Windows Linux Mac

If you have used Windows for more than a few days you have probably noticed that as you install more software your computer begins to get slower, especially when you first log into Windows.

On most computers this is because you have lots of programs trying to start up every time you login. Here’s how to eliminate unnecessary programs from your startup.

Step 1:
Identify which programs are running on startup. There are couple ways to do this. Before you begin, you should restart your computer to make sure you haven’t already closed some programs that would normally run on startup.

Many of the programs will have icons located in the taskbar (beside the clock) that shows they are running. Simply hover your mouse over the icon to see what it is.

You could also open the task manager by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del. This will show you a list of all the current processes that are running. If you look at the very bottom of the task manager window it should show the number of current processes. If you have over 40 processes after you login, you probably have too many programs running on startup.

You may not be able to identify what all of the processes are but some of them will be very obvious (Ex: iTunes.exe, AIM.exe, etc)

Step 2:
Once you have identified which programs are running on startup, decide which ones you don’t need to start every time you login to Windows. If you decide a program is not needed on startup that does not mean that it will be uninstalled or unusable.

It will help to make a list of the programs that are currently running and the programs that you wish to have running on startup.

Step 3:
There are a couple ways to keep programs from running on startup.

The first is by opening each program that currently runs on startup, and changing its preferences so that it no longer runs when you login to Windows. This is typically the best solution but will require different instructions for each software.

The second way is to use MSCONFIG. This system utility will allow you to disable certain programs from your startup.

To open MSCONFIG, first click on the start menu and then Run. Type in ‘msconfig’ and press enter. Once the MSCONFIG window appears, click the Startup tab on the top.

Here you will probably notice there are tons and tons of programs listed with check boxes by each of them. To disable a program from running on startup, simply un-check the check box. If you don’t recognize what the program is by the name, try looking at the file path.

Computers from manufacturers such as Dell and HP are likely to have several programs installed by these companies. Usually most of them can be disabled.

TIP: Be careful to not disable programs that control your wireless connection, unless you use the Windows utility or a 3rd party program for this.

If you still aren’t sure what a certain program is and whether or not it is needed, check out this comprehensive list of startup applications. On this site, programs with an “N” or an “X” can safely be disabled. Programs with a “Y” should be left alone and those with a “U” are left up to the user to decide.

TIP: Disable only a few programs at a time and then restart. This way if you realize you disabled a program that you need, it will be easy to identity. Also, if you need to enable a program you can do this by simply checking the box next to the program name.

Some startup programs might actually be due to viruses or spy-ware. If you are having trouble disabling a certain application, try scanning for viruses and spy-ware. It could take you several restarts to finally disable all of the unnecessary programs.

Step 4:
Once you have disabled all the unnecessary programs from running on startup, check the task manager again to see how many processes are running when you login. This number should be lower than when you started. Again, anything less than 40 is ideal. The less processes the better.You can see the number at the bottom left corner of the task manager.

If you have ever used a Linux system you probably have seen the boot up text (aka verbose mode). The boot up text can be quite informative if you’re having hardware or system problems when you boot up. Or the boot up text can look kinda cool and make you feel like you’re in one of those old school green screen computer movies.

Whichever reason you choose, you can see the boot up text on your nice shiny Mac. The text has been running behind that splash screen of yours all along.

Why even bother with a splash screen? So that all those people who have no idea how to use a computer will not run away before they ever get to a login screen (and because it looks nicer). So here’s how to see the boot up text:

While your Mac is booting up, press: Command + V.

That’s it! It will only show you the boot text on that boot up; so if you like that splash screen of yours, don’t worry, it will come back the next time you start your computer.

TIP: If you want to keep the boot up text, run the following command in the terminal:

sudo nvram boot-args=”-v”

Images taken from the following sites respectively:
http://blog.igorminar.com/
http://www.guidebookgallery.org/

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Almost all new processors have the ability to scale down their frequencies.  With laptops this allows you to save a ton of battery life.  Read my previous post on how to save battery life in Linux.

With desktops (and laptops), scaling the CPU frequency will not only save you money on your power bill but will also let your computer run cooler.  Why would you want your computer running at full speed all of the time when you don’t need it?  Instead, here is how to scale your CPU frequency for on demand performance.

Step 1:
Right click on one of the panels (top or bottom of screen) and then choose ‘Add to panel.’

Step 2:
When the Add to Panel window appears, scroll down and select ‘CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor.’ Then, click ‘Add’ to add it to the panel.

Step 3:
At this point you should see an icon appear on the panel similar to this one:

Now, open the terminal and enter the following command:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure gnome-applets

Step 4:
Now, you will see the following screen:

Press enter to continue configuring the CPU frequency monitor.

Step 5:
After pressing enter you should see this screen:

Press enter to select ‘YES’

Step 6:
This completes the configuration of the CPU frequency monitor.

Now you should be able to left-click on the CPU scaling monitor and see the following options:

At the top of the options you can choose a specific CPU frequency.  The processor will stay at this frequency as long as the setting stays the same.

The following CPU frequency governors control how your CPU frequency is scaled:
Conservative: Sets the CPU depending on the current usage by gracefully increasing and decreasing the CPU speed rather than jumping to max speed the moment there is any load on the CPU.
Ondemand: Sets the CPU based on the current usage.  It automatically scales the CPU frequency up and down as the current usage changes. This is recommend for both desktops and laptops
Performance: Sets the CPU to the highest speed.
Powersave: Sets the CPU to the lowest speed. This is recommended for maximum battery life on laptops.

If for some reason this still does not allow you to scale your CPU and you know it has the capability to scale its frequency, read the Ubuntu Guide for an advanced method.

Ever left your computer alone for 5 minutes to come back and realize it crashed and restarted itself?

Here’s a quick guide on how to keep a log of your shutdowns. Logging will give you a time and reason for your crash/unplanned shutdown so hopefully you can fix the problem.

Step 1: Go to the start menu, click Run and then type in ‘regedit’. You should see a screen that looks like this:

Step 2: Find your way to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Reliability.  The complete path is located in the bottom left corner of the window.

Step 3: Right click on ‘ShutdownReasonUI’ (if you don’t have that file go to step 3.1) then click Modify. You should see something like this:

Step 3.1: (This is ONLY if don’t have the ShutdownReasonUI file). We are going to create the file: Just right-click in the white space on the right. Hover over ‘new’ and then click ‘DWORD Value’. Change the name to ShutdownReasonUI and then go back to Step 3.

Step 4: Change the Value Data entry box to 1. Then click OK and restart your computer.

To find the logs that have been created go to: Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer. Click on the System subtab on the left and it will list your logs. Errors are marked with a red X or a yellow exclamation mark. Just click on the error and it will give you even more information.

With all Linux distributions come updates, especially with new versions.  Usually these updates consist of security fixes and new versions of core software.  However, every so often new kernels are released.  The Linux kernel is the core of all distributions.  When these are updated, most of the time your Grub boot menu will become cluttered with multiple kernels.  Here is how to edit your Grub boot menu.

To begin, open the boot menu list in your favorite text editor.  The following code will open the list using gedit, with sudo privileges.

sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

Once the gedit window opens, you will see a text file with lots of information included.  Don’t worry if you don’t understand what some of the text does, most items have comments explaining them.  Any line that begins with a ‘#’ is considered a comment.  Some lines actually have more than one ‘#’.  These are merely comments that are meant to stand out.

Inside this file you can change a lot of settings that control your boot manager.  For example, you can change the default entry, the time to choose a boot entry, the grub colors, and even completely customize the text for each entry.

Change the timeout
Changing this settings allows for more/less time at the boot menu.  The default is set to something fairly high like 25 or 30.  For most people this is more than enough time to choose the correct entry.  Therefore, if you wish to change the timeout to a lower number, such as 5 seconds look around line 19.  This line should read:

timeout     30

Change the “30″ to the timeout value you wish to have.  The numbers are in seconds.  As I said before, usually 5 or 10 seconds is a good value.

Remove old boot entries (Linux kernels): Safest Method
Scroll near the bottom of the menu.lst file.  Here you will find the entries that appear on the boot menu.  Look around line 128 and you should see:

## ## End Default Options ##

The very next line after this should be the first entry on the boot menu.  This first entry is also usually the newest Linux kernel.  To tell which kernel is the newest look at the last number (following the ‘-’).  For example, the newest kernel for Hardy is “2.6.24-17″.  This is slightly newer than the “2.6.24-16″ version that comes with Hardy.

Therefore, you can remove the old versions from the boot menu by placing a ‘#’ at the beginning of each line corresponding to an old kernel.  Here is a copy of my boot menu for comparison:

title        Ubuntu 8.04, kernel 2.6.24-17-generic
root        (hd0,4)
kernel        /vmlinuz-2.6.24-17-generic root=UUID=a049d4fa-84cb-4fac-bed4-082641c201e3 ro quiet splash
initrd        /initrd.img-2.6.24-17-generic
quiet

title        Ubuntu 8.04, kernel 2.6.24-17-generic (recovery mode)
root        (hd0,4)
kernel        /vmlinuz-2.6.24-17-generic root=UUID=a049d4fa-84cb-4fac-bed4-082641c201e3 ro single
initrd        /initrd.img-2.6.24-17-generic

#title        Ubuntu 8.04, kernel 2.6.24-16-generic
#root        (hd0,4)
#kernel        /vmlinuz-2.6.24-16-generic root=UUID=a049d4fa-84cb-4fac-bed4-082641c201e3 ro quiet splash
#initrd        /initrd.img-2.6.24-16-generic
#quiet

#title        Ubuntu 8.04, kernel 2.6.24-16-generic (recovery mode)
#root        (hd0,4)
#kernel        /vmlinuz-2.6.24-16-generic root=UUID=a049d4fa-84cb-4fac-bed4-082641c201e3 ro single
#initrd        /initrd.img-2.6.24-16-generic

title        Ubuntu 8.04, memtest86+
root        (hd0,4)
kernel        /memtest86+.bin
quiet
### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

# This is a divider, added to separate the menu items below from the Debian
# ones.
title        Other operating systems:
root

# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/sda1
title        Microsoft Windows XP Professional
root        (hd0,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader    +1

I do NOT recommend deleting the entries for the old kernel versions.  You can do this but if you were to make a mistake and delete part of the wrong line, you will not be able to boot your computer.

Once you have commented out the old kernel versions you boot menu will look more like this (this is merely an example and does not correspond to the sample text above):

Remove old boot entries (Linux kernels): Advanced Method
This is for you advanced users who don’t like to edit text files.  Again, USE WITH CAUTION

To begin, navigate to ‘/boot’ either in the terminal or using nautilus with sudo privileges.  Then, delete all files with the old kernel version in the name.  The easiest way to do this is to look for the name which has the lowest number at the end.

Once you have deleted these files, run the following code in the terminal to automatically update your grub menu:

sudo update-grub

Customize entry titles
If you don’t like how the entries read, you can change them to whatever you want.  To do this, change the line beginning with “title” for each entry.  This also applies to the “Other Operating Systems” line.  Be careful to only change the lines beginning with “title”

Change default boot entry
This will set the entry that you want to boot automatically upon startup.  To do this look around line 14.  This line should read:

default     0

Once you have the boot menu with ONLY the entries you need, change the “0″ to the line number corresponding to the boot entry you want.  In other words, if the entry you want as default appears as the 3rd line in the boot menu, change the “0″ to a “2″ (the first line is line 0).  Therefore, if you want the first entry to be the default, leave it set to “0″.

TIP: IF you want Windows to be your default entry, and there is a separator (”Other Operating Systems”), don’t forget to include this line in your count.

Once you are done editing the menu.lst file, save your changes and reboot your computer.  The Grub boot menu should now be a little easier to read.

Take a look in the menu.lst file for some other settings: password protection, colors, hidden entries, etc.

This post will show you how to rip DVDs so you can watch them on your iPod/iPhone. Michael wrote a similar post on How to use DVD Decrypter for Windows.

1) Download and install HandBrake. If you download version 0.9.2 you must be running Leopard. If you are using Tiger or older, you should download 0.9.1

2) Place the DVD you wish to rip into your DVD drive and open HandBrake. If your computer tries to play the DVD automatically, close the program so that only HandBrake is accessing the DVD.

3) Click the Source button in the top left corner. Then choose the your DVD drive and click Open. At this point HandBrake will begin to scan the DVD. This could take a couple minutes.

4) Click the drop down box next to Title and choose the longest title if you wish to copy the entire DVD (this does not apply to Episode based DVDs).

5) The default Destination is the Desktop. Change this to wherever you wish to save the DVD file.

6) If the presets are not already displayed on the right side of the window, click the Toggle Presets button in the upper right corner to display them.

7) For the iPhone and iPod Touch you should choose iPhone / iPod Touch.

If you have an iPod video or iPod classic and want high resolution (much larger file size, good for 160GB versions) choose iPod High-Rez.

Lastly, if you have an iPod Video or iPod classic and want smaller files (good for 80GB versions) choose iPod Low-Rez.

If these presets aren’t quite what you are looking for, check the troubleshooting at the bottom of the article.

TIP: For better quality, choose 2-pass encoding. This will take longer to encode but will look better.

8.) Click the Audio & Subtitles tab. Here you should choose the language you prefer under “Track 1:”. Also, be sure to set Subtitles to None. The Sample rate should be between 32 and 48 while the Bitrate should be set between 112 and 160.

9) At this point you should be ready to begin ripping your DVD. Click Start to begin.

10) Once your DVD is finished ripping all you need to do is add it to your iTunes library (or whatever iPod manager you use) and then transfer it to your iPod.

Troubleshooting
If you have trouble with the video and audio settings from the presets, you should try the following settings instead. These settings are more strict and should work on any iPod with video capabilities.

File format: MP4 file
Codecs: MPEG-4 Video/AAC Audio
Average bitrate (kbps): 700 (again lower numbers mean less quality and smaller files)
Check 2-pass encoding
Picture settings -> set Width: 320 and the height will auto adjust to something close to 240 (will be lower for widescreen movies)

Once you find the settings that work the best for you, you can save them as a custom preset.

For more information on how to use HandBrake take a look at these websites:
How to Rip a Move for your iPod with HandBrake v0.9.0
How to Rip a TV show for your iPod with HandBrake
HandBrake Documentation

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Why would I want to configure my systems sounds? My answer: why not? You can actually do this in Windows, but that’s for another day.

You could play ‘Hey Jude’ by the Beatles when you log on and ‘Hello, Goodbye’ when you log off. Hopefully you can choose some more personal songs, but I’m a Beatles fan, so why not?

Please note that the file needs to be .wav format.

Step 1: (In Gnome) System -> preferences -> Sound

Step 2: Click on the ‘Sounds’ Tab at the top. You’ll see a windows that looks like this:

Step 3: Select which option you would like to add or modify the sound to. Your options will look like this:

Step 4: Click ‘Select sound file’ to choose your personal sound clip. (Remember it has to be .wav)

(Optional): I know a lot of people who do not like having the system beep. If you click the ‘System Beep’ tab at the top, you will find the options that allow you to turn on/off the system beep.