HP Shortcut Manager

Whilst imaging a machine I noticed a process taking up 100% of one of the cores named HPShortcutManager. After a quick search I found this Apple Discussion on the issue. It appears there's an issue with HP Scanjet Scanners button manager. It isn't very effecient at waiting for someone pressing one of the buttons on the front of the scanner.

Best way to fix is by deleting the HPShortcutManagerstartup.app:
sudo rm -R /Library/Application\ Support/Hewlett-Packard/HP\ Scanjet\ Scanner/HPShortcutManagerStartup.app

Done

Embedding multimedia into Joomla

So, I just wanted to make an article with an embedded youtube video. Easy you would think:

1. go to the youtube video
1. click share > embed
2. copy code
2. make a new joomla article
1. write what you want
2. go to code view
3. paste iframe code
4. save
3. done

Not so simple. Seems when you go back to 'not code' view, it gets rid of the pasted bit of code. Very annoying.

After reading a forum discussion it appears for some reason it's best to have an extension. The simplest is "Allvideos". Download and install it under extensions. Enable it under "Plugin Manager". Then the procedure is:

1. go to the youtube video
1. get the id code of the video (the last bit of the address in the address bar)
1. i.e. - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kI97VGGHkic (bit in bold)
2. make a new joomla article
1. write what you want
2. where you want the video to appear type:
1. {youtube}kI97VGGHkic{/youtube}
3. save
3. done

So, in the end not too hard, just have to know the right buttons to press. Not good user design if you ask me, i.e. I had to look it up in a forum. The good thing about it is that you can embed all sorts of stuff, like flv files, mp3 files and more like it. Nice.

What to do if your windows computer is running ridiculously slow (only applies to Microsoft Windows)

So, I get a lot of people coming to me with Windows PC's and laptops which are running ridiculously slow. As I'm fixing one this very moment, I thought I'd document what I have found to be the easiest ways to get them running to their original speed (when they were first purchased).

I will run through it in a chronological order.

1. First things first, you need to be able to get the system to a 'usable' state, meaning you can click on stuff and something happens, and also you can install stuff. Here's how I do it in worst case scenarios:
1. Boot up into safe mode (continuously press F8 when the computer is booting up)
2. Enable the "Windows Installer" in safe mode.
1. Heres a link to an article where I describe how to do this.
3. A part from safe mode, you can always:
1. open the task manager and end processes of anything which is taking up the CPU, but this is a little frustrating.
2. delete startup items in the Start > Programs > Startup menu.
3. Go to  Start > Run -> msconfig and click "disable startups" described here
4. If you're still having problems, run hijackthis
1. It's a very good program and helps you delete entries in Windows linked with Malicious Programs. Here's the home page
2. When you run it you can make a text file. Paste this text file on the home page and it'll analyse it and tell you which things you'll want to remove.
3. Tick the right boxes and bingo.
2. Install and run a free anti-virus.
1. At the moment the top runners for free anti-virus are AVG and AntiVir
2. I have found that  in the past a lot of anti-virus programs are the things that actually slow your machine down. This is one of the reasons AVG and AntiVir have such good ratings.
3. Install and run a free anti-malware application
1. At the moment the top runner is MalwareBytes
4. Install and run TuneUp Utilities 30 day free trial, currently on version 2012.
1. You get a free 30 day trial, but I've found you really only need a 1 hour trial to fix all the problems. Luckily it doesn't "unfix" the problems once it has expired.
2. The main part to run is "one-click-maintanance"
1. It runs through your system and tells you how many things it can 'fix'.
2. Click the fix button
3. Keep running this program until it does not fix anything anymore.

If these basic steps aren't going to fix it, you're best option is to re-install Windows a-fresh and make a nice new start. Possibly consider installing the operating system it came with to begin with? Or even think about another operating system (i.e. not windows). Ubuntu, OS X?

At the end of the day, your computer will at best run at the speed it was running when you first bought it. If you upgrade the operating system you will notice a slow down.

Also, programs which run at startup are going to slow your machine down. I only have 3 running on my startup; DropBox, Carbonite and MAMP. I suggest you really think about how you want to use your computer. It's all about compromise. 

Any suggestions are welcome, especially if it's easier than this list of 'things to do'.

Number Lock (numlock) at login screen in Windows XP

After re-imaging a MacBook Pro with Windows XP, I noticed (annoyingly) that the num lock was always switched on upon boot up at the login screen! After googling it I found this post, which describes how to change it on startup in the registry. Simply change:


HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Keyboard\InitialKeyboardIndicators=3
to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Keyboard\InitialKeyboardIndicators=1


This turns num lock off. Unfortunately, I think this just applies to whoever's logged in at the time, and doesn't apply to the login screen. Simple enough though, and is described at the bottom of the post in a reply (although for some reason he used some weird code - "2147483650" (string value)). I did this:


HKEY_USERS\.Default\Control Panel\Keyboard\InitialKeyboardIndicators=1


and it worked.

DeployStudio rc20 not showing new Disk Image Masters

I've just taken a Master image using DeployStudio but the image doesn't appear in the list of images, nor in the /Masters/HFS/ directory on the server. Of course this has happened before so I'm merely writing this down as reference.

The reason is because it uses a directory called /Masters/.workInProgress/ to store disk images whilst they're being made. When they are complete (which is after post processing like ASR scan and gzip) they get moved into the appropriate folder, in this case /Masters/HFS/. I think something happened and it never got moved. In the terminal I simply typed:

admin$ mv /Masters/.workInProgress/OSX-10_6_6-SMALL-2012-06-27.i386.hfs.dmg ../HFS/


But replace OSX-10_6_6-SMALL-2012-06-27.i386.hfs.dmg with the name of your disk image. Tab completion is the easiest way.

Making buttons and content only for registered users in Joomla

It's simple really, but I did need to do a search on it. I wanted a button which registered users could press which made a new Article in the News category.

What I did in the end was to make a new module, changed "access" from "public" to "registered". This module would then only show if the user was logged in.

I made a new menu, and put it in this module. I then created a button in the menu of type "Create Article" and made the default Category "News".

But looking at it now, it appears you can change Access to Registered for any menu item. So I could have just added menu items. But it still looks good.

VLC media player displaying filenames

Whilst setting up some exhibition spaces a student didn't want her video to have the filename displayed whenever it was played/repeated. I looked it up on google and found this interesting opton:

if you go to "start > run" and type the command:

vlc.exe video1.mov --no-video-title

then vlc opens without displaying the title.

Also, looks like it's in

Tools/Preferences/Subtitles & OSD.

There's a checkbox labelled "show media title on video start"