Write an FAQ!

[Mephisto_kur]

Post your step by step instruction for fixing or installing anything.  Post them as replies to this thread.  I'll eventually link them on their own page once I have enough.

[KillJoy]

Multi-NIC, Multi-Protocol Network Boot Disk

This is the most valuable tool I have ran across in a long time.  Imagine a disk that boots to Windows 95 DOS mode and creates a RAM drive.  It then gives you a menu to pick which NIC card drivers to load, and a choice of NetBEUI (faster for ghosting if your file server supports) or TCP/IP with static or dynamic address.  It also lets you specify the Domain and username to log on with, the server and share name to automatically map a drive letter to, then it applies all those things, logging you into the Domain (if necessary) and mapping your drive letter.

With a little tweaking, I've added all of the NIC drivers for all of the machines I support.  It also was a little slow, since it extracts these drivers from highly compressed .CAB files on a floppy diskette, so I burned the floppy ISO to CD, and had room to add extra tools to the CD, like FDISK, FORMAT, etc. (the sky is the limit here...or rather 650+ MB is the limit).

Now I have one CD that can boot any machine and map a drive letter to any other machine on my network.  I use it primarily for imaging machines using Ghost, but I've also used it to recover data from FAT or FAT32 partitions where failed operating systems (Windows 9x sucks) have left them unbootable.  I simply boot on the disk and copy the documents to the mapped share on the server.  It's easier than tearing apart the machine to pull out the drive and slave it on another system.

I think I got it from BovisTech here:  http://www.bovistech.com/multiple.htm
To add your own NIC drivers, you'll need the PowerArchiver or similar utility to create the .CAB files... http://www.powerarchiver.com/
Make all the changes to the floppy, then burn it to CD along with your formatting / partitioning tools.  I hope you find it as useful as I have.

[BigJimandtheTwins]

Useful DEll tip for HD problems:

-At the Dell splash screen hit ctl + alt + d. This runs what they call the 9090 diags. If your box fails this test they will send you a hard drive. They will make you run this test anyway.

To clear the NV RAM do the following: Scroll, number and caps lock buttons should be lit. Go into CMOS and hit alt + f; alt + e; alt + b. the pc will reboot. You have just cleared the NV RAM

[Mephisto_kur]

Need a bootdisk?
Head over to www.bootdisk.com

[Mephisto_kur]

To call a php page from an html document, use the syntax:

Code: [Select]


<?php<br>include_once("http://forum.heavybrick.com/index.php");<br>?>


You can also use a php based redirect:

Code: [Select]


<?php<br>Header("Location: http://forum.heavybrick.com/index.php");<br>?>


This is handy on servers that you cannot use a .htaccess file.  For example:

.htaccess is not implimented
Frontpage Extensions are active.  In which case changes to the .htaccess file would break Frontpage Extensions.
.htaccess just plain doesn't work or are not enabled.

Be aware that Win32 based servers cannot correctly process php includes at this time, no matter the webserver software.

[Mephisto_kur]

Is your webhost php enabled?

Open a text editor (notepad is good for Windows people) - do NOT use Word or Staroffice.  The programs can use non-text characters that will foul and break code.  We'll assume notepad.

On the blank notepad page, enter this code:

Code: [Select]


<?php<br>phpinfo()<br>?>


Click File\Save As
name the file "phpinfo.php"  WITH THE QUOTES.  If you save without quotes, notepad automatically adds the .txt extension.  FTP the new phpinfo.php file to your webspace.  Open it in your browser (i.e. www.bobfrank.com/phpinfo.php).

If it doesn't do anything, php is not enabled or not installed on your webserver.  If php is running on your server, you should have a return page of all the information you could possibly need, including webserver type and version, compression settings, php settings.  Check mine here.

[BrNz]

IE Window problem?

You annoyed whenever you open a second IE window and its too small/large?

Easy fix:

Open up the first browser window to full screen.
Open up a second instance - it's that annoying size?

Well then resize it! Seriously.... resize it to whatever your preference is, then close the first browser you have open. THEN close the second one.

It should remember the settings.

[Mephisto_kur]

For some reasons, hard drive manufacturers are under the impression that computers use a Base-10 number system to express the amount of storage a device can handle. This is why all of the hard drives that are labelled as 80GB have the disclaimer "1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes". Let's do the math.

80GB is equal to 80,000,000,000 bytes. Computers think in binary, Base-2. One Giga-something in Binary is equal to 2^30, or 1,073,741,824. That is obviously more than 1 billion. Thus, 80GB should be 85,899,345,920 bytes (80* 2^30). But, you have 80,000,000,000 bytes. If you divide this number by 2^30, you get 74.50580596923828125..., or approximately 74.5. This is why you have 74.5GB of free space on an 80GB hard drive

Of course, then you can dig even further. An 80GB hard drive really has more than 80GB, despite what my calculations here show. This is how a drive deals with bad sectors. When a bad sector is encountered, it is marked by the drive and the OS, but nothing happens to it. When a low-level format is done, the bad sectors that have been marked (and those that haven't been marked yet) are re-mapped by the hard drive to other parts of the hard disk, that are reserved for use only when bad sectors have to be redirected to those locations.

Thanks to evildre at CandidForums.  I knew the reason, but he explains it much easier than I would have...  That last paragraph explains, BTW, why most HDD manufacturers consider a low level format a warranty voiding thing to do...

[Mephisto_kur]

How to make a bootable Windows XP SP1 disc.
link.

[KillJoy]

This one should prove particularly useful.  I didn't write it (I wish).

How to install Linux on a dead badger

[KillJoy]

Cygwin is great, but the terminal leaves you with problems.
Line feeds don't always work right.
Window resizing doesn't work.
Terminal apps display incorrectly.
Backspace, control sequences and stuff are just hosed...

Here's the fix...  Use RXVT instead of the DOS / CMD crap.  It's part of the Cygwin distro.  Then, just fix your cygwin.bat to use it correctly.

These guys solved all my problems...  http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?BetterCygwinTerminal

Make sure rxvt is part of your Cygwin install, and update your C:\cygwin\cygwin.bat to this:

 @echo off
 C:
 chdir \cygwin\bin
 start rxvt -sr -sl 10000 -fg white -bg black -fn fixedsys -tn cygwin -e /bin/bash --login -i