Author Archives: J.D. H.

Windows 7 ethernet goes to sleep! [solved]

Question. Hello! I have a problem with my network connection in Windows 7. Everything works great until the computer has been at rest for a while, then my ethernet connection drops out! As soon as I move my mouse or keyboard the ethernet comes back on. My laptop is NOT in sleep/hibernate mode when all this occurs! Please help!? Answer. Great question :-). Here’s a potential solution for your Ethernet woes 😉 Go to Control Panel -> Network and Internet

ACPI TOS6205 drivers for Windows [SOLVED]

Q. from Laptop Nut: Hello, I have a new laptop and that I did a clean install of Windows 7 on. I still have ONE unknown device called ACPI/TOS6205 do you know what driver I can download to fix it? A. That device is the bluetooth adapter for your laptop. You can download the correct driver here: (alternative dl [select your model]), ([download id=”10449″ format=”1″]) Since you’re running 64 bit Windows 7, you’ll want the driver download version: 7.10.16  Windows XP x64 / Windows

Upgrading a Dell M4400: Dual Hard Drives, 2.8GHz CPU, 4GB RAM

UPDATE: new post with specific M4400 upgrade questions and tips as a result of questions from commenter David. NOTE: you can also view all the entries in this Q & A series… The Dell M4400 has been my laptop of choice for almost a year. For my birthday I upgraded it to 4GB RAM (from 3GB) and swapped out the P8600 CPU for a T9700. The P8600 is a 2.4GHz dual core chip (25W) with 3MB cache, the T9700 is

Musings on turning 30

I think this is going to be another good year :-). Photo: sunset in the Ozarks, taken late last month. Intro: I’ve heard that you if you watch someone you can see the story of their life. I’m not talking about what kind of car they drive or how expensive their watch is, I’m talking about whether they are kind to others and whether they believe in themselves. I mean are they as healthy as they can be and do

Nice Summer

It’s been a nice summer so far :-). Lot’s of good stuff going on with friends and family. I launched my first iPhone app: Camera Kompare. So far it’s doing really well and I’ve gotten some good feedback from users. I’m excited about the new versions coming out (with new cameras and features, plus a separate iPad version). Samantha has been doing great and having perfect checkups. I can’t believe the baby should be here in less than two months!

PC case mod with auto opening top vents – Tempest SXR

Recently I came across a pretty darn cool case mod with auto opening top air vents! I highly recommend you WATCH THE VIDEO of the case in action 🙂 It really works well and you get a much better feel for how it works when you watch the video as opposed to just looking at photos. If you want to know ever more about this sweet case mod, here are some pages with additional info and photos about the project:

SOLUTION: Getting Broadcom Crystal HD decoder to work in Windows 7

NOTE: this is a first draft of this post, more info and some screenshots to be added. After installing the Broadcom card and drivers I had a difficult time getting MKV x264 video files to play. Solution: Disable all “internal filters” Set external filter to Broadcom Applies to: GOM Player, Media Player Classic Home Cinema Basic info to the Broadcom card itself: XBMC & Broadcom Bring 1080p Decode Upgrade to ill-equipped netbooks, nettops, Apple TVs http://www.anandtech.com/show/2898In one of my last

Upgrading/replacing a parity drive in unRAID

I’m preparing to upgrade my 2TB WD Green parity drive to a 2TB WD Black parity drive on my unRAID system. I did a lot of searching for resources on this topic and while there are some great forums posts out there, they are sometimes hard to find. So here is a consolidated list of useful links for parity drive replacement: NOTE: many thanks to all the helpful and supportive unRAID users out there, the credit for all of this