Feed: VanMackay Computer Solutions - AggScore: 61.4

Here is a quick solution for anybody who has a fake path error while attaching doc/image in Gmail. Some users have found this error after upgrading Internet Explorer.

(Steps using Internet explorer)

• Open browser, click gear icon (TOOLS)
• Internet Options
• Security
• Custom level
• Scroll down towards the bottom of the page and find include the local directory path when uploading files to the server and enable and click OK

Van Mackay Computer Solutions
www.vanmackay.ca

If you have a website that changes and update information often more than likely you utilize RSS Feeds for your visitors. RSS is simply a format for delievering changing web content, endusers simply have to click on the websites rss feed icon to start the subscription process. RSS feeds need an rss feeder, feed reader, or aggregator to be displayed web based, desktop or mobile device.

Van Mackay Computer Solutions has a small list of RSS Directories to submit your rss feeds to gain more traffic.
                                                                           

• http://www.5z5.com/Suggest-A-Feed/                                                                 
• http://9rules.com/about/feeds/                                                                     
• http://blogdigger.com/add.jsp                                                                      
• http://www.blo.gs/   
• http://chordata.info/suggest.php 
• http://www.feedagg.com/      
• http://www.feedcat.net/ 
•  http://www.feedest.com/     
•  http://www.feeds4all.nl/      

Van Mackay Computer Solutions offers blog & rss feed submission.We will will manually submit your rss feed and blog index page to ranked rss aggregators & blog directories online. You will receive an email report or screenshots of all sites your rss feed and blog are submitted to.Van Mackay Computer Solutions offers two packages:

Many computer users have never heard of drive by download, a drive by download is defined as any time a file is downloaded without the users permission or knowledge. Drive by download can affect computer systems by exploiting weaknesses in email, Internet browsers, and operating systems.

The real question is how can I keep my computer system safe from drive by downloads? The first step is to make sure to keep your operating system and browser up to date. Make sure you utilize a good anti virus suite if you need advice choosing an anti virus solution check this previous post Free Anti Virus Products. *Ensure your anti virus is updated*

Another problem is software that work in conjunction with browsers such as adobe reader and flash. Both these programs have many vulnerability and we recommend either disabling plug ins or using an alternative to adobe reader.

Hope these tips will help you not become a victim to drive by downloads.

Van Mackay Computer Solutions
www.vanmackay,ca

Van Mackay Computer Solutions has some tips to help you get that disc out of that drive. There are many reasons why a disc can get stuck in your drive and your first step if the eject button doesn't work is to go to your computer right click the drive the disc is in and press eject. Also restarting the computer and pressing the eject button while starting up might help. Most drives have a small pinhole beside the eject button and will release the disc all you need is to bend a paperclip and insert it in the pinhole to release the disc.

There are some drives that don't have emergency pinhole I experienced this while fixing a Dell Studio Hybrid and found the best way to eject the disc was to restart the computer hit F12 and ran system diagnostics on drive and right side there is an option to eject CD.

Anyone have any tips to share on this topic?

Van Mackay Computer Solutions
http://www.vanmackay.ca/

Van Mackay Computer Solutions

Computers blogs

Computers blogs

Van Mackay Computer Solutions understands small businesses and home business are on a tight budget and hope these tips can help everyone save money while keep productivity high. One way to save some money is to try an alternative to Microsoft Office they are many great office productivity suites that are free and have a large online community.If you decide to try Open Office or K-Office you will have to also add an email software because they don't bundle an email program like Microsoft Office.

Open Office -http://www.openoffice.org/

KOffice - http://www.koffice.org/

Google Docs -https://docs.google.com/ *Google Docs is web based and also has an email client*

No business can run without accounting software and most business use simply accounting or accpac for all their accounting needs however if you feel comfortable trying an open source accounting program Van Mackay Computer Solutions suggest trying Gnucash. http://www.gnucash.org/

Home businesses usually will do their own taxs and buy a tax program or hire someone but if you are a jack of all trades and do both your personal and business taxs Van Mackay Computer Solutions suggests Studio Tax. StudioTax covers the overwhelming range of personal income tax scenarios from simple tax returns to more involved returns for self-employed.

http://www.studiotax.com/en/download.htm

Next week Van Mackay Computer Solutions will discuss even more ways to save money in your home office.

Van Mackay Computer Solutions
http://www.vanmackay.ca/

Quick Guide on Connecting your PS3 to PC

First steps involve the PC

Second Step Install Windows Media Player 11 (PC)

Start the PlayStation 3

Van Mackay Computer Solutions

www.vanmackay.ca

Computers blogs

Ever since I was a little kid I was crazy about computer games my dad would setup the commodore vic 20 and I would play hours playing the most simplest of games from there I progressed to Atari, nintendo, sega, turbo graphics 16, n64 , so you get the picture. Today these games and systems are hide to find but with emulators you can enjoy these games on today's computers and new consoles.

The most famous emulator is MAME which is an emulator application designed to recreate the hardware of arcade game systems in software on modern personal computers and other platforms.

Instructions to install MAME:

1. Download the emulator from MAME
2. Double click now on mame exe file, a window pops up, select the folder you want to extract your files to, then click Extract button.
    
3. Go now and open the folder containing extracted files, then double click on mameuifx32.exe to launch the emulator
4. All downloaded games must be placed in roms directory. To play a game, you should simply double click on its title displayed on MAME main interface.
5. To configure MAME display, sound, controllers, etc. then open Options >> Default Game Options.

Computers blogs

The computer repair business usually gets a bad name for ripping off customers and its a shame where they are plenty of professional computer repair technicians who will go the extra mile to ensure the customers is happy. Just recently I got a phone call from a person upset that they took there computer to a computer store to remove virus/ Trojans.Once home they plugged the computer and nothing so frantic they called Van Mackay Computer Solutions since the other computer store was closed we inspected the computer and found we just needed to reconnect the power supply connectors to the motherboard.

First problem I have with this why did the computer technician open the computer case if he was removing virus? Couple tips I have when dropping of your computer to a computer technician is do your homework and research the business do they have positive reviews, and how long have they been in business. Make sure you know whats in your system I have heard horror stories of techs taking parts out or replacing parts with inferior.

Back to the story the computer technician removed all the virus and told the customer the computer was up to date however when I checked the computer it was still on service pack 2 and no anti virus installed so they knew just a matter of time before the computer is filled with virus again. Some customers are interested in anti virus pro versions with all the bells and whistles however Van Mackay Computer Solutions will never give a customer no anti virus software installed.

www.vanmackay.ca

Computers blogs

Great tool to try for computer users that rely on usb drives is a open source software called USB Memory Stick Tester. USB Memory Stick Tester is a small application that test removable storage for defects.The current version is only able to test the unused space from the disk. To test the whole disk, you need to format it first.USB Memory Stick Tester is only available for Windows XP / 2000. Van Mackay Computer Solutions suggests never to solely rely on usb drives for backup purposes to many times we see usb drives get lost, physical damage, and personally don't last long.

USB MEMORY STICK TESTER DOWNLOAD http://sourceforge.net/projects/usbmst/


Van Mackay Computer Solutions
www.vanmackay.ca

Computers blogs

We all remember in the early 90's playing Doom on are PC with the keyboard, then buying the gravis pad controller and replaying Doom! Since the PlayStation 3 was released there have been people asking How do i connect my PS3 controller to my PC. There is PS3sixaxis download which can be downloaded at PS3SIXAXIS

Instructions to install PS3SIXAXIS:

Download this archive and install the filter driver (libusb-win32-filter-bin-0.1.10.1.exe).
2. Unpack ps3sixaxis_en.exe
3. Plug the SIXAXIS into your PC.
4. Run ps3sixaxis_en.exe once.
5. Push the PS button on the SIXAXIS once if it doesn’t see it straight away.

I have found many people have issues or difficulties getting there PS3 controller to work with the above software and I recommend using Motioninjoy usb driver to connect your PS3 controllers and Xbox 360 controllers to your PC.

Motioninjoy has created a driver that works on all version of windows however there are two different downloads depending if you are running a 32bit system or 64bit system. Both version can be downloaded at Motioninjoy http://www.motioninjoy.com/download/

Instructions:

First step is to download the drivers

Plug in your PS3 controller with USB attachment and the PC will add a device driver

Install Motioninjoy Driver

Run the DS3 tool (you must have a Internet connection for this step)

Click Load and the installation will occur

The controller will not be blinking which means your controller is working in a limited state(digital button and cross pad will work right now)

To enable dual shock and analog controls You need to exit out of the program after the first time, and start it again

Restart the DS3 Tool program, you will see this screen




Your controller should be listed If not go back to the Driver Manager, and try loading the driver again.

simply select the Analog Gamepad 2 mode, and click “Enable”. You will immediately have full analog functionality, which can be verified in the Game Controller control panel.

Happy Gaming

Dennis Vanden Heuvel
Van Mackay Computer Solutions

Computers blogs

Van Mackay Computer Solutions has added a download page for visitors at http://vanmackay.ca/downloads.htm where you can find free and open source software.

Van Mackay Computer Solutions has compiled a list of the top five alternatives to Photo shop. Today Adobe Photo shop CS5 retails for $667 which most people will find quite expensive!

1. Gimp is the oldest alternative to Photo shop and you will find most of the same feature.Gimp is made for multiple platforms,free alternative to photo shop, however complex installation process
2. Paint.net free image and photo editing for windows systems, easy to use for beginner, and has a huge online community.
3. Photo Pos Lite is a free lite version of the award-wining photo editor Photo Pos Pro. With Photo Pos Lite, you can edit, enhance and manipulate your pictures easily.
4. Krita Krita is a cross-platform bitmap graphics editor and a member of the KOffice suite. It is designed to create new works as well as edit photos.
5. Cinepaint CinePaint is a free open source deep paint tool capable of manipulating many image file formats. It’s used in motion picture work flows to edit exr, dpx and 16-bit tiff high fidelity images and for general still image editing purposes with jpeg and png images.

Van Mackay Computer Solutions
www.vanmackay.ca