I was recently having problems getting my Apache web server to start up the other day. If I tried to start it with the Apache Monitor or in the Services window, it would just try to start and exit. No message and nothing would be left in the Apache log files.
So I went to the command prompt and tried to start it there. That is when I received the following error.
(OS 10048)Only one usage of each socket address (protocol/network address/port) is normally permitted. : make_sock: could not bind to address 0.0.0.0:80 no listening sockets available, shutting down Unable to open logs
Solution
Turns out the problem was with Skype. I had installed it recently and when I rebooted my computer, it took control of that port before Apache could. You can fix it by exiting Skype and then starting Apache, before starting Skype again. Alternatively, you open Skype and go to Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Connection. Turn off the checkbox that refers to port 80 and 443. Then restart Skype.
I had a new problem today. The power jack was pushed back further inside the laptop. When I tried to connect my power cord, it fit really loosely and the battery charging light would not turn on. I have seen power jack problems before, so had a pretty good feeling this was the problem.
Anyhow, I turned the laptop over and remove the small panel on the bottom where you gain access to the memory. I then removed all the large screws on the bottom have of the plastic case so that I could detach it. I was still unable to remove it, so I remove the top piece above the keyboard where the power button is and the power lights. Underneath there are two screens that hold the monitor to the upper half of the body. If you remove these, it also allows to pull back the bottom half.
Sorry if the instructions are confusing. I don't have pictures either. Basically, try to remove as many screws as possible that look like it holds the two halves together though.
When I looked inside where the power jack was, the tiny little plastic ridges that the power jack held against had bent back and/or broken off. My solution was to push it back into place, insert the power cord into the jack fully, duct tape down the power cord on the outside of the laptop so it stays in a good place and doesn't place any more strain on the power jack, and then apply as much super glue via toothpick around the surface contact areas that were plastic between the power jack and the laptop case.
Afterwards I put everything back together and left the power cord taped to the laptop to give it as much time to cure the glue as possible.
Hopefully it lasts for a little while. A new power jack definitely wouldn't have helped as the problem was with some plastic pieces on the inside of the laptop body.
I have found two ways that I have used to download my Google Contacts list onto my iPhone. For those of you who don't know what Google Contacts is, it is basically a big address book on-line. Entries get created automatically when you email people using your Gmail account, but you can add tons of other information like phone numbers, addresses, birthdays, profile pictures, and even categorize them into groups.
If you are like me, it is quite developed and very handy to have on-line as well as on your phone. Both methods I have used will synchronize both ways, meaning that changes you make on your phone or on -line will then move to the other device too.
Free Way to Synchronize Your Google Contacts
The free way is to configure your email on the iPhone to work using the Exchange settings when you initially do the setup. Most people use the "Gmail" option as it is the most obvious, but it will only sync your mail.
The downside with this is that the iPhone only allows for one Exchange account to be set up at a time, so if you have another email account using this, then my paid option below might work for you better.
Please note, with this method you also get push email which means your phone will show your email as soon as it is delivered to your account. It otherwise checks the server on a predetermined interval (could be 10 or 15 minutes) to check for new email.
Paid Way to Synchronize Your Google Contacts
I found an app called Sync in a Blink that will synchronize your Google Contacts to your iPhone. It is quite a bit more powerful as it will let you specify more settings and only sync certain groups if you've defined them in your Contacts.
Basically, it allows you to not have to use your Exchange account on your iPhone if you are already using it for another account.
Word of warning, play around with the settings first for Sync in a Blink, because if you sync more contacts than you really wanted to (like I did) it is a bit of a pain to wipe the contact list so you can sync again. There are some tutorials on-line on how to do it though.
I had a really annoying situation with my Acer Extensa 5420 laptop recently. It would not sleep or go into sleep mode. I would press the sleep button, close the lid, and would even try to do it through the Windows Start menu's Shutdown section, but the laptop would still be powered on and usually just go back to the Windows login screen.
The problem of it not sleeping came from setting up a Windows Media Extender (otherwise known as my Xbox 360). When you set up a Windows Media Extender as part of your Windows Multimedia Center, it will ask you if you want to enable or turn on Away Mode. This is what can disable your sleep functionality. It is probably more suitable for a PC than my laptop.
At first, I remapped my lid closing action and sleep button to hibernate. Hibernate is where the laptop truly saves power because it saves the laptop's state to the hard disk. Sleep just puts the laptop into power save mode basically, but is still using a slight bit of power to keep things in memory. The difference is that sleep will go into and come out of sleep mode much faster than hibernate. However, hibernate actually saves more power if the laptop will be off for long periods of time.
Disable Away Mode
This was the real solution I was looking for. Basically, you need to go change your Power Options settings:
Go into the Start menu -> Control Panel
Click on Power Options. If you don't see it, you might need to click on System and Maintenance to find it.
There will be a power plan already selected (radio button). Click on Change plan settings for that plan.
Click on Change advanced power settings
Find Multimedia settings near the bottom and click the plus sign to expand it.
Click on the plus sign beside When sharing media.
There are two settings for On battery and Plugged in. Change the picklist to be anything other than Allow the computer to enter Away Mode. I picked All the computer to sleep.
Hopefully that works for you as well. I was sick of closing the lid on my laptop to come back and find that it had actually been running the whole time and killed the battery.
I had a scary moment on my most recent trip. My card appeared to fail after I had taken a week's worth of pictures in Nepal.
My Nikon D70s started flashing "For", which indicates the compact flash card inside needs to be formatted. I was unable to view the pictures and if I put it into a card reader and tried to access it on Windows, it just wanted to format the card.
I waited a month, until I arrived home, to try and recover the pictures. I tried 8 different programs and I found two that were able to do it.
RescuePro was one of them. They let you download a trial of it and see if it will actually work before you have to buy. It will access the flash card and then scan it. After awhile, it shows you thumbnails and will let you recover a small number of the files for free. If you see your files and think it is worth it, then you can pay the US$40 for a license.
Active File Recovery is the other one that worked. This program is a little more full-featured. It can recover files on hard drives as well. RescuePro was strictly for flash cards.
Anyhow, if you have ever deleted, formatted, corrupted, or had some other failure with files or flash cards. Don't just erase the card and start from scratch thinking you lost everything. Download a trial copy of RescuePro from the link above and see if you can spot your missing items. It will be well worth the $40 in a lot of cases.
Just to give you the run down. I recently purchased a different computer and in re-wiring everything, my monitor start to have fuzzy horizontal scrolling lines that would move slowly down the screen all the time. There were usually two on the screen at any given time and would takes several seconds to move to the bottom before another one would start at the top.
It seemed intermittent and I tried moving the cables around, but eventually it settled into being permanently there.
Solution
Anyhow, a friend of mine suggested that it could be interference as I was using the old VGA cable to connect to my computer. This is an analog signal and is subject to interference that digital cables are not. So I hooked up a DVI cable, since my video card also had that output on it and my monitor also had that input. That completely cleared up the problem and with the DVI cable I have none of those fuzzy lines moving down my screen.
I finally upgraded to a new computer. My last new desktop was purchased in November of 2002, which is a long time ago in the computer world. I have done a couple of upgrades, but for the most part it was pretty original. It was a Pentium 4 2.4GHz with 1GB RAM, an Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 128MB video card, 160GB hard drive, DVDRW, and that was pretty much it. It didn't even have USB 2.0 on it.
That being said, I could still photo edit with it, do some video editing, watch videos, and even play WoW. I sold it for $80 the first day I listed it in the Buy 'n' Sell.
The New Machine
I am quite impressed so far with my Studio Slim. I found it used in my city for only $400 so getting a bit of a deal was even a better find for me. Anyhow, here are the specs.
Dell Studio Slim Specs
Intel Quad Core Q6600 (2.4GHz)
4GB PC6400 DDR2 RAM (4 X 1GB)
Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit
ATI Radeon 3650 512MB DDR2
320 GB Hard Drive
DVDRW
15 in 1 card reader
Bluetooth
USB2.0 jacks front and back
Firewire
spare PCI slot
spare 3.5" internal bay
All-in-all, I feel it is a decent machine, especially considering where I came from with the old one. It seems a lot quicker and now I can actually watch some of those high-def video files I have.
Slimline
It is half the width of my old tower, which is pretty neat. One thing I notice with this is that there is only 1 PCI slot and 1 3.5" bay. So upgrading is a bit hampered. The PCI cards that do go in it have to be the slimline models. My ATI Radeon card is one of the models that have that availability.
Noise Factor
My old PC had become brutal for the noise from the fans. I could have fixed that somewhat by just purchasing some new ones, but I wasn't investing any more in into it. The new machine is very quiet I have to say. Fans intake/outakes are on 3 sides of the machine too.
Current Issues
Fuzzy Lines
I currently have some fuzzy horizontal lines that scroll down through the monitor. I have had a few times where they are not present, but for the most part they are always there. Going to try a few different cable configurations to check for interference and then go through some settings and driver checks with my video card. Not sure why it is is doing it.
32 Bit Operating Systems
It came pre-installed with Windows Vista 32 bit. This means the 4 GB of RAM installed can't actually be fully used, because it is unable to do so. I will probably consider upgrading to 64 bit at some point. The difference isn't really between the 3.5 it is capable of and the 4 installed, it will be when I actually upgrade to more RAM.
My Xbox 360 decided to not work the other day.
Basically, 9 out of every 10 times I turn the power on, the Xbox 360 opening splash screen loads up and then doesn't go any further. I wouldn't say it freezes because the swirly animation of the circle in the symbol is still moving. It just never proceeds to the dashboard menu.
Then 1 out of every 10 times I boot it up, it will flash the lower right quarter circle, or one red ring of death, on the power button. It then takes me to a black screen that says Error E68 and to contact Microsoft.
Here is a video of the bootup screen I see. This is exactly what happens too. The animation swirls in with the sound and then it just sits there with the animation still moving. It is like it hangs or freezes on the splash screen.
Diagnosis
It turned out to be my hard drive. When I disconnected the 20GB hard drive (the grey device attached to the end of the Xbox 360 where the CD drive tray is), it will boot up no problems.
Unfortunately, the hard drive carries my profiles, my save games, and other downloaded content.
If you are seeing other error codes or behaviour, check out this Xbox 360 Error Code Forum for lots of useful information.
Solution
For the short term, I have purchased a 512MB flash memory card for the Xbox 360 on eBay. You can pick up a Hong Kong special for around US$30 or less. This is a lot cheaper than the $100 60GB hard drive which is the cheapest one in stores right now. If you are still on warranty, then you don't need to do this. Just read on below about warranty replacement.
I found a variety of solutions on YouTube and other forums, but none of them worked for me. You can always try them though.
I then proceeded to the Xbox support site that is run by Microsoft. There are some handy features there if you create an account. I was able to register my console and found out that the warranty is actually still good for 6 months.
I didn't like the repair section of their site as it was geared towards just sending in the entire Xbox and I was sure it was the hard drive so I decided to call.
You can use the phone number 1-800-4MY-XBOX. You will enter an automated assistance system that is a little bit annoying if you have already figured out your problem. Just say "AGENT" at any time and you will be directed to a real, live person. I never had a wait time over 2 minutes either.
You have to provide your Xbox 360 serial number and some personal information before you start. They ran me through their own series of tests to make sure it was the hard drive. One I hadn't done yet was to put my hard drive onto a friend's Xbox 360 and see if it exhibits the same behaviour. That is exactly what happened.
They will then give you a reference # for you case and I was told to mail it back to the service center for my country. Once they received it, they would send me a new one within 2-3 weeks. I had to pay the one way freight (US$10 that included a tracking number) and that was that.
The Microsoft service agent did not tell me to include any documentation, but I wrote a bunch of info onto a piece of paper and put it in the package. This was my name, the serial # of my Xbox 360, the problem, the reference number to my repair ticket that they quoted me on the phone, my return address, email, and phone numbers.
The address I mailed it to was:
Service Center
Dock 20
844 Don Mills Road
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M3C 1V7
I did some investigating and I don't believe this is an actual Microsoft facility, but really another company taking care of the service end for them in Canada.
Conclusion
I have sent it away this week, so this dilemma has not ended yet. I was told I would lose all my save games and would have to recover my profile using the Xbox 360 Dashboard when I get it running again. In the mean time, I'm hoping my 512MB memory card arrives. I think I might use it for all my save games and profiles from now on as the memory cards have a more reliable life span than a hard drive in my opinion (no moving parts).
I finally figured out a really annoying problem today. I try to connect my laptop to a television so I can watch video, play Guitar Hero, or do whatever and it always displays in black and white.
I was using a short little s-video to composite adapter that came with my MSI video card a few years ago. The picture would be decent, but it was entirely in black and white.
After talkin to some helpful personnel at Memory Express, they told me that a lot of these packaged adapters for video cards use some proprietary standards and don't work perfectly when used with other video cards. I purchased a standard S-Video to Composite adapter for $10 and now it works fine.
So if you s-video is black and white on a monitor or television, check the s-video to composite adapter first.
I also tried using my audio RCA's and a video RCA's and both work the same.
I streamed video to to my PSP for the first time the other day.
If you haven't heard of it, the program is called PimpStreamer and can be downloaded from the PimpWare site.
Basically, you have a server running on a computer somewhere that has access to media files. Any media files that your computer can play. Your PSP can then connect to the server and request a file. The PimpStreamer server will then re-encode the file so that it will play properly on the PSP and send it across the network.
Installation
It was very simple on my Windows XP computer. Connect your PSP and put it into USB mode and then install the files. It does the rest.
My Windows Vista experience wasn't as smooth and I have not got it working yet to tell you the truth. The installer ends with an error part way through saying some program is missing that is needed. I will let you know when I have gotten further on it.
How Well Does It Work
PimpStreamer doesn't work all that great for me. The vidoe looks like good quality but it jumps quite a bit and stutters. I have read some tips on how to fix it, but will have to sit down and play with it for a bit. My computer with the server is close to 6 years old and is running around 90% for the PimpStreamer process, so that could very well be the problem itself.
Either way, check it out. It is a nifty little program that could save you the hassle of having to encode and upload to your PSP anytime you want to watch something.
