Note: if you receive an error on opening, open the configuration and remap the three parameters (Object, Counter, Instance). It is based on Windows metrics, that differs with system language. They must to be set to: PhysicalDisk, _Total, %Disk time (or the correspondent in your language, of course).

Breaking news

JailbreakMe 3.0

Disabling only the “mouse over” version is really simple: just click with the right mouse button on the Windows Taskbar and choose “properties”, then uncheck the option “Use Aero Peek to preview the desktop“. That’s all! Now you can click on the show desktop button, but hovering it will do nothing.

Gabriele Piscitelli published the complete procedure to enter the service mode of your Samsung SCX-4300 printer, flash it and reset the ink counter. I translated the tutorial in english and I want to share it with you. The original italian article can be found on his blog.

DISCLAIMER: as usual, I am not responsible for any damage you can cause with this procedure!

• First of all, download the software pack: SCX-4300.zip (here’s a local mirror) and extract it in your hard disk (C:\), creating a C:\scx-4300 folder;
• Now fire up a command line window: click Start -> Execute…, type CMD and press enter;
• In the black command line window type cd / and press enter; then type cd scx-4300 and press enter again;
• Type fix4300.exe SCX4300_V1.13_Fact_romdl.hd and press enter; this script will create a new file in the folder, named FIX_SCX4300_V1.13_Fact_romdl.hd. This file is created starting from the unique serial of your printer, and it will replace the original one in your printer flash memory.
• Let’s go to service mode: press the following buttons on your SCX-4300 panel:MENU
  COPIES
  <
  >
  MENU
  >

  You have to execute the entire sequence quickly! If nothing “strange” happens, just press “STOP” and redo it.

• If everything is done, you should see “TECH MODE“ in the display of the printer;
• Press the “MENU” button, follow these steps: DATA SETUP -> FLASH UPGRADE -> LOCAL, then press “OK”;
• Go back to your computer: you’ve to drag and drop the file we created before (FIX_SCX4300_V1.13_Fact_romdl.hd) to the icon named usbprns2.exe;ù
• The display on Samsung SCX-4300 should say:
  - Data receiving
  - Flash erasing
  - Flash Programming
  - Checksumming
  - Download Ok
• Then the printer will reboot. You unlocked it!
• When the printer is ready, just repeat the sequence you used before to enter the “TECH MODE” and follow these steps: DATA SETUP -> CLEAR COUNTERS -> CLEAR ALL CNT. The status LED on the printer should become yellow, then finally green. Now you can print again, using all the remaining ink!

That’s it!

In the italian keyboard, “<>” is the key on the right of left-shift, and “\” (the backslash) is above the TAB key.

Apparently without any valid reason, these keys reversed their position, like (I think) they are on official Apple keyboards (I use instead a normal Toshiba PC keyboard). I tried to disconnect and reconnect the USB plug, but the selection window didn’t appear – I think because the system “remembers” that keyboard, so it doesn’t think it’s necessary to ask user to press keys to detect it again.

After a lot of Googling, I found that it’s necessary to delete a file to make Mac OS completely forget keyboard settings:
/Library/Preferences/com.apple.keyboardtype.plist

So, after the deletion of this file, I reconnected the keyboard and I completed the dection wizard. Keys are now fixed

I suspect that this problem is not directly bound to Avast! (in any case this can’t be considered a bug of the application because  Windows 7 is in beta status and so isn’t officially supported by Avast! Antivirus) but to the drivers of my network card, as seen in my previous post about connection problems with Live Messenger.

The fix was simply to uninstall Avast!, replacing it with another free antivirus: Avira Antivir, that seems to run smoothly without any problems, also on Win 7.

Now I’ve to solve my last-big-network-problem with the new operating system from Microsoft: I cannot access shared folders and printers from a Mac Mini of my LAN. No problems with Vista, no problems neither with Linux (and shared folders are using SMB protocol from Microsoft!), but nothing to do with Windows 7.  Stay tuned

• click on the Windows logo in the bottom-left corner of the screen (the old “start” menu);
• type CMD.EXE and wait a second: the cmd.exe program will appair in a list;
• right-click it and choose “Run as Administrator”, then confirm the action in the request that will appair;
• you’ll see a black window; type the following command: netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled
• now just close the window and try to connect with Windows Live Messenger (it shouldn’t be necessary to restart the computer).

Note 1: I suspect that this problem is linked to my hardware (a Netgear DG834G router and a Atheros PCIE Gigabit LAN, on a ASUS M2A-MX motherboard).

Note 2: If you want to restore the auto tuning feature, you’ve to repeat the above process with the following command: netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal

About a year ago I tried to directly ask Microsoft, but they answered me that this wasn’t possible; they suggested me to sign up for a new Live account.

Now I discovered that it’s possible to do it easily.

Just login here with your Live credentials and then click on “change” near to your e-mail address

NOTE for Messenger users: as stated by Microsoft, e-mail/login changes require about 1 hour, so you could have some problems signin in or using Live Messenger after the modification.

NOTE for @hotmail/@live/etc… users: I don’t know if it’s possible to change your e-mail/login even if you have a Live account based on a e-mail address managed by Microsoft. Will you lose your e-mails? Make me know

Notice: This little tutorial assumes that you have some basic Linux knowledge, and that you know what SSH is.

Christmas is coming, and I’ll be out of office for a while.

I was a little worried because I could need some data from my main desktop PC… I’ll copy the most important documents on the laptop, but if I’ll forget something? I don’t want to leave my desktop turned on, nor to be obliged to pass the evening of 24th of December in my car to come back to the office.

So it’s time to activate Wake On LAN

Wake On LAN (aka WOL) is a feature of many PCs. It leaves the network port in standby mode, without turning off it completely. It requires very little power, and it allows you to activate a PC from your LAN.

In my office network I have a Linux server that is always on: with WOL I can login into this, launch a very simple command to activate my desktop and then login into it to do what I need. When I finish I can also turn it off again: it will remain available to be re-activated later!
I’ll do this from my office server, anyway the same feature (the ability to send a special command to the local network to turn a PC on) is embedded in some good home and office routers, so check yours

• The first action I had to accomplish was to activate WOL from the BIOS of my desktop motherboard (an ASUS M2A-MX). Usually, this option is easy to be found… even it wasn’t so in mine (here the option is called “Resume from S5 by PME#”);
• The second thing is to discover and write somewhere the desktop MAC address. I found it from my router web interface, listing the connected devices… anyway you can read it directly from the PC to be turned on remotely, with ifconfig command. It will list a lot of information about the computer’s network interfaces… usually the LAN card is identified by eth0 code, and the MAC address is in this form: HWaddr xx:yy:zz:01:02:03
• Then I installed a little utility called wakeonlan in my office server (that was already configured to accept remote users login via SSH), with a single terminal command:
  sudo apt-get install wakeonlan
• At this point, WOL was already working if I turn my desktop on, then I turn it off with its power button. I login into the server via SSH, then I send this simple command:
  wakeonlan xx:yy:zz:01:02:03
  (just change the MAC address with the one of your target PC)
• Unfortunately, it didn’t work turning the desktop off from Ubuntu (with Gnome’s shutdown command),  so I needed to create a boot script to activate the feature everytime the PC starts:

1. create a new script:
   gksudo gedit /etc/init.d/wol.sh
2. paste this and save the file:
   #!/bin/bash
   ethtool -s eth0 wol g
   exit
3. give execute permission to this new file and add it to startup scripts:
   sudo chmod a+x /etc/init.d/WOL.sh
   sudo update-rc.d WOL.sh defaults

It’s ok! Now you’ve only to reboot and shutdown the PC normally, the network interface will remain in standby mode, allowing you to wake the system from any another PC (or router, see above) in the LAN!