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Dr_Disk
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- Name: Dr_Disk
- Gender: Male
- Member Since: 3/4/2008
The Origins of Dr. Disk
As the son of two educators, I have a passion for learning. Not Surprisinly, I became what I like to call an Edu Geek! I took my first "real" job as a computer technician in a high school in 1998. The students quickly learned I was the one to come to if they had a damaged floppy disk. 85% of the time I was able to get their data back, earning me the nickname "Dr. Disk." I have since moved on to Network Administration.
I enjoy troubleshooting complex technical issues. I have been working in a high school setting for 10 years. I enjoy helping to bring 21st century learning to teachers and students. It may sound corny, but, the children are our future and we can't let it pass them by!
In this blog, you will find many of the problems I've run across and the solutions I've found.
Enjoy!
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The utopia of the technological order is virtual immortality. --Godfrey Reggio
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Heading home.
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Calmly setting up Novell Users
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Frustrated
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Monday, 05 March 2012
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When You Don't Want a Split Personality
Recently, I had a D630 Latitude decide it was going to scramble it's display. Interestingly, I've had this before and have had to go through Dell to get a replacement. There was a limited warranty enhancement which allowed users with models affected by this issue to get the necessary replacement parts. But that's always such a hassle, I would much rather exhaust all resources. First, I booted the machine while holding down the Fn key to run the diagnostics, but those never loaded. Then I tried holding down the D key while booting the machine. I had read this runs a video diagnostic. And while the pretty colors were very nice on a Monday morning, they did nothing to fix my issue. On a whim I decided to take a look at the BIOS - in the Video-->Primary Video section you have the option to use Dock Video Card or Onboard Video My setting was at Dock Video Card. I switched it to Onboard video and have not had a problem since! Hope this works for you!
Wednesday, 08 February 2012
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Been a While
OK, so it's been a while since my last post. This is actually a good thing, since I usually post here after spending hours figuring out a tech issue that has been haunting me. Today it was audio on an HP Elitebook with Windows 7. I had a group using my laptop to present a project they had been working on for six months. It was a movie file with audio. No big deal right? Plugged in some external speakers anda projector and away the project should have gone. Except the speakers were whisper quiet. In fact they were not working at all! Here's the catch, they worked fine with every other program on my laptop besides Windows Media Player! So off to do the research. Two hours and a call to my Professional Learning Network later and I was still no closer to a solution.
Finally in a fit of brilliance (ok, it was more exasperation) I disabled the speakers entirely. And what do you know, the external speakers started working! Counter-intuitive? You betcha!
You see with Windows 7 - they simply refer to the internal speakers within the Sound Control Panel as "Speakers" Notice they are disabled below.
Everything else would play with the external Speakers plugged in and the normal "Speakers" enabled. Somehow the auto-switching did not work properly within Windows Media Player and yes, I searched for a good half hour through all the program options to see if something was mis-configured. Nothing I could find. Additionally, once the external "speakers" were working through the external "headphones" they were extremely quiet. Fortunately, this was a bit easier to fix. Simply right-clicking on the headphones and selecting properties, I was able to open the enhancements tab and tick the Loudness Equalization box and apply the changes. Didn't make a huge difference but did add enough audio to make the sound audible.
Hey Microsoft, shouldn't we be making technology easier with each new OS?
Tuesday, 13 December 2011
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Scripting in Google Sites? You Bet!
If you are a Google Apps for Education user you may just have people building some pretty amazing Google Sites. Unfortunately, the coding within Sites doesn't always co-operate with embed code that you pulled from different Web 2.0 utilities. For example, Sites does not seem to accept any of the Twitter Widgets codes (which was what a co-worker was trying to do). This was likely do to the <script> code that makes the widget work. For those unfamiliar, <script> typically indicates the presence of a client-side script such as JavaScript. Most of the embed codes you can pull from Web 2.0 sites, includes this type of code. So after a few hours of struggling with alternatives and having little to no success, I put a call out to my Professional Learning Network, who once again came to my rescue (thanks Aida Awad)! She led me to an article called Add Twitter to Google Sites. This simple 4 step process solved the Twitter Widget issue with which we were struggling.
Now if you know me at all, you know my mind is always churning and trying to push the envelope. So, I started wondering would this work with other <script> code. Guess what? It does! If you are not afraid of "hacking" html code read on.
Using the code at the end of this post and replacing the <script> tags (highlighted in red) with whatever script you choose to use, you can "wrap" the code and it's results into your Google Site. But first you must save the file as a .XML and upload it to a hosted website. Uploading the .XML as a Google Doc will not work! Once you have the file somewhere on the web, copy out the URL to the file. Then open your site and choose "Insert Gadget". Under the option "Add gadget by URL" paste the link to the XML file. When you save and apply the change, the script should now successfully be running on your Site!
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<Module>
<ModulePrefs title="ErinBurge" />
<Content type="html"><![CDATA[
<html><head>
<script></script>
</head></html>
]]></Content>
</Module>
Read more: http://zenodotus.net/#ixzz1gS0LvuGF
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives
Tuesday, 02 August 2011
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Fakepath when trying to attach?
I've been running across an error lately that occurs when attaching a file in gmail. It claims that the file is located in a fakepath location n the C: drive when really you are pulling it from a networked location. I've seen this happen most frequently in Internet Explorer and I found the solution today. For IE go to Tools-->Internet Options-->Security-->Custom Level and look for the Miscellaneous section. Enable the include local directory radio button and you should be off and running.
Tuesday, 26 July 2011
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Loosing Your Domain
My District is currently in the middle of a Windows 7 Active Directory roll out as we migrate from Novell. We also have some XP machines that need to connect to the domain. Fairly straight forward unless the "Join Domain" option is greyed out?! That's the situation I ran into today. After a little poking around, I discovered that there was no Windows Client installed on the machine. Once installed joining the domain was a snap.
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