M.A.S. Electronics' Blog

There’s DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW, and even DVD-ROM! So what’s the difference between all of these different names, aren’t all DVDs the same? Well, it’s not quite that simple. Let’s first start with the most obvious difference: some have R and some have RW. The “R” stands for recordable, while the “W” stands for rewritable. The main difference between DVD-R and DVD-RW, or DVD+R and DVD+RW is that the R disc formats can only be written to once, and then…

Read More Read More

One of Microsoft’s big selling points for Windows XP was that it loads applications much faster than its predecessors. To accomplish this feat, Windows XP uses what is called the “Prefetch technique,” in which the operating system gathers information about each program that you launch and stores that information in the \Windows\Prefetch folder. Then on subsequent restarts, Windows XP uses the information in the Prefetch folder to essentially preload parts of those programs at boot time. Thus, when you launch…

Read More Read More

Here’s something I came across that will really speed Firefox up: 1.Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries: network.http.pipelining network.http.proxy.pipelining network.http.pipelining.maxrequests Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading. 2. Alter the entries as follows: Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true” Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true” Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to some number…

Read More Read More

If you manage a Windows XP peer-to-peer network, you regularly need to be able to find out who is remotely using files on a particular system. This task probably makes you wish that Windows XP contained an updated version of Net Watcher-that’s the neat utility in Windows 98 that showed you what files were open and who was using them. Unfortunately, Net Watcher never made it to the newer versions of the Windows operating system. However, Windows XP does come…

Read More Read More

On the Advanced tab of the Power Options dialog box, Windows XP provides you with several built-in shortcuts for putting your computer in Suspend mode-either Standby or Hibernation. These shortcuts allow you to reconfigure the operation performed when pressing either the Power or Sleep buttons. (If you’ve enabled the Hibernation feature, using these shortcuts will put your computer into hibernation mode. If you haven’t, using these shortcuts will put your computer into standby mode.) However, if you wish to expand…

Read More Read More

Most Windows XP admins start their troubleshooting process by launching Windows Task Manager and selecting the Processes tab in order to gather information about the programs and processes that are currently running on a system. While some of the running processes are easy to identify (especially if they directly represent an application), other processes can be puzzling to identify (especially if they represent services). For instance, when you look at the list of processes displayed in the panel, you’ll probably…

Read More Read More

Opinions vary on how to preserve data on digital storage media, such as optical CDs and DVDs. Kurt Gerecke, a physicist and storage expert at IBM Deutschland, has his own view: If you want to avoid having to burn new CDs every few years, use magnetic tapes to store all your pictures, videos and songs for a lifetime. “Unlike pressed original CDs, burned CDs have a relatively short life span of between two to five years, depending on the quality…

Read More Read More

If you’re the only person who uses a particular computer running Windows XP, you may want to remove the Files Stored on This Computer group. This tip explains how you can delete the group in three simple steps. When you open My Computer in its default configuration on a Windows XP machine, you’ll find a group titled Files Stored on This Computer. This group contains the Shared Documents link, as well as links to folders for all user accounts created…

Read More Read More

Takeaway: If a lookup fails for a host because the target domain’s DNS server is down, then subsequent attempts to look up the host will also fail because the failed results are cached. Learn two ways to overcome this problem. DNS enables fully qualified host names like www.maselectronics.com to be resolved to their target IP addresses. Every time you visit a Web site, the DNS client software built into Windows 2000 Professional performs a DNS lookup of the specified host…

Read More Read More

User profiles store documents, application settings, certain temporary files, custom colors, and more. A single user’s profile can be quite large; when multiple users share a computer, the profiles can take up a considerable amount of space. When a user stops using a particular shared computer, you can typically delete the profile to free up space on the drive for other users, applications, temporary files, and so on. While you could delete the folder structure manually, doing so can be…

Read More Read More