.NET Hobbyist Programmer

Cleaning Up After Chrome

I find Google Chrome, which I have no interest in, is continually getting installed on machines in my house, mostly due to Adobe Shockwave bringing it along as an install package. (Family members are agreeing to the download, not realizing the Chrome is getting dropped as well.) My major issue after uninstalling Chrome is that you can no longer click on links in Outlook emails. There is a lot on the web about this, and Google has not been proactive at fixing their uninstaller.

I have now added a registry file to my Win64 systems to reset the problem registry keys and clear the error. This registry file is pretty simple. It merely resets HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\.htm, HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\.html, and HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\.shtml back to their default values of "htmlfile". Chrome takes over the handling of these file extensions because its default install is to make itself the default web browser. The Chrome uninstalled fails to clear/reset them.

In troubleshooting this, I looked in my registry based on the web info on the Chrome uninstall problem. Since my system had never had Chrome installed, my registry did not have the problem keys. To troubleshoot, I installed (ugh!) and uninstalled Chrome. Sure enough, Chrome left the expected debris with a value string of "ChromeHTML.PR2EPLWMBQZK3BY7Z2BFBMFERU" or something similar. Resetting these values fixed the problem.

I see that Chrome leaves quite a bit of debris behind in the registry. I guess it is creating the keys then leaving them behind, even though their presence (with bad data) subsequently affects operations.

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Posted On Sunday, September 23, 2012 2:48 PM | Comments (0) | Filed Under [ Software ]

Windows 7 Registered Owner and Organization

This is another of those memory aid posts. After I got tired of seeing Hewlett-Packard as the licensed organization on my laptop, I dug into the registry and changed it.

Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion and make your changes to RegisteredOwner or RegisteredOrganization as desired. A reboot is not required. Your ProductId is there too if you want to record it.

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Posted On Saturday, September 15, 2012 10:51 AM | Comments (0) | Filed Under [ Software ]

Noise Canceling Earphones

I travel a lot. The hours spent droning through the sky can be made more tolerable with an MP3 player and a set of noise-cancelling headphones. Reducing the sound of the airflow and engines is a great relief.

For a year or two, I used a pair of folding Sony MDR-NC5 Noise Canceling Headphones, the ear foam covers self-destructed. I replaced them with old washcloth material and was happy, but the DW thought it looked bad.  I switched to a new set of Sony MDR-NC6 Noise Canceling Headphones.  These worked equally well, although they did not fold as small as the MDR-NC5 headphones.

Over four years of use, the MDR-NC6 headphones started cutting out and making popping noises.  This was not surprising considering the beating they took on travel in my backpack.  It looked like I needed another new set.

The older MDR-NC5 headphones were still on the shelf with the hated washcloth covers.  A quick search online showed a vibrant business in selling replacement ear foams, often at exorbitant prices.  Nowhere did I see ear foam covers made for the oblong MDR-NC5.  I then realized that foam is stretchable and that the shape should not matter.  After another search and some consideration, I purchased 2-5/16" foam pad ear covers that were able to stretch over the MDR-NC5's strange shape.  Problem solved for less than $5.

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Posted On Friday, March 30, 2012 6:19 AM | Comments (0) |

C# Value Type Table

One of the things I always seem to be checking are the various characteristics of the C# value types.  You know, stupid questions like whether int is the same as System.Int32 or System.Int64.  I know the answer, but when I need it, I just want a quick reference.  I could not find one, so I made one.  I think it is correct since I combined multiple tables from the MSDN documentation.

There is also a PDF that I still need to upload.

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Posted On Sunday, March 25, 2012 8:34 PM | Comments (2) |

Finally: The 1600-volt Compact Hairdryer

You have to love Amazon.  They will sell you anything.

Get them while they last!

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Posted On Thursday, November 3, 2011 6:10 PM | Comments (0) |

MSDN vs. TechNet

For a period of time, I have access to both an MSDN and a TechNet subscription. Both offer Microsoft software for download.  I wondered what the similarities and differences were between the two subscriptions. I copied the two download lists into Excel and aligned them. Most of the material I would never use.  Some products I have never heard of.  I present the lists, current as of today, for your reviewing pleasure.

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Posted On Friday, August 19, 2011 9:17 PM | Comments (3) |

Configuring the Synology DS1511+

My last post related the sad story of a dead HP MediaSmart Home Server. This time, I will relate the steps I took to configure the Synology DS1511+ for use. To avoid unnecessary typing, I recommend this post to provide the basic details. It is written for the older DS1010+, but the process is the same for the DS1511+. … OK, now that you have read that, I have different drives in my NAS so I had a different kind of problem.

I chose to go with five Western Digital 2TB Caviar Green SATA II drives (WD20EARS) because of their availability, great price, and presence on the Synology compatible hard drive list.  That "Green" technology is what is causing the problem.

When I examined the SMART data after only 10 hours of run time, I was puzzled as to why the Load Cycle Count (LCC) values were over 100. Some searches showed that the recent WD Green drives have an aggressive Idle3 power saving feature that is not compatible with Linux standard settings. While the drives are certified to 300,000 LCC cycles, the drives in the Synology would get to that level in one year instead of 5-6 years. There is even an entire discussion board concerning the Western Digital LCC issue on the Synology website.

The WD Green drives have a default of 8 seconds before they park the drive heads and increment the LCC value. That value is changeable, but you have to run a custom application. Western Digital provides one (WDIDLE3) that runs under DOS. That is OK for laptop/desktop users who can put it on bootable CD, but it is not useful for a headless NAS appliance.

Since WDIDLE3 is a Windows application, it does not run on the NAS under Linux. The DS1511+ has an Intel Atom D525 1.8GHz x86 Processor, 1GB of 64-bit DDR2 RAM (expandable to 3GB). The solution is to create a native Linux application.

There is a SourceForge project to set the Western Digital Idle3 drive setting here.  The goal of this exercise is to get the Idle3 Tools to run natively on the Synology NAS.  To do this on a fresh, unmodified Synology box, I did the following from a Windows 7 machine.  (This is a compilation of several posts on the Synology website.)  I recommend compiling the source code locally on the NAS.

• From the Synology DSM web interface, configure the NAS for remote access
  • Open the Control Panel, click on the Terminal icon in the Network Services section, select "Enable SSH service", and click OK
    
• In Windows, download and install PuTTY if you do not already have a SSH client on the PC
  • Configure PuTTY using the IP address of the NAS on port 22 (I saved it as a new session for easy recall)
  • Establish the PuTTY session with the NAS
  • Login to the NAS as username "root" with the same password as the administrative password of the Synology system
    
• In Windows, download and extract the Idle3 Tools source code to the Synology box
• I downloaded the file "idle3-tools-0.9.1.gz" from here (It is listed as a .tgz file, but it is not.)
• When I extracted it, WinZip could not read the archive correctly, so I had to use 7-Zip
• I extracted the archive to a new "\\DISKSTATION\public\idle3-tools-0.9.1" directory on the NAS (You can use any shared directory. I used the "public" directory I created.)
• In that directory, I opened the file "Makefile" in Notepad and removed the "?" from lines 13 and 14
• "CC ?= gcc" was changed to "CC = gcc"
• "STRIP ?= strip" was changed to "STRIP = strip"
• Save the Makefile and close Notepad
  
• Using PuTTY, download and install the Itsy Package Management System (IPKG)
  • Change to a temporary directory by entering the command "cd /volume1/@tmp"
  • Download the IPKG bootstrap by entering the command "wget http://ipkg.nslu2-linux.org/feeds/optware/syno-i686/cross/unstable/syno-i686-bootstrap_1.2-7_i686.xsh" (this takes some time)
  • Install IPKG by running the downloaded script with the command "sh syno-i686-bootstrap_1.2-7_i686.xsh" (this takes some time)
  • Delete the IPKG script file with the command "rm syno-i686-bootstrap_1.2-7_i686.xsh"
  • Close PuTTY by entering the command "exit"
    
• From the Synology DSM web interface, reboot the NAS
  • Click the top left arrow, click on "Restart", and close the browser tab
    
• Using PuTTY after the NAS restarts
  • Login to the NAS again user "root"
  • Change to the Idle3 Tools directory by entering the command "cd /volume1/public/idle3-tools-0.9.1/"
  • Update IPKG by entering the command "ipkg update" (this takes some time)
  • Download and install the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) via IPKG by entering the command "ipkg install gcc"
  • Download and install Make via IPKG by entering the command "ipkg install make"
  • Run Make to compile the Idle3 Tools by entering the command "make"
  • Test for proper compilation with the command "./idle3ctl –h" which should display the lines
    

    idle3ctl v0.9.1 - Read, Set or disable the idle3 timer of Western Digital drives
    Copyright (C) 2011  Christophe Bothamy

    Usage: idle3ctl [options] device
    Options:
    -h : displat help
    -V : show version and exit immediately
    -v : verbose output
    --force : force even if no Western Digital HDD are detected
    -g : get raw idle3 timer value
    -g100 : get idle3 timer value as wdidle3 v1.00 value
    -g103 : get idle3 timer value as wdidle3 v1.03 value
    -g105 : get idle3 timer value as wdidle3 v1.05 value
    -d : disable idle3 timer
    -s<value> : set idle3 timer raw value

  • Run the Idle3 Tools and set the the values on the drives as desired. The default timer value is "80" for 8 seconds.  Because I have five drives in the NAS, I had to run the utility five times to disable the timer on each one. Set yours as desired.
    

    ./idle3ctl -d /dev/sda
    ./idle3ctl -d /dev/sdb
    ./idle3ctl -d /dev/sdc
    ./idle3ctl -d /dev/sdd
    ./idle3ctl -d /dev/sde

• From the DSM interface, shutdown the NAS (This is required for the drives to read the new Idle3 setting on power-up.) 
  • Click the top left arrow, click on "Shutdown", and close the browser tab
    
• Once it is fully off, restart the NAS

Your NAS disks should now have stopped their LCC cycling.  This kind of process is why I am staying with Windows as much as I can.

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Posted On Friday, July 8, 2011 9:40 PM | Comments (0) |

Replacing a Windows Home Server

There comes a time when computers die. So it was with our HP MediaSmart Home Server. At the age of 4, I was not expecting it to die. Oops.

It has never really been an easy life before the death of that machine. It’s anemic 512MB of memory got upgraded to 2GB. The 500MB primary drive got expanded with two 1TB drives. The power supply fan started sounding like my lawn mower, so it had to be replaced. Things seemed stable until the primary drive croaked – and me unable to locate the recovery disk – bad, bad.

So I went on a search for a replacement. I wanted a true RAID this time and something that was a already-built solution, an appliance if you will. To make the long story short, I purchased a Synology DiskStation DS1511+, stuffed it with five Western Digital 2TB Caviar Green SATA II drives (WD20EARS), set it up as a RAID5, and then copied all the files from the MediaSmart’s data drives to the new SAN box. We will see how those consumer-grade drives work in the RAID.

The copy operation took awhile. I used this storage enclosure for 3.5-Inch SATA HDD's via its USB 2.0 port to connect to my laptop. I would have used the eSATA port, but I did not have a cable. The enclosure ships with USB and FireWire cables.

The Home Server is great for automated backups and making its drives seamlessly available. That Drive Extender technology was one of the big selling points for me. Microsoft has subsequently removed that capability in the most recent version Windows Home Server 2011. The stated reason was that they could not maintain compatibility when they moved to using Server 2008 R2 as its core. Whatever. Drive Extender is dead. That was a primary reason for my buying it, so I am not buying another.

I found a podcast (Hanselminutes #285) with a great explanation of why two techies replaced their Home Server with a SAN appliance, or at least augmented it. One of the participants in the podcast, Travis Illig, has an excellent post with pictures on how to set up the DiskStation. I will be writing another post about my setting up the DiskStation from the perspective of a Windows guy working with a Linux system. Let’s just say that adventure ensued.

The new setup is supporting video and music throughout the house now, as well as centralized file storage. I will be expanding the use of several features of the Synology DiskStation in the coming weeks.

My post on configuring the DS1511+ is here.

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Posted On Tuesday, July 5, 2011 6:30 AM | Comments (0) |