Cobalt Computer Consulting Tips & Tricks.

Setting Apple Time Capsule as NAS Storage only.

2010-11-25T06:41:00.005-05:00

So you want to use an Apple Time Capsule as a NAS drive, and a NAS drive ONLY. No problem.

Let's begin by going to Finder>Applications>Utilities>Airport Utility.

The first thing that you should do is to disable all unnecessary network communication protocols. To do this, click the "Internet" icon, and then while in the "Internet Connection" tab, select the "Connection Sharing" drop down manu and select "Off (Bridge Mode)". This will disable all routing functions, and the WAN port will now become a regular ethernet port.

Next we want to turn off the wireless option.

Now, select the "Airport" icon at the top of the window. Now choose the third tab over labeled "Wireless". For "Wireless Mode" select "Off". (See below)

You now have a basic NAS drive. Mission complete.

*One last note: You may want to remove the password from the Time Capsule in the "Time Capsule" tab, as you may have trouble connecting to it in Windows if you don't.

Saving / Copying Playlists From Your iPod to iTunes

2010-10-24T10:33:00.003-04:00

To save a playlist from your iPod and copy it into iTunes, do the following: (These instructions pertain to a Mac computer, but won't vary too much from PC)

1. Plug in the device (iPod).

2. Click the device when it populates in the left hand column under "Devices".

3. Select the playlist and right click it.

4. Choose "Export" from the list.

5. At the bottom of the screen that pops up, there will be a drop down box that says "Format" next to it. Click it and select .xml, and save the file to your desktop for now.

6. Copy the .xml file that we just created and put it on the computer with iTunes that you want to import it to.

Go to iTunes and select File>Library>Import Playlist...

iTunes Home Sharing: Part II - Automatically Syncing Purchased Media

2010-09-29T18:54:00.013-04:00

So you want to have multiple computers in your house to all have the same music on them at all times. This can be fairly difficult to achieve, but it can be done.

You will most likely sacrifice some things that you would like to do in this situation, but that all depends on the scenario. The scenario that I will use here is this:

Scenario 1 (For a related family living in the same home) - 1 home network, 5 computers (That is the maximum allowed per iTunes account), all running MAC OS X (In this scenario), 1 NAS (Network Attached Storage Drive (Say, 1TB)), and several devices. (iPad, iTouch, iPhone, iPod Nano, etc....).

Now, the problem that I have always had is that, if I bought anything from the iTunes store, I would have to remember to add it to all of the other computers in my house manually. But with Windows 9 or 10, you can now use Home Sharing to fix this flawlessly. Here's how:

**Important factors to note:
****You must use one (1) iTunes account across the network for all of the purchases and devices to work flawlessly. Here is why. How many times have you bought a song on one computer and tried to play it on another computer, and because it was purchased through the iTunes store, it wants you to log into the iTunes account that the song was purchased with in order for it to play?
Too many. So for all of your libraries to stay in sync, and to automatically add purchases from any device or computer to all of the iTunes libraries on your Home Share network, USE ONLY ONE MASTER ITUNES ACCOUNT FOR ALL PURCHASES. It's a nuisance, but you'll avoid conflicts and issues.

****Syncing Purchases - Any purchases made from the iTunes store PRIOR to turning on Home Sharing on the computers, will need to be manually moved to each library (Computer) and will not be synced to the libraries. Purchases made AFTER you enable Home Sharing on all computers will automatically transfer/sync to the other libraries (as well as the master iTunes library folder on the NAS) as long as all computers have Home Sharing enabled on those computers. Even if you purchased music on a device for instance (iPod), as long as it was purchased under the same master account, it will transfer the purchase(s) from the device to all libraries once plugged into a computer.

****Before you begin this process, it is a good idea to log into the master iTunes account that you will be using and "Deauthorize" all computers, as you will need to re-"Authorize" all of the computers in the home and on the home network in the following steps.

Let's get started.........

1. Get all of your music and media together on a single NAS drive. If you want everyone in the house to have the same library at all times, start here.

2. Once all of your media is on the NAS, start with a fresh, clean updated version of the latest version of iTunes. Install iTunes and do the following.

3. In iTunes, go to File>Library and then navigate the the NAS drive and folder on your network that holds all of the music and media (Example: G:\iTunes Library).

4. Once selected, iTunes should start to populate the library with the media and/or media folder selected.

5. Now, the most important part of keeping all of the purchases and libraries in sync. Turn on Home Sharing.

6. Type your Apple ID and password, and click Create Home Share.

7. Using the same Apple ID, repeat steps 1 and 2 on each computer.

8. To import items from another computer, select the computer (below Shared), and drag items from its library to yours.

9. To automatically import future iTunes Store items you download on the other Home Share computers, select‚ Automatically import new purchases from [Computer Name]. (You first have to select the Shared Library name in the Shared section. After you do, a Settings button appears in the lower right of the iTunes window, next to an Import button. Click the Settings button and you can select to enable automatic transfers for your choice of categories (Music, Movies, TV Shows, Audiobooks, and Applications). You need to do this separately for each shared library.

Airport Extreme Base Station / Extending Your Home Network

2010-09-21T17:08:00.010-04:00

Airport Extreme Base Station / Extending Your Home Network

**Note: Make sure to reset the Apple Airport Express to factory defaults if it is not new out of the box. It may have someone else's old settings on it. To do this:

1. Unplug it from the wall.
2. Use a pen to hold in the reset button on the unit.
3. While holding the reset button in, plug it into the wall (continue holding button) until the amber light flashes rapidly. Now release the button.
**Note: If the Airport Express still doesn't show up in the Airport Utility at this point, go to the Airport (Wireless waves) icon up by the clock, and see if the device appears there. If it does, click it. It should now appear in Airport Utility. Now repeat that process, but this time connect back to your main network again.

To set up a new or additional Airport Express to extend your current network, follow these steps:
**Note: These instructions pertain to Mac OS X only.

1. Go to Finder and select Applications>Utilities>Airport Utility
2. In the left pane you will see your main base station (i.e. Time Capsule, Airport Extreme, Airport Express), and possibly your new Apple Airport Express.
3. Select your main (Original) base station by clicking it and selecting "Manual Setup" at the bottom of that screen.
4. Now make sure that you have selected the "Airport" icon at the top, and also the "Wireless" tab on this screen. (See image below.)

5. All you really need to change here is to make sure that you check the box on this screen labled "Allow this network to be extended".

To be continued........

iTunes Home Sharing (And what those "Shared" icons mean.) iTunes 9 / iTunes 10

2010-09-12T12:05:00.018-04:00

Q: What is the difference between "Share your iTunes library" and "Home Share" or "Home Sharing" your iTunes library?

A: "Share your iTunes library" means - "If your computer is connected to other computers over a local network, you can share items in your library with up to five of those computers. While your computer is on and iTunes is open, others in your network can play your shared items, but can’t import shared items into their libraries." If you want to import items from other iTunes libraries on other computers in your home network, you can turn on Home Sharing. (**IMPORTANT NOTE**: Protected media (music) purchased through the iTunes store will become an issue at some point. UNLESS ALL OF YOUR MUSIC, APPS, SHOWS AND MOVIES ARE ALL PURCHASED ON DEVICES AND THROUGH ITUNES WITH THE SAME ITUNES ACCOUNT / CREDIT CARD. THEN THIS WILL WORK FLAWLESSLY.

Home sharing works best if none of your media is protected. If it is protected, you will have to go through the "authorize computer" process, which limits to 5 computers. In January of 2009, the iTunes store came to an agreement with record companies, and stripped it's store of DRM protected music. So with that in mind, and music purchased after that date should be unprotected. Here is an article explaining how to remove the DRM protection from your purchased music.)

"Home Share" or "Home Sharing" your iTunes library means - "You can use Home Sharing to import items from up to five iTunes libraries on other computers in your home network. To use Home Sharing, you must have an Apple ID account." So in other words, if you just want to stream or listen to other people's iTunes libraries and playlists, and NOT copy or add their music to your library, then you just want to "Share your iTunes library". But if you want to trade or copy music from one computer to the other, then you need to enable "Home sharing".

To just "Share your iTunes library" with other computers for playback or streaming purposes (but not to copy files), you'll want to enable "Sharing":

1. Choose iTunes > Preferences, click Sharing, and select “Share my library on my local network.”

2. Select the items you want to share.

3. To require users to enter a password before they can see your shared items, select “Require password,” and enter a password.

If you choose to share your entire library, its name appears in the iTunes window (below Shared) on other local computers set up to look for shared libraries. To change the name others see, choose iTunes > Preferences, click General, and type a new name in the Library Name field.

To be able to trade or copy music between iTunes libraries over the network, you will want to enable "Home Sharing" on every computer that you want to exchange files with.

To turn on "Home Sharing" (To copy files from one computer to another):

1. Choose Advanced > Turn On Home Sharing.
**Note: You may need to go to each computer and turn off "Home Sharing" if it is on, then turn it back on on each computer. Each computer will need to login to one, single (master, or main one) iTunes account, and then "authorize" each computer for home sharing under that same account (Example: All computers should turn on Home Sharing and then login to mainuser@gmailexample.com). After you have transferred all of the music that you want from all of the computers, go to the "Store" link at the top of iTunes, and then select "Deauthorize This Computer". When that is done, all UNPROTECTED media that was transferred will now be played and essentially "owned" by that computer.

2. Type your Apple ID and password, and click Create Home Share.

3. Using the same Apple ID, repeat steps 1 and 2 on each computer.

4. To import items from another computer, select the computer (below Shared), and drag items from its library to yours.

5. To automatically import future iTunes Store items you download on the other Home Share computers, select “Automatically import new purchases from [Computer Name].”

You DO NOT need to do both to enable home sharing. In other words, you DO NOT first have to go to "preferences" and enable "sharing" and then go to "advanced" and enable "Home Sharing". Simply enabling "Home sharing" opens the whole library on every computer that currently also has "Home Sharing" turned on. **HOWEVER**, at least 2 computers must have Home Sharing turned on, otherwise you will not see a share on either computer. So even if computer #1 has home sharing on, it will not show up on computer #2 unless computer #2 also has home sharing turned on. As soon as this is done on both computers, you should see the home icon appear under the "Share" category in the left iTunes sidebar.

What do the "Shared" icons mean in iTunes when working with or enabling Home sharing?

This iTunes shared icon with the house, means that "Home Sharing" is enabled and turned on between at least 2 computers on the network. "Sharing" through the "Preferences" pane may also be active at this time, but will not be reflected as an icon. The Home Sharing icon takes precedent over the "Sharing" icon in this case.

This is the "Sharing" icon. It means that "Sharing" has been turned on for (streaming playback only) on the network through the "Preferences" panel. This means that "Home Sharing" is disabled at this time.

This iTunes shared icon with the lock on it means that "Sharing" has been turned on, but that the library is password protected.

Managing missing or different content:

Say you connect to your brothers library through home sharing, and he has a large library. How do you know what songs that he has that you don't? It would take forever to browse his library.

Well, if you click his library and look at the bottom of the iTunes screen, you will see a new dropdown box with the "Show" option. Click this and select "Items not in my library". Now iTunes will display only the items that you do not have in your library. As you select and drag the songs from here to your own library, you will see that they simply disappear.

In addition to that, if you want any future purchases from that library to be automatically added to your library in the future, you can select the "Settings" button in the lower right corner of iTunes and choose the options for future automatic transfer syncing there.

I will add to this blog later. Thanks for reading.

Windows XP File Repair

2010-01-21T14:26:00.004-05:00

(Windows XP Instructions)

So you want to try to repair your Windows XP installation, but you don’t know what to do after you get past all of the Windows prompt screens, and are left staring at a black screen that reads:

“1: C:\WINDOWS

Which Windows installation would you like to log onto

?”

Well, here’s a little tutorial........

The following issue also applies to these errors:

- Unmountable Boot Volume

- Can't run System Restore in normal mode or safe mode, can't open programs

- Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\...

- Stop: ... {Registry File Failure} The registry cannot load the hive.

- System error: Lsass.exe

-When trying to update a password the return status indicates that the value provided as the current password is not correct.)

Scenerio: So you’re troubleshooting your computer system, running virus scans, what have you, and you reboot because it was required, or to see if the problem has been resolved. And upon the reboot you get this message:

“Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:

\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM

You can attempt to repair this file by starting Windows Setup using the original Setup CD-ROM.

Select ‘r’ at the first screen to start repair.”

Oh. Great. Thanks.

First of all, this is only relevant if you have your Windows XP CD-ROM. (If you have a PC that didn’t come with one, or has a recovery disc or recovery partition instead, then this does not pertain to you. Sorry for your luck. I personally think that all PC manufacturers should have included a physical copy of YOUR Windows disc separate from their added extra software. Anyways......)

When you hit “r” to repair, Windows checks the hard drive and then brings you to a black screen. This is the recovery console.

This is where the help comes in.

Windows Recovery Console will say:

“1: C:\WINDOWS

Which Windows installation would you like to log onto?”

Hit the number 1 key and press enter.

Next it will ask for the Administrator password:

Just press ENTER (Hopefully it has never been set).

The screen drops to a command prompt of C:\WINDOWS>

So.....what do you do now? Windows no longer prompts you as to what to do from here.

First, perform a disk check by typing chkdsk /p and hit enter.

When that is finished, type fixboot and hit enter.

Now type exit and hit enter to restart the system.

Hopefully this fixed your issue. If not, try these additional steps:

As soon as the computer starts hit F8 every second to bring up the Advanced Options Menu.

Choose the Last Known Good Configuration.

I Hope this helps.

Please visit www.cobaltflorida.com for additional assistance.

Privacy Center Virus

2010-01-21T14:19:00.000-05:00

I ran across this one today (5-29-2009). Nasty bugger. Here’s what I did to get rid of it. (Windows XP Instructions)

Privacy Center is promoted as a “Simple one-click solution to protect your PC”. It even shows a link to Microsoft’s Privacy policy. Privacy Center is a type of virus. This rogue program will arrive on computers as a fake Windows Media coder/decoder required to play certain multimedia files. Privacy Center will be installed simultaneously with this fake codec without users knowledge.

It takes over your windows boot sequence and basically hijacks your operating system. Your desktop will never load at all in most cases, so you can’t even get to the start button to execute commands in the command prompt.

At first, it looks as though it is scanning and finding all kinds of bad files. I’m not sure what happens at the end of the scan, because in my case, all it does is eventually throw about 100 pop up error windows at me until the system crashes.

Well here is the solution that worked for me:

1.As soon as the Privacy Center interface appears, CTRL+ALT+DEL. Task manager appears. Quickly go to the “processes” tab, click “Image Name” at the top of the list of running processes, and find “pc.exe”. Right click it and select “End Process Tree”. That should shut the program down and make it disappear.
2.Now all you have is a blank desktop. Not to worry. In the Windows Task Manager window that you should still have open, (if not, CTRL+ALT+DEL again), go up to “File” and select “New Task (Run...)”. Enter cmd and click “OK”.
3.This should open the command prompt screen. Now type the word “explorer” without the quotes. Just the word itself, and hit enter. You should now see your desktop.
4.Open Task Manager again, (CTRL+ALT+DEL), click the “processes” tab again and right click>”End Process Tree” these processes if you can see them running:

openvpn.exe

tapinstall.exe

agent.exe

5.Now go to My Computer and double click your C: drive. Now find the Program Files folder and double click that. In this folder we want to find a folder called Privacy Center or PCPro or PC (something. The name of the folder varies). Double click that folder and look for a file named Uninstall or Uninst. Double click and run this file. Follow the prompts, then reboot your system and see if the issue has been resolved. If it has, I still recommend doing a full system scan with several different programs such as AVG Free, Malwarebytes, Ad-aware and/or Spybot Search & Destroy. All of these programs can be found at www.download.com.

Now, many websites say to go download Malwarebytes, a reputable application, but they fail to mention that this Privacy Center program that we’re trying to remove, may not allow you to install it, mainly because it knows what the software is.

Additional tasks

Try to locate and remove these Privacy Center files:

C:\Program Files\Privacy center\

C:\Program Files\Privacy center\agent.exe

C:\Program Files\Privacy center\sounds\

C:\Program Files\Privacy center\tools\tapinstall.exe

C:\Program Files\Privacy center\tools\openvpn.exe

(Advanced Users)

Locate and delete the following registry keys:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Privacy Center

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\Privacy Center

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Privacy Center

Update

After doing all of the previous steps, I still noticed that the PC would not allow the installation of several prorgrams like Hijackthis and Malwarebytes, and Spysweeper.

So I removed the drive and did a full scan (externally) with AVG. It found about 8 files in the C:\Windows\System32 directory and also in C:\Windows\System32\Drivers. These files all started with a capital UACand a bunch of garble after the UAC like UACkjbku76hdjgvu, and so on. These files were found with AVG on the initial internal scan also, but were not able to be removed. That’s why I did the external scan.

Also, please take note that these files were not found until near the very end of the scan, so be patient. This customer's scan took almost 3 hours.

After running an additional scan with Spybot, etc....., I reinstalled the drive and fired up Malwarebytes and it worked. And even found 4 additional issues right away.

Good Luck!

Additional repair information can be found on my website www.cobaltflorida.com

Helpful Applications for Spyware / Virus Removal (Plus some favorites)

2010-01-21T13:35:00.000-05:00

You can get almost all of this software from http://www.download.com. All of the software there is tested for adware and viruses before it is posted on the site. The site is very reputable.

AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 8.5 - Download

This is one of the very best anti-virus softwares out there.

It finds things that Norton and McAfee don’t find, and it’s free. And it doesn’t hassle you with a ton of pop up notifications or slow your computer down. It’s been downloaded over 200,000,000 times.

Ad-Aware Free - Download

Use this software in addition to all of the others listed here. Remember, what one piece of software might find, another may not, and vice versa.

Mozilla Firefox Internet Browser - Download

A very fast, but more importantly, safer web browser. I do not recommend Microsoft Internet Explorer. But keep IE on your computer, as not every site on the internet will work flawlessly with Firefox, although 99.9% will.

Malwarebytes - Download

Malwarebytes has become a highly heralded, reputable tool lately. Again, this program finds infections that some of the others don’t.

And if I can help further, my services are available for hire.
http://www.cobaltflorida.com

iWeb '08 and '09: Remove underline from link in iWeb (Tutorial)

2010-01-21T13:32:00.000-05:00

I see people all over the web asking how to do this, and several posts suggest messing with CSS, because no one gives a simple, or even detailed answer. You do NOT need to mess with CSS. Well here it is.

I am going to give the example of making a "word" a link. (Not an image or a box. Just a word.)

1. In iWeb, open inspector (lower right corner).

2. Highlight or double click to highlight the word that you want to turn into a link.

3. In the inspector, click the "Link Inspector" icon (The curved blue arrow icon).

4. Now, there are 2 buttons inside of the "Link Inspector". "Hyperlink" and "Format".

5. Click the "Hyperlink" button and check the "Enable as a hyperlink" box.

6. Now point it to wherever you want to using the "Link to:" and "URL:" options.

7. Now select the "Format" button in the "Link Inspector" box.

8. This is where it got confusing for me. Most people don't notice this, this is why I am posting this.

9. This is where you can select the color options for your links. You'll notice that the first option is "Normal". This is the color that you want the link to be. But NEXT to it, (and all of the other options), is, by default, a blue underlined "U". Click it, and it turns white. When it turns white, this turns the UNDERLINE LINK option to "off".

Do the same for the rest.

I really hope this helps.

First post - Boosting Pagerank

2010-01-21T13:30:00.000-05:00

Great article here.