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An examination of the Windows Media Center package as it comes with the Windows 7 operating system

An examination of the popular Media Browser package that ads features and styling to Windows Media Center

Adding a TV Tuner card to your PC provides both Media Center and Media Browser with a whole new set of tools to work with

04 Recorded Tv

Setting the TV Tuner Card software to automatically record your favorite programs provides you with a library shows whether or not you were watching TV when they aired

05 Tv Series

The TV Card in combination with program data provided by your TV Station allows you to program a whole series with a single command - imagine an entire season of "The Simpsons" right there on your hard disk

06 Raid5

And speaking of hard disks - putting 3 or more together in an array attached to a RAID card can provide protection, performanace -- and maybe even both

07 Remote

Media Center component providers seemed to have come to a basic agreement on standards for their remote control - we look at a few of them

08 Extenders

Many of us gizmo guys have been forced to give up the dream of having a PC in the lounge. The spousal objections were just too strong. But help is at hand - using one of the many models of Media Center extenders we can enjoy many of the benefits of a media PC - now in the lounge as well

09 Filename Conversion

Although Media Center technology has expanded our entertainment horizons and at the same time made this diverse material easier to get, there still exist pockets of resistence where manual intervention is required. Re-naming files to confrom to the standard is one of those hold-out and we take a look at a techie way to automate the process

10 Ninite

And speaking of automating processes, here's a nifty little package to automate your next windows software installation

11 Last Filesystem

I've got quite a bit of disk space available on my home network, but I found out some time ago that it's no good having a bounty of space if you can't find what you've got. Tools like "Everything" are great (I use it at least once a day) but why not put it where you can find it as soon as you get it? In truth any filing system will do so long as you use it - and any system should be based on the way you use your computer, but I've offered up my own home-grown tried-and-true system for your consideration

12 Knowem

This is a fun little resource - type in your name and see how may social networks know who you are!

13 View Source

Here's one for the propeller-heads - it's a way to automate a download process using the raw text data from a web page. Pocket Protectors at the ready!

140Colors.Htm

As a web designer you're required to use color on your site (I don't believe I've ever seen a black and white site - something to think about) but if you're a guy you are more than likely to have some degree of color-blindless. Even if you don't you probably don't want to use words like "chartreuse" or "beige" or "passion pink". On top of that who can remember those stupid codes? (#00FFFF). Fortunately, the HTML people have provided us with "word equivalents" for 140 colors out of their 16 million possibles. This means that when we want red we can specify "red"

14 Css1

CSS is growing on me. I took a stab at understanding it several times before making this small initial step and I've made additional strides since that I hope to write about soon

15 Css2

One nice thing about using CSS over using tables in your HTML layout is that it's more flexible and (in my view) more attractive. Here's a little starter kit to get you going

16 Tv Setup

Returning to our roots, this piece is about fitting a TV card into your Windows Media Center setup. Even if you don't watch much TV, the technology is interesting in and of itself. If you do watch a bit of TV merging your PC technology with Broadcast functionality adds a new dimension to the mix and turns your PC into an intelligent DVR

17 Epg Setup 1

Taking TV technology to the next level, it's now possible to extract the Electronic Program Guide (EPG) right out of the air. Previously this information had been horded by the provider as a source of revenue, today the information can be freely available with a bit of software and some time to set it up

18 Epg Setup 2

Part 2

19 Epg Setup 3

Part 3

20 Call 4 Help

Tips and tricks for getting more information and faster problem resolution from your help desk.

21 Quick Edits

(The sections that follow ("in progress") are placeholder titles to remind me about the topics I'd like to cover but just don't have time to work on just now. This is a very short item to show you how to use the TAB key in Windows 7 to move between file names in the windows explorer window in "edit" mode eliminating the need to hit "F2" or the "right click", "rename", edit the file name, "enter" sequence.

22 Basic Setup

(In Progress) This section aims to describe the basic set of software tools that pretty much any computer user should and use. Included will be links to download the free or "free versions" of each.

23 Unix Help

(In Progress) Unix was my first operating system and I always keep a set of Unix tools on my PC for those times when Unix beats Windows 7 hands down. This article describes a few of these tools and the situations when they would be most useful.

24 Cmd

(In Progress) This article is the Windows Command Line counterpart to the Unix article just above.

25 Geek Zone

(Stalled) Can't really remember what I was going to do with this one.

26 Database 101

(In Progress) The next three items have been planned as a series of basic database training to describe what databases are good for, what they are not good for, how to design your database to fit the purpose, what to include, what to exclude, and how to design for expandability.

27 Database 102

(ditto)

28 Database 103

(ditto)

29 Raid Again

Proof-almost-positive that RAID hardware is the bee's knees.

30 Hot Win

Keeping your Windows installation cooler and cleaner by hiding those unslightly wires.

31 Cool Win

(InProgress) Tips and tricks to keep your windows installation running cooler

32 All My Movies

A cool little program to sort out your movie collection

33 Tmdb Api

(In Progress) a tutorial on how to link into the TMDb Movie Database - I hope this is going to turn into a stand-alone application one day.

The purpose of this post is to confirm the confidence I have in RAID technology as expressed in the earlier post "06-RAID". It is occaisioned by my recent plans to write a very different piece. As they say "it's always darkest before the dawn" .

Warning Signs

Summers can get pretty hot here in Auckland (average temperature 24 degrees - 75 to you Northies with 99% humidity) so it's no simple matter to keep a computer cool.

Some time ago (more than a year) I found that I had to re-boot my systems much more often on hot days than on cool days.

Since then it occured to me that these seemingly unrelated faults might be the result of systems overheating.

Googling through the list of pages that got a hit from "computer heat-related faults" you will find a surprisingly large and diverse range of suspects; slower system performace, programs not running when clicked, web browser locking up, are all listed and they were the sort of problems I was having that would prompt a reboot. The solution, it appeared, would be to add few more internal 12-volt fans.

I did ask my wife if we could turn her sewing room into an air-conditioned computer room with racks and a raised floor - but she said "No". Women - go figure.

Instead I added more and more internal fans into my 2 boxes, and while this seemed to aleviate the faults, it also made the room a lot noisier.

In an effort to reduce the office noise levels I had a cabinet built to house both of my Tower units and I included several ventilation holes that I hoped would be sufficient.

The result was actually a large desk-shaped oven. The multiple 6-inch vent holes weren't nearly enough to extract the traped heat so it just got hotter and hotter. I had to take off the cabinet doors and even the PC covers and then direct a large office fan at them to bring the operating tempurature down to a safe level. In the end, for a time, the office was hotter and noisier than ever. (more about this in our next article)

I mention my heat problems because for a long time I attributed all of my "unattributable" faults to it. In particular, the one that bugged me the most was the loss of my RAID array.

The first time I noticed it was a bit of a shock, but after a bit of investigations and reboots it became clear that the array hadn't dissapeared, it had only failed to mount after a reboot.

The boot drive ("C:\") is a separate physical HDD so the system boots up fine, it just has no "D:\" drive.

No error message was produced and in fact, the report from the HighPoint RAID management system told me that the array was "Normal" apart from the number 2 disk running a bit hot.

In order to recover the folders I had to power down the box and reboot at least once, and sometimes more, to get the virtual "D:\" drive back on line.

I sent off a note to the HighPoint group via their support web page, got an email back saying their support guy was on vacation and provided an alternate address to contact. No reply came back from the alternate email.

I used the support page to request an update on the status of my fault report and shortly thereafter I got an email saying that my trouble ticket has been updated - I logged back in to the support site only to find that the "update" they notified me about was my query asking them for an update.

Around this time I'd been posting my problem off to my various forums and one kind reader wrote me to point out that if I really wanted to back up a 1.5Tb RAID array, I'd need a 1.5Tb backup disk to do it. He was right of course, but it was a depressing kind of right - there is a good measure of fault tollerance built into the RAID software, but it is fault "tollerance" not fault "proof". If you lose a second disk before you can replace the first fail, you will lose the array.

The lack of progress on this issue and a growing sense of frustration with the supplier drove me to consider an article on "the failure of raid technology and its suppliers" - fortunately a lucky-un-lucky break intervened.

"We had to destroy the village in order to save it"

Have you ever had an intermittent fault on a system that you couldn't pin-point, but you knew it was in a particular subsystem, so you just whacked the subsystem with a hammer to get the whole thing replaced?

Fortunately for me, fate held the hammer this time.

As disk failures go, the "head crash" (see Wikipedia) has to be one of the most dramtic. It's a catastrophic hardware fault that occurs when a read-write head (works like the needle on a turntable) comes into contact with the surface of the disks platter which is spinning around at 7200 Rpm.

On February 1st. a noise that sounded very much like a high-speed dentist drill came screaming from my PC - checking the RAID Management page I could see that the number 2 drive had indeed failed. (I've put a sound file on my website if you want to hear it Baracuda Head Crash.wav)

Securing a replacement drive (a Western Digial) I had a go at getting it integrated into my system but the first attempt failed miserably ("no available drive found"). After I figuring out that the drive had to be formatted first it only took only a minute to install, and then another 8 hours to mirror the drive back in the array restoring my system to peak performance.

Since February 1 and with additional system cooling modifications, both servers have been running well although I still can't close the cabinet doors yet. My confidence in RAID technology is solidified, and I'm very happy to re-recommend a RAID 5 solution for any situation that requires a large logical drive for optimum disk utilization and data protection with a lower cost of ownership profile than simply doubling the number of disks.

One down, One to go

Bolstered by the sucess with the disk failure I pushed ahead for a solution to the dissapearing drive problem and sent another email off to HighPoint. I got a note back from them directing me to their Chineese website to download the latest drivers, bios, and web management tools. It sounded like a fob to get me off their backs, but those basic steps - even if they never seem to work, must be undertaken in order to move on to the next step.

On March 1 I found the driver, bios, and application files on their website and they were indeed different from the ones I'd obtained earlier from their US website (why didn't they just update the US files themselves?)

I installed the 4 new files and I guess it must have worked -- 4 or 5 reboots since the install and not a missing drive in sight!

I won't claim a final victory however. As with the currently accepted scientific theory: it's only true until it's not.