Tech Tips

Note: Some things are changed for ease of example.

For this tech tip, we’ll be looking at the different problems/consequences of handling wireless networks as well as looking at the benefits of a wireless network.

If you’re running windows vista then your gateway to the wireless and wired world for networking lays in the the dual computer icon like so: (the icon in the middle, parallel to "Friday").

If you right click on this icon, you’ll get an array of options you can choose. The most important option is the very last one entitled Network and Sharing Center. It will look like so:

The fist thing I would like to highlight is the first choice on the left side menu, View computers and devices option that enables you to see computers and other hardware connected to the network whether wirelessly or hard wired. If you click on the option, a window like the image below will appear:

This allows you to see all devices that your computer sees. This includes other computers on the same network as you (router or hard wire), shared printers, wireless router(s), and other devices. This particular option can be beneficial if you need to quickly know the IP address of your router (you can do this by right-clicking on your router and then selecting properties) or if you want to access your router via web you can right-click and it’ll take you to the necessary web page. If you have more than one computer on the same network you can explore them and share content between the two systems easily and you could also print wirelessly too.

This next part deals with the connections that you can potentially connect to. The networks that my computer picks up on are wifi signals from my router as well as my neighbor’s router. I have the choice to connect to either one if I wanted; however, If I wish to connect to my neighbor’s I would need a password in order to access his wireless internet hence, Security-Enabled Network.

The next part is vital to fixing a common problem encountered by many people that are new to a wireless networking system. If you ever get an error stating that you cannot connect due to previous internet settings for this network, your problem and your solution are in the same place. Example: Let us say that Jon is our best friend so we go over to his house a lot and we do all sorts of things and one of those things is that we enjoy looking for deals online. Jon, one day, decides to purchase a new router and cable modem and decides to set up a 128 bit encryption so no one steals his internet anymore. You help him set it up and later on he messes up on the settings so he resets the wifi router and starts from scratch. You come back the next day, like every other day, and you see how he’s doing along with the wife, kids, grandparents, etc. You try to connect but a window pops up stating that you cannot connect because you have previous settings for this particular wifi system. Your solution is to delete that particular wireless network that is saved on your computer by clicking on the Manage Wireless Networks option on the left hand menu of the Network and Sharing Center. Select the network that is giving you trouble (in this case Jon’s Network) and delete it. Go back to the Connect to a Network option and then select the proper one and enter the correct information and it’ll work like a charm! Note: "Security WEP" isn’t really lime green, it was highlighted to make it known that for these connections you must enter in a password, passphrase, or some type of code.

Setting up an internet connection and be done in various ways but it isn’t always necessary either. Depending on your needs, you can set up a home network with a broadband connection, wireless connection, setting up a router, wireless ad hoc connection, etc. These are all relative to your type of internet connection of course.. So here’s the down low on all of the options. Connect to a Network is the same procedure as connecting to a network through the connect to a network as mentioned previously; however you’ll need to specify wireless, broadband, or dial-up. If you choose wireless then you will follow the same procedure as mentioned before. For Broadband (PPoE), you will need to enter in the username and password that your ISP provides for you and enter in that information. For Dial-Up, you’ll need the phone number, username, and password your ISP gave you in order to connect to the internet. Note: For Dial-Up, you will need to enter some additional information before you setup the connection.

Connection types

PPoE Connection window

Dial-Up Connection window

The next option on our list is to Setup a wireless router or access point. The access point is usually for small businesses so the business can have printer and file sharing via the access point. For most folks, you’ll want to set a wireless router. Windows will provide you with the necessary information on setting up a wireless router and the security that is needed to protect your personal information.

Wireless and access point setup

You can manually connect to a wireless network by providing all the necessary information in order to connect to the wireless router. You’ll need the correct network name, the correct security type, encryption type (which is relative to the security type), and the Security Key/Phassphrase.

Manually connect to a Wireless network

The next option is something called an Ad Hoc network setup in which small businesses can be connected to the same network and be able to share info between them easily. The computers must be within 30 feet of each other, however…

Ad hoc network

The next and final option is setting up a network through a workplace. You’ll have to decide whether or not you wish to simply "dial into" your workplace or get through via a VPN (Virtual Private Network). A VPN is defined as a network that connects one or more computers to a large network, such as a business network, using the Internet. A VPN is encrypted, so only authorized people have access to it.

In this tech tip, we will be looking at the iso files and how to create them and why .iso files are easy and convenient.In this process, I’ll be using a program called poweriso, which can be found here.

Step 1

In order to create our iso image, we need to gather the necessary folders and/or files that will make up the .iso. You want to drag the folders and files into the main window like the image below: Please note that you can insert a disc that already has information on it and compile the cd into an iso file by using the copy function or by saving the information as an iso file as discussed in step 2.

and then you’ll see a few things happening that we want to be aware of. The first thing is the blue bar at the bottom where it says the total size of the contents of the disc, which in our case is a CD that will have 608MB or 86% of that CD to be filled. If we happen to exceed 700MB, poweriso will automatically change to a DVD for storage.

Step 2

Once we have our necessary files, we can burn the iso image onto a CD or DVD (depending on the size of the data), insert the proper media into your disk drive and then we need to save the file as an .iso by going to file > save as > <filename>.iso. Once our iso is saved on our hard drive, click on the burn button and then you’ll see a dialogue box appear like the image below:

Using the .iso image that we just saved on our hard drive, if it is not already selected, select the image file, select the drive that you media is in, autodetect the media, burning speed is relative to the job (usually max is fine), and if you wish to verify the data thereafter then check the checkbox and then hit burn! For creating ad burning an .iso it is as easy as step 1 and step 2!

The benefits of having an .iso file is that it is popular for creating an image of a disc, it can be compressed and optimized, and it is very user friendly.

Note: All images are clickable and will give way to a larger image in new tab or window depending on your browser settings!

What is RAM and what does it stand for? RAM are two or more chips that allow your computer to start, run, access information from your hard drive, display that information to you, convert those files into information you can access, use, edit, etc… Basically, your computer won’t even run without RAM, you’ll simply get a black screen or your computer may not even start. RAM stands for Random Access Memory. The word random refers to that fact that any piece of information can be returned at a constant time, regardless of location of any data.

Types of Ram:

There are a few types of RAM (random access memory) out there for you to purchase such as DDR (double-data-rate), DDR2 (double-data-rate 2), DDR3, SODIMM (small outline dual in-line memory module), DRAM (dynamic random access memory), and SDRAM (synchronous dynamic random access memory).
All the information above doesn’t specifically refer to the types of RAM. Rather, the information above is about the components of RAM but not the RAM itself. Here’s the break down….

DDR SDRAM:

Double-data-rate synchronous dynamic random access memory – whew, that was a mouth full!
Unlike its predecessor SDRAM which was a single-data-rate chip, this DDR SDRAM had the same general principles of SDRAM, however, it used double pumping without increasing the frequency. What does this mean and how will it help me?! Well, to be perfectly honest, it won’t!
So what do I really need to know about DDR SDRAM?

Well, as of 2009 DDR SDRAM was still being used in some computers and even in mobile devices so there might be a chance that you need to replace an old memory module or you might want to upgrade your ram altogether.  If so, you need to identify some key thinks on your RAM chip before purchasing new memory. The first thing you need to know is exactly what type of RAM you’re dealing with. As mentioned above, there is DDR, DDR2, and DDR3 and each has a different pc number. To start, we need to identify our DDR type.

Use the image below of a common DDR2 laptop chip as a reference.

This is the main factor in deciding what ram to buy. DDR, DDR2, and DDR3 will NOT work with each other at all.

Next, we want to identity the PC number which is the next more important thing in your decision making process…

The PC Number is also known as the module number which is just as important as the type of RAM in which you use. You cannot have a different module number than your motherboard is made for and if you’re not sure what your PC number is, contact your manufacture for more information on the type of RAM that your machine uses.

Then, we want to determine the frequency at which our RAM operates on.

Frequency is the same as the PC number (within its own set of limitations, of course). It is important to know at what frequency your motherboard will use your memory.

Another good piece of info to know is that amount of RAM you have as a whole and each chip.

In this case, this particular RAM chip is a SODIMM DDR2 PC2-5300 @ 667 MHz that has 512 MB of available memory. With this information, we should be able to go into your local fry’s electronics, best buy, or any tech store that sells memory modules and be able to successfully upgrade, update, or replace your RAM!

One of these days, I’ll go in depth about RAM and all of the smoke a mirrors associated with computer hardware!

We’re going to be looking at how to reformat and partition your Hard Disk Drive (HDD) using Microsoft’s Windows Vista and Windows 7. Since these two OS have disk management software embedded in the OS, there is no need for third-party applications such as Partition Magic or Norton’s Parted Magic software.

Step 1

To open the management portion of Vista or 7, right click on the computer icon on your desktop, type compmgmt.msc command in run or DOS, or if you’re using the new start bar design, you can right click on computer and choose manage.

Any way you do this, you will have to click "Yes" to the User Account Controls (UAC) in order to proceed into the management services.

Step 2

You’ll want to navigate to Disk Management on the left hand side menu and wait for all of your drives to load.

As you can see from the image above. There are three Hard Drive Partitions, one for C:, E:, and D: (which is an external HDD plugged in via USB). C: has 73.53GB of space on it, E: has 1021 MB of space on it, and D: has 149.05GB of space on it. Let us say for the sake of argument that E: partition is in FAT32 format and we want it to be formatted in NTFS….

A brief history of NTFS and FAT 32… NTFS is called the New Technology Filing System and FAT is called the File Allocation Table.

All in all, NTFS is the way to go. A small sacrifice in disk speed is well worth the reliability of the NTFS format. FAT32 is outdated these days anyhow, flash drives and some external HDD are formatted in FAT32 and most new computers are formatted under the NTFS system. As an example of the FAT32 format’s inability to save disk space, think of a 1KB text document; NTFS will save it and put 2KB on the disk as a backup, whereas FAT32 will take that 1KB and turn it into 32KB with 31KB not in use.

Step 3

Let us say we want to reformat our E: partition from FAT32 into NTFS. First things first, we need to click on the drive in question, in this case the E: drive. Then we want to right click on the E: drive or the windows that represents its free space, size, etc… The highlighted areas basically…. Select the format option.

You have the choice of renaming the HDD if you desire, and can also change the file system to NTFS, — duh — FAT32, or FAT (you don’t want!). You can also choose to perform a quick format which isn’t recommended because, well, you’re rushing a change of the file system on a HDD, you don’t want to rush that do you? You can also enable file and folder compression as well, this will add time to the procedure of course.

Upon clicking OK, windows will prompt you saying that everything on this partition (or HDD if it’s a complete drive) will be erased and once the process is started cannot be undone or stopped without some consequence. Back everything up on that particular drive if you’re reformatting a partition and if you’re reformatting a whole HDD, back up the files that you wish to keep because once they’re gone, they’re really gone and no file recovery software, system restores, etc… will recover the files. Naahhh!! I’m just trying to scare you all!! You can find software that will recover files and such, but it will cost you! If you lose some files that you want to recover, click on any of the three links below!!

www.recovermyfiles.com

www.grc.com/spinrite.htm

www.runtime.org/hints.htm

Ever had that process that wouldn’t go down without a fight? You’ve tried relentlessly to end the process through task manager with no success… You see End Process Tree and you said, “Oh well, might as well since I can’t do anything else” and you click it. Next thing you know you get the infamous Blue Screen of Death and your computer crashes. You start your computer in safe mode (just to be safe) and hope all is well but it does it again… Such a tool exists that is as powerful as administrative control if not more…. Behold the power of DOS!!! Also called cmd, command prompt, run (which is incorrect), and DOS (Not denial of service, that was the 80s). Let’s say for instance that you want to kill notepad.exe in dos. Open the command prompt (cmd) or open run and type cmd.

So you get this fancy – or lack thereof – black box with a stoic blinker and an archaic C:\> You think to yourself, “what am I doing here?!” There’s a purpose behind this, I assure you! The command for killing a task in cmd is cleverly called “taskkill” (minus the ” and “, of course). Note: If you type taskkill/? it will give you more information on taskkill command and any other command that you type e.g. cmd/?, ipconfig/?, winver/?, etc… I strongly recommend that you type this before proceeding, unless you happen to know the proper syntax.

As we can see, there are many choices that we can use and each serves its own special purpose in terminating a process. Our first example will be terminating notepad.exe using it’s Image Name (IM).

Step 1

Open Notepad.exe and open cmd.exe

Step 2

Type taskkill/? for the example to see or continue reading….
Our proper syntax will be the following: taskkill /IM notepad.exe and the process will terminate with a success or failure message and then the PID. In order to kill a process and all child processes started by that process, we can use a different syntax, example: taskkill /IM notepad.exe /T and if we want to forcefully kill a process (which you might have to use) our example would look like taskkill /F /IM notepad.exe /T

For the sake on example, let us say that we don’t know the image name but we do know the PID or we want to kill multiple processes without typing each IM. In vista, go the view > select columns > Process ID

XP users should also have a PID option. Example syntax:
taskkill /F /PID 5644 /PID 2216 /PID 1253 /T this will kill the following PID: 5644, 2216, & 1253 with a forceful termination and terminating all child processed started by it’s parent process.

Have you ever experienced sluggish computer performance and checked your task manager (taskmgr.exe) so see if it was a service or process that was out of control or not running? In you search you find, to your dismay, you see that you have about a thousand rundll32.exe processes open and now it’s sapping all of your CPU power and all of your RAM! (In windows vista, you’re only supposed to have two rundll32.exe running at any given time and usually the same for XP). You have no idea where the process is being started from and you want to find out and see if it is a virus or not. If you’re running XP then I have some bad new for you. To my knowledge, you cannot see the command line of the source file that’s causing all of this drama; however, if you have vista then you can simply go to the view tab and pick the select columns icon. Scroll down to the bottom and select the command line option check box.

When this check box is selected, you will be able to see the command line version of the specific location of that process and what rundll32.exe is actually executive (exe).

If you do have this problem and you trace the problem back to internet explorer, then you need to install ie to the latest edition or you may need to reinstall completely. If, however, your problem is not traced back to ie then do a Google Search on that particular process in question (be sure to add the file extension e.g. taskmgr.exe, system.sys, etc) and you can review opinions through a google search.

Perhaps there has been a time when your whole entire desktop was missing and your start bar would cease to exist. Befuddled beyond belief, you began to panic and did a hard reset on your computer and thankfully everything came back to normal or maybe not…

In any version of windows (or at least the latest, 98SE, all XP editions, all Vista editions, and all Windows 7 editions, there is a process called explorer.exe and this controls – amongst other things – the desktop and start bar.

You can see the highlighted text that is explorer.exe

If you do not see this, don’t panic. As long as your desktop is still showing then all is good. If you cannot see your desktop then press control+shift+escape to bring up the task manager window and go to the processes tab. Click on file > new task and type in explorer.exe

This will bring back your desktop icons and your start bar.

You can also do this through run or through cmd or DOS

Note: If you’re unsure and don’t know what you’re doing then don’t follow these directions. These changes will be saved on your computer and could lead to a browser that is sluggish and way messed up. Be responsible for your own actions and proceed if you can BE responsible and follow these directions exactly.

First things, first…
Open a new tab, type about:config into the address bar and hit enter…
The field entitled “filter” is where you type the stuff you see below…

Appearance:

* browser.display.focus_ring_width
This option will remove that annoying ring of dots (aka an ant trail) from selected/active links/elements.

Default value = “1″.
“0″ = Hide the Focus Ring.

* browser.chrome.toolbar_tips
If you’ve ever tried dragging and dropping bookmarks around your Bookmarks Toolbar and the Tool Tips got in your way, you’ll find this helpful.
(Be careful, though. Some Add-Ons are dependent on Tool Tips).

Default value = “True”.
“False” = Disable Tool Tips.

* dom.disable_window_open_feature.* (I just love this one! When you type the entry on the left, you’ll narrow the about:config list to 11. Explanation below). Webpage authors can disable many features of a popup window that they open. Setting these preferences to “True” will override the author’s settings and ensure that that feature is enabled and present in any popup window.

close = Prevent the close button from being disabled.
directories = Prevent the bookmarks toolbar from being hidden.
location = Prevent the address bar from being hidden
menubar = Prevent the menubar from being hidden.
minimizable = Prevent popup window minimization from being disabled.
personalbar = Prevent the bookmarks toolbar from being hidden.
resizable = Prevent popup window resizing from being disabled.
scrollbars = Prevent the scrollbars on a popup from being disabled.
status = Prevent the status bar from being hidden.
titlebar = Prevent the title bar from being hidden.
toolbar = Prevent the navigation toolbar from being hidden.

* browser.tabs.closebuttons
Controls how Close Buttons will be displayed on tabs.

Default value = “1″
“0″ = Display a close button on the active tab only.
“1″ = Display close buttons on all tabs.
“2″ = Don’t display any close buttons.
“3″ = Display a single close button at the end of the tab bar (Firefox 1.x behavior).

* browser.blink_allowed

Mozilla supports both the HTML element and the blink value for the text-decoration CSS property.The blinking content produced is usually irritating at best, disorienting and confusing at worst.For accessibility reasons, the blink effect can be disabled via this preference.

Default = “True”
“False” = Disable blinking text and display it as static text

Functionality:

* browser.helperApps.deleteTempFileOnExit (Does NOT exist by default. To create it, right-click an empty area of the about:config page and select New > Boolean).Wondering why files downloaded via Open With… in Fx3 are always set to “Read Only”?
Here’s what the developers had to say: “This is intentional so people do not modify the files and then save them. We had lots of bugs filed about people losing their work because they did open with and then worked on a file.”

For example:
If you’re using uTorrent and you try to Remove And > Delete .torrent + data, you’ll find that the .torrent file remains because it was set to “Read Only” by Fx3.

Default value = “False”
“True” = Downloaded files will be set to “Read Only”.
“False” = Downloaded files will be left alone as they were in Fx2.

* layout.spellcheckdefault
The spell check function, when active, is accessible via the context menu of the text area/form field.For spell checking to work, the user must have the appropriate dictionary files installed.

Default = “1″.
“0″ = Disable spellchecker.
“1″ = Enable spellchecker for multi-line controls (e.g., text areas).
“2″ = Enable spellchecker for multi-line controls and single-line controls (e.g., text areas and form/input fields).

* browser.urlbar.matchonlytyped
Determines behavior of autocomplete in Location Bar.

Default value = “False”.
“True” = Only matches typing against URLs specifically typed into Location Bar.
“False” = Match against browser history.

* accessibility.tabfocus
Pressing the Tab button on your keyboard when a web page is in focus will move the focus from element to element. This is helpful when moving to a link you’d like to visit or moving between form fields without using the mouse. This preference determines which elements can be focused by pressing Tab.
Note: In OS X (as of 2005), if this preference is not explicitly set, the “Full Keyboard Access” setting in System Preferences will be honored. All builds before that date (e.g., Firefox 1.0.x) will ignore that setting.

Default = “7″ (“1″ in OSX)
“1″ = Give focus to text fields only. (The default in OS X.)
“2″ = Give focus to all form elements except text fields.
“4″ = Give focus to links (and linked images) only.

You can add any of the above values together to combine their functionality.That is, setting this preference to “3″ (i.e., 1 + 2) will let you focus both text fields and other form elements.

* browser.preferences.instantApply
“True” (default in all platforms but Windows) = Changes to browser preferences are active immediately. The preferences window is not modal. Instead of “OK” and “Cancel” buttons, there is only a “Close” button.

“False” = Changes to preferences occur only after clicking the “OK” button. The preference window is modal.

* editor.singleline.pastenewlines
Single-line text fields do not allow users to input newlines. Pasting content, however, poses a problem: what happens if pasted content contains newlines?This is often handled differently on different platforms. This preference determines what happens to multi-line content when it is pasted into a single-line text field.

“0″ (default in Linux) = Paste content intact (include newlines).
“1″ (default everywhere else) = Paste the content only up to (but not including) the first newline.
“2″ = Replace each newline with a space.
“3″ = Remove all newlines from content.
“4″ = Substitute commas for newlines in text box.
“5″ = Remove all newlines and surrounding whitespace.

* layout.word_select.eat_space_to_next_word
This preference controls the selection behaviour when double-clicking text as it relates to the space following the text.

“True” = Select the space up to the following word. (Default on Windows and Mac).

“False” = Do not select any extra spaces. (Default on all platforms except Windows and Mac).

* browser.fixup.alternate.suffix
Firefox tries to automatically add a suffix to the domain name entered if none has.
So, entering www.mozilla would add .com to it because .com is the default suffix that will be added.You might prefer to add a country code like .fr or .de if you live in those countries. Simply change the setting to your country domain.

Default = “.com”
Please have a look here for various country codes.

Performance:

* content.interrupt.parsing (Does NOT exist by default. To create it, right-click an empty area of the about:config page and select New > Boolean).

This preference controls whether the application will interrupt parsing a page to respond to UI events. .

Default value = “True”
“True” = Parsing can be interrupted to process UI events.
“False” = Parsing cannot be interrupted. The application will be unresponsive until parsing is complete.

* network.prefetch-next
Link prefetching is when a webpage hints to the browser that certain pages are likely to be visited, so the browser downloads them immediately so they can be displayed immediately when the user requests it.

This preference controls whether link prefetching is enabled.

Default = “True”.
“False” = Disable Prefetching.

* config.trim_on_minimize (Windows ONLY and does NOT exist by default. To create it, right-click an empty area of the about:config page and select New > Boolean).Determines how Windows handles RAM usage for the browser while minimized. Setting to False will often prevent delays when restoring the window (see bug 76831).

Default value = “False”
“True” = Allow Windows to trim the working set when the browser is minimized.
“False” = Prevent Windows from trimming the working set.

All of the following are to be used in conjunction with each other to noticeably speed FireFox up…
I’m not going to go into much, (if any), detail on these.
Just trust me that they DO work and you WILL see results…

* network.http.pipelining
* network.http.proxy.pipelining

Default = “False”.
“True” = Pipelining enabled.

* network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

Default = “4″.
“1″ = Disable pipelining.
“2-7″ = Maximum number of requests.
“8″ = Maximum useful setting. (any higher value will be ignored in favor of the maximum).

* network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server (It is considered poor etiquette to make too many connections to a server and may lead to you being banned from that server).

Default = “6″. (2 in Fx2).
“1″ = Lowest possible setting.
“255″ = Maximum useful setting. (any higher value will be ignored in favor of the maximum).

* network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy (It is considered poor
etiquette to make too many connections to a server and may lead to you being banned from that server).

Default = “8″. (4 in Fx2).
“1″ = Lowest possible setting.
“255″ = Maximum useful setting. (any higher value will be ignored in favor of the maximum).

* network.http.max-connections-per-server (It is considered poor etiquette to make too many connections to a server and may lead to you being banned from that server).

Default = “15″. (8 in Fx2).
“1″ = Lowest possible setting.
“255″ = Maximum useful setting. (any higher value will be ignored in favor of the maximum).

* network.http.max-connections

Default = “30″. (24 in Fx2).
“1″ = Lowest possible setting.
“65535″ = Maximum useful setting. (any higher value will be ignored in favor of the maximum).

* nglayout.initialpaint.delay (Does NOT exist by default. To create it, right-click an empty area of the about:config page and select New > Integer).
The number of milliseconds to wait before first displaying the page.

Default = “250″
“0″ = Lowest possible setting.

* If you’re on a broadband connection (Cable/DSL, etc) you can use the following

settings as a starting point.

network.http.pipelining = “True”
network.http.proxy.pipelining = “True”
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests = “8″
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server = “16″
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy = “16″
network.http.max-connections-per-server = “16″
network.http.max-connections = “40″
nglayout.initialpaint.delay = “0″

Hello and welcome to another exciting issue of Tech Tips! In this issue, I’m going to show you how you can change that boring old Windows XP boot screen to something more exciting and enjoyable.

The image that is displayed during boot up has been pretty well hidden away by Microsoft. It is located in the WINDOWS directory inside the system32 embedded within a file called ntoskrnl.exe. Experienced users of windows often have hacked this file to display their own image during windows boot up. So then all you have to do is find somebody who posted their hacked version of ntoskrnl.exe on the internet and replace the file on your computer, right? WRONG! There are so many versions of Windows for different languages and Microsoft always is making new updates to windows, so just replacing your ntoskrnl.exe with somebody else’s is probably not going to work because chances are you have a slightly different version of windows. And when you start up your computer instead of displaying a nice lovely new boot screen you will probably get some nice text that says “C:\Windows\System32\ntoskrnl.exe is missing or corrupt.”

So how do you safely change the boot screen? A free program called Boot Skin makes it an easy and safe process. Start by visiting www.bootskin.com to download and install the program. Once you get it installed, open up Boot Skin. Look through the default boot screens or visit www.wincustomize.com/Skins.aspx?LibID=32 to download additional boot screens. Click the preview button to preview the skins and once you find one that you like just press apply and you will see it next time you boot up. It’s that easy!

Welcome to yet another exciting issue of Tech Tips! I’m taking this week’s tip in a slightly different direction. This week instead of learning how to do something we are going to learn all about something. And that something is two different ways to represent colors: RGB and Hexadecimal. RGB and Hex is decimal are two different ways to name computer colors.

If you have ever used Photoshop or something similar, you are probably used to seeing RGB color representations. RGB stands for Red Green Blue, which are the three colors that when mixed together create all other colors that computers display. RGB colors are shown as three separate values that vary between 0 and 255. These numbers represent how much of each color is used to create the resultant color. The higher the number of color, the more influence that color will have on the final color. So for example, 255, 0, 0 will turn out to be a Red color, because we are mixing 255 units of red, 0 units of green and 0 units of blue. 0,0,0 will turn out to be a black color, because no colors will be represented. If we max out all the colors (255, 255, 255) we will get a white color.

If you have ever created a web site before, or done any web design, you have probably seen colors looking like this: #ffffff. This is called the hexadecimal form of the color. The number sign (#) begins every Hexadecimal color; After that, the 1st and 2nd digits represent the red value; the 3rd and 4th represent the green value; the 5th and 6th represent the Blue. For example, in the color #3366cc, 33 represents the red, 66 represents the green and cc represents the blue. Hex color values can contain any of 16 different digits, they are 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, and F.

Follow the steps outlined below to convert between the color types:

RGB to HEX (ex: 168, 79, 255)

1. Divide the Red value by 16. (Ex: 168 ÷ 16 = 10.5)
2. Separate this number into two parts, the part before the decimal point and the part after the decimal point. (Ex: 10 and 0.5)
3. Multiply the part of the number that was after the decimal point by 16 (Ex: 0.5 × 16 = 8 )
4. Now you should have the first part of the number that you got in step two and your result from step three. (Ex: 10 and 8 )
5. If either of these numbers greater than 9 subtract 9 from them and substitute that letter of the alphabet. (Ex: 10 > 9 so 10 – 9 = 1 = A; 8 ≤ 9 so we leave as 8 )
6. These are the red digits of the hexadecimal color. (Ex: a8 )
7. Repeat steps 1 through 6 for green and blue values (Ex. 4f, ff)
8. Put all these values together and put in a number sign in front (Ex: #a84fff)

HEX to RGB (Ex: #a84fff)

1. Take the first digit of the red part of the hex color. (ex: a)
2. If this digit is a letter, replace with the letter of the alphabet and add 9. If it is not a letter, leave it. (ex: a = 1; 1 + 9 = 10)
3. Take the second digit of the red part of the hex color. (ex: 8 )
4. If this digit is a letter, replace with the letter of the alphabet and add 9. If it is not a letter, leave it. (ex: 8 )
5. Divide this number by 16. (ex: 8 ÷ 16 = 0.5)
6. Add the number you got in step two and the number you got in step 5. (ex: 10 + 0.5 = 10.5)
7. Multiply this number by 16 to get the red value. (ex: 10.5 × 16 = 168)
8. Repeat steps 1 through 8 with green and blue values. (ex: 168, 79, 255))

There are certain hex colors that are considered “Web Safe”. These colors include all combinations of the follow strings of digits: 00, 33, 66, 99, cc, ff. As you can see there are 6 possible choices here and in order create a hex color out of them, you need 3. Giving 63 which is equal to 216 possibilities.