Tech Talk & Other Thoughts

Some nerd talk by Brian and other random thoughts

PS3 Media Server

December 22, 2011 in Tech Talk & Other Thoughts by Brian Thompson | No comments

So back when I wrote that the website was back up I mentioned the PS3 Media Server.  This is a great free program that will allow you you stream pictures, music, and videos from your pc to your PS3.

Well I have been having a bit of a problem, but I just figured it out and thought I’d type about it.

The problem:  Network drive folders are not showing up on the PS3.

The Observables:  Prior to making the PS3 operate as a service everything worked fine.  When I clicked on the “Install as Windows Service” button on the “General Configurations” tab.

The Solution:  After reading through the PS3 Media Server forum I came across this thread which suggested that the solution was how the service was being run.   I added to the thread for my solution, but here it is again.  It turns out that I did have to go into the PS3 Media Server Service settings and from the “Log On” tab change the log to use “This account” and not a “Local System account”. Make sure you use the Browse button, enter your user name and then click “Check Names” button to ensure that the user account name is correct.  For me it came out as ‘.\UserName’ sans-apostrophe. Next type in your password, even though there are dots, and click apply. It should tell you to then stop the service and press start again for the settings to take place. Once I did this my network drives all work. I suppose the other option is to change the permissions on how my drives are mapped, but since this is working I’m done.

Discovering Symbolic Links

October 22, 2011 in Tech Talk & Other Thoughts by Brian Thompson | No comments

A while back I was trying to do symbolic links in Windows 7 like you can do in Linux.  I didn’t try too hard as I really didn’t have a good need for it at the time.  Well I recently found a good need for symbolic links so I looked a bit harder.   Not too long later I came across several sites that recommended Link Shell Extension.  After messing around with this a while I can say this does exactly what I want….almost.

For my use I want to be able to share some pictures on FTP for friends to download, but I don’t want to let the FTP program, Filezilla, have access to all my pictures.  I also dodn’t really care to have pictures in two places (my pictures folder and in the FTP folder).  With symbolic links I am able to keep the pictures in my personal pictures folder and then create a symbolic link in the FTP folder.   Now I only have one copy of the pictures on my computer and my FTP folder can only see the pictures that I’ve linked.

Before using this I did a quick test.  If you delete the symbolic link the files are not deleted, but if you go into the folder that is linked and delete a file within it the actual file is deleted.    For how I don’t think I need to use hard links as programs seem to work fine with the symbolic (or soft) links.

The one thing that I was hoping to do was to link files from my external hard drives shared through my ww-drt flashed router.  It seems though that the link shell extension program will only work with local files.  For now not a big deal, but I’ll probably keep my eyes out for a solution.

 

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Setting up UltraVNC

October 17, 2011 in Tech Talk & Other Thoughts by Brian Thompson | No comments

I’ve found UltraVNC to be a great free program to maintain the computers that we have.   I’ve now setup all of our computers to use a fixed IP address and each has their own server port.  Our router now fowards the external port calls to each PC.  I’m now able to log in from outside computer or my phone to the computers.

Recently, when I installed uVNC I ran into a problem where once I was logged in the computer wouldn’t respond to any of my inputs.  I checked the settings and the “Disable user inputs” was not checked.  After quite a while I gave up.  I completely uninstalled uVNC from both computers.

When installing I choose to do a full install, downloaded the mirror and vista drivers (though I don’t know if I really use or need them, and choose to not have it setup as a service but rather application mode instead.

Because it was in application mode I opened up the “Edit Settings” icon that came with uVNC.  This is where I think I discovered the problem.  When the application opened I noticed that it loaded all of the old settings (a good thing), but I noticed that the “Disable user inputs” was selected.   Weird since I know it wasn’t selected beforehand.

Well I started up the server side and logged in on the viewer side.  No problems, everything worked just fine.  From there I selected to load it as a service and now I’m all setup.

A couple of quick notes, make sure that you have the firewall disabled or the proper ports configured correctly.  Related to the last note, make sure your networks are setup with the right type Home or public as the firewall rules run may be different for each type.

 

 

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Issues loading Windows 7

October 17, 2011 in Tech Talk & Other Thoughts by Brian Thompson | No comments

What I thought would be a 1 hour task took closed to 10 frustrating hours.

I completely wiped my entire computer and re-established the RAID system.  When I bought Windows 7 upgrade I created a boot CD and thought I’d just put that in and install windows.  Well the install went through just fine until I had to enter my product code.  Apparently since I bought the upgrade I needed to have another verison of Windows already installed.  So no problem I figured I would just use the Vista CD that came with my computer.  Well it isn’t a bootable disk which posed as a problem.  I attempted to create a USB boot disk following a few instructions from web sites, but that didn’t seem to work.

I decided to cheat a bit then.  I re-isntalled Windows 7 using my disk and then found a product code online that worked for a Dell (32KD2-K9CTF-M3DJT-4J3WC-733WD — XXXXX-OEM-8992671-00524 — DELL).  I made sure to keep my computer offline as I imagine the product code is banned by Microsoft.

Once Windows 7 was installed I used my legal Windows Vista 32-bit CD and did a full clean install.  From there I then did a full install to Windows 7 64-bit using my paid product code.

So in total it took 3 installs to get my PC back working, but in reality it took me about 12 attempts to get there.  Not a fun time to get back up and running and I’m really disappointed to find out that Dell didn’t give me the tools to install Vista on my own.

SD Card not working on my HTC Evo Shift

August 10, 2011 in Tech Talk & Other Thoughts by Brian Thompson | No comments

Here is a small issue that I ran into.

After upgrading my HTC Evo Shift to Gingerbread I discovered that I could no longer connect my phone to my computer and get to the SD card.  I tried installing the latest HTC Sync software, but that didn’t seem to fix the problem.  I read a few other blogs and then tried getting the latest Android SDK.  After installing that I’m back up and running.  Pretty simple, but pretty annoying.

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