Step ONE – Install anti-virus software:  As simple as this may seem, about 25% of the computers I see don’t have antivirus installed.  Some viruses are “tricky” enough to block installation of AV software, but for many this is all of the cleanup you need.  The anti-virus software I’m currently reccomending is:

Avira Free

Avast Home

FortiClient Standard

Pick one of the above – all of them are free.  (I’m partial to Avira, but all three work well).  Download it to your computer and start the installation.  Follow the prompts, hitting “Next” or “Ok” as needed.  You’ll probably need to reboot to finish the installation

Step TWO – Clean up your temporary files: Often viruses keep their files in your computer’s temporary files.  Cleaning out these unneeded files can be a big help.  The easiest way I’ve found is to download and run TFC.  Here’s how to run it:

• Download TFC here, and save it to your computer.
• TFC will close all programs when run, and reboot your computer when it’s done, so save and close your work first, and make sure to let TFC run uninterrupted.
• Start the program by double-clicking on it.
  
• Click the Start button (in TFC) to begin cleaning.  It’s going to take a long time, so be patient!
• TFC should ask to reboot your machine when it’s done.  If it doesn’t, do it yourself to ensure a complete clean process.
  

Step THREE – Install and run Maywarebytes’ Anti-Malware:

• Download Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware here, and save it to your computer. Download the Free Version.
• Double-click mbam-setup.exe and follow the prompts to install the program.
• At the completion of the install, be sure a checkmark is placed next to
  [✓ ] Update Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware
  [✓ ] Launch Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware
• then click Finish.
  
• If an update is found, it will download and install the latest version.
  
• Once the program has loaded, select Perform Quick scan, then click Scan.
  
• When the scan is complete, click OK, then Show Results to view the results.
• If the scan finds any malware, be sure that the boxes near them are checked, and click Remove Selected. If it finds a particularly “evil” file, it may have to restart your computer to remove it.
  
• When completed, a log will open in Notepad. and you may be prompted to Restart.

Step FOUR – Download and run GMER rootkit removal: rootkits are extremely sneaky viruses that can hide from most antivirus software by pretending to be legitimate parts of your comuter’s operating system, or even the antivirus software itself.  GMER doesn’t run under Windows7 64 Bit mode, so skip this if that’s what your computer runs.

If  your computer is particularly messed up, you can download the files above onto a CD-R or Flash Drive on another computer, and try the above steps in “Safe Mode”.  Microsoft has Safe Mode startup instructions for Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.

http://tjschmitz.com/blog/2010/09/01/diy-virus-removal/

While there is a cost to backup to Amazon S3 servers, the cost for the four fairly large websites has been averaging  $0.03 a day – which averages out to $2.74 per site per year!  Definitely worth the peace of mind I’ll be getting from having a secure offsite backup of the website created each night.

The first is CPU-Z by CPUID.  This handy little freeware utility gives you the lowdown on the CPU, motherboard, memory and OS information of your systems.    When trying to identify the components of a whitebox computer remotely from hundreds of miles away, this tool is the best.

The other tool is the Crucial System Scanner tool.  This cool tool will run from a network share or flash drive, with no installation needed.  Once it runs, it gives you a nice readout with information on what board/chipset you have, how much memory is currently installed, and what RAM will work with your system.  Crucial will of course be happy to sell you compatible memory, but armed with the information they’ve given you you can search around for the best memory for the price.

A nice bag of tricks that takes all of the guesswork out of memory upgrades.  Thanks CPUID and Crucial!

The most prominent company offering  free WordPress hosting right now is DreamHost.  They are a established, well known hosting company.  You can sign up for their free app hosting at: https://panel.dreamhostapps.com/signup/ .

Too keep it free (remember we’re just testing and learning here) pick a name to use with their free DreamHosters.com domain name.  FOr my example I picked  “mycooltestsite”:

I then made some changes to the default settings in step 3 – I clicked the “X” next to Drupal to deselect that program and changed the address in WordPress from “blog” to “www” – this is how I normally set up my websites.  You can certainly feel to leave the settings how they are or make any changes you want to.

Leave step 4 unchecked – we’ll talk more about hosting options in a future post. We’ll keep trying this for free for now.

Enter your information in step 5, and once you’re all done you should come to the payment page – which should show a grand total of $0 due.

DreamHost will email you instructions on how to get into the WebPanel of your new free hosting account, but for now click on the “Continue to our web panel” button.

The next step is to wait 15-20 minutes or so.  Go grab yourself a bowl of ice cream or a slice of pie to celebrate!

In a little while, you should find a gazillion emails from DreamHost in your email notifying you that your apps are installed and ready to use:

Open the one titled “Success installing wordpress…” and you’ll get the ID and password for your WordPress software:

There may be more information below this about making changes to DNS, but unless you used a custom domain name (not *.dreamhosters.com) you can ignore all of that.

Click on the management link in the email and you’re ready to make your first blog post or web page!

For help on getting up to speed on using WordPress, I recommend First Steps With WordPress for a quick tour of it’s features and functions.

To adjust the pressure:

1. Turn on the CPAP, noting the pressure setting in the LED display on the right hand side of the CPAP.
2. Turn the CPAP back off.
3. Open the little panel to the right hand side of the LED display.
4. Turn the Heat setting to “0″.
5. Turn the machine on while holding in the ramp button.
6. Wait for a zero with dashes on either side to appear in the LED display.
7. Turn the heat setting to four.
8. Change the pressure by turning the little dial inside the panel on the right hand side of the CPAP.  Left means less pressure, right means less.  You should hear the pressure raise/lower while you turn the knob.
9. Turn the heat setting to Three.
10. Press the Ramp button again. The CPAP will go back into “normal” mode and will show what you have set the pressure to.

Obviously you should take extreme care adjusting your CPAP or you could blow your sinuses up or something.  You should probably check with your medical professional before blowing your nose, so don’t come lookin to me if you hurt yourself with this gem of knowledge I’ve provided.

Happy sleeping folks!

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN>STSADM.EXE -o addtemplate -filename c:\Templates\JobRequisition.wsp -title JobRequisition -description JobRequisition

Cannot find or parse web template file c:\Templates\JobRequisition.wsp.

I downloaded different copies of the template from all over the web, but I kept getting the same message:

After a couple of days of searching Google, I finally found the answer:

wsp file extensions take addsolution, not addtemplate

And after changing the command just a tiny bit – I finally had sucess:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN>STSA
DM.EXE -o addsolution -filename “c:\Templates\jobs\JobRequisition.wsp”

Operation completed successfully.

If I had read the “readme.txt” file that came with every copy of the file I downloaded, I would have figured this out about a day quicker…..

Finally, don’t forget to deploy the solution before trying to make a site with it.  Full instructions can be found on the TechNet site at: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288412%28office.12%29.aspx

Fortunately there is a “trick” that will let you restart a machine.  Press “CTRL-ALT-END” to bring up the “Windows Security” window (just like CRTL-ALT-DEL would locally).  Click on the “Shut Down” button.

and then pick “Restart” from the drop down menu in the “Shut Down Windows” window, and click “OK”.

Your computer or server will be on it’s way to a fresh start.

All of the solutions listed wanted you to uninstall the Terminal Services Licensing Service from your server and re-install it.  This would have required a couple of reboots and taken way longer than I wanted to have the system down.  Fortunately I came across a better solution that was quick and easy:

Start regedit and delete the following keys:

HKey Local Machine\Software\Microsoft\TermServLicensing\Certificates.

HKey Local Machine\System\CurrentControlSet\services\TermservLicensing\Parameters\Certificates.000

H Key Local Machine\System\CurrentControlSet\services\TermservLicensing\Parameters\Certificates.001

Then stop and restart the service and you’re back in business!

I bought a cheap phone for $2 at the second hand store.  Amazingly it worked great when I got it home, and I started putting phase two of my plan in place.

I bought a pair of headphone jacks for $2.99 at Radio Shack, and found an old computer network cable that I cut up to get some small cables for making the connections.

I found the cabling layout for the phone handset cord, and cracked the old phone open by removing thee screws:

(Click on the picture for a larger view -thanks to Pedro Rebello de Andrade for the original picture)

Tracing the cables back from the handset jack on the phone, I could see where the jack connected to the circuit board of the phone.  I got lucky that my phone used the colors referenced above – you may have to use the numbered sequence of pins on the jack soldered to the circuit board.

I made two small holes in the case of the phone (using a kitchen knife, much to my wife’s chagrin) where there was empty space so I could close it up again with no problems, and screwed the two jacks into them.

Then, I soldered the Black and Yellow (#1 and #4) two one of the jacks and labeled it “Mic” and made it pink with a red Sharpie I had to match the color on the plug.  Red and Green (#2 and #3) were connected to the other jack with a 470 Ohm resistor in-line.  I used a 470 resistor as that’s all Radio Shack had in stock – I figured it was close enough and at $0.09 for five, I could afford to make a mistake. The jack was then labeled “Phones” and colored Green (also with a Sharpie) to match the color on the plug of the headphones.

The phone was put back together, and the headphones/mic were plugged onto the jack.  I had sound in the headphones, and my test caller said my voice was coming through nice and clear.

My total cost: $5.98 – not bad, considering the cheapest phone at Wal Mart was $9.99, and it didn’t even have a handset jack at all being an all-in one phone.  If you need a headset for this, WalMart has one for under $5, so your total outlay would be $7.96 if you can find an old/used phone for the same price.

You do have to be a comfortable with a soldering iron, but if you’ve got any kind of basic soldering skills, this should be a breeze for you.

1. Click Start > Control Panel > Sounds and Audio Devices
2. Click the Sounds tab
3. Scroll down the list under Program Events. Under the Windows Explorer section, highlight Start Navigation.
4. Under the Sounds box, select (None) > OK, close Control Panel

Here’s how to nuke the sound in Windows Vista:

1. Click Start > Control Panel > Sound
2. Click the Sounds tab
3. Scroll down the list under Program. Under the Windows Explorer section, highlight Start Navigation.
4. Under the Sounds box, select (None) > OK, close Control Panel

Peace and quite is now restored.  I, however think that whoever decided that opening a link, or a folder needed it’s own sound should be beaten with a bag full of “Made for Windows” stickers.