Tips, Tricks and Information for the Modern Technologist

Category: Windows


The Ultimate Guide to DVD Encoding with Handbrake

Posted 22nd September in Software, Windows. 3 Comments

It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of Handbrake. After committing to copying my DVD collection to my storage array, I’ve tried and tested just about all software out there for converting video to H.264 with an emphasis on quality and speed. Many software packages have problems with quality or desynchronized audio, Handbrake is my hands-down favorite when it comes down to converting video — and that includes both free and commercial software.

One of the complaints I hear about Handbrake is that there are too many options. Well, the good news for someone looking for simplicity is that the built-in presets mostly take care of them for you. And for anyone who likes to dive into the nitty gritty of video compression, it also allows for a lot of tweaking to get the most out of your movie while maintaining small file sizes and high quality.

Read on for my full guide to Handbrake features.



Canon CanoScan LiDE 50 Scanner and Windows 7 (32 or 64-bit) Driver Fix

Posted 24th January in Hardware, Other Technology, Windows. 30 Comments

Canon’s site for the LiDE 50 does not list any Windows 7 drivers for download, nor Vista 64-bit drivers. However, I did find that you can use the CanoScan LiDE 60 drivers in place of the LiDE 50 drivers, and they do have options listed for Windows 7/Vista in both 64-bit and 32-bit varieties.  Do do [...]


What I recently learned about EDID, Windows 7 and nVidia

Posted 22nd January in Hardware, Other Technology, Windows. 1 Comment

EDID stands for Extended display identification data and is what many computer monitors and televisions with a VGA/HDMI use to tell the PC what resolution they support. Which, in theory at least, is great. However what I recently found out is that many LCD and Plasma televisions do not broadcast the correct 16:9 resolution via EDID, [...]



How To Reset Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7 Passwords with Ubuntu 9.10 Live Image and a USB Drive

I put this together for a project in a class I am taking, and thought it would be handy for others as well. The goal is to access a Windows filesystem and reset the password for a user, for example if someone forgot the Administrator password or the account is locked out from too many [...]


Convert Windows or DOS Encoded Files to Unix/Linux. (ANSI to UTF-8)

Posted 6th February in Linux, Shell, System Administration, Windows. Comments Off

Windows files and Unix files (Redhat, Ubuntu, etc) are encoded in different ways. Namely, the end of line that is a part of most files created in Windows is not compatible with Unix. You can usually see this because there is a ‘weird character’ at the end of each line. ‘cat’ does not show it, [...]


Remote Desktop from Windows XP to Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista

The Remote Desktop connection settings for Windows Server 2008, and I believe Windows Vista, includes 3 levels of service: Don’t allow connections to this computer Allow connections from computers running any version of Remote Desktop (less secure) Allow connections only from computers running Remote Desktop with Network Level Authentication (more secure) At first blush, you [...]


Automatically Rip DVD using Handbrake and Autoplay (XP)

Posted 4th January in System Administration, Windows. 12 Comments

I am currently copying my DVD collection to my PC for use in my media center downstairs. I have an generic process down, that works very well, but it requires a bunch of clicks to do. While figuring out how to Autoplay a DVD using ZoomPlayer rather than the built in Windows Media Player, I [...]