Tech Support

Bug in Intel Graphics under XP on Sony Vaio Z

By Howard | Published September 12th, 2008

If you close the new Sony Vaio Z series laptop while it is running in Stamina Mode (using an Intel GMA 4500MHD chip) it WILL NOT wake the screen up when you resume from standby. This video shows my new Sony Vaio Z (VGN-Z11VN) running the XP downgrade drivers version 6.14.10.4953 dated 21/05/2008 from Sony….

Disable Notification Area Balloon Tips in Windows XP

By Howard | Published August 29th, 2008

I’m rebuilding my new Sony Vaio Z with Windows XP, and as usual there are a load of tweaks I need to make to the OS before I feel “at home” again.  Since the fingerprint reader software on the new build has an annoying habit of popping up info balloons on every boot – regardless…

Nooo! Infrant ReadyNAS NV Death

By Howard | Published June 27th, 2007

Noooo! One of my ReadyNAS devices died today. Based on the “hot component” smell and the fact that nothing lights up I’m hoping that it’s just the PSU/mainboard that fried, and that all my disks with their lovely XRAIDed data are intact. I’ve sent a trouble ticket to support, but since they’re now owned by…

m0n0wall and MS Virtual Server

By Howard | Published March 4th, 2006

We recently had the need to simulate a routed environment with low bandwidth/high latency links between remote sites.  To achieve this I used m0n0wall – a free software router – running inside Microsoft Virtual Server on multiple virtual NICs.  Here’s how to get it up and running…

SpeedswitchXP

By Howard | Published September 14th, 2005

I’ve blogged about this guys stuff before (when I had an Inspiron that overheated) but now he’s saving me grief on a different Dell. SpeedswitchXP allows you to force the speed of your processor to high-speed if speed-step, or Windows itself insists on running it at half speed. Very useful if your 1.8GHz machine keeps…

Speed Up IE’s HTTP requests

By Howard | Published January 3rd, 2005

This is one of those handy tips that I first found out about around IE 4.something, and keep forgetting to write down anywhere – so every time I want to do it again on a new machine I need to Google for it! So here it is in permanent blog form. To comply with current…

Dell Tech Support

By Howard | Published September 13th, 2004

Have a recent Dell portable? Beware of thermal problems due to a badly designed heatsink!

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