Download speed / UnRar Issues

      After the adventures of two weeks ago I finally got a chance to relax and enjoy my holiday. Got to see a few movies, play a few games, read a few pages, and beer was back on the menu. All fine and dandy. But then I noticed that a few things were off, even more than before.

     First thing I noticed was that my download speed over the Internet had been cut in half for no apparent reason. Second thing was that every torrent I was downloading had problems when I tried to unRAR it. And this could mean that somehow the data packages might be getting mixed up. I still don't know what is causing these problems but I did find ways to get around them.

     First thing's first, the download speed. After I made sure there were hardware issues, i started looking around for people that also had had this problem. Unfortunately I couldn't find anybody that did. What I DID find were a few tutorials ( that might be helpful to you even thought they weren't for me) . And here they are : First, the auto tuning for TCP/IP receive levels. And second, how to Change or Disable the QoS Reserved Bandwidth Limit in Vista. This one reffers to the default bandwidth that the OS has priority over for such programs as Auto Update. As I said these didn't work for me but they are useful, and most of all they're official, on the vista forums for x64 editions. In the end what I did was to search for an update for my ethernet controller and installed it. After rebooting everything was back to normal.

     Second issue. Problems unRaring torrents.
Well this still was kinda tricky and even though I tried a few things in order to find out what was causing the problem I didn't find anything. What I did find though was that , the data packets were ok, and weren't getting scrambled which meant that the files were actually OK. So the simple solution was simply to select, on Winrar's "Extract to" window the "keep broken files" option. This way I still get all the error messages but in the end it keeps all files, and all files work.

     Well hope this helps, cheers Geeky.

PS: In regards to what I was writing in the last article, just in case you're curious , Diablo Battlechest fully works on Vista x32 as long as you get the lattest patches from Blizz, and D2 works on vista x64 ( i just tried it ) again get the patches.

Diablo 3

Now I don't usually do this as this is not my style, and this blog isn't really about games. Actually it's not at all about games and that's why I didn't say anything when Assassin's Creed or Crysis came out , which are both outstanding games ..but this time it's personal.

Diablo has always been somewhere in the top 5 all time favorite games ever. I love this series, the inovation, the sheer coolness of the game, and especially the oustandingly well put together story. And again, the guys at Blizzard outdid themselves and have announced something I've been hoping for ever since I finished D2, that Diablo 3 is in the making and will some day come out.

Now to those of you who are new to the game, this might not mean anything ..but to the fans it's a big deal. This was quite unexpected at least for me because the original team that made Diablo ..Blizzard North ..had quit a few years ago as I remember.

To get a feel of the game, check out the Blizzard website and you'll have a chance to see the trailer..and a very nice gameplay trailer. So far the game looks great using what appears to me as a modified version of the graphics engine that Blizzard is also using for Starcraft 2. New classes have been added and are announced , the only one so far you can see being the Witch Doctor ( to all Blizzard fans this will be more than familiar). Basically Blizzard seems to have taken what they learned with their WoW experience, added it to the already amazing Diablo universe, and finished it off with their natural ability of making great games. Unfortunately right now their webpage is still somewhat under construction but be sure to check back soon for all the great new stuff.
Hope you enjoy this as much as I do , cheers Geeky.

PicLens

Now I might be just getting excited over something most of know may have known about for a really long time, but still I'm glad I found it now. I'm talking about PicLens, which is a multi browser add-on that completely transforms your interface, into something that closely resembles ( in my opinion) Vista's Media Center.

The add-on is very small, a few megabytes , and it can be installed on Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari. Now if you're wondering which of these to choose have a look at my Browsers article and that should give you a clue.

Many popular sites have been optimized for the use of PicLens including YouTube, Google photo search, Yahoo photo search, Photobucket, MySpace, Flickr, Facebook and many more. You can view these sites either as a 3d image base, or as a slideshow. And the add-on already incorporates different popular subjects and sites such as News, Sports, Technology, and Movies that it will automatically search for an update on your screen.

Now the part that is really cool, is that you can optimize your own website for PicLens by using their tools, or adding a little html coding. And if you have a blog on Wordpress that you'd like to optimize for this , you simply download the Wordpress add-on. And the best part, is that even people who don't have PicLens installed or who use a browser that doesn't support it ( ie ME) can still view a nice interface using the PicLens Lite that runs directly off the net. I've added a few pictures so you get the ideea.

Cheers, Geeky.

This is the full PicLens on Mozilla Firefox while looking on an Wordpress blog.

And this is the same blog in Opera while running PicLens Lite.

Asus P5KC ( New Motherboard)

Well the holidays are here, finally! Suprinsingly I passed every exam and test I had, and now it's 3 months of immortality. But while most other people, aka normal people, like to start off the holiday by finishing left over work, or by seeing some old friends they haven't had a chance to see in a long time, I prefer to waste my time, energy and money trying to fix my PC. Anyway here's what happened:

For the last 1 year and a half my PC had an Intel D946Gzis motherboard that ran smoothly with a Pentium D CPU at 3.4 Ghz , and 1 gb of RAM. After I installed Vista I realised that 1GB of RAM is not really enought to fit my demands so I went out and bought myself a 2Gb kit. After a few weeks of using the new cards, and about 20 Blue Screens of Death ( BSOD) I realised they weren't actually compatible with the Intel motherboard. So I went back to the old ones.

But last week I decided it was finally time to change my motherboard, as I now had the time and the money to buy a new one and perhaps fix all the problems that may appear ( I was actually expecting the RAM not to be compatible, or at the most to do a clean install of Vista).

Well I went out and bought me a brand new Asus P5KC board with an Intel Chipset specifically asking if it would support the dual layered RAM I had with me. SO I bought it, went back home, unboxed it filled with anticipation, and finally I began to take part out of my PC to install it. Now I have taken motherboards out before but never really with the intent of them still working afterwards so this time I had to be very careful. I don't really know why but at one point when I was taking out the CPU I accidentally touched the pins and a few other circuits you are really not supposed to but I didn't pay it much thought.

After finally ..finaaaally figuring out how the LEDs and the Power Switch cable were supposed to be fitted ( i had no diagram of the motherboard's circuits) I was ready to test it. Plugged in the power cable, LED on the motherboard came on , pushed the power switch ..nothing happened. Ok i figured out I might have plugged something in the wrong way ..so I rechecked everything, tried it again ..still nothing happened. For a full one hour I stood there cheking and recheking every possible jumper and cable I could see, trying to figure out what I had done wrong.

On the verge of despair I realised I could switch the reset button to simply switch the power on or off ..so I did that. Success it worked! The PC powerd up , checked RAM, checked drives, ( i couldn't remember which of my HDDs was the bootable one so I had to find out through trial and error), failed to boot. I said to myself no big deal, I just went into BIOS and ..wooa.. the PC shut down. Ok ..restart. Again go into BIOS ..switched the booting order of the hdds and before it even had a chance to try and boot, it had shut down again. Something must be very wrong I thought to myself and restarted one more time.

I directly checked the CPU temperature as I knew that might be the cause. Well I was right .. the BIOS told me that my CPU was making water boil with a temperature of about 125 C ( that's about 257 Fahrenheit ). Wow I was stunned ..the cooler must not be working and ..wow ... So I checked everything again, the cooler was working, the radiator was properly set, and the CPU's actual temp was somewhere close to 40C.

So i checked everything one more time, and then I use a different PC and search the internet for what might be causing this. I found out something interesting: the PC doesn't measure the temperature using a thermal sensor, but actually runs an electrical current throught the CPU and then measures some data and converts it using a formula thus giving the temperature of the conductor. If for any reason ( such as touching the conductor leaving grease or other substances on it ) the current behaves differently than it normaly would then you'll get false readings. So I realised I had touched the pins on the CPU most likely leaving that thermal jelly thing ( that's found on the bottom of the cooler) on it. There are no certified ways of cleaning a CPU ..actually if anything, it's strongly counter-advised. But I wasn't completely sure that this was the cause of it.

So I tested the CPU on the old motherboard, adn it worked with no problems. Then I looked around the net some more and found out that many people had had issues with the Asus P5K with weird temperatures readings because of buggy BIOSs.The obvious resolve was to update the BIOS , and Asus makes this easy with their EZFlash feature that let's you update directly from a flash drive without having to boot into DOS from a floppy. So I get the latest BIOS from Asus and try updating it. But after checking the file, the system says that the file has no Asus signature and it wouldn't let me update it.

I assumed the motherboard MUST be faulty and decided to switch back to the old one until I got the replacement. But big surprise ..after switching back ..the computer would simply restart itself a few times and then shut down. Somewhere along the way the CPU had fried. So the next day I went out and used up the money i was planning to use for a trip ..to buy a brand new Intel Quad Core Q6600. Great I think to myself, now everything should be fine.

So i go back home, and set the NEW processor into the NEW motherboard. It starts, 60C in BIOS ..that's decent, and then ..after 10 more seconds ..just as I thought things were back to normal ..the PC shut down again, no obvious cause. So I get the motherboard, go back to the shop and togheter with one of the guys there we tested it with different processors. It worked like a charm, no problems, no issues, no restarting no nothing.

Feeling a little embarased I took the board back ..stripped my PC .. took everything apart and then started to add components one by one to try and diagnose what the hell was going on. Weird part is ..it worked perfectly, after i came back with it I simply didn't have any other issues . Except for the fact I had to do a clean install of Vista x64 ( due to the new processor) everything was perfect, and still is.

Now after these two days I've learned a few things ..such as NEVER TOUCH THE INSIDE OF THE CPU, and could probably give a lot of tips if asked.

Well that's it. For questions or suggestions post a comment.
Cheers, Geeky.