IT
Installing Linux without any removable drive
I dont know if this is common practice or really new, but it just occurred to me out of pure necessity (the box in question can’t boot from USB, and i have no empty CDs, and only broken floppys).
You can install Linux (tested for the debian installer, I think it should work for the most other distros too, but this is untested) without any boot media.
You just remove the HDD from the system in question, put it in any other box with a working OS, run unetbootin, slap a netinst bootdisk of your distro of choice on the disk*, put it back in the system you want to install linux on, and voila – the installer runs just fine. The trick is that the debian installer seems to put all needed files onto a ramdisk, so there is no problem in formatting the disk it originally booted from (of course it works only with netinst-images).
As I said before, this may not be entirely new, but it just saved my ass – I had already been screwing around with floppy disks 
This can be particularily helpful if you have an old laptop with a broken optical drive. If the HDD is PATA, you will probably need an adapter to write on it, but these things are readily available for small bucks.
I hope this blog post helps someone in a similar situation someday!
*unetinst seems to be a bit picky about the disks it accepts. If you can’t select the disk in question, just run it over any other spare disk (an usb flash drive comes to mind) and simply copy all of the generated files to your disk.
AsRock ION-330-HT-BD running XBMC (+Silent mod)
The ASRock ION-330-HT-(BD) is a really nice option if you search for a cheap system for XBMC. Its about ~280€ without BluRay and about 100€ more with a BluRay-drive.
Front view
Open case view
The Fanmate2 - a snug fit 
Stress testing...
...and simultaneous playback!
I got the version with Bluray drive, as you can see in the title (for about 370€ at Amazon). I really haven’t tried BluRay playback up to now, because i have no Bluray-Disc lying around right now. I am really content with the performance of the system, and a minimal ubuntu install and the following automatic XBMC install (with this shellscript: http://sourceforge.net/projects/xci/) worked like a charm.
The noise the system produces is a problem though. The case-fan is no problem at the automatic setting, but the CPU-Fan is making a very high-pitched noise. You won’t hear it when you play a movie or music, but when the system is idle, it can be quite iritating.
This is why i decided to take some measures against this problem. I read in different forums about replacing the thermal pads with Arctic Silver 5, but in my opinion, this is too much work (and also voids the warranty).
So i decided to use a ZALMAN Fanmate 2 fan controller for slowing down the CPU-Fan. I set it on the highest level (11,1V) and voilà, the high-pitched noise is gone (and i doubt it has much effect on the airflow). To compensate for it anyways, I undervolted CPU, RAM, and Chipset.
After i completed the installation (about 10 minutes of work), it was time for some stress-testing:
I tried to push the system to its limit by running mprime in a ssh session while playing back 1080p H.264 content.
To my surprise, I didn’t even get any skipped frames! (the 59 skipped frames are from fast-forwarding, as the network can’t deliver the content fast enough during 16x FF). VDPAU is REALLY taking a lot of load away from the processor!
The temperatures did get quite high, but nothing too troubling (since the system will never be under that much load [normal CPU usage while playing back H.264 1080p content: 10-20%). I think the cooling will suffice in the summer, since the maximal specified temperature for the ATOM is at about 82°C and the room temperature will be about 15°C higher. I would be pretty near the maximum, but remember the system will never be at full load (~80% of the CPU-Load are from mprime).
Some other nice features of the system are: power-on from OFF state with IR-Remote, Audio output via HDMI – Only 3 cables required for installation (HDMI, LAN, power), streaming from Samba,NFS,DLNA and about anything you can think about, internet radio playback (just put the playlist files in a folder and you are set), and last but not least: No warranty sticker bullshit!
A newer, beefier version with a intel core cpu (and 3D-playback, allegedly) will be released soon, but i did not see the need for it (more power? what for?) as i won’t have a 3D-screen for a loooooong time 
I am quite happy with my new, HD-capable XBMC box. If there are any questions left open, or if you would like to point out alternatives, please feel free to leave a comment.
[XP] Disable the fraking annoying Security notifications
This is f*cking annoying.
How to shut it down for good:
1.) Open IE (why the f*ck do i have to change SYSTEM SETTINGS IN A BROWSER?)
2.) Open "Internet Options", then "Security" Tab, "Custom Level". Scroll down until you finally reach "Launching Applications and unsafe files (not secure)"
3.) Check "Enable (not secure)".
4.) NOW M$ decides to annoy you with a warning that the current settings are a Risk to your Computer (in IE, you should not be using this "Browser" anyway, but it keeps freaking me out during windows updates)
5.) To turn THIS off, you have to edit the registry: Navigate to HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Security (creating any non-existing key).
6.) Create a DWORD-Value called "DisableSecuritySettingsCheck" (Case-sensitive!) and set it to 1.
7.) Shoot yourself (optional)
Use full 4GB RAM in Windows XP32
I just found this BRILLIANT tweak while googling randomly.
The solution is pretty neat: Its a RAMDisk driver which creates a RAMDisk which resides in the unused top 768MB of your RAM.
1. download depositfiles.com/de/files/916161
2. extract anywhere
3. run ramdisk.exe, leave everything on default, set size to 768MB, change drive letter according to personal flavour
4. change the pagefile to reside on your new RAMDisk
5. reboot
6. check the RAM statistics in Task Manager. If everything went fine, you should have 31xxMB of physical RAM plus your 768MB Swapfile (if not, you may have to enable PAE in the registry – google it).
7. ???
8. Profit!!!
For me, this is the biggest performance boost i ever had from a software setting. Windows feels like its on crack.
Control if everything is set up right (german): www.thinkpad-forum.de/thinkpad-software/windows/47545-den-winxp-taskmanager-richtig-lesen-auch-ein-beitrag-zur-auslagerungsdatei/
chkdsk doesn’t work correctly on mounted drives
This wasted an afternoon for me.
chkdsk appeared out of nowhere during boot yesterday. It fixed some filesystem errors. To investigate further, i decided to run it once again when windows was up and running. It detected one error.
Then i decided to install a Windows PE on an USB Stick, which took me about an afternoon, because its not an easy thing to do and because i wanted a multiboot-USB stick. Well, when i finally booted into WinPE and ran chkdsk /r : no errors found.
I investigated further and found the following quote in the NTFS-3g forums:
You should never run CHKDSK on a mounted partition. CHKDSK is silly.
Chkdsk seems to be very inaccurate if ran over mounted partitions.
Thanks for informing us about that, Microsoft!
Anyway, now i have a Multiboot-USB-Stick
Good ol’ Slashdot
about the fixed Battery in the new MacBooks:
by markov_chain
Do what I do. Forget about changing the internal battery. Instead, take a deep-cycle lead-acid unit with desired capacity, put in a voltage regulator, and solder on a black and red pigtail with a DC plug matching your laptop on the other side. Secure everything with lots of duct tape, leaving a bit of the pigtail to stick out. Make as many of these as you need.p.s. these are a real hit on airplanes!
by SuperBanana
Just 16 screws?Hell yes. Ever removed the hard drive from an iBook?
I have, about a dozen times. It requires nearly complete dis-assembly. I had about sixteen PILES of different screws. When I took one apart that was for parts, the screws could have filled about a third of a shot glass. You need a large table, mostly to hold sheets of paper with areas marked out for keeping track of where the screws came from (not terribly hard to remember, but better safe than sorry.)
Total time to disassemble, swap drives, and re-assemble, after you’ve had practice? I think the fastest I ever did it was a little under an hour. Add extra if you refresh the loctite coatings on the screws that have it (recommended for machines which are young and will be kept for a while; the screws loosen up quite a bit with age.)
I don’t know which was worse: the numerous (and continued, throughout the life of the series) major defects, or how badly it was designed WRT servicing. It’s almost like they intentionally designed it to be a bitch to service to make up for thinner sales margins so they could nail people (mostly students and teachers) on labor after the glorious one-year warranty expires.
How to disable annoying and completely unnecessary items from system tray
Do you have multiple network adapters? If you use a laptop, you probably do, and valuable taskbar space is wasted by completely superfluous items in the task bar.
They basically inform you that there is no network cable connected to a specific network card. Now, network errors are one of the most obvious errors. If there is something wrong (and in 99% of the cases there isn’t, even though windows bugs you) you WILL notice it early enough, and check the settings.
If you have some virtualisation going on, the situation will get completely out of control (see picture).
Another bullshit message Windows is going to spam you with: “Limited or no connectivity”. IF there is no IP obtained, im going to notice this and run ipconfig myself, thank you very much.
Anyway, luckily there is a solution, and a quite easy one: its just deleting a registry key (back it up before, tough):
1. delete HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{7007ACCF-3202-11D1-AAD2-00805FC1270E}
2. ???
3. PROFIT!
