Here’s a brief explanation of the Notepad++ compare icons which are surprisingly undocumented:
You can access the compare menu from Plugins, Compare, Compare or by simply selecting Alt-D. You need to load the 2 files to compare first and have them as the last 2 on your tabbed list.
If you see the error “We’re sorry Thunderbird had a problem and has crashed”, all is not lost. I’ll take you through some fault-finding stages that may help.
Here’s what the window looks like on most computers:
Yikes, not great information there and submitting information to Mozilla doesn’t help you in the short term, although it helps them to develop the software better.
OK, the first step I take is to download and install the excellent free MozBackup from here:
https://mozbackup.jasnapaka.com/download.php
Close all open programs and run the tool. Create a backup accepting all the default options (this backs up everything).
Now we can work on the program without risk of losing data. Download the latest version of Thunderbird from here:
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/all.html
Now we are going to run the installation program and install it to the exact same location your existing one is in. Note, we are not uninstalling the existing version. If you are not sure of the location, accept the defaults. The installation program will not tell you it has detected an existing version but that’s OK.
For reference, I have done this countless times and the last was overwriting a version 8 with version 9. If you are running a really old version then there may be a compatibility issue but I haven’t found anything that version 9 can’t successfully overwrite yet.
Now we can start Thunderbird. It may prompt to update plugins which you can accept or disable those you don’t use. You should find your data exactly as you had before. In my experience, you only need to fill in your SMTP server details (if at all). If you have anything missing you can run MozBackup to reinstate it.
Install any plugins or add-ons that aren’t there that you previously had such as Spam filtering (via an Internet Security package or other such as SpamFighter etc).
Job’s a good’un and you should now have a fully functioning Mozilla Thunderbird without the “We’re sorry Thunderbird had a problem and has crashed” window!
Midnight Commander is a great free file manager but the problem is people are overwhelmed by the interface. Here is a quickie Midnight Commander tutorial so you can navigate and get to the files you want.
All files and directories can be moved, copied or deleted and their contents viewed by using the F keys on your keyboard. Make reference to the options list on your screen. Use a combination of F key, cursor and mouse to navigate around the screen.
In the directory panes, select single files simply by using your cursor keys to get to them. Select multiple files by using your Insert key to highlight and press Insert again on any file to deselect.
You can filter for groups of files: the + key will bring up a selection box into which you can enter wildcards. A wildcard selects all files of a certain type, for example:
*.doc
would select all files that have the ending “.doc” in a given directory.
You can view contents or edit files using the F keys on your keyboard and press Enter (or double-click) on a file to execute or open it with an external program if you have this installed in the environment you are running in. Since most people will be using this from a boot CD then you may not be able to open any file. If using Linux then you need to have the program installed in your distro to open the corresponding file.
There are two ‘file’ menus. F9 is for accessing operations such as changing permissions or ownership. F2 deals mostly with zipping and extracting files and subdirectories.
Note: In Midnight Commander if you are moving or copying files, it will first assume you are doing this to the opposing directory, but gives you the option to change the destination.
Hope this helps!
With Notepad++ freshly installed, the default behaviour for the search function is to select either “Up” or “Down” directions. This for most programmers is hugely annoying because the document start or end is reached before all instances of the word or phrase are found. Find and replace uses the same functionality too.
Fortunately, there is a fix. You should tick the “Wrap around” checkbox as I have highlighted below. This will then give you the (correct?) full search behaviour.
Hope this helps shave a few minutes off your day and saves some RSI on the wrists!
This is a guide which shows you how to install Xampp on Windows 7 64 bit.
Visit apachefriends.org to get the Xampp distribution for Windows. I prefer the non-installation zip file so let’s get this one. The zip or 7zip files are the same but you’ll need another zip utility such as 7zip or WinRar to unpack the 7zip archive. If in doubt, get the zip as Windows can extract files from this one.
Unpack the zip file onto your hard drive. My test PC was partitioned into C and D so I unpacked the file to get this structure:
d:\xampp
You can likewise use your C drive, just replace D with C in all my examples. I prefer a separate partition so that a Windows reload would not wipe these files and since it’s a standalone installation, a new Windows install would allow Xampp to work with no configuration.
Next, we should now be able to run the Xampp control panel by navigating to the newly created xampp folder in My Computer, then double clicking this file:
d:\xampp\xampp_control.exe
If this is not visible, there is an icon in the system tray (bottom right of the screen) that will pop the Xampp Control Panel up again. You may need to use the arrow to expand the tray icons and make it visible. At this point I usually make the tray icon always accessible by dragging it to the visible tray area.
Tick the svc boxes under MySQL and Apache and click the Start button on both. You now should have both services report that they are running
Xampp and Skype – arch enemies
After a lot of testing I came to this conclusion…. they both hate each other! They are fighting for attention on port 80. Now we can either make Skype dump data on another port or, and I believe this to be the better way, close Skype while we are working in the Xampp environment. Given that there is a bug in Skype on Windows 7 where it is always displayed on the taskbar, even when closed or signed out, you will need to completely close Skype in Windows 7. The solution and quickest way is to right click on the Skype icon on the taskbar and click on Quit. This stops Skype from monitoring port 80.
Other offenders can include TeamViewer, UVNC, Crossloop and LogMeIn if they are set to be resident. Simply quit these applications to avoid conflicts.
OK, let’s push forward and check we now have Apache and MySQL running by firing up Xampp’s information page. In your browser’s address bar, type in:
https://localhost/xampp/
This should give you this Welcome and Information screen:
In this screen there should be a page with a column of options down the left side. Now depending on your screen size and whether your browser has toolbars installed, you may miss the bottom few lines. On our test laptop with a 15.4″ screen this missed the last few rows.
No problem though, we can disable the toolbars temporarily or just type in the browser command we require. Here you can see the last entry for reference:
Right, so we can now setup WordPress as all we require is Apache and MySQL to simulate our server.
We are going to use phpMyAdmin to create our database that WordPress will run on. On the Xampp info page, click on the menu item ‘phpMyAdmin’ OR in your browser go to
https://localhost/phpmyadmin/
Note I am using forward slashes here but if you use backslashes it will resolve to the same place. Best to use Unix server syntax though as it’s great practice if you are a Windows user wanting to do things correctly! It will stand you in good stead if you need to get your hands dirty on a real server.
Okey dokey, let’s setup WordPress’s database. Under MySQL Localhost, type in “wordpress” as the database name. Check your options are as shown below:
If you are seeing a slightly different screen to the one above, this is because you’ll be running a later version of phpMyAdmin. No problem, the important thing to make sure you get right is the utf8_general_ci and the name of the database. The name of the database can be anything really, just don’t use special characters. I often use the name of the domain I am developing.
Let’s move on to WordPress now. Download the latest and greatest version from here and unzip it to your desktop. You should now have a folder called wordpress. Open this and look for the file
wp-config-sample.php
Look for the following lines
/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define('DB_NAME', 'database_name_here');
/** MySQL database username */
define('DB_USER', 'username_here');
/** MySQL database password */
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'password_here');
/** MySQL hostname */
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');
/** Database Charset to use in creating database tables. */
define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8');
Carefully edit the lines to read this:
/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define('DB_NAME', 'wordpress');
/** MySQL database username */
define('DB_USER', 'root');
/** MySQL database password */
define('DB_PASSWORD', '');
/** MySQL hostname */
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');
/** Database Charset to use in creating database tables. */
define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8');
I’d advise you stick to this because in Xampp, ‘root’ is the default user and there is no password. Note that I only modded 3 lines, I just left the last 2 in for info as some people change these unnecessarily. Now save this file as wp-config.php in the same wordpress directory (it will not work if you just save it as wp-config-sample.php!)
Copy the whole wordpress folder over to the xampp htdocs directory so you now have
d:\xampp\htdocs\wordpress
Developer tip:
If you are setting up Xampp as a test environment for building client websites, use the name of the client or their domain instead of ‘wordpress’ as a folder name. At this point, you can copy the folder to another within htdocs and rename it to something else, ready for your next project,eg:
htdocs\domain1
htdocs\domain2
Navigate in your browser to
https://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php
and you should see the WordPress installation routine. Choose the following:
Site name: TESTSITE
Username: abc
Password: abc
Untick the “Allow my site to appear in search engines…” box
Add any email address
Click “Install WordPress”
At the ‘Success’ screen, login with username: abc and password: abc
You can now login at any time that xampp is running Apache and MySQL by going to this url in your browser:
https://localhost/wordpress/wp-login.php
Congratulations! You can now modify your WordPress theme files directly in the WordPress themes folder (wp-content/themes/theme-name) and refresh your browser page for quick and easy theme or template development with no FTP! Once you have modded your files then you can save them elsewhere as a backup and upload them to your server. I recommend installing Mozy (see review) or Livedrive (see review) for a secure and easy online backup.
If you want to check out some more useful and interesting stuff you can do with Xampp and php, take a look at this book
Often, we need to change a PC or laptop’s boot order to start from CD, DVD, USB, external hard drive or floppy disk. It’s not difficult to do this but timing is important.
Turn on or restart your computer and watch for a message during the startup screen about which key to press. It’s usually Del, F10 or F2 and you need to press this key as soon as you see the message on screen. The window of opportunity is really quite small – about 2 seconds – before the computer loads the operating system (eg Windows).
Now, if you have done this correctly you will see another screen loaded. If you have gone on to the Windows load screen, you will need to wait, shutdown and try again. Don’t be tempted to turn the computer off on the button or at the wall socket as this will cause even worse problems.
The new screen you see is called the BIOS screen. It will look like this, although not exactly as many manufacturers will have different setups.
This allows control over the hardware in your PC such as CD/DVD, USB, memory, processor, hard disk drives etc. It is generally a blue background and navigation is done using the keyboard cursor keys (the arrows) and not the mouse. Navigate to the ‘boot’ area and change the order of the boot sequence so that your CD boots first. In the example above, the hard disk boots before the CD ROM so this would need changing. Save and exit the bios screen. This restarts the computer. Make sure you have a CD in the drive that you wish to boot from. Do likewise if you wish to boot from USB (some older BIOS systems do not support USB booting).
PCRepairMan’s top tip:
Note that many BIOS systems look confusing at first but they usually have helpful prompts for how to navigate and change values stored in them. In the screenshot above, you can see the bottom of the page shows Arrows to move, Enter to select, Page Up/Down to change values, F10 to save etc.
With a new boot order set, your computer will look to that device to start every time. This can be a problem after the fix, when the PC is set to boot to usb and you plug in a non-bootable USB, for example a printer. The BIOS can look at the printer and hang, waiting for it to do something. If this happens, simply change the boot sequence back to your hard drive first and this will resolve it.
Here are the current email settings for Tiscali users. Tiscali has been taken over by TalkTalk but users are still advised to use the old ‘legacy’ settings listed below.
Please bear in mind that there are 2 main types of email client setup, one which uses Pop3 and the other which uses IMAP. In short, IMAP “synchronises” your PC or phone with the Tiscali server and keeps emails on both while POP3 downloads all emails to your PC or phone. If you are setting this up on an iPhone, I’d recommend using the IMAP service. You can even use your PC on IMAP as well as your phone so everything syncs nicely.
Anyway, here are the current Tiscali email settings. I’ve included FTP and Webspace to make it a definitive list, but these aren’t needed to setup your email:
| Login | [email protected] |
| Incoming email (POP3) | pop.tiscali.co.uk |
| Incoming email (IMAP) | imap.tiscali.co.uk |
| Outgoing email (SMTP) | smtp.tiscali.co.uk |
| FTP server | ftp.myweb.tiscali.co.uk |
| Webspace address | https://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/directoryname |
Kaspersky Pure is a super-solid internet security package. Introduced in 2009, it has rapidly become the de-facto standard that all other packages are judged by. Detection rates are second to none and there is a built in antivirus, antispyware, parental control, firewall, anti-spam, safe run option and many more features.
My little-known method is to purchase an older Kaspersky software version that is fully licensed (from the offers below) but then download and install the latest Kaspersky Pure Trial from here. It will be a trial version but turns into the full version on activation. To activate, you can simply use the purchased licence key (from an older version) to activate the latest version when you are prompted. There is absolutely no need to install the older version at all (if you did it would just upgrade to the latest anyway). See here for some live deals on older versions and discounts on new ones too.
I highly recommend this security package over all others, with excellent detection rates and easy installation. PC performance is good post-install, and it runs happily on XP, Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8.
When the licence expires, take a look at this article to see a clever way you can renew for less money:
How to register Kaspersy Pure with a new product key
Because Kaspersky offers a free upgrade to this version from all previous ones from 2009 onwards, this is a completely legitimate method. Importantly, you will save LOTS of money without needing any underhanded pirate serial codes that only last for a few weeks. With Kaspersky prices being anything up to 85% cheaper in the deals below, it makes serious sense and you get the best security suite currently available.
Note: Please make sure that you purchase the correct licence for the number of computers you are installing Kaspersky on, ie the 3-user licence is for up to 3 separate PCs where the 1-user licence will only allow use on 1 PC. Also check that the product you download and install is the same as the product you have purchased the older version of, eg “Kaspersky Pure” not “Kaspersky Internet Security” or “Kaspersky Antivirus”
Personally, I’d go for the Kaspersky Pure package rather than just the antivirus as there will be a very small difference in cost but there’s a huge amount of extra functionality.
If you do use my method, please either drop a little donation in the tin, ‘Tweet’ or Facebook ‘like’ this article or just give me a link back to help others save some cash!
It’s worth checking out prices in my shop too as we often have great deals on Kasperky Pure in our antivirus store:
Buy discounted antivirus packages now
Do you have Norton products installed instead? If you wish to carry on with those, then be sure to checkout these:
Cheapest Norton Internet Security renewal Cheapest Norton Antivirus renewal Cheapest Norton 360 renewal
Instructions how to run check disk from Windows recovery console (Windows xp).
So what does chkdsk actually do? Well it checks your internal hard drive for errors. These errors can stop your operating system (Windows) from starting or allow it to start but then crash shortly afterwards when it hits a bad area of the drive.
Here are a few of the ‘switches’ that can be used with chkdsk
/F Automatically fixes file system errors
/X Fixes file system errors on the disk but dismounts the volume first
/R Looks for and attempts to recover bad sectors
/V Displays the name and path every file on the disk
/L:size FOR NTFS ONLY - Changes the log file size to a specified number of kb
/C Skips directory corruption checks
/I Skips any corruption checks which compare directory entries to the
FRS (file record segment) in the volume's MFT (master file table)
This is a verbose explanation but generally, in my experience, it is sufficient for most PC drive problems to run a chkdsk /r and this can be easily done from the recovery console if you have the XP CD ROM.
Many emails about how to access the recovery partition on Dell Inspiron and Dimension PCs. I have noticed that Dell don’t give this information unless you pay for their premium tech support so here we go, hope this helps a few people…..
Most PCs I have tested can do this method providing the hard drive has not been changed and the original recovery image – hidden by default – is intact. I have used this method on PCs as old as 2003 but older ones may work too.
Note: This process is destructive to your data. Ensure you have all you need backed up like serial numbers for software (Office etc), address books, emails, photos and documents.
The computer restarts and your software should be as it was when you first received your computer. Spend a bit of time uninstalling all of the 30-day trial rubbish and uninstall any security suite that was offered at the time as it will be old and superceded. Make sure you update the system to the latest service packs and security updates using Windows Update. Install a decent antivirus and the best antispyware and your system will be as good as new. Or better!