Recently I have found myself wiping hard drives and reinstalling operating systems a lot, and I wanted a quicker way to do it and found installing the operating system to a usb key to be the best.

Setting up the usb is really simple, only use this for windows vista and windows 7 as windows xp will not let you install it from a usb.

The first step is to format the memory stick  to fat32 and create a partition, this is done in the command prompt, go to start, then click run and type cmd or in the search box in windows vista and windows 7 just type cmd and press enter.

Type the following lines to format your memory key, (note disk 1 represents which disk is your usb, type “list disk” (example image above) to find out which one your usb is when is the diskpart section):

• diskpart
• select disk 1
• clean
• create partition primary
• select partition 1
• active
• format fs=fat32
• assign
• exit

Once your usb key is fully formatted using the commands above the next step is to copy the files to your usb key from the operating system disc, use the command below in the command prompt to do this:

• xcopy d:\*.* /s/e/f e:\

In the code above, the d:\ represents the drive letter of your disc drive and the e:\ is the drive letter of your usb key.

You are now ready to install your operating system, just plug it into your computer and boot to the usb.

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However there has always been one thing missing from this, that is the ability to crop, and rotate your images live whilst you upload them. On numerous occasions i have uploaded a picture and then realized that i had put it the wrong way round. I would then have to re-upload a rotated version; this all takes time, time that i could use doing something else.

Tonight i was looking about the WordPress plugin’s page and found a great small plugin that lets you crop, resize, rotate and add watermarks to your pictures. You do not have to upload a picture then go to a different page in your admin panel to edit the picture, the plugin is implemented into the existing WordPress image upload box and it only takes 2 seconds to fix up a picture.

I know for sure i will be using this plugin a lot in the future. The plugin is called: Scissors and can be found on the WordPress plugin directory.

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I enjoy messing about with computers and learning new ways of doing things or how to get the most out of a computer. Having knowledge of how a computer operates is very usefully when something goes wrong.

I have been using computers now for about 10 or 11 years and since my first day with them i have now become a lot more familiar with fixing problems. Before when i had little know-how on how a computer operated i would have to get someone down to have a look at the computer and fix it. So they would usually end up taking it away and then coming back a day or two later saying it would cost a fair bit of money.

I reckon that whenever a tech person takes away your computer, they probably have one look at it and most likely 99% of the time they will know how to fix it and it will probably only take a few hours, in most cases a run of an anti-virus program would sort out most problems. Then in that other 1% a more in depth investigation will be required to find out what is the problem.

Since i have such an interest in computers i was keen to find out how to fix them. Now if something goes wrong with my computer i can fix it easily with no hassle at all . It saves you so much time and money. By fixing it yourself it will not be broken for as long since you do not have to wait for your computer to be returned to you and also you do not have to pay those mental fees people try and ask for!

I talked to a few people before and they told me that they would take it to a PC clinic, like the ones they have in PC World. Before most places like this even look at your computer they will straight away charge you a standard fee of €50! That is just mad money, then on top of that you will get charged for any parts required etc…

Friends of mine always get me to have a look at their computers, and most of the time it would be something simple to fix such as a few viruses or maybe some spyware or even errors that have occurred. A lot of the time people ask, why is my computer going so slow?

A few simple things could be done to fix that big problem that you have, first make sure you have enough space on your disk drive, check for viruses / spyware , remove unnecessary programs,  and try a defrag of your hard drive. Most of the time that will work no problem and you will have your computer back up and running smoothly again.

It is strange that whenever i start to fix one person’s computer, suddenly loads more computers break and i end up getting asked to fix them. I think it is odd that they all break around the same time as each-other, or maybe it is just me thinking they do. I enjoy fixing them, and it also gets me a bit of money on the side whilst i am not at work .

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Over the past few days i have been trying to get my pc to connect to the playstation 3, I couldnt figure out how to do it, it was getting really frustrating. I attempted loads of different methods such as setting my pc as a server and attempting to access it that way, but it was having none of it, no success there for me

Next i tried linking my playstation to my pc using an ethernet cable just to see if it might recognise some type of folder that i had set for public sharing, that too would not work. At this stage i didnt know what to do, but when i start to try to do something i have to keep at it until i get it done, if i dont find out how to do it i feel that it got the better of me, and after all why should technology get the better of a human?, we designed technology therefore we should know how to control it. So of course i continued to try different methods of linking the two together.

I was then messing about with the playstation and i saw that you could search for media devices so i thought why not try to scan for one to see if it finds anything, first try it didnt, so then i realsied that i could use windows media player as a media device and then the playstation should recognise it, i decided to do it wirelessly, so no cables lying around the room, i decided to let the router broadcast the signal,

There is no messing about to do this it just does it by itself, so i went into windows media player and clicked on the drop down arrow in the library section and clicked ‘Media Sharing’,then up popped a box with an unknown device, this was the playstation so i clicked allow so it would have permission to access my files, then i went back to the playstation and there i could see my pc listed.

Sometimes when you have just set up the connection with the pc the playstation will say that it has not got permisson to access the pc, just restart your playstation and it will work perfectly. Also before doing this you must have Windows Media Player 11 or higher.

By having your Playstation linked to the pc you can also stream music and video across and you will not need to save it to the hard disk, however if you are like me and got one of the limited edition 160gb playstations then you will have no worries about saving videos to the hard drive.

Image via Wikipedia

You might be thinking instead of trying to link the pc to the playstation to transfer files why dont you just use a memory stick or a portable hard drive. I did try this first, when i put my memory stick into my playstation it recognised it straight away i was happy, then i clicked to go into it and it said no data found, i knew there was data on it so there had to be something wrong.

It wasnt until later that i found out that instead of clicking ‘X’ to open the memory stick, you have to instead press ‘Triangle’ button and choose display all, then it will open up and show you your files, this is really easy to do and i wish i found out sooner how  to do it, but i still prefer to set it up wirelessly. Also some different types for portable hard drives cannot get recognised by the plastion, for example, the seagate freeagent, this is the one i was using and it didnt work.

I done this using windows xp, i am sure it will not matter if you use xp or vista.

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With nLite you can completely modify the way you install your operating system. you can even make the whole installation process automatic, meaning that you will not have to sit at the computer and modify the settings, this is very time consuming and by having it do the entire install by itself it can make your life that little bit easier.

Also you can choose what default windows programs you don’t want to include like windows messenger or notepad. You can add the latest windows service pack or hotfix into the install, this will also save time.

And of course you can tweak the hell out of it, by doing this you will increase performance speed and unleash the maximum performance from your computer. You can also change the appearance of how windows will look once installed, by changing if you want classic or standard windows theme or if you want the olive green colour scheme or just the standard blue.

Here are the few simple steps involved:

1.) You will first need to get the installation files for your operating system, you can make a new folder on your desktop and copy all the files from your install disc or just copy the contents of the ‘I386′ folder from your hard disk.

2.) Then open the program and locate your install files.

3.) Next select what part of the install that you want to modify.

4.) Then add the latest service pack.

5.) Don’t forget to add any custom drivers you installed since the original install of the OS.

6.) Next set compatibility and choose which default programs you want to remove.

7.) Set up unattended install

8.) Customize the performance by editing the different tweaks available.

9.) And finally create an ISO file or burn directly to a disc.

There are 2 versions available:  nLite is for all versions previous to vista and vLite is for windows vista.

Download Links

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