Category Archives: computer tips

Access XP share without password, from Vista

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Question: Tonight I was trying to access, via Vista, a folder that was shared from a Windows XP Pro machine. I kept getting a username/password prompt, but there isn’t a password set on any of users! How can I access the folder? Answer: by default Windows XP Professional won’t allow network users shared folder access without a password. So here’s how to allow network access using a blank password: First, on the XP computer that is sharing the folder make

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SOLUTION to Dreamweaver problem: The document you selected is very large and would take too long to import

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Question. I’m trying to paste a large Word document (or even copied web pages out of Firefox) into Dreamweaver and I get the following error: “The document you selected is very large and would take too long to import. We recommend you use Copy and Paste to insert parts of the document into multiple web pages.” Answer. Edit the Dreamweaver file InsertOfficeDoc.js to adjust the file size threshold upwards. After editing that file and restarting Dreamweaver, you should be able

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Building a PHP and MySQL search function

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I’ve been working on the search feature of komparison. Specifically, making sure multi-word searches like peanut butter crackers work well. Let’s say we have some a food item stored as Crackers, wheat, sandwich, with peanut butter filling and the user searches for peanut butter crackers. If the search is coded simplistically  like: SELECT * FROM some_table WHERE some_field LIKE ‘%peanut butter crackers%’ or: SELECT * FROM some_table WHERE some_field LIKE ‘%peanut%butter%crackers%’ Then we won’t get any results because the ordering

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Install (or “downgrade”) to Windows XP on Sony VAIO-Z series

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It’s that time of year again. Time to reinstall Windows after my laptop has finally succumbed to the mass of programs I’ve installed or evaluated. It’s getting slow, not painfully slow, but slow enough that I crave a clean install. Currently the laptop has Vista on it. Rather than paying for a Windows 7 upgrade, I’m considering “downgrading” to Windows XP. I would have done that a long time ago, as I am not a Vista fan… but at the

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JO’s ultimate computer (Octo Core)

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Type QTY Price Total Item Comments CPU 2 $835 $1,670 Xeon Clovertown Quad Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz 19.2 GHz Motherboard 1 $499 $499 TYAN S5380G2NR Dual Socket 771 Intel 5000P SSI 6 high speed USB ports on back of the computer, 2 more in the front of the case. Let me know if you want more. Memory 4 $180 $720 1GB FBDIMM ECC memory chips 4GB RAM Primary Hard Drive 1 $225 $225 Western Digital Raptor WD1500ADFD 150GB 10,000 RPM

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