1) Install Windows XP (or Vista, or 7, or a server OS, whatever OS you want)

2) Set up users on the “server” PC to match accounts on your other PCs. For example, HTPC is the account on my home theater PC (clever eh?) and I recreated an account on the file server with the same credentials. This allows share permissions to function transparent to the OS/user.

3) Enable blank passwords from accounts in Local Security policy

4) Add whatever shares you want, and give proper access. For shares that will be public, like my pictures, I want to make sure no one could delete them – so I restrict them to read-only. This allows friends to browse the shares when they visit while securing my piece of mind that they don’t accidentally delete something (no offense!).

5) Install some sort of backup solution (I use Syncback Free), and set your jobs up.

That should do it – you now have a simple file server that guests can access, without destroying things, and that backs itself up!

p.s. And when you’re trying to figure out why your end to end gigabit connection is only transferring around 100 megabits, check to see that you didn’t plug something into a 100 megabit port…sigh

Windows XP:

%userprofile%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Media Player

Windows Vista/7:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Media Player

Seems Red Faction is coded like a game from 1998 (Starcraft) and is one of only two games I have EVER had not work on my PC. Long story short in compatibility (under properties) you have to select “Disable display scaling on high DPI settings” to get it to work – otherwise you’ll have one of the following problems:

• Display blinks black repeatedly, never loads
• Sounds are COMPLETELY messed up (way loud, or distorted)
• Moving the mouse will spin you around in a circle
• Moving the mouse wheel will turn your character

Starcraft is also somewhat affected. DPI at 120 or higher will cause the minimap to no longer let you click in certain areas.

Glad they took the extra months to make sure Red Faction Guerrilla worked at 120+ DPI. This trick should work in both XP and Vista (and 7)

If you’re looking for minimal power consumption, and less than 720p HD:  get an Atom 330 based mini-ITX board (29 watts idle, 36ish at 100% load)

If you’re looking for respectable power consumption, and 1080p HD: get a Celeron E3200/3300 based system with a Geforce 9400 based motherboard (35ish watts idle, 60ish watts at 100% load). Add an ATI 4670 to that and you can game at 1080p at the cost of 10 watts idle, 40 watts at 100% load.

If you’re looking for over the top performance and gaming, well, Grab a i7 965, 12 GB of RAM, triple SLI GeForce GTX 285’s, and a SAN.

Links to sources? BAH. Google it.

(Please someone prove me wrong)

AD_EXT pin outs:

VCC +5V power supply    1 X X 2    VCC +5V power supply
                                  GND Ground    3 X X 4    AC97CLK 24.5 MHz clock output
                                  GND Ground    5 X X 6    GP_SPDIFIN#2 SPDIF input signal
                                  GND Ground    7 X X 8    GND Ground
                   SPDIFO#3 SPDIF Out signal    9 X X 10   GPO1 General Purpose Output #1
              GPO2 General Purpose Output #2   11 X X 12   GND Ground
              GPO0 General Purpose Output #0   13 X X 14   GND Ground
              GP_SPDIFIN1 SPDIF Input signal   15 X X 16   GND Ground
                   SPDIFO#0 SPDIF Out signal   17 X X 18   GND Ground
                   SPDIFO#1 SPDIF Out signal   19 X X 20   GND Ground
                                  GND Ground   21 X X 22   SPDIFO#2 SPDIF Out signal
   GPI0 Digital Input (GP Input 0; Reserved)   23 X X 24   GPI1 Digital Input, (GP Input 1; Reserved)
                         OUTMIDI MIDI Output   25 X X 26   GND Ground
                           INMIDI MIDI Input   27 X X 28   GND Ground
                                      No pin   29     30   No pin
                ADCSDO2 I2S audio data input   31 X X 32   GND Ground
                ADCSDO1 I2S audio data input   33 X X 34   GND Ground
                ADCSDO0 I2S audio data input   35 X X 36   GND Ground
                 I2SCLK I2S serial bit clock   37 X X 38   GND Ground
                            I2SFS Frame sync   39 X X 40   GND Ground

Volume Control:

                                  Volume down   1 X
                                       No pin   2
                                    Volume up   3 X
                                       Common   4 X

Firewire Connector:

                                       ?TPB-?   1 X X 2    ?TPA+?
                                         ?NC?   3 X X 4    ?TPA-?
                                         ?NC?   5 X X 6    ?VG?
                                         ?VP?   7 X X 8    ?NC?
                                       No pin   9   X 10   ?TPB+?

Courtesy of HowToGeek

Show Allocated System Restore Size

Type in the following command into the prompt:

vssadmin list shadowstorage

Changing the Allocated System Restore Size

To change the maximum size on the disk that System Restore will use, you will need to type in the following command:

vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=C: /Maxsize=5GB

You can change the /for and /on to match the drive that System Restore is enabled on, and you can set a different size for the max size. 5GB was used as an example, but you could change it to anything you want (minimum of 300MB or System Restore won’t work).

This is the fix:

Open a new “Command Prompt” window by right-clicking and selecting “Run as administrator”

At the prompt, run the command “regsvr32 actxprxy.dll”.

If you get an error from RegSvr32 with an error code of 0×80070005, you forgot to run the Command Prompt as administrator

Thanks to Random Poster on Egghead Cafe

Using my PS3, I used the patched version. It’s pretty nice for a free calibration disc – I recommend it if you are cheap like me!