Archive for category Windows
Global Media Shortcuts in Windows
Many Gnome users may have taken advantage of the global keyboard shortcuts available. I’m in Windows at the moment on a normal keyboard, and I want the same customizable shortcuts. Typically in Linux I’ll set Win/Super + P for the play/pause shortcut, Win + Up Arrow for volume up, Win + Down Arrow for volume down, Win + Left Arrow for previous, Win + Right Arrow for next, and Win + M for mute. This removes the need for extra media keys completely, and I really like that feature of Gnome.
Now that I’m in Windows 7, I really miss that ability. I’m looking for a way to do this. If anyone out there knows how to do this, shoot me a comment.
Thanks!
Edit: Eureka! Nevermind on the suggestions. I found a nice little free app that does exactly what I wanted. I was about to try to write one myself, but this one does it well. You can download it here. The app is great. I setup my keys, changed the options to have the app start at windows startup, and set it to close to the system tray. That will confirm that it’s always running when I’m in Windows.
Windows 7 Freezes Randomly
Posted by Randy in Applications, Windows on December 28, 2011
I recently reinstalled Windows 7 on my main box because I wanted to do some good screencasts for my PHP Video Tutorials site. After installing a few updates for Windows 7, I started getting a strange issue with audio and video. The OS would glitch. I would get short pauses in video and distortion in the audio.
After killing some processes and services, I soon found out that the problem was with Windows Superfetch. The issue has to do with my SSD drive. So if you have an issue like this and you have a solid state drive, you should try disabling superfetch. After stopping the service, give it a few moments. Play videos and see if you still get the problem.
If you want me to write up a howto on disabling superfetch, leave a comment. If there is any interest, I’ll write it up.
PHP Video Tutorials
Posted by Randy in Web Development, Windows on December 23, 2011
I just started a new website devoted to teaching people how to develop websites. The site is PHP Video Tutorials. So far I have about 20 videos uploaded. There are nine in the first series which teaches basic HTML and CSS. The second video series goes into PHP and MySQL. I think these videos will be very helpful to anyone who wants to get into web development.
BattleField 1942 in Windows 2008
Posted by Randy in Applications, Games, Windows on March 25, 2009
I decided to play BF1942 today. I installed it and Battlefield Vietnam. These two games are about the only first person shooters I can play without getting simulator sickness. It had been a while since I played BF1942 so I wanted to try it first.
It should be noted at this point that I’ve been using Windows 2008 server as a desktop operating system for about three months now. Up until now everything pretty much worked out of the box, but once I tried to start up BF1942 I ran into a slight problem. It complained about having the wrong version of DirectX installed. It requires DirectX 6.0 or higher.
I knew I had a higher version of DirectX than this. So after digging around for a while I found out that there is a bug that causes this issue. The fix is a little strange. One person suggested that it was an issue with fullscreen mode. True enough, after changing one line of a config file for BF1942 to force it to start in windowed mode, there was no issues. The only problem is that windowed mode sucks.
So, searching further, I discovered that there is a fix that involves a patch for GTA2. Here are the instructions to execute this solution:
1.) Download this.
2.) Unzip
3.) Copy the dmusic.dll and dmusic.inf files to C:\Windows\System32
4.) Inside the system32 directory find dmusic.inf…right click on it and choose install.
BF1942 should now work in full screen mode.