15 April 2010 | Computers |
Printing with 64-bit Windows can be a lot of fun if you don’t have a 64-bit driver.
As I mentioned in Windows x64: How to Print to Any Printer Even Without a 64-bit Driver, there are ways to make your printer talk, even if they are a bit involved.
There is one other trick in particular that you might want to try first, though: use a similar 64-bit driver from the same manufacturer and fool Windows into thinking that everything is working fine!
Before you read any further, do visit the manufacturer’s web site again and check for the availability of a 64-bit driver for your specific printer model. It turns out that Canon, for example, released a boatload of 64-bit drivers a few weeks ago. So, if you have, say, a Canon LBP5100 color laser printer, there is now a 64-bit driver available! WOOHOO! Took long enough, though…
For the rest of you, read on!
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17 March 2010 | Computers |
If you’re one of those people who likes to build and upgrade your own computers, or if you have just decided to make your first attempt at upgrading an older system, there is one thing you may be wondering: Do I have to reinstall my OS?
Unfortunately, most people I talk to say one of two things:
- “I just always reinstall the OS.”
- “I upgraded once and I didn’t have to do anything to the OS, so that’s what I’m going to try this time.”
Well, Option #1 will certainly work all the time, no matter what. As for Option #2, whether or not the OS will boot depends on the hard disk controller driver. So, just because #2 worked for one upgrade doesn’t mean it will work for another.
Fortunately, whether you use Windows or Linux, there is a very easy way to prepare for a motherboard upgrade.
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30 December 2009 | Computers |
Everyone has run into this problem at least once: you are running a program, and you minimize it to the task bar. Later, you try to restore the window by clicking the program on the task bar, and nothing happens.
You’re program is running, but its window has somehow moved outside the desktop area. Firefox – bless its flaming little heart – just loves to do this to me.
Since it was such an annoying problem, I managed to figure out a couple of ways to restore the “hidden” window…
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15 November 2009 | Computers |
One of the most handy features in Windows is the ability to right-click on a file, and select an option to edit that file in a particular program, like so:
The big problem is that sometimes, your favorite program doesn’t come with a right-click context menu option. Or, maybe it does come with such an option, but it doesn’t work for some reason.
Whatever the case, you can very quickly and easily add whatever program you want to the right-click menu in about 30 seconds.
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6 November 2009 | Computers |
Let’s say you have just purchased an external harddrive case, and stuck a spare harddrive in to make your own external backup drive. Or, maybe you have an existing external drive or USB stick that you wiped clean.
In both cases, you may find that your drive no longer triggers the AutoPlay feature in Windows. In fact, it may not even automatically show up in Explorer at all!
What to do?
It’s surprisingly easy to fix such problems by creating a new autorun.inf file on the external storage device.
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25 September 2009 | Computers, Networking |
There are many things to love about Windows 7. It truly is “Vista done right”, sad as that may be. But it ain’t perfect.
One of the most common problems, as I recently discovered, is that you tell Win 7 to share only your Public directories, but it doesn’t quite listen. Due to some apparent bug that is at least present in the Release Candidate build of Win 7, sometimes the OS will share your entire Users directory, which includes your Public files/folders. That means ALL your files are shown to the whole world on your LAN – not just the your public folders.
Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to fix this little problem once you know a few little bits of information…
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12 September 2009 | Computers |
If you’re like me, when it comes time to upgrade Windows or the hardware inside a computer, you do things the old fashioned way: you manually copy all the user’s desktop, settings, and data onto a backup drive, and then restore it all after the upgrade.
Recently I have discovered a much, much easier and faster way to do the same thing. It’s called Windows Easy Transfer, and it’s present in Vista, Windows 7, and you can even install it on an old XP box. Best of all, it comes with Windows.
While it won’t transfer programs themselves from the old machine onto the new, it will save you a lot of time and frustration. Since Microsoft isn’t very big on explaining how it all works, I decided to share my recent experiences to illustrate just how handy it is.
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22 August 2009 | Networking |
Let’s say you have a network of more than ten Windows computers connected in a local workgroup without a domain controller. One of the computers has a printer connected to it, and more than ten machines in the workgroup need to print at the same time.
Well, you might say, “Dude, get a server!” or “Dude, get a print server!”
True, that would solve the problem… But sometimes, things like money and technical knowledge are limiting factors in such cases.
The good news: It’s actually really easy to increase the limit and get everybody printing/sharing files in a very short time!
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8 August 2009 | Computers |
UPDATE: See my new video from March 2021!
Let’s say you’ve got a ginormous image that you’d like to print. Maybe it’s a picture of a map, and the resolution of the image is something like 2000 by 2200 pixels.
Obviously, you could just print the image to a single sheet of A4/Letter paper, but you’d lose a lot of detail.
If you’re a serious Photoshopper, you’d probably just fire up that particular app and use the built-in functionality to split and print.
For the rest of us, however, that’s not exactly what we’d call “easy”.
The good news is that Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7 all give you a wonderful (AHEM!) application that does exactly what you need…
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4 July 2009 | Computers |
Let’s say you’ve just installed Windows 7, and you notice that Windows Photo Gallery is now missing. That’s because it was pulled out of the OS and plopped into the Windows Live Essentials 2011 suite.
Well, that’s not so bad, because Windows Live is free. You need to download the Live installer, which will then allow you to download only the apps you want. The problem comes when you have to do this on multiple machines with a limited internet connection.
Windows updates can be downloaded in standalone form, so why not Windows Live? It’s just not very convenient. Surely there is a standalone installer that you can download once and install later on multiple machines??
In fact, there is. It’s just a huge pain in the arse to find it, especially on Microsoft’s web site.
Not to worry! I found it for you. Watch out, though: it’s 138MB! You can still install only the apps you want, but no internet connection is required and it’s perfectly friendly for low-bandwidth connections.
UPDATE: It’s now called Windows Essentials 2012. Click the button below to download!
Have fun!
Printing with 64-bit Windows can be a lot of fun if you don’t have a 64-bit driver.
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