Computer Tips -Tech Info

Tag: LONG

  • Smartmontools on Windows – emailing warnings

    For years I’ve been using smartmontools on my linux-based machines. What I’ve absolutely LOVED about it is the advance notice I’ve had of hard drive failures. Two consecutive Decembers I received an email from my server claiming that a drive was dying and had time to replace them rescuing the data. (Although the first one was falling to pieces as I copied.) If I had not know until I NOTICED a problem I would have likely lost a good amount of data and had a long rebuild process from various backups.

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  • Symantec Internet Security 2007 antispyware protection off….

    and you can’t turn it on without an error… Oh boy… last week I first saw this system and it was running less than the minimum amount of memory, so I thought that could be part of the issue. (It certainly made it slightly less than tolerable to work on.) So, now, with new memory installed. Norton still shows problems, Antispyware is off, phishing protection is off and the catch is when trying to enable either there’s a cryptic error message….”internal program error” and a string of numbers which is nowhere to be found in symantecs online support. But the online support does say to try and use symantecs utility to “fix” the problem and if that fails or is unavailable uninstall using the Norton remover that they provide as a free download and reinstall…. thanks Symantec…. (You might find the antivirus removal tool list helpful.)

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  • Enabling keyboard hotkeys under KDE

    I’ve just been sitting down with the laptop for a while (Dell Inspiron 8000) it’s an older laptop by current standards I guess, but it does well for me. The inspiron 8000 has some “hotkeys” for volume up and down, mute and controlling the cd player (play, stop, next and previous tracks.) It’s pretty standard these days to have hot keys of some sort on the keyboard for at least the volume. I realized though that I had never setup those hotkeys under KDE (Frequent visitors will remember that I use linux as the primary desktop.) Now, I guess some would have tried the hotkeys and, on seeing no response, conclude “hotkeys don’t work under linux.” That, of course, would be wrong….

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  • Anti-phishing tool

    I had run across a link that netcraft was trying to combat phishing schemes and I didn’t have time for a detailed look at the time. I’ve since revisited and found their Netcraft toolbar. I’m impressed, it installs in either Internet Explorer (under Windows), or Mozilla Firefox (all platforms.)

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  • Archives of old Genealogy sites

    I don’t know how many know, but one of my sidelines (hobbies) over the years has been Genealogy. Sometimes I’ve had more time for it than others. The last couple of years it hasn’t been something I’ve had much time for. However, the archives of two sites exist at this domain. The first www.northcarolinagenealogy.net has not seen a makeover in a LONG time. In fact, the second archive was meant to be the next revision of northcarolinagenealogy.net it is located here This second one will likely be changing soon as I look at converting it to the model I’ve used for the main site. (more…)