I have a Logitech G430 headset. It’s one of a series of Logitech headsets that offer fake surround sound as a marketing ploy. (I will write up something someday about why surround sound headphones are 95% marketing B.S.) Using it on Windows, at some point all audio from channels other than left and right disappeared. […]

Are you having problems with your 3ds Max or other Autodesk license?  Need to change your serial number to a new one?  Does the program keep giving you a license error when you try to activate? To reset your serial number so that the program asks you for a new one, start up regedit.  Look […]

(not for public use) Here’s my plan: Windows partition (NTFS), about 40 GB or more Mac partition (HFS+), about 20 GB or more Data partition (preferably FAT32), the rest of the drive The data partition is for all the documents and music and stuff, so it can be shared by both operating systems. The reason […]

Autoplay can helpfully automatically do things when you insert a disc, but it can get your computer rootkitted or just be plain annoying. If you want to turn it off, there are several ways of doing it. To disable autorun just temporarily, hold down the Shift key as you insert a CD. Go into Device […]

MPlayer has support for many file formats, most importantly Matroska (.mkv) containers which are common for watching anime. Often, subbers will use custom, nice-looking fonts that they embed into the Matroska containers. However, to use these fonts, MPlayer relies on Fontconfig. Without Fontconfig, MPlayer can’t use custom fonts. First of all, you don’t have Fontconfig […]

I got a new HP dv6605 Pavilion laptop, but it came with Vista. I reimaged it with XP MCE from an older Pavilion onto it, only to find out that none of my drivers worked. HP doesn’t provide XP drivers for this laptop – only Vista drivers. There are three main things that need drivers: […]

Windows Explorer will show thumbnails for certain file types when browsing a folder. The information for which file types to show a thumbnail for and what DLL to use is stored in the registry. HKCR\ – shows a list of file extensions.  Underneath each file extension’s key may be another key called ShellEx that contains […]

When a program registers itself as a service (that will constantly run in the background and does not show up in the Task Manager, FYI), it puts an entry under HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ in the registry.  If you have a service that won’t go away, you can try deleting its entry from the registry.  As always, make […]

I decided to go crazy and arm my computer with all I needed to access everything from any Internet-connected computer, including stuff like VNC.  Naturally, I wanted this to be secure, both to prevent unauthorized access and to maintain my privacy. I figured the best way to do it would be to set up a […]

You want the cool sidebar and instant search features of Windows Vista, but you don’t want to put your computer through surgery to upgrade the OS? Just install Google Desktop.  It’s that easy.  Google Desktop has its own sidebar that closely resembles Vista’s sidebar, and will index your files and do find-as-you-type searching. I installed […]