HOW-TO: No Safely Remove Hardware Icon

USB devices abound nowadays that it is almost impossible not to own one thumb drive or external harddisk. And to safely unplug them, it is necessary to click on the "safely remove hardware" icon on the system tray. How do you go about unplugging the device if the icon is not there?

Read on as this tip will discuss just that. One day it's there, the next day it's missing from the system tray. But not to worry..

The icon is probably just hidden. Do the following:

(right-click) Start --> (select) Properties --> (select) Taskbar tab --> (click) Customize --> (scroll to) Safely Remove Hardware and make the behavior Always Show.

Alternatively you can keep the icon to automatically hide by default (and leave your Systray uncluttered). If this does not solve the problem, try running this instead:

Start --> Run.. --> rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll

... then choose the device to unplug.

You may even create a shortcut for this so it is easier to unplug a device by clicking on the shortcut and not have to recall what command to run.

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ARTICLE: 64-bit Flash Browser Plug-in

One of the major problems faced by upgrading to a 64-bit system is the portability of the drivers to support the architecture. Although recently the development of drivers is catching up, the next hurdle to tackle is the compatibility of applications. In general, most 32-bit applications are tweaked to be backward-compatible when run by a 64-bit operating system. This can be done by a number of ways. The popular ones are hardware compatibility mode and software emulation.

The term 64-bit can mean a lot of things. For this article, we will be dealing with the 64-bit architecture and the 64-bit operating system. To be more specific, the x86 architecture and the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). And the inexistent 64-bit application -- the 64-bit flash player browser plug-in.

Installing the RHEL operating system is easy. Configuration can be tricky even with the assortment of text files with their corresponding graphical user interface (GUI) configuration tools. But our recent challenge was to install the flash player plug-in to the Mozilla Firefox package that came with the RHEL WS 4 x86_64 (Nahant Update 4). This experience is what we will share with you in this article.

It is very surprising to know that after installation of the RHEL 4 x86_64 operating system, everything works to the initial log-in page. However, when opening my a browser and opening a page with flash content, there would be ugly holders where the flash content are supposed to be (see screenshot above).

Its a good thing Mozilla Firefox has an "Install Missing Plugins.." button towards the upper right corner, near the search engine plug-ins. However, the good thing ends there as the wizard prompts that there are no suitable plug-ins for the browser.

We got stumped but were not just about to give up right there. Google is our friend, so the next thing we knew the search engine has returned a whole page of links with keywords "64-bit flash plug-in". After checking out a few links, we knew the reality of things.

It is as equally surprising to know that 64-bit flash player is not yet released -- under development but no projected date of release. Not even a beta version of the software is available.

Flash content is found in just about any website from site logos to advertisements; Flash ActionScript allows a website to be interactive; Flash can create "flashy" (no pun intended) eye-catching animations; and it is used to stream media across the internet. With its widespread use, a website is almost incomplete without flash media.

Aside from it being portable and browser friendly, flash content is known to have small footprint. Thus they eat up only a small chunk of bandwidth and are easy to load. But despite it being one of the major bling-bling to a website, flash player is disappointingly unavailable to 64-bit browsers.

How then is flash content viewed in your 64-bit browser? The answer: nspluginwrapper. Download two RPMs -- the plugin, nspluginwrapper, and its viewer, nspluginwrapper-i386.

Upon successful download, open a terminal window and change directory to the folder containing the two recently downloaded RPMs. Execute this on the command line (plug-in first):

root@localhost # rpm -i nspluginwrapper-0.9.91.4-1.x86_64.rpm
root@localhost # rpm -i nspluginwrapper-i386-0.9.91.4-1.x86_64.rpm

Taking a another look at the previous website browsed now displays the flash content.

I hope this article has helped you install the needed 64-bit flash plug-in for your web browser. Flash is not the only plug-in supported by nspluginwrapper, there are other 32-bit plug-ins. Capability has been built-in to detect and not apply wrapping on native 64-bit plug-ins. Although I have not tested this on other 64-bit flavors of Linux, it could work for them as well.

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HOW-TO: Missing Volume Icon on System Tray

A friend of mine recently brought his laptop for me to check it out. His problem? The missing volume icon on the system tray.

This is the first thing I did:

Start -> Control Panel -> Sound and Audio Devices -> (tick) Place volume icon on taskbar

... and click OK.

The above is a recommendation from Microsoft KB279435.

Performing the above did not seem to work. So I dumped his registry and compared it to mine. For this kind of problem, check this registry key:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Drivers32]
"wavemapper"="msacm32.drv"

Add wavemapper as REG_SZ (String Value) with value "msacm32.drv".

Logout and log back in. If this does not restore the volume icon, run "systray.exe".

Start --> Run.. --> systray.exe

Addition of the above registry key restored the volume icon on the system tray.

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REVIEW: Tuniq TX-2 Thermal Grease

The most overlooked part of the rig must be the thermal grease or thermal paste. Maybe because the thermal grease is the part which is not seen even from a windowed case (no pun intended). For the most part, every performance heatsink available packs a thermal grease as bonus. And these thermal grease that come packaged with performance heatsinks mostly perform above average.

We have with us the Tuniq TX-2 to review. For people who have known Tuniq, the company is responsible for the tall and gigantic Tower 120 heatsink. We know the heatsink but we have yet to try their thermal paste -- the TX-2. How will it compare with its peers? We will soon find out as we will put it to test against the Arctic Silver 5 and the Zalman STG1.

Its thermal conductivity is also specified at 4.5 W/mK (a higher number means better thermal conductivity). Thermal conductivity is the ability of the material to conduct heat. This property mainly depends on the composition, structure and the steady-state temperature of the material.

Our Tuniq TX-2 product sample is a 3.5g syringe. Like the Arctic Silver 5 (or AS5) the TX-2 is on a syringe. This is typical of generally every of the thermal pastes. This is with the exception of the STG1 which is not on a syringe but rather on a small rectangular bottle.

The Tuniq TX-2 has been allowed to "cure" for two months; arctic silver 5 (AS5) also for about the same period; and the STG1 for a month. It took us some work and a bit of time to compile this review. Nevertheless, it was a nice experience to finally get to see each thermal grease perform first hand.

The heatsink used in this review is the low-profile Zalman CNPS8700 LED. Its fan will be running at full speed and not regulated. BIOS fan throttling machinisms will be disabled during the test process.

To simulate a real-world system, the Focus Nemesis will be closed at all times, with only the AF12025 exhaust aiding in the air flow. This is aside from the Enermax EG495AX PSU aiding a bit in the push of hot exhaust off the insides of the case.

Performance Results. Ambient temperature was noted to be 34°C. Tests were conducted at the hottest time of the day -- 2PM -- for all thermal pastes used. We really could not control the weather conditions to be exactly the same when conducting the test, but we tried to keep the variables the same.

For the stress test, we will be loading the processor with Lavalys Everest System Stability Test for CPU, while at the same time it gathers the logs in the background to a CSV file.

There isn't much of a difference between the performance between the TX-2 and AS5. Both pastes top out at 49°C; but the major difference lies in the average temperature of the readout. The AS5 averaged 46.27°C and the TX-2 45.94°C. This is where the TX-2 shines. How about in comparison with the STG-1? Check the result below.

The same trend continues for TX-2 vs STG1, topping out at 49°C. And again, peeking at the average temperatures the TX-2 beats STG1's average of 46.25°C.

Final Remarks. An enthusiast will never go wrong with going for a branded thermal paste. No matter which thermal paste chosen, the peak temperature readouts have shown about the same mileage. However, an exacting enthusiast who wants more bang-for-the-buck performance will want to consider the average temperatures. And this is where the TX-2 will win.

Pricewise, the TX-2 does not dissapoint either. The TX-2 costs $3.50 per 3.5g syringe. Score another win for the TX-2.

The Tuniq TX-2 will definitely pimp your rig! Thanks to Tuniq for providing us samples of the TX-2 thermal grease.

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Transition for PIMP-MY-RIG

this blog is a transition from my previous website http://www.pimp-my-rig.com which is now unreachable. rather than naming it pimp-my-rig incarnate, it rather seems proper to name it pimp-my-rig reloaded.

all reviews and posts will now be posted at this site, especially articles that were useful and requested to be re-posted.

articles and reviews will be posted soon. useful tips will be added to the site as well. check it out again later for new posts and site updates.

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