Dyn.Org.Inf.Ref » Windows

Simple File/Backup “Server”

Alarchy — Sun, 30 May 2010 17:39:40 +0000

I am constantly worried about data loss (and as my friends point out, a little unnecessarily), so I set up a simple file/backup server this weekend with a spare copy of XP Pro I had lying around. You basically just need a low power PC, two hard drives (one for file server, one for backup – in my case a 1TB WD Black and a 2TB WD Green), and an OS (Ubuntu will work, but is much more annoying to set up, so I’d stick to Windows).

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 Media Player Library Location

Alarchy — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 20:40:40 +0000

Since I didn’t know where this was, here is how to find your WMP library (if you have legacy stuff in it or want to delete it). I have since moved to Media Monkey.

Windows XP:

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

Windows Vista/7:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Media Player

Vista: Resize System Restore Shadow Volume

Alarchy — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 09:51:58 +0000

Vista uses a crap ton of storage space for System Restore, and will fill it up well past 30GB if you let it. There is no GUI option to change this in Home Premium, so here’s what you have to do to change it.

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).

Vista: Windows Explorer Opens a New Window on “Explore”

Alarchy — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 08:16:06 +0000

Fun times with IE8 installation. Apparently it fails to register a singular DLL file, and will cause Windows Explorer to open up new windows every time you try to explore to a folder/directory.

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