First, there’s partitioning. Sectioning off an entire chunk off your hard drive is both scary (for the first timers) and creates less total space then would otherwise be available to either OS.

Second, neither OS can (generally) access the files of the other. Your photos, music, movies, homework, and detailed schematics of jello-powered war robots remain on the original partition, inaccessible to the new operating system.

Third, rebooting is annoying.

So whats is this virtualization option? Simply put, virtualization allows you to run multiple operating systems simultaneously; each within their own window.

How is this done? A virtualization program works by creating virtual environments for additional guest operating systems. These “virtual machines” are digital representations of virtual (i.e. not real) computer hardware, which the guest is made to “think” it’s running on. In reality this virtual hardware is merely a thin abstraction which hides the guest from the real hardware and drivers, which the main operating system still maintains full control over. Additionally, a file represents a virtual hard drive, which dynamically expands or contracts as data is added to or removed from it.

An important thing to remember in this situation is that hardware is not being emulated; the virtual machine uses real computer hardware natively, just in a masked fashion. This is a non-resource intensive approach and produces very little overhead; the only real limitations to running multiple operating systems in this manner are the memory and processing footprints required to run them.

With virtualization, you can run multiple operating systems at the same time, right alongside one another. No rebooting, no partitioning, no boot loaders. Generic virtualized hardware means you won’t deal with driver issues. A useful feature allows users to select shared folders on the primary hard disk, which can then be used natively by a guest OS, which provides file interoperability. Newer features also allow for the use of SMP (symmetric multiprocessing), 64-bit processing, and even limited (though quite useful) hardware graphics acceleration.

There are several choices as far as virtualization software goes; some of which are quite reputable. I personally recommend Sun’s virtualbox; it packs the same features as the other heavyweights; while being open source and entirely free. I’ve been using it for a good part of a year now, and it performs outstandingly.

Regardless of your choice, virtualization can eliminate whatever issues you might have with running multiple operating systems, and make doing so a great experience.

Cheers

The cost of adoption is still prohibitively high, but this will change – and soon. Because of this I can definitely see motherboards with onboard SS hard drives in our future.

Crazy? I don’t think so.

I can still remember the days when you had to purchase a separate I/O controller to hook up your floppy disk and giant 5.25″ hard disk that only held 125MB. It wasn’t too many years ago that video controllers weren’t standard issue either. With the price of flash memory steadily dropping, and more and more people funneling money into the manufacturers by purchasing the now ubiquitous flash drives for their portable storage; I honestly can’t see any good reason for the motherboard manufacturers not to eventually throw a 500GB solid-state chip next to the southbridge.

Think about it – from a performance standpoint it makes perfect sense. The mobo manufacturer could interface directly with the memory using whatever bus system they see fit, and could tune said system to squeeze as much speed out of it as possible. It also makes sense from a laptop manufacturer’s point of view as well – having no separate drive means that space is saved for other items, which means that more features could be packed into a small area where space is already at a premium. I shouldn’t even have to mention the obvious power savings – another boon for portable computing. Not only would their product have an inherently fast storage solution, but they can add more features all the while advertising an increase in battery life.

So keep an eye out – I will not be at all surprised if we see the first mobos with on-board solid state hard disks within the next four years.

*At ~$650.00 for a 256GB solid state disk purchasing one is certainly feasible, but the term “affordable” is still pretty subjective.

My experience with the G1 was good overall. In my opinion the phone did feel a bit klunky and as if it were rushed to market simply to get an Android phone out there as soon as possible. However, most of the little quirks that I disliked about the phone – the lack of a virtual keyboard, for instance – were corrected over time with software updates.

Because of my generally positive experience with the G1, and the fact that I absolutely love the phone’s design, I decided to give another HTC product a shot – the Touch Pro. It has everything that the G1 has, physically anyway. The slide out full QWERTY keyboard, a large touch-sensetive LCD display, camera, video recording capabilities, GPS, 3G connectivity, excellent web browsing (as good an experience as you can expect from a phone) etc, are all things that I like.

The choice of carrier was easy. Verizon Wireless has the best coverage down here in St. George and the surrounding rural areas, as well as the fact that most of my colleauges, friends, and family with them. The only real choice was the phone itself. By day I am a network administrator for one of the largest marketing firms in town. By night I own and operate a small consulting/computer repair firm, and on top of all that also operate my network of websites. As such, I need a phone that will act as a task manager, scheduler, storage device, MP3 player, and obviously still be able to make quality calls. I browsed through the various phone choices available to me and was extremely pleased to come across the Touch Pro as it does all of these things in the exact form factor that I like (I positively love full QWERTY slide-out keyboards. Typing is so much easier on them).

So – I made my purchase and gleefully took my shiny new phone home. Right off the bat I carefully trimmed a screen protector and applied it to keep my display safe. Courtesy of owning previous Windows Mobile devices before (A Dell Axim X3, for instance) I was able to set up ActiveSync to connect and sync with my gMail contacts and calendar right off the bat. This alone made my entire evening; no spending one and a half hours manually entering contacts for this cowboy! It was also a trivial matter to get the Windows Mobile Device Center for Vista software installed and the phone setup to sync with Outlook on both my desktop and my laptop. In fact, I was able to set it up to sync via bluetooth with my laptop so that even plugging in a USB cable wasn’t required!

Suffice it to say, that initially at least, I was very pleased. Unfortunately, the honeymoon period was quite short lived.

It didn’t take too long before I noticed the HTC Touch Pro’s largest and most fatal flaw – its llllaaaaaaaaaaaaaggggggg. This fully featured and might I add quite expensive smart phone is SLOW. AS. HELL. Doing trivial things, such as simply sliding out the keyboard would cause it to hang for a while as it though about realigning the display to the landscape format. Switching between running apps would take several seconds. Trying to type a text message is infuriating because not only does it take a few seconds for each sub-menu to appear once you select ‘New’ within the messaging app, but once you’re finally into the message and start to type then at least half of the time no text will appear until you’re halfway done composing whatever it is you’re going to send – after which the cursor comes flying across the screen with all of the letters chasing it. Of course, if you’ve made any typos then you now have to either manually scroll back to correct it, or you have to pull out the stylus to carefully select where you’d like the cursor to be.

Messaging isn’t the only thing that is frustrating with this otherwise promising peice of hardware. Phone calls are nearly impossible to manage with it as well. Because of the phone’s incredible lack of speed, it takes on average at least 5 seconds before the “answer” option is available to you once the phone starts ringing. This is in addition to the fact that once the phone realizes that there is an incoming call it locks up the current app. So not only are you not able to answer the call until the phone decides to display the option to do so, but you can’t even keep doing whatever it was you happened to be doing at the time of the incoming call. I could go on about the phone’s 8086-style slowness, but there are so many examples of this P.O.S. lagging out or completely locking up that I’d have carpal tunnel by the time I got done writing them all.

What was that? You thought that I was done? Nope. The phone’s other absolutely fatal flaw is the volume of the handset speaker. Unless you’re in an absolutely silent area then you’re not going to be able to hear what the person on the other side of the call is saying. I’m a guy, so I definitely can’t say that I’m a great listener. That said, I also cannot say that I am hard of hearing. With that in mind, then you should have a good idea of just how quite this phone is with the volume all the way up. The only way that I can use it without either having my headset on, or connecting it to the uConnect system in my car, is to turn on the speaker phone. Not only is it annoying to have to turn that on every time I get a call without a headset in tow, but the godforsaken laggyness causes problems here too.

Example: The phone rings, and once it finally decides to display the option to answer, you do so. After this, you can start talking – but good luck hearing the person on the other side. During this time the phone is now slowly thinking about showing the in-call options that it should. Once it does this, you have to select the menu where the speakerphone option resides. Another couple of seconds later that menu eventually shows, and then you can turn the speakerphone on. Because of the amount of time this takes – paired to the fact that I probably won’t be able to hear, much less understand them until the speakerphone is turned on I usually answer the phone and then wait for a second or two before giving my greeting. This buys me a little time to wait for the phone to become responsive and then get into the menu needed. Some of the time, if it’s being particularly slow for instance, I will give a somewhat longer salutation; I basically try to drag it out long enough to where I can get the speakerphone turned on that way I don’t have to have them repeat their last several sentences because they were blabbering on before I was able to hear anything.

I fully expected to come into this review blasting HTC for not putting a decent processor into the Touch Pro. Imagine my surprise when I learned that not only does the Touch Pro have the exact same processor as the very responsive HTC Dream, but it also has MORE MEMORY! At this point it would only be natural to place all of the blame on Windows Mobile, but I don’t feel it fair to do so. Windows Mobile is inherently a bit more laggy than other phone OSes. This is common knowlege (It’s called “The infamous Windows Mobile lag” for a reason). Because of this, HTC should have crammed a much faster CPU into this particular phone in order to compensate for it.

All of you must also keep in mind that I have, in fact, done my due dilligence. I’ve used the performance tuning utilities recommended by my friend Eric over at IsYouGeekedUp.com. I’ve also flashed custom ROMs onto it, the Psyki ROM from PPCGeeks being my favorite. MightyROM is also a good one. I’ve also done hard resets, made a point to keep my running tasks at a minimum, etc. None of this helped enough to make the phone worth keeping, let alone recommending to anyone.

If I used any sort of rating system on this site then I’d give this doozy 1 out of 5 stars. Technically, yes, the phone works. Yes there are many cool features included with it that work as well. But with the phone being so slow as to make it unusable coupled with the crippling volume problem, I would never recommend it to anyone for any reason. There are plenty of other phones out there that will not only do everything that this phone does, but will do it well (and quickly!). Personally, I’m going to switch to the Blackberry Tour just as soon as I can offload this peice of garbage on eBay.

PROs: I’m sure that I’ll be able to sell it on eBay.

CONs: SLOWEST AND MOST QUIET PHONE I HAVE EVER USED. Lag makes phone nearly unusable.

Other Thoughts: Blackberry Tour, here I come!

After this I paired my Plantronics Voyager 510 with my computer by putting the PLT-510 in pairing mode (while the headset is powered on, hold both the button on the mic arm and the volume up button until the light keeps flashing red and blue in succession) and then right-clicking the handy Bluetooth icon in the system tray and then selecting “add a bluetooth device”.

The headset paired with my PC, and Vista tried to install drivers for it, which failed. None could be located online automatically and Plantronics hadn’t included a driver disk with the headset.

The solution for me was to install the Broadcom updated drivers for Bluetooth so that the profiles are updated. You can download them from here: http://www.broadcom.com/support/license.php?file=SetupBtwDownloadSE.exe

After this is done and you connect the Vista PC to the Voyager 510 again then it should correctly detect the device and register with the Windows audio services. If you intend to use it to Skype calls or whatnot, make sure to select it as the default recording device in the sound properties. To do this you simply right click the volume icon in the system tray and select “recording devices”. It’ll show the Voyager listed in there if it’s installed properly; which it should be if you followed my instructions above.

The install went smoothly, absolutely no hiccups there. Even after the initial reboot everything looked kosher; the main X login screen would appear just fine. It wasn’t until I actually tried to log into the account I had created that there was a problem.

Effectively, just after logging in the screen would go completely dark with the exception of a one pixel band at the top of the screen where some of the desktop was displayed, and the mose cursor would render as well. Nothing else.

I initially tried to do a failsafe terminal session and run the old trusty “sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg” command, but that didn’t work. Following this, I did a little poking around and found that the SR1503WM uses an Intel graphics card, so I went to another failsafe terminal session and edited the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file to the following:

Section “Device”
Identifier “Configured Video Device”
Driver “intel”
Option “AccelMethod” “XAA”
EndSection

Section “Monitor”
Identifier “Configured Monitor”
EndSection

Section “Screen”
Identifier “Default Screen”
Monitor “Configured Monitor”
Device “Configured Video Device”
EndSection

In order to edit this file from a terminal I prefer to use pico as it’s much more straightforward than using vi.

Anyway, boot to a failsafe terminal session and after this type “sudo pico /etc/X11/xorg.conf”. Following that, change the file to match what I have posted above, use Control+X to exit, and make sure to save your changes. When you’re back to the main terminal screen type “exit” and press enter, after which you should be back to the X login screen. Be sure to click on “Options” and then “Change Session” and set Gnome back to the session you want. Try to login now and you should be golden.

EDIT: It should be noted that the two bolded lines above were the ones that I added to the xorg.conf file. The rest was already there, and is pretty standard for most X11 configuration files. Also, I did a fresh install of Ubuntu 9.04 after this and it loaded X/Gnome just fine without any tweaks to the conf file.

Do you keep having intermittent performance issues or are worried about having such?  

I’ve been seeing lots of comments and posts on computer helps sites where users have spent hours, days, weeks and often times lost important data, while costing themselves enormous amounts of money all because they weren’t keeping their Windows Operating Systems’s  (OS’s)”up-to-date”, aren’t maintaining backups, and have forgotten all about general system maintenance.  I’m not sure why this is occurring so much but it appears that many users are fearful of losing data or messing up their current configurations.  Even though we might be computer professionals or maybe not?, everyone needs a reminder ever so often about the basic activities which keeps our systems moving.

So, lets go through how to maintain your Windows OS’s by downloading the latest high-priority updates using Windows Update tool, general maintenance / cleaning up of your system,  plus one of many ways to keep your data backed-up;  so that you don’t need to worry about data loss or configuration issues when downloading updates.  This will help keep you out of trouble – It has saved me many times!

Lets go over how you turn on and use Automatic Updates:

1.  Turn on Automatic Updates:

Click Start, click Run, then you will type sysdm.cpl, and then press ENTER.

Click the Automatic Updates tab.  Then click to select one of the following options:  

1.   Automatic (recommended) – Automatically download    recommended updates for my computer and install them option.  

2.  Download updates for me, but let me choose when to install them option.

3.  Notify me but don’t automatically download or install them option.

2.          Obtain Updates from the Microsoft Web Site:

If you don’t choose the option to “Turn on Automatic Updates and install them when they become available” then you should plan on visiting the Microsoft Web Site often and check for updates. Visit the Microsoft Windows OS update Web Site at: http://www.update.microsoft.com/microsoftupdate/v6/default.aspx?ln=en-us

3.          Do you have any Microsoft Office software installed?  You know, you should keep those applications updated as well.  Here are some examples of the Microsoft Windows Office Applications you should keep updated:  Excel, Outlook, Word, and PowerPoint.  In addition, don’t forget to keep your Internet Explorer (IE) current.

http://office.microsoft.com/search/redir.aspx?AssetID=ES790020331033&Origin=HH101730061033&CTT=5

4.    While we are at it, lets also remember to keep your antivirus and spyware programs up to date.  Since there are so many of them, I’m not able to list the install, update and maintenance instructions for each of them.  If you do not have any antivirus and spyware programs installed, it is HIGHLY recommended that you do such.

5.      Just like doing regular maintenance on your car is invaluable, so it performing maintenance on your computer.

When files are created, deleted, or modified it’s almost a certainty they will become fragmented. Fragmented means that the files on the drive / disc having been divided; or the unity has been destroyed.  This means that a single file no longer stored in one place, in it entirety, on the disk.  Or, what is called contiguous in technical terms.  If the parts of the files are not located together, then they must be scattered and that is exactly the term used to described noncontiguous or fragmented data on a drive. As you can guess, the more fragmented files there are on a drive, the more performance and reliability suffers as the drive heads have to search for all the to be connected or joined pieces in different locations across the drive. What the disk defragmenter tool does for the drive is to reorganize the drive so noncontiguous files are put into contiguous files and then actually optimized for performance. 

A)  How do I get to the Windows XP Disk Defragmenter? 

There are 3 common ways to get to the disk defragmenter tool:

1)     Click Start, Click All Programs, Click Accessories, Click System Tools, Click Disk Defragmenter

2)    Click Start, Click Run, Type dfrg.msc, Click OK

3)    Click Start, Click Administrative Tools, Click Computer Management, Click Storage, Click Disk Defragmenter

B)  How do I get to the Disk Cleanup tool?

There are 2 common ways to get to the disk defragmenter tool:

1)     Click Start, Click All Programs, Click Accessories, Click System Tools, Click Disk Cleanup

2)    Click Start, Click Run, Type cleanmgr, Click OK

About:Blank is one of the most frustrating Browser Hijackers to stay around as long as it has and continue to do damage to systems. If you are hit you will totally be frustrated until you realize you have to do something.  What you see that tells you your system has been hijacked by the About:Blank Hijacker is that each time you open a new browser window, you receive a blank window with “About:Blank” on the address bar.  What causes this is that this Hijacker has corrupted Lucky users, after repeatedly entering URLs can occasionally obtain access to web sites but most often, all users see is a blank white, empty page. Trying and retrying to get a working page is typical for most techies and geeks and so this Browser Hijacker can linger before you do something about it. The intermittent good browsers that behaves normally is good enough to let us not worry about it for a while, until it responds poorly again – which, in this case will be shortly, usually in one or two window openings.

This Hijacker has been around for 5 or 6 years and infects computers by displaying a false directory webpage whenever the browser is opened and shows About: Blank in the title and address window.  One of the most frustrating things about this Hijacker is that is will not let you change your browser’s default homepage and if you do figure out a way to change it, it will change it back.  This Hijacker may also add new websites to your IE favorites, install an adware toolbar to your settings, and of course, hit you with tons and tons of pop-up ads, over-riding all of your settings.

Here is the real killer to all of this; the developers of this Hijacker earn incomes from the advertisements that are displayed on all of the infected machines. Each time you click the links on the directory or search result pages, you are earning money for the Hijacker developers. 

Then, we also have to wonder if the fixes to these aren’t also part of the whole Hijacking mess.  And, here is why: there are ways posted on the web to try to help you fix this but guess what, you cannot totally remove this problem without going out and purchasing a tool.  You can use free tools to scan and identify the infected and damaged files but in order to completely fix the problem and have a clean machine you end up forking out some bucks. I have had this particular Hijacker hit one of my machines that was protected with Norton, Avg, Avast, and a couple more.  Ended up having to add another to my protection suite.

Avg and Avast have proved to be good tools for me.  Both are free.  Both work well.  I have just added XoftSpySE and so far so good. It was the only app that cleaned up and removed the files that were infected.  The others only identified and quarantined.  Not sure why. PC Tools, SpyWare Doctor, Regcure are just a few that you may want to try.   But, don’t purchase before you run a scan and see how many infected files that tool locates. 

Here is the download link for the XoftSpySE tool:

http://www.paretologic.com/download/xoftspyse/revenuewire/?uid=pnh24

Now, there are always those sophisticated users that want to try to clean their systems without the help of a tool.  If you are one of those, you can use the REGISTRY EDITOR to attempt and I do mean attempt to remove about: blank.  First step, backup all of your files. 

If you do not have a backup program, then you can use the Windows Backup Tool:

Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click Backup to start the wizard.  Choose which files you want to backup and where.  I would recommend making a copy that you can store “off-site” away from your machine just in case of emergency. 

Before we go over the steps to try to manually remove the About:Blank components, let me preface with a general word of advice:  manual removal of malware, adware, spyware, or viruses can damage important components of your computer. As a result of an improper removal, the computer may not function properly or it may not function at all. Consider the acquisition of an effective and safe anti-spyware program for the safety and security of your computer.

Moving on, the following steps outline the process that you can follow to attempt a removal of About:Blank from your computer:

Click Start, Click Run, Type ‘regedit’

Click ok to open the registry editor

Remove the following registry values:

06abaa2d-34ab-4902-a326-409bd9b9a7a5

b664647f-efd5-4837-a810-a807139107e5

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\software\microsoft\windows\ currentversion\runnetworkservice

ce6a1268-9cc9-4ba3-8657-fe1132906cc4

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\software\microsoft\windows\ currentversion\runnetworkservice

In addition, the following About:Blank processes also need to be removed:

phafxfa.exe

svhost.exe

smbdins.exe

sethcd.exe

tsmsetup.exe

You will also need to delete or remove any and all of the following directories and their files if they are present on your computer:

phafxfa.exe

svhost.exe

smbdins.exe

sethcd.exe

tsmsetup.exe

wdm.dll

achpjba.dll

cbme.dll

se.dll

iesp1.dll

The following DLL files will need to be unregistered:

wdm.dll

achpjba.dll

cbme.dll

se.dll

iesp1.dll

The above lists are representative of the directories, files, and folders that may be found on your computer if About:Blank has been installed. Variations can exist due to the fact that these programs are constantly making new versions in to outwit savvy computer users. About:Blank has also been known as About Blank Hijack, About Blank Trojan, About Blank Homepage Hijacker, About:Blank Search Hijacker, CWS.Aboutblank, About Blank Spyware, and About Blank Virus.

Very often About:Blank is actually seen on the Add/Remove Programs.  So, you should check and make sure that it has been completely removed from your computer. Open the Add/Remove Programs in the control panel to see if About:Blank is listed.  If it is there, you most likely have not removed it all and will need to continue your manual search for other infected files.  Or, realize that you need to use a Scan Tool from a 3^rd party vendor to locate the infected files.

Nothing like taking a 13 MacBook or 15 /17 inch MacBook Pro and connecting to a 50” or 60” flat screen!!!  From experience, let me tell you how awesome it is!!!!

Are you one of those that has been trying to piece together cables so that your MacBook or MacBook Pro would work with your HDTV or other HDMI compatible device and doing so without much luck, only to find out, after lots of research that others are struggling too and there really isn’t a sound solution available?  Well, I’ve got some good news for you but first, lets me remind you that there are solutions available.  You can put together a solution that does work and that does allow you to use your laptop (MacBooks) on your flat screen TV’s.  Some may ask why – but, think about this……..sitting in your  favorite couch potato chair, in front of your Panasonic 50”  or 60” flat screen TV and deciding that you want to do some research on-line so you plug in your Mini-Display port to DVI cable that is connected to a mini-dvi to dvi adapter.  Then you have a DVI to HDMI cable connected to your flat screen TV and walla; there you have it – the Internet as big as life!  Check that configuration out if you have a flat screen in your bedroom – it is awesome to work or research while hanging out in bed or in your other favorite chair. 

So, where do you get the cables and which cables do you get?  Well, of course you can get them from Apple on-line and they are actually cheaper there than most places I’ve found – plus, the quality is pretty good:  www.store.apple.com/us

Now, let me explain something that may help.  There are three kinds of DVI cables. “DVI-I” stands for “DVI-Integrated” and supports both digital and analog transfers, so it works with both digital and analog Visual Display Units. “DVI-D” stands for “DVI-Digital” and supports digital transfers only. “DVI-A” stands for “DVI-Analog and supports analog transfers only.  One tidbit that may be useful is that DVI does NOT transfer audio, only video. 

One of the hardest problems users have is recognizing the DVI cables.  Here is a quick help as well as a reproduction from datapro on how to differentiate between the cables:

There are two variables in every DVI connector, and each represents one characteristic.

The flat pin on one side denotes whether the cable is digital or analog:

                  A flat pin with four surrounding pins is either DVI-I or DVI-A

                  A flat pin alone denotes DVI-D

The pinsets vary depending on whether the cable is single-link, dual-link, or analog:

                  Two separated 9-pin sets (rows of 6) for a single-link cable

                  A solid 24-pin set (rows of 8) for a dual-link cable

A separated 8-pin and 4-pin set is for DVI-A.

If you head to www.datapro.com they offer pictures of the cables that can help you determine what you need. 

The DVI stated signal distance is 16 feet but you can find places that carry 25 foot cables and then if you have extra cash, you may want to pick  up a a signal booster.  But, I haven’t talked with anyone that has ever needed a signal booster for their DVI cable system. But, on the other hand, I’ve never tried going over 12 feet and my research has shown that users going over 16 feet and using the 25 foot cables are not experiencing degradation.  So most likely you wouldn’t need a booster.

What we all need to do is get them to develop the wireless DVI to HDMI.  Imagine a Mini-display port wireless card about and inch long and a quarter of an inch wide coming from the side of your Mac and then a small HDMI wireless connector on your TV.  Now, that is what I want.  There is good news on the development front, not on the wireless front but on the HDMI topic,  Monoprice has developed Mini-DisplayPort to HDMI adapter and was to have it to market in January 2009.  Unfortunately, they are having problems finding vendors that can produce the product for them. Stay tuned for an update, as this is a pretty, darn hot topic and lots of users are waiting for this solution.

http://www.macyourself.com/2008/12/11/macbook-owners-rejoice-mini-displayport-to-hdmi-adapter-soon/

So, bottom line, what you need is a mini-display port to dvi cable that you can get for $29.99 from Apple (http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB570Z/A).  Then,  you grab a dvi to HDMI cable / adapter from datapro that is anywhere from $16.95 to $45.oo depending on the length (http://www.datapro.net/products/dvi-to-hdmi-digital-video-cable.html).  At that point, you have a HDMI ready cable and you are set!  And, it is a beautiful thing when you get it all put together, which only takes about 5 minutes.

I have a Dell Inspiron 518 running Windows Vista. My kids have managed to get it infected with the virus that poses like a virus scanner – XP Antivirus 2008 (runs as XPAntivirusUpdate.exe and xpa2008.exe). I can’t manage to get this damned thing removed, so I’m just going to have Windows reinstalled. 

Yeah, the Vundo trojan and all of its variants (AntiVirus 2009, AntiVirus XP 2008, WinFixer, AntiSpywareMaster, Storage Protector, Sysprotect) can be a huge pain in the butt to remove. My parents got infected by it a few months back and it was one of the more difficult viruses to remove that I’ve run into.

Symantec has a removal tool, but it doesn’t work with all of the variants. Assuming that doesn’t work for you, then you can try to remove it by booting with a Barts PE disk and scanning your machine with McAfee’s SuperDAT.

You may want to give that a try, but in the event that it doesn’t work for you then you can access your Dell’s recovery partition by pressing Ctrl+F11 when the machine is first turned on. The appropriate time to do this is almost immediately after the power button is pressed. A small message is usually displayed that offers to let you enter the BIOS (usually F2 on newer Dells) or go to the boot menu (F8 or F10, I think; it displays the appropriate key to press).

So, assuming that the partition that the recovery image is saved to hasn’t been deleted for some reason, or that the master boot record hasn’t been altered from the factory settings then the Dell System Recovery software will load and you will be given the option to reimage your drive. Their software is basically just a rebranded version of Norton’s Ghost or some other similar imaging software.

Do keep in mind that if you decide to reimage your machine that all of the data that was on your hard drive will be lost. The machine will be exactly as it was when you first purchased it – meaning that any saved documents, movies, music, settings, programs installed by yourself, etc will be gone.

Because of this I would highly recommend that you save anything that needs to be kept to a flash drive or a DVD before you go forward. After the reinstallation of Vista then you can copy the files back to your hard drive (be sure to virus scan them first, it’d be rather foolish to immediately reinfect yourself with the same malware)

If for some reason you’re unable to get to Dell’s recovery software then you can always order a DVD from them that does the same thing.

Good luck.

Flash plugin required. Select OK to launch web browser for Adobe’s Flash Plug-in download.

The problem with this, is that I clicked OK on multiple occasions and let it install Flash both from Firefox and from IE. Regardless of the install method, the download manager would come up with this error every time.

The solution ended up being:

1. Completely uninstall any reference to Flash from your computer via Add/Remove Programs.
2. Set Internet Explorer as the default browser (I’m not actually sure if this step is completely necessary, but it’s what I had done when I actually got the program to work)
3. Attempt to launch the Download Manager
4. Click the OK button
5. Let the Flash player reinstall itself
6. Attempt to run the EA application again

I’m not sure exactly what the DM is looking for when it checks for the player, but it must be something only generated on a new install of Flash, and not placed there on an update. I had actually completely uninstalled the download manager as well once, but not at the time that I had got it to work. If the above steps don’t work for you, try uninstalling the download manager before you try steps 1-5 again.