HOW-TO: ReadyBoost with PCMCIA Adapter + Compact Flash

I recently upgraded my relatively aging but still healthy Dell Latitude D630 notebook to Windows 7 (yeah, I jumped into the bandwagon but it's about time). And seeing that there is already a Service Pack 1 (SP1) out, this made sense to me. During the Windows XP era, it wasn't all good and stable until the SP1 came out. Let's hope history repeated itself here.

One thing that attracted me to the move was the all-improved Readyboost that 7 has. I have experienced the improvement on my desktop and it made sense to put the same to good use on my notebook. But hanging a USB flash drive (UFD) on a portable machine doesn't make sense at all. Good thing the D630 has a PCMCIA slot and I happened to have a PCMCIA card reader with 8GB of hi-speed compact flash media to boot.

But alas when I plugged it in to enable it for use of Readyboost, it wasn't compatible at all. How then do I enable Readyboost on the PCMCIA-CF card? Next thing I did was to ask my friend Google only to find out there are literally thousands (if not millions) of us facing the same dilemma.

Good thing I found this forum post on how to enable USB hdisk drives for ready boost. I tried it out and after a few trials (and errors), I got it to work.

As shown, make changes to the registry (NOTE: Changing the registry can render your computer unusable. You better know what you're doing!) like below. This is the registry key for my Sandisk Ultra PC Card Adapter with RiDATA 8GB 233x Lightning Series Compact Flash card.

After I made changes to the registry, I restarted explorer (using Start > Run > "tskill explorer"). Voila! The device can now be used for Readyboost!

Now explore the Readyboost-enabled card and see that it has the file ReadyBoost.sfcache which is used by Readyboost.

There you go. PCMCIA Adapter and compact flash media for Readyboost. I now have a Readyboost device on my notebook that is completely flushed and barely noticeable at all. Performancewise, I can feel a slight improvement in launching of applications which means Readyboost works.

If you want to tweak this further, you may want to hide the Readyboost drive in Windows Explorer. Google for "NoDrives" registry key.

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HOW-TO: Remove Windows 7 Service Pack 1 Backup Files

Windows 7 SP1 has just gone live over a few days ago. If you haven't gone and downloaded the Service Pack yet, you may check it out here: Download Windows 7 SP1. However, for a "seamless" upgrade experience Microsoft has advised to upgrade to SP1 using the Windows Update (WU) module.

I have done the upgrade using WU, and instead of downloading almost a gigabyte (yes, it is a hefty 903.2MB for the x64 version) for x64 version the WU module downloaded just 87.2MB. I might have most of the updates already installed, so that advise made a little more sense after this experience.

The installation of SP1 also backs up several critical files of the non-SP1 version. As seen in the below screenshot, the backup is an additional 640MB on the drive. It is not that huge on a desktop, but for mobile folks with limited disk space you may choose to remove the backup files after some time.

Understand, however, that once the backup files are removed SP1 could not be uninstalled.

There are several ways do to this. First is via the GUI. Launch the orb (or Start for Classic Shell users), and type "Disk Cleanup" on the search bar. The window launched is similar to the screenshot above. Tick the "Service Pack Backup Files" and click OK. All that is left is to wait for the prompt, and you're done.

For the savvy command-line admins, you may opt to use the command tool. Remember to launch the command tool using the "Run as Administrator" mode. Then execute:

dism /online /cleanup-image /spsuperseded

The above command executes and ends with:

Service Pack Cleanup operation completed. The operation completed successfully.

Too bad, I wasn't able to take a screenshot of the command line as I wasn't thinking about posting the procedure above. After remembering, it was too late. So whether on the command-line or the GUI, you may get rid of the service pack backup files and recover critical disk space.

In a future post, I will outline a procedure on how to slipstream the downloaded SP1 to the original ISO.

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HOW-TO: No Subtitles on Egreat EG-M31B

Like most people, I rode the HD-craze and bought myself a NMT or HD-tank (whichever term tickles your fancy). The nice thing about the NMT is you can download videos for offline viewing. Having an NMT means the device itself can download the video, then when you return after some time you can enjoy relaxing while watching in comfort. HDMI is another bonus too, less cable clutter.

Another good thing to note is that subtitles can be downloaded for the videos. One very good source for it is opensubtitles.org. However, lately I discovered that not all subtitles are playable on the NMT. I was a bit perplexed at first but I got it to work after a few tweaks.

Just so I can give you a background of the problem, I own an Egreat EG-M31B NMT and it has the latest firmware. I downloaded the movie Sorcerer's Apprentice as requested by my sister. The good thing is that it came with its own subtitle file (which lessened the hassle). However, when I played the video on the NMT, there was no subtitle at all. Even if I pressed subtitles on the remote, I only get the exclamation point inside the yellow triangle -- meaning no subtitle file is found.

So I checked the directory of the video. The srt file is there and it is named appropriately. Next, I downloaded another subtitle file from opensubtitles.org. Then uploaded the file to the NMT and resumed playback, but still there was no subtitle. This time I was getting a bit impatient and pissed -- impatient that I wanted to watch the video and pissed that I might have purchased a lemon. One thing that kept bothering me is that other movies that have srt files are playing the subtitles. What was wrong with this one?

I opened the file in metapad to see if there was something amiss -- the format of the srt was fine. Then I decided to "save as" a different file. I saw that there was an option to save it to ANSI (or DOS text). Then I re-uploaded to the NMT. It prompted to overwrite the original srt file (which was 180k in size) with the new srt file (just 90k in size). Right there and then I thought this might be it. And when I played the video I saw the subtitles.

The Egreat EG-M31B could not play UNICODE srt files. It could play ANSI srt files. You can use notepad or my favorite text editor -- metapad -- to convert the UNICODE srt files to ANSI.

On notepad, open the srt file and choose "save as" and change the encoding to ANSI before clicking save (see screenshot below).

On metapad, open the srt file and re-encode the text under the "File" --> "File Format" --> "DOS Text" (see screenshot below).

I hope this solution also helps you in playback of videos with subtitles. I sure am glad to have chosen the right NMT and it is definitely not a lemon as I thought at first.

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TWEAK: Thumbnail View Showing Icons in Windows 7

New to Windows 7? I would assume the answer to that is "Y-yess?", obviously, as the OS is relatively new. But I would also assume you are used to Windows XP as you got the very issue that brought you here.

Right at the start of using 7, I immediately disliked the OS. Why? I am used to XP's explorer view where photos are seen as thumbnails instead of 7's icons. This immediately made me wish I didn't had the curiosity to buy and install 7 and had stuck to my "working" XP. Don't get me wrong, Windows 7 is amazingly fast and is much more improved -- which I liked -- but the lack of thumbnail view bothered me a lot. With this dilemma facing me, I turned to the internet and asked my friend Google.

The search was not that helpful at all since the results returned aren't of much value.. They either describe the procedure on setting the view to thumbnails or they describe the "XP"-way of things -- not Windows 7. Either that or I used the wrong keywords. But before giving up, I phoned a friend who happens to be a photography enthusiast and is overly excited on his Windows 7 setup. I often wondered why he liked 7 without thumbnails (I can't imagine digital photography without thumbnails), so I asked him.

He outlined this procedure:

Open a Windows Explorer window (hotkey: [WIN]+[E]). You may press the hotkey combination or search through the programs. You should see a similar display as below.

As seen from the screenshot, even the thumbnail view shows icons. This is the same experience I described above. Compare it with the thumbnail view screenshot from an XP machine below.

There is a whole lot of difference between the pictures!

To continue with the procedure.. Now on the menu bar, open the tools menu and from the drop down select "Folder Options" (Tools --> Folder Options). If you don't see the menu bar pressing [ALT] on the keyboard will make it appear.

Once the dialog window opens, select the "View" tab and untick "Always show icons, never thumbnails". Select "OK" to accept the changes until all diaglog boxes are closed.

Now refresh or press [F5] on the Explorer view of the directory containing pictures. Or if Explorer is not set to thumbnail view (on Windows 7 I use "Large Icons" view), try setting it. You can now see thumbnails of the pictures. You can also select the size of thumbnails which is cool!

You should see the view change to this:

I'm not sure if it is just me, but I strongly believe this behavior should not be the out-of-the-box default. It might be one of the reasons why Windows 7 is faster than XP, but I'd sacrifice a bit of performance for this thumbnail function. Hard disks are faster nowadays, and even a faster RAID set-up could compensate for the performance hit.

With this functionality back, I'm starting to like my Windows 7 setup; and, I think you will too.

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HOW-TO: Windows Media Player Cannot Access the File

Do you use your PC to play or view videos? After all the PC can be pretty robust when it comes to this functionality as the bundles of available player+codec software make a mutually potent combo to watch just about anything. However, the most common player available is Windows Media Player (or WMP). And it has its share of headaches, one of which is this error:

"Windows Media Player cannot access the file. The file might be in use; you might not have access to the computer where the file is stored, or your proxy settings might not be correct."

(or this screenshot below)

I got the above while trying to play an AVI file. No software install has been done in over a week, so this troubled me a bit. No recent changes to the system either. (Yeah, I'm one of those who believe in the saying: If it ain't broken, don't fix it.)

I have checked the permissions all the way to the root folder of the drive but it doesn't really help. I googled a bit, but came out empty.

Paranoia took over, so I scanned for viruses -- none. That didn't help either.

Luckily, I plugged in the Zalman 5.1ch headphones and was about to change the speaker settings from normal stereo to 5.1ch when the solution came. Try this:

(if using "Category" view try..)
Start --> Control Panel --> Hardware and Sound --> Sound

(if using "Icon" view try..)
Start --> Control Panel --> Sound

A pop-up will show stating certain enhancements are interfering with the program. Terminate? (Unfortunately, I wasn't able to take a screenshot as I wasn't aware that this WAS the solution to the problem. And, it is as tragic that I cannot duplicate the problem. So for now, the cause is unknown.) Click "Yes" to this pop-up.

I didn't realize this was the solution until I actually clicked on the AVI file again and it played this time. The procedure above brought back functionality of WMP. I hope it does the same for you.

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