Continue making my EeePC 900 a default BT box and always on device at home

Yesterday I experienced something bad on my EeePC while I attempted to use it as an always on BT device: the machine shut down itself down because of overheating. That's when I realized that I disconnected the fan for the sake of making it run quietly. So I reconnect the fan again.

That was when I realize how great the eeeutil app was. I used it to turn the fan first to all the way 100% and then later to Auto, and turn the power to full so that there's enough power to drive the external 2.5 inch harddisk. I even connected the wireless mouse and keyboard set to it so that I could later use it as an always on machine, just like what my desktop used to do.

If everything goes well, then my next step will be trying to use WiFi for BTing, so that I can put the device at a corner that does not anony me.

Oh, so it was the damn 80Gb harddisk in a USB enclosure that **ck things up, and QuickSFV

I was very puzzled about the hell all the BT I've done on the EeePC 900 were all **cked up. Well, today I finally understand why: it was the dran 80Gb external USB harddisk that I used with the EeePC 900 that **cked things up.

The reason I know that's true is because everytime I use RapidCRC the SAME folder of rar files, I will GET DIFFERNT RESULTS. However, if I copied those file to my desktop harddisk. I will get consistant result. In fact, the connection was so unreliable that after unhooked the USB connection at one place and rehooked it on another USB portt again, the harddisk seems NOT WORKING ANYMORE. Screw that.

So Now I am using a 2.5 inch external USB harddisk now. Hope this one is better.

Oh on the side note, I like RapidCRC so much better as a SFV tool than the QuickSFV. The older vesrion's history feature gave me inaccurate result. And I can't even install the new 2.36 on my Windows 7 RC1. So forget it. RapidCRC on the other hand gives me consistant result. Good stuff.

Something wrong with my new BT box EeePC 900

With all the heat generated and the tiny tiny keyboard, I finally find myself fed up with my EeePC 900. Instead of leave it at the corner, I thought, why not use it as a dedicated BT box? So I set everything up and start using it to do nothing but BT.

However, things didn't go well. I found out that both of the BT work I used it to do was failed. They both have file corruption problem. So now I am getting pretty puzzled. What could be the problem of the file corruption?

• Machine overheating?
• Bad external 3.5 inch USB harddisk?
• Ethernet connection that comes through the USB instead of the real Ethernet port?
• The file I BTed was actually having problem (doesn't make sense, since no one else seem to have that problem.

This time I unplugged the USB port set thing, and directly connect Ethernet cable to the Ethernet port. I also redo one of the failed BT, and if whether the file itself really have problem. We'll see.

Lenmar Rechargeable Battery 10 unit pack: well, at least it works

Lenmar 2500mAh Rechargeable Battery 10 unit pack is not particularly a great deal. But for US$19.99 selling at Fry's, it's reasonably priced and in fact worked pretty well. When I brought it earlier today, I was worrying that it may not work well with my rechargeable battery charger since my charger had some problem with some 2500mAh GP battery that I brought when I was in Hong Kong last year. Luckily, battery from this 10 unit pack doesn't seem to have any problem so far.

Still don't know if I made a good decision on getting the HP Wireless Multimedia keyboard

For the price of US$19.99 getting it locally at Houston Fry's Electronic Store, the HP Wireless Multimedia keyboard seems like a petty good deal. Sure I can get the Microsoft Wireless Desktop 1000 set at the same price from Directron, but the feeling of this HP keyboard seems to be slightly better.

My problem, though, is that this wireless keyboard seems to have the same problem most wireless keyboard has: every once in a while it will drop some keystrokes here and there, unless you put the receiver very close to the keyboard. I experienced a lot of key dropped when I left the receiver at the top of my desktop. But when I put it right next to the SyncMaster monitor, the key dropped problem seemed to be disappeared, at least for now.

So for really reliable typing, I still think having a wired keyboard is a much better solution. In fact, I am still seriously thinking of getting the Apple wired keyboard standard version just because the keyboard takes so little space, with such great typing experience, even though it's pretty expansive as a wired keyboard without number pad.

Windows 7 RC1 still needs DirectX 9 for gaming

I tried running Mirror's Edge and I got some DirectX DLL missing error. It turns out that even for Windows 7 RC1, I still need to manually install DirectX 9c (Aug 2008 Distribution). Oh well, at least it works now.

Smart Doctor DOES NOT work, but ....

After running Mirror's Edge on Windows 7 RC1 caused my machine to shut down a few times, I knew I had to do something.

So I tried and I tried and still couldn't get SmartDoctor (a tool to start the fan on the graphic card in order to lower the temperature) installed. Finally I was inspired by this post and tried using the ATI Catalyst Control Center, and successfully keep the machine from shutting down. Here's what I did.

1. Right click the desktop and select the Catalyst Control Center which should be the item at the top.
2. Go to [Graphic Settings][ATI Override]
3. Click the unlock icon.
4. Check [x]Enable ATI Overdrive.
5. (Probably optional)Turn GPU to minimum (500) and Memory Click to minimum (750).
6. This is the most important step: [x] Enable Manual Fan Control, and turn the value to 100%
7. click [Apply].

This will turn the fan speed to the max. It's very noisy, but at least my machine does not shut down.

I'll probably read me about manually change the fan speed later, though.

Graphic card shut down, what the ....

I was enjoying my new XBox 360 controller playing Mirror's Edge when suddenly my machine just shut down. It seemed like the graphic card shutted itself down because of overheat problem. So I went to ATI web site, find EAH4850/HTDI/512M entry, and downloaded SmartDoc535.zip and Version 9442.11.10.0.2.AS01 BIOS update. I hope they can solve my problem.

XBox 360 Controller : a must for PC Gaming, if you want the console experience

I just got my XBox 360 Controller from Amazon.com for US$29, and I found this bad boy totally worth the price. The pad was very well made, and game support was excellent. This is kind of sad thing for gamepad creators like Logitec. In fact, I have a wireless joypad which I very much like. Too bad it either didn't not work well with games, or require me to remap tons of buttons. This US$29 solved a lot of my headache.

Printing with web browser

When dealing with printing, Internet Explorer has far superior feature compare with other browsers like Chrome.

Mirror's Edge problem solved .... by buying a wired XBox 360 controller

I remember like months ago I was frustrated by that the game Mirror's Edge was not functioning properly because I was using a Logitech wireless joypad, and that stuff does not map properly with the game (and I blame the game for that). I even had to hack the TdInput.ini file in order to rearrange the game setting.

Well, recently I ordered a XBox360 Controller, and I suddenly realize that I did a heck on a game on the joypad setting, and I had to find it out and revert before I use it with the XBox360 pad. But as the result, not only I found out that it's Mirror's Edge, I also found out that I don't need to do nothing because by installing Windows 7 RC1, I already wiped out the joypad hack setting that stores in the user information folder.

Well, let me wait for the game controller to come, and see if I can change my gaming experience.

Reinstalling .... portable Firefox 3?

It may seem strange, but a while ago I spent 20 minutes reinstalling Firefox 3 Portable. That's right. Portable! It turns out that show how the Firefox browser was messed up. For instance the right click menu will create a huge white space area in the middle, and then the [OK] button on the preference screen couldn't be closed.

So instead of wasting time googling about the possible fix, I just reinstall everything. (Well I did googled a short while but then I realized that it was just not worth it.)

The reinstalling process was not complicated, but it did take time since I need to reinstall all the plugin, and then reinstalled all the gmail account with the Gmail manager. And finally I have to set up my Gmail delicious account. But when all was done, I got a clean working browser. And somehow I found the browser loads up slighltly faster than it used to be, which is always a welcome change.