hendrikch.com – Hendrik Christian Blog on Daily Life

February 2, 2011

Troubleshoot Fan Error on startup

Filed under: Technology — Tags: — hendrikch @ 3:42 pm

Continuing the trend of being “IT Support” guy in the family from yesterday, my uncle asked me to look at his computer that has been giving some “Fan Error” message upon start up, “Press F1 to resume”.

I quickly took a look, and he was right. Now, there are only few possibilities there: Fan not running (which is dangerous), Fan is running but sensor not plugged in (not too bad), Fan is running and sensor is plugged in, but somehow not detected (false alarm).

I opened up the casing, saw the fan looks alright. I plugged out and plugged the CPU Fan cable back in, and voila, suddenly the fan speed is detected, and no more “Fan Error” message upon every start up.

February 1, 2011

Remote Branch Computers Management

Filed under: Technology — hendrikch @ 8:04 pm

So, we got these branch office that is at least one hour drive away from the main office. It has multiple computers, and no one in there has a clue on what to do when something goes wrong. Lo and behold, the second day I’m back to Jakarta, I was summoned to fix “network issue” there. After surviving the one-hour massive traffic jam in Jakarta, I reached the branch office, troubleshoot a bit, and decided that the network cable to one of the PC is faulty. Thirty minutes later, a new cable was bought in, and problems solved.

While I’m there, with my itchy hand, I noticed that some of the PCs there were logged in using Admin account. Later I found out that the Admin account uses “1234″ as the password, which is known to everyone in the office (which is not good). Some PCs have all browsers you can imagine, toolbars, anti-virus (which is expiring in 15 days), Conficker worm, I Love You virus, and you-name-it, they’re all there.

To clean it all up, I did the following:

  • Changed Administrator password, so only one guy and myself know it.
  • Uninstall everything that is not necessary, additional browsers, anti-virus, toolbars, etc.
  • Clean up startup registry to make sure unnecessary applications don’t automatically start-up.
  • Install Microsoft Security Essentials (which is good and free), and did a full scan.
  • Scheduled a daily 5PM quick scan.
  • Updated the computer names to something that make sense. Previously, the computer names were like cryptic PC-4d33fa57f.
  • Some PCs still on Windows XP SP2, so I quickly updated to SP3.
  • Installed LogMeIn with my account, so I can connect to those PCs without having to brace the one-hour traffic everytime there are issues.

So yeah, that’s pretty much about it, but I’m happy that it looks a lot better after I left than they were.

Now, the side-effect with all these were my thumb drive that had all my utilities, and virus scanner, and so on were obviously infected. I had to remember not to plug in the thumb drive to other clean Windows PCs afterwards.

I waited till I reached home, plug into my Macbook (which is virus-resistant to Conficker and I Love You), and format the drive away, and the world is a much better place now with less computers infected by viruses.

All in a day’s work.

January 11, 2011

Crap Singnet cable modem

Filed under: Online Service, Technology — hendrikch @ 12:09 am
The few commandments when using Singnet 2Wire cable modem:
  • You shall restart me at least once a day, else I’ll just stop working.
  • You shall not copy anything > 1 GB over Ethernet cable between machines, else I’ll stop everything else including Internet connections.
  • You shall not be more than ten metres away from me, else I’ll keep dropping your wireless connections.

There are many crap cable modems out there, but Singnet one just hit a new low.

January 2, 2011

Three stars Angry Birds Seasons

Filed under: iPhone, Puzzle, Technology — hendrikch @ 10:51 pm

When I was unplugged for the seven days I was in Bali (to avoid crazy roaming data charges), the only entertainment I had was a book (a Christmas present) and my iPhone.

I made it a point that in those seven days, I would have completed all levels of Angry Birds Seasons with three stars. Prior to me leaving for Bali, I had one level with only one star and many levels still with two stars. Felt challenged, I not only completed Angry Birds Seasons with three stars, I also managed to complete Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit from tier 1 to tier 4 before the year turned 2011.

All three-stars in Angry Birds Seasons

Needless to say, the book was not read as much, but I still managed to read about 100 pages of it (and learned a lot from that book in the process).

If there’s anything Angry Birds Seasons taught me, it’s patience, thinking out of the box, and ultimately persistence. It’s the patience to wait for one level each day, it’s thinking out of the box to try out new things and sometimes not-so-obvious choices, and ultimately persistence to try 10, 20, 30 times (or whatever it takes) to get three stars in every single level.

It may only be a 99-cents game, but it can teach you a lot.
Sitting pretty on top of the world ranking

July 26, 2010

Sony camcorder suffix meaning

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , , , — hendrikch @ 10:41 pm

As I was doing some research on Sony camcorders, I realized that for the same camcorder model, they have multiple suffix to denote different “type” of the same model. For example, Sony HDR CX350, CX350E, CX350/B, etc.

Here are what I could gather about the meaning of suffix:

  • No suffix: plain and basic camera, likely US/Canada model with NTSC format.
  • V-suffix: It means this camcorder has built-in GPS for geotagging.
  • E-suffix: It means this camcorder is an “E”uropean model (including Australia and most of Asia) with PAL format.
  • Character after “/” sign: It simply means the color of the camcorder. 350/R means Red color, 350/B means Black color, and so on.

So, that’s pretty much all to it. Simple when you think of it, but without proper documentation, it’s pretty hard to understand if you’re buying the right product or not.

Disclaimer: I’m not related to Sony by any means, so if I got anything wrong, let me know in the comments. ^.^

June 8, 2010

iPhone 4 in Singapore

Filed under: iPhone, Portables — hendrikch @ 9:58 am

So, when will iPhone 4 launch in Singapore?

June 24 is the date for five countries, with few more in July, and by September, 88 countries will have it. So, worst case scenario, Singapore telcos will launch iPhone 4 in September, best case in July.

Price wise, the current price may stay, that is with $38/month plan, you’re looking at S$538 for 16GB version and S$668 for 32GB version.

April 17, 2010

Desktop upgrade

Filed under: Technology, Windows — hendrikch @ 3:39 pm

On Wednesday, I saw a post by my colleague that he was selling his desktop PC components for cheap. After a quick research, I decided to buy from him. My desktop PC was last upgraded in February 2005, and now for $80, I’ve gotten Asus A8N SLI-Premium motherboard with AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ that is the equivalent of current Intel Core 2 Duo (both for $50), and 2 GB of Kingston RAM (for $30).

The motherboard was, as its name suggest, a premium motherboard, with 2 slots for PCI Express graphic cards, 10 ports USB 2.0, two Gigabit LAN, three Fireweire IEEE 1394, and two eSATA ports. It has every ports known to mankind, and for $50, I couldn’t resist a cheap upgrade to give my desktop PC a whole new guts inside.

For graphic card, I got myself Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5750 512MB GDDR5 that should be powerful enough for games in the next 3-5 years.

The end result? Here are the Geekbench scores of my desktop before and after the upgrade.

Before upgrade

Before upgrade

After upgrade

After upgrade

Based on these scores alone, with $80, my desktop PC is now twice as powerful as it was, and it should prolong its life for the next 3-4 years. Good stuff eh?

It’s still not as powerful as my Macbook, but for that price, I can’t complain.

Macbook score

Macbook score

The result according to Windows Experience Index shows the score is up there now. It was previously 3.1. before upgrade. Yay !!!

Windows Experience Index

Windows Experience Index

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