While using Windows, it may become necessary to find out CPU usage, memory usage , disk as well as network usage especially when trying to troubleshoot performance issues.

Windows comes with a handy dashboard that shows all of the above information at a glance.

To do this :

Open Task Manager (right click anywhere on Windows taskbar and select “Start Task Manager”, or hit Ctrl-Alt-Del and select the same.

Click on Performance tab, this will bring up a brief info on CPU usage and memory usage. To view the detailed statistics, click on Resource Monitor.

Selecting Overview tab will show detailed view regarding CPU usage, disk and network usage as well as memory consumption.

Selecting CPU tab will show all the running processes along with associated services.

The Memory tab will display the memory usage of individual processes along with the breakdown of physical memory in use.

The Disk tab will show disk activity of processes along with disk activity and storage layout of various drives.

The Network tab will display processes with network activity and other handy features like Network Activity, active TCP connections and Listening Ports.

This Resource Monitor is a convenient and easy to use tool to view and analyze system resources in Windows and is very handy when trying to fix bottlenecks or system performance related issues.

The default Windows 7 settings for taskbar includes all the system icons like clock, volume, network, power and action center as being active and displayed.

In order for any of these system icons to prevent from being displayed in Windows 7 taskbar:

1^st way :

Open Taskbar properties by right clicking on blank space in Windows taskbar and selecting  “Properties”.

Under the Taskbar tab, click the “Customize” button from within the Notification area section.

This will bring the window where icons from individual applications can be turned on or off. Select the option of “Turn system icons on or off”.

Finally, select system icons as desired and change their properties to On or Off in the Behavior column.

2^nd way :

The other way to do the same is to first go to Control Panel  (Click on Windows orb and select “Control Panel” ) and then selecting “Notification Area Icons”.

This too will bring the same window as shown above. This is a bit longer way since first Control Panel needs to be accessed followed by the usual settings while the first way is more intuitive considering that selecting Taskbar properties directly shows how notification area can be customized along with other taskbar attributes like appearance, location etc.

Precision Screwdriver Set

Here are a few tips that may help you strip down and reassemble laptops:

• Use a digital camera or camera phone to take a shot of each stage of the disassembly for reference when you are ready to reassemble it. Zoom in and take separate shots for areas where you have various plugs and connectors or wires running in a specifc way so you know exactly how they were before you took them apart. (unless you have a really good memory!)
• Use scrap sheets of A4 paper to map out screw positions. Sketch a point (or points) of reference like a battery compartment or RAM module cover on the paper so you know what way up it goes and stick each screw to the paper with clear tape so when you’re finished taking all the screws out of the bottom of the laptop they will all be stuck in their corresponding positions on the piece of paper. Depending on the laptop I may have 2 or 3 sheets of paper with screws on – bottom of unit, under the keyboard and motherboard screws. Doing this will be a great help if you have to leave the laptop disassembled for some time (e.g. to order parts etc) as you will have no doubt as to which screws go where. Some makes and models will use the same length screws for most of the base assembly but others have all different lengths which makes it all the more important to remember where they go back. A ‘too-long’ screw in the wrong place could cause major damage!
• I use a hobby case/assorter for each laptop with various compartments like this to store components separately like keyboard, hard drive, wireless/bluetooth, battery, DVD drive etc with the A4 papers inside. As much as I like finishing one repair before starting another, sometimes you may have to leave the laptop in a disassembled state for some time.
• Check for Laptop Service Manuals before you start. Some manufacturers like Dell and HP/Compaq make their laptop service manuals freely available from their websites. Other manufacturers do have service manuals but they may be hard to find and in some cases we have had to pay for them. They do however make the job go a lot faster when you aren’t guessing if you’re doing the right thing!
• Forget the crappy little metal precision screwdriver set – get a decent set of precision screwdrivers for your laptop repairs (like the ones in the photo) and magnetise the tip of the cross-head screwdrivers. This will save a lot of dropped screws in places you don’t want them to drop! If you don’t have a magnetiser, get an old desktop harddrive and open it up. there’s usually a really powerful magnet on the actuator assembly you can pull out and use. Just stroke the tip of the screwdriver in one direction across the magnet a few times.
• A PCB holder makes life a lot easier when soldering on a motherboard. These can be obtained from Maplin and other electronic supply stores.
• Use the flat pieces of sponge you get in the boxes that new screens come in to disassemble the laptop on. This will prevent scratches to the casing of the laptop. I have a big rectangular grey antistatic piece with a flat side and a bumpy side. I use the bumpy side up so any errant screws get caught in the little cups.
• Keep a cracked screen or two (that has a good backlight or CCFL tube) to test inverters on. It’s an easy way to tell if a dim screen is caused by a bad inverter or a bad CCFL tube. Most inverters have a standard high voltage connector so to test the inverter all you need to do is:

1. FIRST MAKE SURE YOU HAVE NO POWER SOURCE CONNECTED! (This includes charger and battery. Inverters put out high voltages!)

2. Remove the hard drive (Your customer’s data should be your first priority – unlike PC World)

3. Remove the plastic bezel surrounding the screen but leave the screen in place – just unplug it from the inverter (usually this is the little two wire plug with pink and white wires.

4. Plug the cracked screen with the good tube into the inverter. You don’t need to use the video/graphics cable; just the inverter cable.

5. Connect the power supply and turn the laptop on – if the cracked screen lights up ok you know the inverter is ok.

* Some people say you must change the tube when you change the inverter and vice versa but I have changed many of each with no problems.

Feel free to post questions in the comments

WordPress Plugins

We recently set up a WordPress site for the New House Basketball Club in Sittingbourne and we used a theme from iThemes as the basis for the design. Quite a bit of CSS had to be changed to get it exactly how we wanted it so we used the Theme Companion plugin for WordPress to override the bits of CSS that we wanted to alter.
Normally we’d use a Child Theme instead of this plugin, but for themes that don’t support Child Themes, Theme Companion can be quite useful.

On the basketball club site, we had to make alterations like increasing the height of the header and logo area and ‘push down’ the top horizontal menu to compensate for the new height. Here is a sample of what we used to acheive this in the Theme Companion editor:

Click to enlarge

This setup achieves what we want and we didn’t have to edit the original theme files to do it. When there is an update for the theme we can safely overwrite the CSS files without losing our changes.

I’ve been looking out for something like this for a while now. WordPress by default has a number of (not very useful IMO) relationships or ‘rel’ checkboxes you can select for various link relationships but rel=”nofollow” is not one of them.

All the plugins I looked at put the “nofollow” attribute on ALL links – you can’t select which ones you want.

Turns out you can easily add this option with a few lines of code. Without further ado, here’s where I got the idea and code from for this blog: How To Add “nofollow” To Certain Blogroll Links In WordPress 3.x

Thanks Trainman1405 for the info!

Home Access Grant

We recently did a complete system recovery on an Acer Extensa 5235 that had a dead hard drive.

This was one of the ‘Home Acess’ computers provided by Becta the now closed government funded grant scheme to help low-income families own a computer.

The client had neglected to make her recovery DVDs whiled the system was up and running.
Usually if we don’t have the recovery DVDs or CDs we can install an OEM version of Windows using the product key on the Windows sticker attached to the laptop, resulting in a nice clean Windows install without all the crap that the manufacturers install alongside Windows. However, the Home Access laptop in our care didn’t have a product key on the sticker.

The license sticker reads: “Windows 7 Pro Natl. Academic Only OA” with a few tracking numbers and bar codes on it. Not very useful for installing Windows!

Luckily we had created a set of 3 recovery DVDs on an identical model that had come in months ago – just in case!

So Windows installed – no problem there, but… When it was time to log into Windows, we were presented with two preconfigured user accounts – Learner and Parent. Learner had no password and was a ‘Limited Account’ which basically means we couldn’t install anything or even update Windows using that account. Parent was a password protected administrator account but we had no password since the client had misplaced the original documentation provided by Comet.

A quick search of the internet revealed quite a few forum posts from people with the same issue – they couldn’t log on after a system recovery because they had lost the original paperwork provided with the laptops. Most of these laptops were provided by Comet and they suggest various phone numbers to call up so you can be told the password because it’s a big secret. After much poking around we discovered what the password was for our machine. Assuming you got your machine from Comet and that Comet didn’t give out different passwords for every machine (which is unlikely) you could try the one that worked for us.

Considering the Becta Home Access program is now defunct and there are probably a load of people out there looking for this password, here it is: cometpar

Let us know in the comments if it worked for you and remember to change it as soon as you log in to something you will remember!

For more information about Becta please see the Becta Wikipedia page

Laptop Repairs

Updated November 20th 2011

Some laptops are designed to be relatively easy to open and repair but others are the absolute pits.

Because we do see a lot of different brands and models it’s not easy to remember which are the ones that are going to need some extra time and expertise to disassemble and repair.

We thought the best thing is to make a note of them here where we can refer to them later and also possibly help other people who are looking for confirmation for: “Yes, you really do need to disassemble the WHOLE laptop to get to the bit you want” sort of thing.

Here I’m going to start on a list of laptops and netbooks that need to be put in the ‘Ridiculously difficult to open and repair for no good reason’ category.
We shall be adding to the list as we come across more stupidly designed models.

• Advent Roma 1001 – Why? Why? Why do I have to disassemble the WHOLE laptop just to replace a screen? This ridiculous design means the front bezel cannot be removed without pretty much disassembling the main body. Add to that the really poor build quality and the fact that you have to remove the keyboard to find the other RAM module (are we still making them like that?) and you have a serious contender for the Stupid Design Award.
• Advent Modena M100 – Errr… Apparently you have to open the base unit even to get to the Hard Disk Drive or RAM!!!
• Advent 5431 – Pray you never have to remove the motherboard in this laptop. It appears that the metal sub chassis is bent up around the motherboard after it is installed. Good luck getting it out! Another cheap and nasty laptop that wasn’t really designed for any major repairs.
• HP G62 – As above but worse. You even have to remove the MOTHERBOARD to remove the display and hinges. Once you have done this you can access the two bottom front-bezel screws. Is this deliberate so that the average person at home who’s handy with a screwdriver can’t repair a broken screen himself?
• Advent 6441 – Hmm, there’s that name again! Advent – crap laptops with a crap design. No wonder they are usually in the ‘budget’ line. This one requires degrees in Engineering and Chinese Puzzle Design to get the motherboard out. End result – about an hour of extra time to the repair for disassembly and re-assembly. Extra service charge for this model!
• Sony Vaio VGN-CS215J – This 14.1″ laptop with Windows Vista installed is one of several models (including VGN-CS220J & VGN-CJ86) made by Sony that seems easy to work on at first because the entire bottom of the unit is easily removed, exposing the motherboard and fan assembly. This is where the simplicity stops. Although the power socket is not soldered to the motherboard, if you need to change the socket, expect to have to remove a daughter-board, hinges, fan, heatsink assembly and motherboard just to get the socket and harness out.
  These units also have a common issue where the wires break off the solder connectors on the rear of the power socket (the power jack where you plug the charger into the laptop). Because the wires are so short, replacement of the whole power jack harness is usually the only option. We have resoldered the old wires back on before and had the unit come back in after a few weeks where the wires had broken off again. Because the plastic socket has some degree of movement in the frame, metal fatigue causes the break after a while.
  Look out for pinched cables and for cables touching hot surfaces when you reassemble as the cabling to the various components runs all over the place and it has to all be replaced properly under clips and through channels, under circuit boards etc. Might be a good idea to take a photo of the cabling before you pull it all apart so you have something to refer to later when it is time to re-assemble.

Look out for even more stupidly designed laptops! (I did have a Sony Vaio in some time ago which required complete disassembly JUST TO REMOVE THE HARD DRIVE!!! Unfortunately I did not make a note of the model number.)

Avast & Malwarebytes

Avast Free Antivirus is a very capable tool which I recommend to my clients.
I know many like AVG as their free antivirus solution but I find the more recent versions of AVG to be very resource hungry. If you stick it on a machine with a single core CPU, it’s like installing the software equivalent of a lead weight.  Avast 6 is still lightweight enough to make just a small impact on performance.

Malwarebytes is the tool to use if you want to clean up a nasty malware infection on your PC. It’s recommended by experts on all the malware help forums. Best of all, you can clean up your system for free! I was so impressed with the detection and removal capabilities of Malwarebytes that I decided I should buy the full version for our in-house PCs. The full version adds real-time detection and malware site blocking capabilities. (We’ve since become resellers of Malwarebytes!)

At the moment I use Avast (free) Antivirus and the full version of Malwarebytes on my main workshop PC. They compliment each other beautifully but they can get in each other’s way if you don’t set them up right. Here’s how to do it…

I’ve copied the following from the Malwarebytes FAQ forum:

Set Exclusions for Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware in Avast! Antivirus 6 (Free, Pro and Internet Security):

• Open Avast! antivirus and click on REAL-TIME SHIELDS on the left
• Click on File System Shield on the left and click on Expert Settings
• Click the Exclusions section
• Click on Browse next to the blank entry at the bottom of the list (this will be the only entry if no other exclusions have been set yet)
• In the Select the areas window click on the + next to C:
• Click the + next to Program Files Note: For 64 bit Windows versions this will be Program Files (x86)
• Click the box next to Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware and click on OK
• Click OK again
• Click on Web Shield on the left and click Expert Settings
• Click on Exclusions and check the box next to URLs to exclude:
• Type or copy/paste the following address:*.mbamupdates.com
• Click on OK
• Click on Behavior Shield on the left and click Expert Settings
• Click on Trusted Processes
• Click on Browse next to the blank entry at the bottom of the list (this will be the only entry if no other exclusions have been set yet)
• Navigate to C:Program Files\Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware and click once on mbam.exe and click Open Note: For 64 bit Windows versions this will be Program Files (x86)
• Do the same for the following files:
  • mbamgui.exe
  • mbamservice.exe
• Click on OK
• Close Avast! antivirus

Set Exclusions for Avast! Antivirus Free, Pro and Internet Security in Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware:

• Open Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware and click on the Ignore List tab
• Click on the Add button on the lower left
• In the small browse window that opens, navigate to C:\Program Files and click once on avast software and click on OK
• Close Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware

Shutting down......still shutting down....

After spending ages disabling things like sound card, LAN, Avast Internet Security, Malwarebytes and everything in MSCONFIG, we still couldn’t get the Packard Bell iMedia desktop to log off or shut down. This was a machine running Windows 7 perfectly for the last six months.

Apparently MSCONFIG cannot disable all third-party services because there were still quite a few running on reboot.

Avast and Malwarebytes were then completely uninstalled but the machine still would not log off or shut down.

Process Explorer was then used to find what else was running when the machine started up in Normal Mode.

Turns out the culprit was something called Rapport from a company named Trusteer. There was no way to disable the Rapport services but once we uninstalled it all our shut down problems vanished.

Hope this helps someone else from wasting a few hours!

* Update- Another Rapport problem on an unrelated system…

Today (25th October 2011) we got a Toshiba laptop in that would consistently ‘blue screen’ (BSOD) everytime it was booted into Normal Mode. In Safe Mode it booted fine. The BSOD referenced: “A Driver has overrun a stack-based buffer”

The dump files were analysed and it was found RapportEI.sys was the cause of the blue screen fault. The Safe Uninstall tool from the Trusteer Rapport website was used to uninstall Rapport because the Windows Installer would not run in Safe Mode. Consequent Normal Mode boots successful. (This system is running ESET Internet Security – not sure if this is relevant).

Photoshop

Back in the day I used PaintShop Pro and I was really comfortable with it. During those years I had a brief fling with Photoshop 7 which left me feeling utterly confused with her seemingly counterintuitive tools.

One of those things I seemed to do really often was fill stuff with the Paint Bucket tool. In PaintShop Pro, this seemed to work as expected and I got so used to the way it works; you just set it to 100% Tolerance to fill the whole layer or selection.

The Paint Bucket tool just doesn’t work that way in Photoshop – in fact it is very similar to the Magic Wand – it just fills with colour the same way it would make a selection. I had some retraining to do if I was going to grow up and move in with Photoshop…

I found out it’s actually quite simple to fill a layer (or selection) with colour in Photoshop – just hold down Ctrl and press Delete to fill with the Background Colour or hold down Alt and press Delete to fill with the Foreground Colour!