Microsoft offers an excellent platform for IT professionals to try out various editions of the latest Windows Server 2012 R2. Not only a step-by-step manual/tutorial is provided, but also virtual machines that you can actually configure and play around as if you have a number of physical computers at your command, all for free. Give it a spin!

BulkFileChanger is a small utility that allows you to create files list from multiple folders, and then make some action on them – Modify their created/modified/accessed time, change their file attribute (Read Only, Hidden, System), run an executable with these files as parameter, and copy/cut paste into Explorer.

This is a very good reading if you are planning to venture into the unfamiliar Windows 8.1 (to be released on October 17).

When you’re on the Internet, there are good reasons to have that eerie sense of being followed. And don’t think you have anonymity just because your service provider gives you a dynamic IP address. At a minimum, visited websites can tell what service provider you’re with and what city or region you are in.

What’s more, any communication with a Web server gives it the opportunity to deposit a cookie on your computer. Benign cookies — small text files downloaded through your browser — simply record information needed to make your Web experience better. That can include sign-in information, where you visited on the site, interface customizations, and the like. Most cookies also keep an identifier for each visitor, so that the next time you connect to a site’s server, it can match you up with its records of previous visits. That way, you won’t have to start from scratch whenever you go to the site.(…..read the whole story)

Wakeup and sleep issues are common problems found in Windows Media Center (WMC), from XP to Windows 7 (perhaps Windows 8 as well).  This particular problem is about sleep. The media center PC does not go back to sleep after recording.

Further investigation reveals that the PC can go to sleep properly (according to the power management settings) without WMC running. Using the following shows the culprit, a USB audio device prevents the system from sleeping when WMC is open.

‘powercfg -requests’

The above command, executed under admin rights, states that “an audio stream is currently in use” associated with the USB audio device. I use the following to tell the system to ignore it and go on to sleep after the pre-set time has elapsed.

‘powercfg -requestsoverride driver “USB Audio Device” system’

Be careful when you copy the above command from a web browser and paste it directly on the CMD prompt because the blank space inside the name of the driver is not really a ‘space’ when pasted onto the CMD prompt window.

If you have a different device that is causing the problem, just replace “USB Audio Device” with the exact device name in your case. Click here to see a similar situation.

More Info (July 2014)

There is another driver ‘Legacy Kernel Caller’ that causes the sleep problem after a recent refresh of the Windows 7 system. Apparently this is from the driver of the TV tuner card (perhaps a different version from the previous installation). Just use a similar ‘requestsoverride’ described above and the sleep problem should be fixed.

When you see an error ‘Unable to Clean’ on a Brother MFC printer, the following solution may help resolve the problem without bringing it in for service.

1. Machine off
2. Switch on the machine while holding down the “menu” button until all the leds are flashing on/off. Now you are in “maintenance” mode
3. Press 80
4. Press the “mono start” button several times until you see “purge: xxxx”
5. Press “2783” in order to reset the purge counter. You will see: “purge:0000”
6. Press the “stop” button
7. Press “99” to exit the maintenance mode

If pressing “99” does not exit the maintenance mode, just unplug and plug the power cord back to restart the printer. This solution works on MFC-420CN; it may work on other models as well.