stuffzone:unlimited

ATI - Invalid Display Adapter Error - Adapter Disabled - Incompatible Driver (4870 X2)

2008-10-25T05:07:00.003-04:00

I ran into quite a few issues trying to install a new video card today, the ATI Radeon 4870 X2 by Sapphire on Vista Ultimate.

After pulling the previous Nvidia 7950 GT from the system and barely fitting in the monstruous 4870 X2, I booted into Windows and proceeded to install the latest drivers 8.10. Prompted to reboot, I did and then disaster; Vista would disable at least one of the adapter saying something along the lines that the driver is not compatible with the VGA adapter installed. Something that made absolutely no sense.

I did try uninstalling and reinstalling many times, while also making sure there are no more Nvidia drivers and files left. Not much luck there for me.

Here's what worked after all:

- Uninstall any and all display adapter and ATI software from the Control Panel/Remove Programs, including the ATI Catalyst Install Manager. When finished and prompted to reboot, don't.

Download and install Driver Sweeper from Guru3D. It's a free and clean piece of software.

Analyze and clean for ATI and Nvidia display drivers using Driver Sweeper. If you get errors just close the program and reopen and do one at a time: ATI - analyse and clean, then Nvidia.

When done, reboot. When computer restarts, hit F8 to be prompted with the Safe Mode startup screen.

Disclaimer: The following stepsmay involve making changes to the registry either by using automatic software or manually removing files. Backup your registry first. There are many guides who show how to do that. I take no responsibility for anything that may happen by following these steps. They just worked for me.

Now I don't know if it's like that on all computers, but I had the option of enabling Low-Resolution (640x480 mode). I chose that option to boot. Once in Windows, I went to Device Manager and uninstalled whatever was under Display Adapters. Then I ran Driver Sweeper again and cleaned as much as possible for ATI and Nvidia files. If Driver Sweeper fails to clean some registry files, just check the location, run regedit yourself and delete these files manually.

Reboot. When back in normal Windows, I downloaded and installed the previous version of the drivers, 8.9 as I had read that some had success with that. After installing things seemed back to normal. I rebooted and then also obtained the latest hotfix for Far Cry 2 from ATI, which is a slightly updated version of the 8.10 drivers, somewhat newer.

That's it. Hope it helps somehow.

Quick Facebook Numbers

2008-05-12T09:45:00.001-04:00

If you've ever wondered how many servers it takes to run a website like Facebook, wonder no more. Although Facebook has never made it public, it is estimated to be around 10,000 servers, according to this CNET article.

Some other interesting numbers (all estimates):

Members: 70 million +
Revenue (projected for 2008): 350 million
Employee headcount: 450, with possibility to rise to more than 1000

Source: Facebook borrows $100 million

Hard Drive model numbers explained (WD)

2008-03-06T20:30:00.002-05:00

In case you wanted to know exactly what those extra letters and numbers on your hard drive mean exactly, here's a very useful information sheet. This applies only for Western Digital hard drives. As I come across similar details from other hard drive manufacturers, I will update this article.

Click here for the WD Model and Order Number Format

iPhone: Quick iPod Shortcut/Music Controls

2008-02-24T17:43:00.003-05:00

I have come across a little nifty shortcut on the iPhone that allows almost immediate access to the music controls. Almost everyone knows by now that the home button can be configured with different functions when double "clicking" on it. However, the same button seems to double as a shortcut for music controls, whenever the iPod application is running (actually, also when it does not).

I have configured my home button to go to Contacts tab whenever I am in in another application. Interestingly enough, however, if I double hit Home when I am at the Home screen, while there is music playing in the background, you'll get a little window with Previous/Pause/Next buttons.

Even better, the same little window with music controls appears also when double hitting Home while at the Lock screen! That's big.. at least for me.. because it means i don't have to slide and unlock and change to iPod in order to control the music (for when you are in the car for example and need to keep your eyes on the road ;)).

Now, if music is not playing and music (iPod) application is closed and you are at the lock screen, you can still double hit Home and get access to music controls and start playing the music! That again is big :).

To illustrate everything, here are some screenshots of what I've been describing:

At the lock screen with music application not running

At the Home screen with music playing

At the Lock screen with music playing and iPhone charging

At the Lock screen with music playing and iPhone not charging

Wow! Wanna have a 3D VR monitor?

2008-02-22T15:28:00.002-05:00

Gotta watch this... this would be so cool for so many applications. But for starters, I would like to see this for mere picture viewing, as shown in the video. Next, such a device on a gaming console, playing Call of Duty 4 online would be like the ultimate gaming experience today :).

Read the article

ZDNet: A dozen free & essential apps for Windows

2008-02-22T14:44:00.001-05:00

A neat little collection of free software that I happen to have already installed on my system; not all, but most of the mentioned applications. It's a great reference for when you have just installed/reinstalled Windows.

Read on at ZDNet...

Massive "laptops"

2008-02-21T16:48:00.002-05:00

We're starting to see more and more of these massive machines intended for portable scenarios. The Dell XPS M2010 is one attractive system with a number of features that to me were appealing enough to actually go for it, but now others seem to want to hop on the train of pleasing to the eye, sexy machines that stop others in their tracks.

HP has refined their original 20" HDX laptop, which was much more of an actual laptop than Dell's M2010 (since the M2010 is heavier, thicker and meant more for desk use than lap use). The new HDX has a 1080p screen ( which is a nice + ), offers a fast cpu which seems to actually not offer as much performance as one would think, and choice of blu-ray and hd-dvd drives. Despite all, the screen does not offer the same flexibility as Dell's M2010 sleek silver hinges, it does not have a wireless keyboard and mouse or a wowy pop-up slot dvd drive :).

I wonder how much of these HP will sell especially since HP's HDX page doesn't even come close to Dell's M2010 product information page.

Got a desktop? Got a laptop? Use Google Browser Sync

2008-02-21T16:13:00.001-05:00

I accidentally came across this little Browse Sync Firefox extension from Google which lets you use your Google account to synchronize Firefox browser settings among two or more computers. This is great because you no longer need to add bookmarks twice, on every computer, and everything is done in the background. Simply install the extension on both systems, choose a pin and you're in sync!

Google has a few more extensions for Firefox that you may find useful.

Quickie: What is an exabyte?

2008-02-21T16:08:00.001-05:00

An exabyte is hopefully the storage capacity of my next computer. Seriously now, an exabyte is a quintillion bytes, or a billion gigabytes!! My system currently has roughly one thousand gigabytes, which is called a terabyte. So I am getting there...

Lunar eclipse pictures

2008-02-21T00:11:00.004-05:00

Here are some pictures taken earlier this evening by yours truly. The lunar eclipse took place today, February 20 2008, between roughly 9PM and 10PM EST. For those interested, the shots were taken with a Nikon D50 with a 70-300mm VR lens, in shutter priority mode. Images were cropped and resized, slight sharpening applied, however colors, brightness and contrast were left as taken. This was my first time photographing a lunar eclipse (on a very cold winter night).

I thought a little description from NASA may come in handy:

A total eclipse of the Moon occurs during the night of Wednesday, February 20/21, 2008. The entire event is visible from South America and most of North America (on Feb. 20) as well as Western Europe, Africa, and western Asia (on Feb. 21). During a total lunar eclipse, the Moon's disk can take on a dramatically colorful appearance from bright orange to blood red to dark brown and (rarely) very dark gray.

An eclipse of the Moon can only take place at Full Moon, and only if the Moon passes through some portion of Earth's shadow. The shadow is actually composed of two cone-shaped parts, one nested inside the other. The outer shadow or penumbra is a zone where Earth blocks some (but not all) of the Sun's rays. In contrast, the inner shadow or umbra is a region where Earth blocks all direct sunlight from reaching the Moon.

This page at NASA discusses this year's lunar eclipse in more detail. For more general info on lunar eclipses, read the Lunar Eclipse for Beginners.

Royalties: What the war was all about

2008-02-19T16:00:00.002-05:00

As always as far as business goes, it all boils down to money... lots of money. Read this article to see why Blu-ray put up such a big game and for some insight into how the industry works.

Forget about customer satisfaction or superiority of image quality. The real issue in the war between Blu-ray and HD DVD was about royalties.
...
Royalties were one of the primary reasons that it took so long to get manufacturers to come out with players that could handle both HD DVD and Blu-ray discs. Manufacturers with dual-format players have to license technology from both camps, which boosts costs.

Read on at News.com

Comparison: Get In Sync with Syncing Software

2008-02-17T23:18:00.000-05:00

Get In Sync with Syncing Software

A great comparison from Tom's Hardware of different file syncing software; something I have particularly long awaited. Having used SyncToy until now, for fairly simple file syncing tasks between my desktop and an external hard drive, at times I have found myself needing more advanced features than what SyncToy current offers.

Vista: Backup Fails with I/O device error (0x8007045D)

2007-10-22T13:23:00.001-04:00

One of Vista Ultimate’s advertised virtues over other Vista versions are its Backup features. Why is it then that my first attempt to do a complete PC backup with Vista’s Backup and Restore program failed miserably?

What I wanted was simple: select the C:\ drive and make an image of that drive so that I can restore it in the unfortunate event if one of my RAID 0 drives fails. The image size was around 100GB and was to be backed up on one of the (many) SATA drives in the computer. After proceeding with the backup, all went smoothly until the very end, when the backup job failed with the following error:

The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error (0x8007045D)

I/O device error?? Where, why? My initial thoughts were that I may have corrupted hard drives or some other serious problem with no easy fix to it. Fortunately, the fix is easier than you’d think, if you know it that is. The problem seems to be with the contents of the shadow copies System Restore creates.

To overcome the I/O device error and be able to complete the backup succesfuly, you must reset the shadow copies. Here’s how to do it:

- Press Windows Key + Pause/Break to bring up the System Properties window (or right click Computer and choose Properties or go to Control Panel, then System and Maintenance, then System).

- On the left, click on Advanced System Settings.

- In the next small System Properties window that appears, go to the System Protection tab.

- On this tab, you most likely have Local Disk (C:) checked. To stop creating shadow copies, you must uncheck it and click apply.

- Now to reset the contents of the shadow copies, you must enable it again. So put a checkmark back next to Local Disk (C:) and click OK.

Try to do the backup again. It should work now.

He was a hacker for the MPAA

2007-10-22T09:40:00.000-04:00

Read on for insight into the practices of the Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA), in its battle against online movie piracy. An actual battle alright since they are employing the same piratous techniques as those they are accusing of being pirates; pirates that cause the movie industry billions in lost sales every year.

In an exclusive interview with Wired News, gun-for-hire hacker Robert Anderson tells for the first time how the Motion Picture Association of America promised him money and power if he provided confidential information on TorrentSpy, a popular BitTorrent search site.

At Wired news.

iPhone: Corrupted Pictures Fix

2007-10-21T04:14:00.000-04:00

In case you get some errors in iTunes while syncing your pictures saying something along the lines of "The "image" was not transferred because it could not display properly", and then you found corrupted images in the respective folder in your iphone, try the following:

- With your iPhone connected, in the Pictures folder of iTunes, remove the checkmark next to the folder containing the problematic images and click Apply. This will unsync the respective images.
- Then open up My Computer, navigate to the image folder in question and rename the folder differently.

- Go back to iTunes and place that checkmark back again and click Apply to let iTunes sync those images back to your iPhone.

This should solve it or at least this did it for me. Let me know if you've had success with it as well.

Give your iPhone a paint job

2007-10-15T08:32:00.000-04:00

Even the most expensive and impressive devices can become unspecial and boring. The more people have it, the less special your special gadget gets. So if you've had your iPhone for a while and you're tired of its sexy looks, send it in for a brand new paint job.

ColorWare is the company that's been know to put new life into Apple products. They are now offering iPhone painting services, complete with a very nice website that allows you to entirely customize and preview every aspect of the iPhone: the back, the bottom, the frame, the button, the logo, the earbuds and the dock.

The cost? Not cheap. Depending on how heavily you want your iPhone customized, it can go up to $219. That is more than half of the cost of the phone itself!

Here's an image of how i might customize mine were I to go crazy one of these days.

Go and customize your own or read a review about the paint job quality here.

Firefox: the amazing PicLens extension

2007-10-01T02:16:00.001-04:00

A worthy Firefox add-on writing about, the PicLens extension is a blessing for those who often look at pictures on the web. And who doesn't?

What does it do? It completely changes your picture browsing experience on the popular image websites. As of the date of this post, it is compatible with Flickr, Facebook, Google Images, Yahoo Images, Friendster and Personal and commersites enabled for PicLens with MediaRSS (learn more about MediaRSS here, and learn how to use it here).

PicLens instantly transforms your browser into a full-screen slideshow experience. With just one click, PicLens makes photos and images come to life via an immersive presentation that goes beyond the confines of the traditional Firefox browser window.

So wait no more, install it today then go to your favorite supported web album and be amazed.

What? You don't have Firefox? Shame on you. Click here to install Firefox NOW!

Give Blogger Play a try

2007-09-19T18:40:00.000-04:00

Google has done it yet again. For those who have a few minutes to spare to stare at some images, or for those whose monitor is used for decoration purposes more than anything else, Google has come up with Blogger Play, a very simple, cool and functional slideshow that displays images just uploaded by bloggers worldwide, in no particular order, with no particular subject. I wonder how much monitoring goes into what Blogger Play actually shows.

So give it a try, you'll get the hang of it within a few seconds. Read more about it here.

Visit Blogger Play

Solution: iTunes doesn't detect iPhone in Vista

2007-09-19T18:01:00.000-04:00

Do a google seach on "itunes iphone vista problems" and you'll have a good idea of how many people are having issues syncing their iPhone to iTunes in Vista. The kind of problems vary a lot, but one more so than the others: Vista detects iPhone just fine, as Apple iPhone, but iTunes knows nothing about it being connected to the computer.

Some of the suggested solutions are as follows:

- Try a high-powered USB port, one that is not on your keyboard or other device but rather directly on the computer itself.
- Uninstall Apple Software Update, Apple Mobile Device Support and iTunes , reboot and then reinstall iTunes.
- Disconnect any other USB devices that may be conflicting with the installation, like webcams and such and reinstall iTunes.

Many people reported having fixed the issues by simply reinstalling iTunes as described above, yet many others, including myself, still experience the same issues after reinstalling 20 times. So what to do? Well, that's where it becomes blury for most and tricky therefore to fix it.

I concluded that the problems must arise from certain software of services that are running and preventing iTunes to install properly. To isolate this problem, you must disable any non-essential services and programs that run at startup. Do that by running 'msconfig' from the start menu (open Start menu, type msconfig and press enter).

I won't go too in depth as to what you need to disable and what not, since services and software vary widely from computer to computer. Also, be aware that your computer may have problems loading Windows if you disable some service or software that you shouldn't disable, so you've been warned.

On the services tab, check Hide all Microsoft services and then click Disable All. This will disable, theoretically, all services that are not essential to the running of Windows. Now go to the Startup tab and go through the list and disable by removing the checkmark from the entries that may not be required for a one time clean boot. Software like antivirus, cd-burning, acrobat, printer drivers, webcam drivers and software, etc. Once you're done, click Ok, and reboot the computer.

I should specify again, that this step (of disabling services and startup items) should be done after you have uninstalled Apple Software Update, Apple Mobile Device Center and iTunes, thus allowing you to boot clean(er) and install iTunes without risking other software or drivers to interfere.

Assuming you booted clean as described above, install iTunes (latest version) and pray that it will detect your iPhone when you launch it. If it does, you're good to go and now you just need to restore and enable the services and startup items that you previously disabled and reboot your PC. The msconfig utility has a column that shows when an entry was disabled so that will make very easy for you to know exactly which ones you disabled a few minutes ago. After restoring the services and startup items, assuming iTunes installed correctly and detected your iPhone when you booted clean, iTunes should no longer have trouble detecting the iPhone afterwards.

If iTunes still doesn't detect your iPhone, well at least you tried. If you do find another fix, post a comment here and i will update this post. Good luck!

Quickcam software woes: Uninstall and Reinstall Procedures

2007-09-15T11:36:00.001-04:00

I like Logitech products. My work area is filled with such hardware. But their software and drivers seriously lack. I dream of the day when they will get that part of the products right.

Until that magical day will come, we have to deal with the issues created by the drivers. So far, most problems were caused by the webcam drivers. What makes this even more frustrating is that due to Logitech's unified driver architecture, which means the same driver package is required for any and all (recent) webcams, whether you get the cheapest Quickcam or the most expensive, you are prone to be at some point affected by the driver issues.

What to do then? Uninstall and reinstall the quirky software. The problem? It's a longer process than it needs to be.

Logitech does provide fairly clear instructions on how this uninstall and reinstall of the Quickcam software should be execute, but these instructions are hidden deep into their user support forums. So to possibly make life simpler for some, i have dug up these instructions and posted them here for quicker access.

Link: How to uninstall and reinstall the Quickcam software

Link: Clean Boot procedures for Vista, XP, ME and 98. Click here for Windows 2000.

Quick Tip: Easily install fonts in Vista

2007-09-11T23:30:00.000-04:00

This may seem trivial for some, but it may be revealing for many others. While in Windows XP, there was no easier or faster way to install fonts other than copying them to the Windows/Fonts folder or creating a customized SendTo menu entry, Vista makes it much easier.

In Windows Vista you can quickly install fonts simply by right clicking on the font file and clicking "Install". Vista will automatically copy the font file to the Windows Fonts Folder and thus install it. You even get an installation progress bar with that!

Update 10/09/2007: I have come across a situation where the Install feature described above was missing in Vista. When right clicking a .ttf font file, I simply didn't have the option of clicking on Install, as it was simply not there.

Knowing for a fact that the functionality should be there, as far as font files are concerned, i was set to find a solution as I had to restore many font files and this is the quickest method of installing fonts in Vista.

After a few minutes of googling and pondering, i realized what the problem was: the .ttf font files had been re-associated with another program, ACDSee. Usually, the font files are/should be associated with "Windows Font Viewer". So, to restore the aforementioned functionality, right click the font file in question, go to Open With... , Choose Default Program and choose Windows Font Viewer, click OK. Right click again and you should see the Install option. Problem solved.

How beautiful simple can be

2007-09-11T19:35:00.001-04:00

Sometimes you come across a website that you just have to tell people about. The new microsite for Bentley, adverstising the 2008 Continental GT and Continental GT Speed models, is such a worthy site.

Why is it worth writing about it? The combination of refined simplicity, straightforwardness and eye ravishing photography make this website one to keep looking at. If you've ever been a fan of Bentley cars, especially the Continental models, you'll find best in class images and wallpapers to keep you happy for a good while. Make sure you go to Menu > Gallery & Wallpapers to savor and save them ALL.

Visit the website: www.continentalgt.com

Microsoft Professional Photography

2007-09-06T15:48:00.000-04:00

Filling out a survey for SyncToy today, I was redirected to Microsoft's Professional Photography site, which I knew nothing of. There are some great resources there, good reads and even photo contests.

A particularly interesting article (actually series of articles as it is in two parts) is The Ultimate Setup in which you can read how professional Sports Illustrated photographers set up their equipment to capture magazine-quality shots at the NCAA Final Four games.

While you're on the site, don't miss a great how-to for my favourite digital image processing software, ACDSee Pro. Read it here.

Adobe CS3 Custom Icons

2007-09-05T12:15:00.000-04:00

For those CS3 fans out there who may not be so crazy after the original CS3 icons, here are some which will hopefully make your day.

These icons were created by icon artist Adam Betts and they are for Mac users. For the Windows version, they were ported by Eli (the-ace) from DeviantArt with permission.

Mac OSX CS3 Icons: http://www.artofadambetts.com/weblog/?p=190

Windows CS3 Icons: http://the-ace.deviantart.com/art/Adobe-CS-3-Icons-Replacement-53728408

On a similar note, in case you've missed the Creative Suite 3 wallpapers by Adobe, here's a link.

Blogging with Word 2007 and… Blogger

2007-06-11T14:21:00.001-04:00

As you may have noticed, this is a Blogger blog. I've used it for a while, I like it, it's cool… and it's free. It's cool because it's free, but also because it's fairly capable for a free solution.

There are quite a few ways to publish posts to Blogger: by logging in to Blogger and using the regular interface, from within your browser via various toolbars, add-ons and extensions, via an email message or as few may know at this point, directly from Word 2007. One of the most popular blogging methods is probably the actual Blogger interface but, in order to save and/or publish you need to be connected to the internet. This is where composing the blog posts with Word 2007 comes in handy.

With Word 2007 you don't need to be connected to the internet to start jotting down ideas and write the entire post or fear that the connection will drop and you won't have any means to save or publish what you've written so far. The blog post is saved locally on your computer and when you are ready to publish and have internet connectivity, you simply click the Publish button and Word 2007 does its thing. Configuring Word 2007 to work with your favorite blogging platform is as easy as choosing your blogging provider and entering your username and password.

How do you start a blog post? In Word 2007, go to New and instead of choosing a "Blank Document", choose "New blog post". If you haven't configured a blog account yet, click on Manage Accounts and a small window will open where you can add a new account. Click on new, choose a blog provider, click Next and enter your username and password and you're done. The current blog providers available are:

Windows Live Spaces
Blogger
Sharepoint blog
Community server
TypePad
Wordpress

If your blog provider is not listed you can also choose Other and fill in details such API address and blog post URL, information which your blog provider should make available in its support section.

So here it was, a quick post about blogging in Word 2007, written and published directly from Word 2007. Give it a try yourself.