click on the folder/file and select Add Folder to Live Mesh, like so.

Now you’ll be greeted with a screen like this.

For now, don’t worry about the Syncronization Options, the defaults are just fine, and you can muck around with them later if you want, but they’re pretty self explanatory. Just click OK. Then you’ll be shown a Creating Live Mesh folder screen, just wait for it to finish. Wait for a bit, and then.. Your folder will have turned blue!

That means that you’ve just started to sync your first folder with Live Mesh, which is all fine, except we want to sync it between computers!

Start up your other computer with mesh on it, and you will have a little blue folder on the desktop that looks surprisingly like the one that you just created. (Note: this may take a while to appear depending on your internet connection, just wait it out)

Double click on that blue folder and you’ll get a screen much like the one that was shown earlier from Zendora when creating the folder, except now you get to choose where you want it to sync to on this computer.

Press OK, and it will start synchronizing the files with your other computer and the live mesh server. If you make an update on either machine, it will be updated on all other machines that you sync with that folder. If you add a new files to the folder, it’ll add it on the other machines, and it’s amazingly fast too.

Now, when you open the Live Mesh Synced folder on either computer, you’ll get a nifty little sidebar on the right of the window, which has a picture of a newspaper, a person, and a computer. If you click the newspaper, you’ll get news about the folder you’re viewing, like when someone edits a file, adds a new one, or deletes one. You can also add news items of your own, which may explain what you’ve updated in a file, or why you have deleted it. This message will appear on all of the synced computers.

If you click on the person..there’s not much interesting there, just users that have the folder open, which for me, will only ever be me. And if you click on the computer, it shows the status of all of your devices.

This new tool is great, and very easy to use. So easy infact that I used it to help write this post, as pictures were needed from both computers, I used live mesh to sync the pictures back to Zendora so I could upload them to WordPress.. Nifty ‘ey?

Of course, another couple of main features are that you can access any files that you sync with Mesh through an online “Desktop” interface from Mesh.com, and that you can use Live mesh to remotely control any of your devices from any computer with the web (provided they are turned on or have wake on lan). I won’t go into that in this post though, it’s long enough as it is.

Let me know if you find any other cool features of Live Mesh that I haven’t mentioned here, or any other things that you find it useful for.

Thanks for reading, happy surfing,

~4zzdawg

Wow.. 1000 hits

Hey guys,

The hits on this site are skyrocketing, something like a 300% increase from a week ago.

It’s insane, last month I got 500 hits. This month, I’ve already hit almost 400 (keep in mind, we’re only 4 days into the month.

I think it’s amazing, and I wanted to celebrate in some way, by posting something insane, that would blow your mind.. but eh, I just got home from school, so I’ve got nothing.. Except that BCT is HELL ON EARTH.. I’ll post the graph of my hits though =p, it’s interesting to me alright.. haha.

I’m pretty sure that I’m getting so many hits because I’m on the first page of google for a number of searches regarding flashing the Acer’s bios, which it seems a lot of people are learning to do through my site. Anyway, I’m happy and excited.

Thanks guys

~4zzdawg

Not long till Left 4 Dead Demo!

Hey guys,

Just thought I’d let you’s know that the Left 4 Dead demo’s going to be released to people who’ve pre-ordered the game in a couple of days.

Probably going to pre-order tomorrow night after I get paid, I’ll let you know how it is =D.

Also, the game’s intro has been released as a video, download it here, believe me, it’s worth it.

Can’t wait!

Cheers,

~4zzdawg

Acer Aspire One – How to flash bios

Hey guys, Just thought I’d put together a how to on flashing the bios on the Acer Aspire One because I’ve got nothing else to blog about atm and it might help people. Alright, I’ll just do it step by step, and with pictures if needed. Feel free to Digg it.

Requirements: Your Aspire One, a Power point and AC adapter, a flash drive with about 4MB free

1. Plug in your flash drive
2. Download your desired bios version here http://www.acerpanam.com/synapse/forms/portal20.cfm?website=AcerPanAm.com/au&siteid=8116&areaid=12&formid=3394#results
3. Extract the contents of the Bios flash you downloaded in the last step onto your flash drive with a tool such as WinRar
4. Download UNetbootin here http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/ (make sure you get the version right for your OS)
5. Run the UNetbootin executable.
6. In the “Select Distribution” field, select FreeDOS, and don’t worry about the version
7. At the bottom where it says “Type: USB Drive”, leave it, and next to it, where it says “Drive:” Select the drive letter of your flash drive. MAKE SURE you get the right one, or you might muck up your iPod or anything else plugged in. This is what it looks like for me, my flash drive is drive F:\      
8. Press OK
9. Wait
   
10. When done press Reboot Now – At this point, you may wish to print this page out, or load it on another computer, as you won’t be able to get to it on your aspire one until you’re finished flashing the bios.
11. When the computer is booting, keep pressing F12, until the Boot Menu is displayed, Select “USB HDD: (The name of your brand of flash drive)” and press enter
12. Wait for it to “Automatic boot” then select Number 5 “FreeDOS Live CD only”.
13. You will get a error about a cdrom, but it doesn’t matter. Type “C:” and press enter
14. Go to the folder where your update files are (the one with the .bat that you extracted), to do this type “cd <directory name>” without the arrows or inverted commas, so if the folder’s name is update, type “cd update”. Note: Not all flash drives work, if the installation files do not appear, make sure they are actually there, and try another flash drive.
15. Make sure you’ve got the power plugged in, orelse the update won’t work.
16. Type “dir”, you will see a great big list of files pop up, one of them will have BAT in the second column and it’s name will be something like 3304, which is in the first column, get back to the C:\ prompt by pressing any key, then type in the files name, so in my case “3304.bat” and press enter.
17. The flashing will now commence, sit back and relax, although it’s rather fast.
18. Give yourself a pat on the back.

All done, you’ve just flashed your computers bios, neat hey?

Companies send out bios updates to fix computer issues, with the one I flashed it fixed things like my wireless card not working, and the screen flickering.

Thanks for reading, if you need any extra help or explanation with the how to, email me at 4zzdawg@4zzdawg.com.

Also, leave me a comment if I helped you out =]

~4zzdawg

 

PS. If the update files don’t show up when you boot into FreeDos, it could be that your flash drive is not supported properly in freedos (or some other aspect of booting it).

Unfortunately the only known option is to try a different flash drive.

If you’re looking to buy another flash drive just for the flash, I know that the HP flash drives work fine and so does the Transcend JF v30.

Thanks to Steve for this information on flash drives.

Feel free to post flash drives that are known to work for this or ones that don’t work for other users to refer to when buying a flash drive.

Windows 7 New Features

Hey guys,

Been reading about and found some of the cool new features that Windows 7 is going to be released with, most of them just making it easier to use for the end user.

They’ve introduced a stack-like feature called “jump-lists” into the taskbar for folders or applications to use. Applications can program in different things that they want to be shown in the jump-lists, or you can just have a folder jump-list, like in Leapord.

Also the system tray is going to be a lot tidyer, with full control over what shows up, and what is hidden.

Two more things about the system tray is that it looks like it’s going to be transparent, like Vista Aero and that the Programs are going to be represented by icons instead of text and icons..

There’s also going to be changes to UAC, it’s going to be a lot easier to control, and less annoying. Instead of having it on or off, you can control which types of UAC alerts show up, and which don’t. So you can say things like “Alert me when an External program is trying to access my files”.

A big focus for Microsoft with this release seems to be touch screens, and gestures for touch screens. “Throwing” an open window to the top of the screen will maximize it, “throwing” to either side will make it take up that half of the screen, making for easy multi-tasking.  ”Throwing” to the bottom will minimize a program.

The only other cool feature I can remember right now is the ability to see a picture of any hardware you have attatched to your computer via USB, and possibly even internal components, much like Leapord and iTunes (which shows your iPod or iPhone).

Oh, one last thing, Microsoft’s going to be making a version of 7 made specially for netbooks, which will be lightweight and good on your resources.

I’ll let you know when I find out more about Windows 7, I’m also trying to get a beta at the moment, I’ll let you know how it goes.

Thanks for reading

~4zzdawg

Acer Cashback Offers

Hey guys,

Just writing to let you know how my experience with Acer’s Cashback offer on my Aspire One was.

I sent away for the cashback on the 2^nd of November 2008, it was really easy, I just had to print the form, and send a copy of my receipt and the SNID barcode.

I’ve just received it today (the 22nd of December..).

Not very happy at all with that.. almost 2 months waiting for my cashback. So if you’re buying anything from acer because of a cashback offer, don’t rely on a cheque coming in the mail to help out with bills, etc.

One more thing to note is that when registering for my cashback Acer kept asking me if I wanted to extend my warranty for free instead of getting the cashback (which might be useful for some people).

Thanks for reading

~4zzdawg

Aspire One – Function Keys and Loading Times (Hibernation and Startup)

Heyyy guys.

Just thought I’d let you know about all the Function buttons on the Aspire One, as I’m really bored and it’s got a few cool features which I haven’t seen before (although I don’t see many netbooks).

Heres a bit of a list of some of the ones I found interesting..

• Fn+F2 – System Properties
• Fn+F3 – Power Options – Always good to have at your fingertips
• Fn+F4 – Sleep button – Ok, I’ll admit, it’s not new or special, but I like using it for Hibernate and thought I would mention it.
• Fn+F6 – Turn the screen off, turns back on instantly with any keypress or mouse movement.

Oh, and another thing I thought I might mention is loading times, this thing is amazing with hibernation.

It takes about 10 seconds from when you press the hibernate button to be done (depending on what you’re running, and only 14 seconds to resume from hibernation, which I thought was incredible.

The startup times aren’t as impressive, but impressive nonetheless, it starts in around about 30 seconds, ready to use, not much point to this if you can hibernate though (except when you need to restart).

You’ll be hearing more about the Aspire One from me soon.

Thanks for reading.

~4zzdawg