Goodbye Adobe (almost)

After trying the excellent PDF support in Google Chrome, I associated PDFs with Chrome and uninstalled Adobe Reader! It felt great!

Now if only I could do the same with Flash......

I hate Vista Event Viewer

Why doesn't the system log in this 'Modern' operating system sort instantly? It's just a few lines of text, FFS. I guess it's all those new security features that makes it 100x slower than the XP one...

Changing a motherboard in a Vista machine

So it used to be that you could swap a motherboard in a PC running Windows XP and not have to format and re-install. Along comes Vista and Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, removed the repair install feature. I've read numerous forum posts saying you need a retail DVD for it to work - tried that and it didn't help... Other people said it's to do with the service packs and you need a DVD with the same service pack as is installed on the machine - this didn't help me either. Eventually I came across a something completely by accident that made my day! I've been using Acronis TrueImage for backups, especially complete system image ones, for quite a while now. I was retoring a backup with the 2010 version the other day and found something called "Acronis Universal Restore".


From the Acronis knowledge base:
"Acronis Universal Restore lets you restore an image of Windows operating system to different hardware environment; Acronis Universal Restore allows to change Windows Hardware Abstraction Layer and install HDD controller and NIC drivers"


Awesome. The very next Vista-box-with-a-dead-motherboard job I got, I tried it and it worked beautifully! So the moral of the story is: I can't recommend this product enough.
I thought it was a bit odd that Norton Ghost, which has long been the industry standard imaging software didn't have this feature, so I started nosing around on their website. They do indeed have a product that claims to do this, called "Symantec Ghost Solution Suite". It's currently at version 2.5 which they claim supports up to Windows 7 (as does Acronis) but I am yet to try it.


Anyways, hope this saves some of you from re-formatting.


http://www.acronis.com/

HP Ink System Failure Error 0xc18a0201

Had this error come up on a HP C7180 and found the fix here. Says it's for a C5180 but worked great for me.

Press and hold the “left arrow” key.

Press the “Setup” key and release both keys.

Display should say “Enter Special Key Combo”

Press and release the “OK” button

1.       Press and release the right arrow button until the display says “System Configuration Menu”.

2.       Press and release the “OK” button.

3.       Display should say “Hardware failure status”. If not there already, Arrow Key over to “Hardware failure status”,

4.       Press and release the “OK” button.

5.       Display should say “Hardware failure status: Clear. Press OK to clear”. 

6.       Press and release the “OK” Button. Message changes to “Hardware failure status Cleared. Press Cancel to continue”.

7.       Press and release the “CANCEL” button as many times as necessary, so that, either the “Welcome to Photosmart Express” screen appears, or, the “Ink System Failure” screen appears. PLEASE DO NOT TRY TO PRINT AT THIS STAGE.

8.       Using the Power Button, turn the unit OFF and unplug the power cable from back of the printer and wall outlet.

9.       Wait 30 seconds for the power to get discharged and then plug the power cable into the wall outlet first and then into the back of the printer

10.   Turn the unit on. The printer may display message “USE POWER BUTTON TO SHUTDOWN THE PRINTER” followed by “PRESS OK TO CONTINUE”. Press OK.

11.   If the printer has already initialized, then go to the next step. If not, the printer will start the “ONE TIME INK INITIALIZATION PROCESS”. Allow this process to complete and do not interrupt. Once the initialization process is complete, the printer will print out a Diagnostic Page.

12.   To verify printer functionality print a SELF TEST PAGE. If SELF TEST prints, then printer is ready for use.

NOTE: If the error is still there, or reoccurs replace the unit.