How to install a Microsoft Loopback Adapter in Windows 7

Some applications like SQL Server are dependent on network functionality. These usually require a network card to be present. If you don't have a network card installed on your PC, then you will need Microsoft Loopback adapter in order to setup and run these applications that depend on network functionality. The Microsoft Loopback adapter is a testing tool for a virtual network environment where network access is not available.

To install Microsoft Loopback adapter, follow steps below:

1. Go to START menu -> All Programs -> Accessaries -> Command Prompt. Run the Command Prompt as administrator (right-click the command prompt).


2. From the command prompt, run “hdwwiz.exe“. This should launch the “Add Hardware Wizard“. Click Next.


3. Select “Install the hardware that I manually select from a list (Advanced)” and click Next.


4. Now from the list select Network Adapters and click Next.


5. Under Manufacturers, select Microsoft and select “Microsoft Loopback Adapter” under Network Adapter and click Next. This should start the installation. Click Finish when the installation is completed.


To confirm the loopback adapter installed, right-click Computer, select properties. Click Device Manager and expand Network Adapters and you can see the Loopback adapter installed there.

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Posted in: howto,microsoft loopback adapter,Windows 7,windows tips

How To WampServer 2.0 on Your Windows Machine

If you would like to build your own website, you can do it on your own computer without putting it on internet. But, you will need a web server, database and supported scripting languague to run at your computer. WAMP is the soulution you need. WampServer is a free utility that allows you to run Apache, PHP, and MySQL on Microsoft Windows. This article demonstrates how to download, install, and configure WampServer on a Windows PC.

Instructions:

1. Go to http://www.wampserver.com/en/download.php to download the latest version of WampServer 2.

2. Run the WampServer.20i.exe file. The setup wizard is straightforward, you don't need to change any default settings unless you want to install your WampServer to a location other than the default C:\Wamp directory.

3. Once the installation completed, the WampServer icon will show up in the system tray when it is launced. You can use the pull-up menu from the WampServer icon in hte system tray to manage the services of WampServer. By default, WampServer is installed to http://localhost and port 80.

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Posted in: apache,mysql,php,wamp,wampserver,web server,windows,Windows 7

How To Open An UIF File

Have you download a UIF file and wondering how to extract/mount this file format so that you can view the content compress with UIF.

A UIF file is actually a MagicISO CD/DVD image file. In order to view the contents, you have to first mount the UIF image file. The other common option for a compressed image file is ISO. comparatively, UIF provides better encryption and also has better compression than ISO format.

There are two ways to decompress and extract the content:

1. MagicISO

Unfortunately, MagicISO is not a free tool. If you plan to use within 30 days, you can download the trial edition to depression UIF file. MagicISO can be downloaded from: http://www.magiciso.com/. After the installation of MagicISO, start it. Then click on Tools and Decompress UIF Image.

Choose the source file and the destination location for the ISO file.

2. UIF to ISO Converter

This method is slightly more complex. But, you can use it to extract large files, larger than 300MB. The MagicISO trial edition has a file size limiation of 300MB. Unless you want to pay for MagicISO, UIF to ISO converter is a free version that can be used to overcome the limitation of MagicISO trial edition.

For Windows:

1.Download UIF2ISO converter. Extract the downloaded zip file to get a folder of the same name. Then, run the setup to install the program.

2. Double-click on the UIF2ISO icon to launch the program. Then, locate the .uif file you want to extract and click “Open”.

3. Specify a ISO file name and confirm the conversion to start the converting process.

For Mac OS X: Download and use uif2iso4mac.

Once the UIF file being converted to ISO format, you can mount it using any virtual disk manager software or using the free unzip tool such as 7zip to extract the content.

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Posted in: computer tool,file format conversion,howto,magicISO,poweriso,uif file

How To Boot and Install Windows 7 From USB Flash Drive

Usually, most people install or reinstall Windows operating system from DVD drive. But, since the USB become popular, we have an alternative to boot and install an operating system to a PC from USB flash drive.

Since most of windows installers come in DVD drive format, we have to copy it to a USB flash drive. Before that, I have to make the USB flash bootable. In this post, I will discuss the command prompt method. You can make the Windows 7 USB FLash installation Disk from any Windows computer. In this post, I use Windows 7 (the instruction is the same for Windows XP). Below are the steps:

Step 1: Format USB Flash Drive To NTFS format

In your Windows, go to Control panel -> system -> hardware -> Device manager. Under the disk drives section, right click on the USB storage drive and select Properties.

Step 2: Select USB Flash Drive To Be Bootable Disk

On Windows 7 Start Menu, navigate to command prompt entry (Start -> All Programs -> Accessaries) , right-click the Command Prompt and select Run as administrator.

Type "diskpart" & press ENTER. Then type "list disk", ENTER to list all disks attached to this computer.

From the disk list, identify the USB Flash Drive. In my case, Disk 1 (red rectangle) is my USB flash drive. Type "select disk 1" to select the disk (the command is "select disk X" where X is the drive number).

After selecting the disk, list the partition in the selected list by typing "list partition". Select the partition you want to make a bootable Windows 7 installation by typing command "select partition Y", where Y is the partition number of USB flash drive. Then, type "active" to make the selected partition to become an active partition.

You are done in preparing the disk for bootable. Type "exit" and Enter.

Step 3: Creating bootable USB flash drive

Copy the content from the Windows 7 Installation content to your computer desktop into a folder, I named is as win-7 (you can name it according to your preference).

Go into the windows folder, in my case win-7 by typing command "cd Desktop/win-7" (Change the destination to the folder that you have extracted). Then, "cd boot" to go into boot directory.

Type: bootsect /nt60 X: (X is the drive latter of your USB drive)


Then, copy all the files from the Windows 7 folder to the USB flash drive. Now, you should be able to use the USB Flash drive to boot and install Windows 7.

Note: You need to change the first boot device to your USB drive in the BIOS.

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Posted in: bootable usb flash,disk partition,howto,installation,pen drive,usb flash drive,Windows 7,windows os,windows tips

What Causes Overheating In PCs Or Laptops

Most lastest computers or laptops have built-in Digital Thermal Sensor to protect the devices from overheating that may causes damages on computer hardware. You can use any computer's temperature monitoring tool such as CoreTemp to monitor your computer's temperature and identify if your computer is experiencing overheating problem.


What are the causes of Overheating in PCs or Laptops?

There could be many reasons for overheating of a computer system. One of them is the computer has been used for long time without shutting down for cooling. When the computer is used for long time, the processor is heated. If the computer is placed at a room or office with hot environment, the long usage and hot environment may cause the computer to heat up until its temperature reach the maximum temperature limit before it being shutdown automatically. Therefore, if you plan to run a computer for long hours, providing a proper cooling system, cooling environment and running internal fan are essential to prevent computer from overheating.

The surrounding temperature affects the computer’s internal temperature. If we run a computer in hot environment, the computers temperature will definite goes high. For this reason you must control the temperature of the environment. You can use Air conditioners to get rid of this problem. If the Air conditioner is not possible then at least remove the casing of the computer and provide external fan to through the air into computer.

Some time the fault in processor or in mother board is the cause of this problem. In this situation the repairing or replacement of the faulty device is required.

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Posted in: computer monitoring tool,computer problem,digital thermal sensor,overheating

How To Monitor Your PC Or Laptop Temperature

Is your computer shutting down frequently without any notice? Most often, it happens after your leave your computer running for a while, and it just shut down without any message. One of the root courses of this symptom is your PC or Lapter is experiencing high temperature until it hits the the max allowable temperature. The computer will be automatically shutdown to protect the PC from overheating.

So, if you PC is experiencing the symptom of shutting down suddenly and frequently, most probably it is caused by high temperature. One way to confirm the issue it is to measure the temperature of PC or Laptop.

You don't to install a thermometer at your PC or laptop. One of the best ways to monitor is to install temperature reading software that might help you actually know if the problem is causing by overheating. Coretemp is a tiny application which is low on resources and is surprisingly accurate in providing the PC or laptop temperature in real-time. It works by communicating with the built-in digital thermal sensor (DTS) on latest Intel and AMD processors.

It is a tiny but extremely powerful and accurate program which tells you the temperature of each core simultaneously and can be easily installed on Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP. Coretemp can be download at http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/.

In the above example, CoreTemp reads the temperatue on Duo Core Intel PC. Tj Max is the maximum allowable temperature. If any of core temperature hit Tj Max, the computer will be shutdown automatically to pretect the PC from overheating. The above example, the Cores are measured at 69 deg. C to 70 deg. C, showing that this PC is experiencing an overheating issue.

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Posted in: computer tool,digital thermal sensor,howto,monitor pc temperature,windows,Windows 7,Windows Vista,Windows XP

How To Check If Your Computer Supports Hardware Virtualization

In the process of installation Mac Os X Snow Leopard on windows-based PC, one of the installation requirements is the computer should be able to support Hardware Virtualization. What is that? and how to check if my computer support it?

After googling the internet, finally I cound a good tool to do the job. The great thing is it supports both Intel-based and AMD based processor. The tool is able to the support of Hardware Virtualizaiton on both Windows and Linux OS.

The great tool is called: SecurAble. It can be download FREE at http://www.grc.com/securable.htm

SecurAble does not require any setup or installation. The executable file can simply be run as a stand-alone Windows or Linux/Wine program.

For Windows: Just double click the securable.exe.



For Linux: you can run the following command: egrep ‘(vmxsvm)’ /proc/cpuinfo

If nothing is printed, it means that your CPU doesn’t support hardware virtualisation. Otherwise, it does.

Note: SecurAble may detect that your CPU does not support hardware virtualization if your computer does but it has been disabled at BIOS. So, if the tool detect that your CPU does not support Hardware Virtualization, go to BIOS and check whether it has been turned ON.

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Posted in: hardware virtualization,linux,Mac Os X on PC,mac os x snow leopard,windows