From time to time I run into a situation where a Windows program reacts poorly to certain drive classes.  For example:

• A backup program that only backs up fixed, local drives, and I want it to back-up a removable drive or a network drive.
• A program that does something to all fixed, local drives, and I want to prevent it from accessing one of the drives by marking the drive as removable.

I need a way to tell Windows that it should say that the drive is different than it really is. 

Here are some ideas/notes.

• You can do some of this by using dummydisk.sys or cfadisk.sys, but they deal only with fixed/removable, and I want network/local.
• Maybe I could hook GetDriveType (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa364939%28VS.85%29.aspx), and have it lie to ONLY the program I want to lie to.  (It could be bad to have it lie to Windows.)
• http://www.codeproject.com/KB/system/soviet_direct_hooking.aspx?msg=1468013  is an article about hooking system API DLLs.
• http://forum.madshi.net/viewtopic.php?p=4420&sid=82111e2f2e1c485c02ebf1d01a80a4aa  is thread about hooking and hooking problems.
  
• Windows volume management functions: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa365730%28VS.85%29.aspx
  
• Might need to also hook DeviceIoControl because http://www.eggheadcafe.com/software/aspnet/35336538/alternative-to-getdrivety.aspx  mentions "Open the volume (CreateFile with something like "\\.\U:") and call DeviceIoControl with IOCTL_STORAGE_QUERY_PROPERTY."
• What about creating a filter driver to create a virtual local drive on top of the network drive?
• Maybe a shell namespace utility?  Like GDrive?
  

There are plenty of people looking for this ability, but I haven’t seen any web pages about anyone succeeding.

I’m running

• Windows 7 Media Center on an
  
• Acer Revo with
  
• nVidia ION graphics, hooked to a
  
• Panasonic 720p TVr via a
  
• Pioneer VSX-819 A/V amplifier, using
  
• HDMI for video and audio.  

I leave the PC running 24x7.  I turn off the TV when not watching it. 

Sometimes, after the TV is off overnight and the PC is idle, when I turn the TV on, Media Center shows a black screen, even after a mouse wiggle or keystrokes.  Additional symptoms:

• I do get a mouse pointer when I move the mouse.
• I do not hear sound effects when I move the mouse (that I would normally hear when mousing over a Media Center button).
• The screen (back-light) gets slightly darker when I move the mouse to the edges of the screen.

Here are some things I’m trying:

1. mouse wiggle - gets a mouse pointer, and back-light level changes as I near screen edge, but screen always blank.
2. press space/shift/letter key on keyboar - no effect
3. press the dedicated start-IE button (a globe) on the remote:
1. Starts Internet Explorer
2. Shows a media-center-not-responding dialog
3. Media center works after I select Restart.
   
4. Disabled screen saver and disabled monitor-off power-save.
   
5. amplifier off and back on - no effect
   
6. Configure PC and TV to send video via VGA (as a preventative, not as curative) - test in progress
7. run hdmiOn.exe from a telnet session
   
8. tv off and back on - ???? (not tested yet)
9. "devcon reset" followed by the device ID - not tested 
1. Might need to "devcon status * > C:\temp\foo.txt" first, to learn the device ID
   
10. Could it be running on another virtual monitor?  Disable non-HDMI output.  Is there a move-to-next-monitor hot-key?
11. alt-F4 (it does work when NOT black first)
12. dxdiag
13. Enable monitor-off-on-idle. Then maybe a mouse wiggle will turn it ON.
14. unplug and re-plug monitor. if this works get an HDMI switch.  What if I switch monitor on the AMP?
15. Does it happen if I go direct from PC to TV via HDMI?
16. make it go to sleep on idle.  When wakes up, does THAT make monitor light up?
17. Remove Nvidia driver and use Windows driver.  Re-add Nvidia driver.
18. Can I set up a hot-key (maybe via Autohotkey). To re-set video (maybe change resolution and back).  Maybe a monitor-off followed by a monitor-on.
19. Set up a background task that periodically writes current monitor settings to a log file.  See if/when something changes.
20. Can test monitor on/off via telnet?
    

From quickonlinetips.com:

What is the best way to stop Google indexing your pages?
1. Add meta tags
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">

2. Use the Google remove url tool, a webmaster tool to remove urls from Google’s index forever.

I do not have iTunes configured to copy music files to my iTunes library.  (I don’t need another copy of my files, which are on a network drive.)

I found stories on the net, saying to delete the content of "iTunes Library.itl" and to edit "iTunes Music Library.xml" to reflect the new location.  The story is that iTunes would detect the corrupt .itl file and rebuild from the xml file.  I tried it.  It didn’t.

My new ‘protocol’ is to make all of my music accessible via M:\, where I have subdirectories named mp3 (where my music lives) and books (where audio books live).  If I move the library, I have to move M: to point to the same structure.  In the simple case, I do this with a new drive mapping.  In the more complex case (suppose the share points to \foo\bar and mp3 and books live in bar) I would then map the share to a different letter (e.g. N:) and then use subst (e.g. "subst M: N:\foo\bar").

I tend to wander from one toolkit for Getting Things Done (GTD) to another. (See http://www.kleinfelter.com/node/50 )

Here is a partial set of my current axioms:

1. Many incomplete projects
2. iPhone
3. Microsoft Outlook email at work
4. Moderate degree of 'lock-down' on client's network and computers, including don't-install policy and blocking of POP, SMTP and webmail
5. Business-supplied laptop running Windows XP
6. Desire not to over-fill my pockets or to carry a 'man-bag' (i.e. a purse)

What I’d like to accomplish:

1. Easy task capture
2. Ubiquitous access to read/write tasks even when offline
3. Linking of tasks to projects
4. Linking of projects to roles/values/goals
5. Automatic back-up (incl. local stash if data in the cloud)
6. Linked to a voice-to-task app such as Jott/Requall/Dial2Do
7. Not too much process friction

Why am I revisiting this topic? I just bought an iPhone and I’m thinking that things which were not possible before might be possible now.

Some random thoughts:

• Remember the Milk (RTM) talks to everyone (like Kermit)
• If it weren't for the Mac requirement, I'd probably use OmniFocus
• Toodledo has features that RTM doesn't. They don't support user-ordered lists.
• Requall has its own iPhone app, but it doesn't appear to categorize/tag. You can use "Places" but then you have to turn off Location awareness. It doesn't support ANY task sequencing.
• Location awareness in OmniFocus iPhone, ReQuall is a really cool idea
• My Life Organized is nice, but they don't have an iPhone app yet.
• Multiple iPhone apps synch with Toodledo
• Nozbe? $60 per year!
• RTM $25 per year to get iPhone app. (Their phone web UI
• Toodledo $0 per year. (They have a free web UI tailored to iPhone).
• Nozbe supports user-sequenced tasks via drag-and-drop; RTM sorts by priority or date; Todledoo sorts by a variety of fields.
• Near as I can tell there is no keyboard interface to Nozbe, and no way to search their help, and their wiki has nothing with the word "keyboard", and no way to search their forums
• Vitalist has drag-and-drop task ordering, and a decent keyboard interface. Vitalist has an iPhone web version which respects task ordering but cannot change it. They have a bona fide iPhone application (with synch) in beta. $0/50/100 per year (5/25/unlimited projects).  If their iPhone app is good, and I can get past $100 per year, Vitalist could be good at some point in the future.
  
• I thought about using Evernote, but you can't create a bullet on the iPhone app, and the iPhone app doesn't work offline. 
• Google Tasks supports multiple lists and user-controlled ordering.  The iPhone web interface is usable (but doesn't let you change task sequence).  You get to it via gmail.com and my employer blocks Gmail URLs, limiting its usefulness at work.
• Todoist supports user-sequenced tasks. (Click the Reorder link to enable it.)
  
• There are two iPhone apps (neither by Todoist). Update: I've been using Doings.  I'm pretty happy with Doings, except for the absence of search.  Doings provides very helpful and responsive support.
  
• Todoist is clearly a one man show.
  
• $0 or $36 per year.
  
• Frankly, it looks pretty good.
• The main drawback is that back-up requires some hackery. 
  
• Update: Another drawback -- no ability to search by text (except to backup to XML and search the XML with a text editor).
  

1. Acer Aspire R1600, 1 GB RAM, Intel Atom 230 CPU, 160 GB drive, Invidia Ion LE Integrated video, many USB ports, and an eSATA port (bought cheap at BestBuy)
2. Hook up a KVM cable to it, and set the KVM to use the R1600
3. Boot the pre-installed Windows XP, and use TrueImage to make a full drive back-up (just in case I later decide I want to run Windows)
4. Put Ubuntu 9.10 on a flash drive.  Insert my blue flash drive into the USB connector on the corner with the power switch, with the writing facing away from the power switch.
5. Boot to BIOS (Press DEL during POST)
1. disable RevoBoot
2. Advanced Chipset Features -> iGPU Frame Buffer Size = 256MB
6. Reboot and press F12 during POST and boot from the flash drive
7. Install Ubuntu -- It will be pretty slow, so don't give up if it looks dead for 5 minutes.
1. Ensure you have a functioning Ethernet connection so that it will search for proprietary drivers.
2. USA (normal USA, not Dvorak, because other people will be using this)
3. Partitioning: Use the entire disk
4. User = kevin; password = my generic, moderately secure password; computer name = xbmc; require password to login
5. At "Ready to Install", check Advanced and ensure that you're installing a boot loader to /dev/sda.  Then press Install.
8. After the first reboot:
1. Login as kevin
2. Add the NVidia accelerated graphics driver version 185 (System->Administration->Hardware Drivers) 
3. System->Preferences->Remote Desktop: Allow other users to view your desktop; Clear "You must confirm..." set a password, and "Configure network automatically..."
4. sudo visudo and append a row with "kevin ALL=NOPASSWD: ALL"
5. sudo reboot
1. (To enable the new video drivers)
9. After the reboot:
1. Login as kevin
1. System->Preferences->Appearance: Visual Effects = None.  (Otherwise, VNC doesn't work right, and you don't need the overhead of Gnome's special effects.)
2. apt-get -y install openssh-server
3. sudo apt-get -y install mythtv 
1. MySQL root password = password (Hey! It is on my home LAN.)
2. Yes, allow other computers to use MythTV
3. It will save your "random password" to /etc/mythtv/mysql.txt.  Note that the password is a database password.  the mythtv user ID is not used, so there is no usable password for the mythtv user.
4. sudo apt-get -y install ffmpeg
5. wget http://www.isely.net/downloads/fwextract.pl
6. Go to a Windows computer and:
1. Download WinTV V7 version 1.2b from http://www.hauppauge.com/site/support/support_hvr1950.html
2. Run the downloaded .exe and let it extract to "C:\Hauppauge\WinTV 7 CD 1.2b".  Exit when it asks what language.
3. Zip up the Drivers folder, and ship it to your Linux box. 
7. Go back to your Linux box and get the firmware into the right place:
1. unzip the Drivers folder, and rename the extracted folder from Drivers to win_driver.
2. perl fwextract.pl
3. sudo copy *.fw /lib/firmware/
8. So far, it has been easy.  Unfortunately the firmware has grown too large for the pvrusb2 driver shipped with Ubuntu 9.10.  I had to download source for pvrusb2 and build it:
1. wget http://www.isely.net/downloads/pvrusb2-mci-20091124.tar.bz2
2. bunzip2 pvrusb2-mci-20091124.tar.bz2
3. tar -xvf pvrusb2*.tar
4. rm pvrusb2*.tar
9. But wait! You can't build pvrusb2 without kernel source (not just headers):
1. sudo apt-get -y install dpkg-dev
2. cd /usr/src
3. sudo apt-get install linux-source
4. sudo tar -xjvf /usr/src/linux-source-2.6.31.tar.bz2
5. cd /usr/src/linux-source/2.6.31
6. sudo cp -vi /boot/config-`uname -r` .config
7. sudo libncurses5 libncurses5-dev
8. sudo make oldconfig
9. sudo make prepare 
10. sudo make modules_prepare
11. sudo make
10. Now build pvrusb2:
1. cd ~/pvr*
2. export KDIR=/usr/src/linux-source-2.6.31
3. make --directory driver
4. sudo make --directory driver install
5. rmmod pvrusb2
6. insmod pvrusb2
7. chmod ugo+rw /dev/video0
11. sudo mythtv-setup
1. It will add root to the mythtv group, and you'll have to logout and login.
2. Capture Card Type: IVTV MPEG-2 encoder card
3. Exit.  When asked, let it run mythfilldatabase.
­

12. Applications->Sound and Video->MythTV Frontend.  It may add you to the mythtv group, and log you out.  Log back in and start MythTV Frontend again if it does.  It is slow (30-40 seconds) to show anything beyond a blank screen, so be patient.
1. Utilities/Setup->Setup:
1. Select the "MythCenter (Widescreen)" theme
2. Paint Engine = OpenGL  (Note: You might want to defer setting this from QT until you are done using VNC, because once you go to OpenGL, your screen updates do not get replicated to your VNC client.)
3. Set Current Video Playback Profile to CPU--

Two women from different social strata, who hadn't seen each other for several months, ran into each other.  Here is their dialog:

• Socialite: Hello dear.  It has been such a busy time.  Last night we had dinner with the Rockefellers.
• Lower Strata: Fantastic!
• Socialite: And of course we summered at The Cape.
• LS: Fantastic!
• Socialite: We'll be spending Christmas in the Alps.
• LS: Fantastic!
• Socialite: How have you been spending your time, dear?  [She's clearly Not Really Interested.]
• LS: I went to charm school.
• Socialite: Oh raahly.  And what did you learn in charm school, dear?
• LS: I learned to say, "Fantastic!" instead of, "You are so totally full of BS."

Awhile back, Windows XP started doing the hardware auto-detect thing for no reason I could discern, and it reported it couldn't find "Microsoft UAA Bus Driver for High Definition Audio".

So I Googled around and found pointers to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888111, but that turns out to be a really old hot-fix and it wouldn't install on my XP-SP3 because the patch was created before SP3.

However, there was an easier solution.  I searched C:\Windows for file names containing "hdaud" and found it in both C:\WINDOWS\ServicePackFiles\i386 and C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers, so I just filled-in C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers in the where-do-I-look-now field, and Windows accepted it.

Windows asks, "Do you want to move or copy files from this zone?" every time I move/copy a file/folder from one folder to another on a network folder.

To get rid of this message:

Control Panel/Internet Options. 
Select  the Security tab; choose "Local intranet"; press the "Sites" button, 
Clear "Automatically detect intranet network"; select "Include all local (intranet) sites not listed in other zones"; select "Include all network paths"