3 posts tagged “windows”

Tech Tip: Help, My USB Drive Doesn't Show Up! [Part I]

May 8, 2007
2 comments

A few weeks ago, I went into a well known chain of office supply stores to pick up some printer ink and some odds and ends since I have a business account, and happened to see a "special" clearance item that caught my eye. I usually don't shop at office supply chains for the best price or for anything for my computer, but again, having business account there means is a convenience and it's not directly coming out of my pocket. Anyway, they were practically giving away a discontinued or to me a "throw away" external USB [Lite-On who rebadges for many companies, including SONY] DVD-RW with Dual Layer recording technology (I happened to want an external drive with LightScribe, but the price was right on this one) for $39, including tax, so I figured, "What the heck?" and went for it. I really only need it to burn an occasional DVD and to back up larger files from my back up drive (yeah, I'm paranoid, my good stuff goes in a fire safe box) and to archive older material for which a CD is too small. (Who would have thought an external DVD-RW would be cheaper than dirt, literally, a couple years ago?)

Well I unpacked it, hooked up the power and the USB cord. Then I fired it up and XP automatically assigned drivers and we were all good, right? Launched Nero and got ready to burn baby burn. No burned disc, but I was burning. Yeah, el cheapo drive-o couldn't work that easily or flawlessly, right? Right. So due to Murphy's Law, I kept getting error messages saying the drive couldn't handle the media, even though the media was correct and other such nonsense. It wasn't the price of the drive though, it was the fact that sometimes XP has problems with external USB drives when it assigns drive letters.

I had Alcohol 120% on my machine at one point, which had assigned several virtual drives, which may not have been recovered on removing it. I don't know if XP assigned/mapped it to one of those old drives, but the drive wasn't showing up anywhere except when I went into Control Panel>System>Device Manager>DVD/CD-ROM Drives. The only way to hopefully rectify the situation was to go into XP's Disk Management by typing diskmgmt.msc at the run command prompt. If the drive shows up there, as mine did, the fix is to rename it. Mine was originally drive L. I right clicked the drive letter and highlighted "change drive letter or path". From the drop down box of available drive letters, I took the easy road and chose Z, knowing for sure it had never been used. Then I right clicked "properties" and ticked the hardware tab. I highlighted the Lite On drive and right clicked "properties" once again and then went under the "Volumes" tab and clicked the "Populate" button. After saving out of all that, I was good to go. My drive was now showing up in Explorer. I dragged and dropped the drive shortcut onto my desktop (being a USB device, it doesn't show up under "My Computer") and this time, my throw away external drive worked "like butta" and I'm still in the process of slashin' and burning the excess fat from my internal hard drives...and except that I don't have my light scribe, I'm happy as a clam.

Tweak or Trick Out Your iPod - The Shortlist of the Best Freeware

May 2, 2007
2 comments

I love to soup things up. My computer, my cell phone, my iPod, my coffee. I like to get every bit of milage out of one device that I can, and I like a little bling too. I am personally not a huge fan of the iTunes software for iPod, but do open it from time to time to when I create smart playlists. All my thousands of music files, many which I use daily on my internet radio broadcast Generation 80s Retro Radio, are well tagged making it easy to sort and filter to create those

Ipod

smart lists in many creative ways. Even though I am a huge freeware fan, I have found Aspect One's Dr. Tag the best program I have used, bar none, paid or free by far, to tag and clean up massive amounts of files, much of it is easily and flawlessly automated and then I volume normalize my tracks with an easy to use freeware utility called MP3 Gain appling a contstant gain of 92db so everything is auto leveled and no one song is louder than another without any quality loss. I find the built in leveling that the iPod employs is not reliable and I prefer to apply the changes to the files on my hard drive for many reasons.

I pretty much have taken to using Winamp for playlists at times as well as Ephpod (a wonderful program when I used my iPod mini, unfortunately doesn't currently support newer iPod video, so I've had to scrub this one for now) or Yamipod (Yet Another iPod Manager). There are a lot of other iPod managers, but I really think these two are the best of the bunch. What do you think?

Want to change the fonts, graphics or text link names on your iPod? Then you need the free, opensource program called iPod Wizard. Follow this link to get the full scoop and the latest stable download. iPod Wizard even allows volume uncapping of certain models. iPodulator Pro is another nifty must have if you like to play games (full catalogue of text based games free), write or read notes and text docs, edit and delete easily with no text limitation or read web pages along with their subsequent embedded links or RSS on your gizmo. Now you can catch up on your web based reading in the doctors office, on the train or by the pool. Basically, like the site states, "iPodulator Pro 2 puts any website or RSS feed you name on your iPod in a text-only version. And it gets better. iPodulator Pro 2 can copy most of the links on webpages to your iPod, so when your reading a page on your iPod you have all the links there, ready for clicking".

If you are into e-books, iPod Library is a nice little open source tool for importing books in multiple formats, remembering your place in the book and easily managing or deleting them. I just downloaded Soundcrank tonight to try out on my iPod. It functions something like Last.fm's scrobbling function (I'm a Scrobbler) and supposedly enables you to discover new music, easily find and tweak album art and lyrics and share lists of what you've been listening to among friends. Of course, this is a Beta release, so if you are leary of Beta testing or Beta releases, tinker at your own risk. I'll follow up my impressions on Soundcrank in comments in the next few days.

If you need some worthy free video conversion tools the one I recommend is the very popular, tried and true Vidora iPod Video Converter freestanding program, or even better, if you have Yahoo! Widget engine installed on your computer, formerly Konfabulator, you can use the Yahoo "Widgitized" converter, where you can simply drag and drop your videos onto the cool looking iPod widget and they will seamlessly convert without any adoo. I mostly use Nero 7 since I own it, but if you just need a good free program, this is your go to app. Handbrake is the equivalent for Mac users. Now if you are in love with YouTube, boy, do I have a treat for you! You have to run and snag Ares Tube which will allow you to enter in the YouTube page URL in AT and it will automatically download the file, convert it, and then import it directly into iTunes, waiting for you to update your iPod. How cool is that?

Lastly, if you want to make your iPod into a mini PDA, it's worth the $15 for iGadget (formerly PodPlus) as you can download local movie times, weather, driving directions, rss, transfer files all types of files between iPod and computer, sync your iPod with Outlook plus a whole host of other things with a nice GUI and a nominal price tag.

What are you using to soup up your Pod and how do you like to create your playlists? Have any tips? Feel free to share, even if it's via email and I can post your comments manually if you are not a fellow Voxer. Rock on...