A few weeks ago, I tried to access my external hard drive and surprisingly I got an error message reading, “I/O device error”. I tried to plug the hard drive into many of my other computers, but I continued to get the same errror. I figured it was probably broken, but I read up on the issue anyway to see if anyone else had restored their hard drive from this.

After searching for about 10 minutes I found a forum with a pretty simple solution to this type of problem; it was a short command line script reading: chkdsk [drive letter]: /F

So, since my external hard drive was labeled as drive [E:] (found under ‘My Computer’), my command line script read: chkdsk e: /F. After entering this in, my computer scanned the hard drive, found the bad sector, and fixed it. My hard drive was again accessible!

So, to do this for your own hard drive, find the drive letter of the hard drive you would like to fix, then go to Start >>  Run… and type in ‘cmd’ and press ‘Enter’. When the command line comes up, type in: chkdsk [drive:] /F (such as : chkdsk e: /F) and press ‘Enter’. The computer should now fix your disk.

If the fix disk function cannot fix your hard drive because the drive must be formatted, which is a problem I have had in the past, (read the NOTES below) then you can right click the hard drive (make sure this is not the hard drive your operating system is installed on, usually labeled ‘Local Disk (C:)’) and format disk. Make sure you do a ‘Quick Format’. Do not save anything to the disk after the quick format!

NOTE: This is not guaranteed to recover all of your files or fix your hard drive!

After this, find some disk restore software. I used ‘Recuva’ which I found at http://www.piriform.com/recuva. I downloaded, installed, and opened the program. I then I selected the disk I quick formatted and recovered ‘all types of files’. I saved the recovered files to my external hard drive.

NOTE: This may not work, files may be missing, corrupted, or damaged!

This is essentially the same as recovering deleted files from the recycle bin. When a file is recycled, it remains on the hard drive, but basically, the hard drive now tells the computer, “You can save files where those files were now!”. As long as you do not save new files to the hard drive, the files may be recoverable.

When I did this with my damaged hard drive, many files were covered, and many files were too damaged to recover. But, I feel some files are better than no files.

There! I just saved you a $300 trip to the data recovery specialist!

If you would like, you could still take your hard drive to a specialist, but they will most likely tell you the same thing you would find out by going through this tutorial.

I was recently trying to build an iPhone app, but the problem was, I didn’t have a mac to build/test it on. The iPhone SDK development software will not run on a PC and I have yet to find any mod or hack that would allow me do so. The only other option was to get a Mac, but the cheapest ones run for about $800, which I find is a bit of an unreasonable price to pay for simply putting together a cell phone application.

I decided then I wouldn’t buy a Mac, but install the operating system onto a PC instead. What makes this difficult though, is that the PC must have an intel based processor, and the Mac operating system must be at least Mac OSX 10.5 Leopard to be able to run the iPhone SDK.

I found several tutorials on building Hackintosh’s, which are just PCs turned into Macs. One tutorial for a decent Hackintosh costing under $800 can be found at http://lifehacker.com/software/hack-attack/build-a-hackintosh-mac-for-under-800-321913.php , but the tutorial I used allows you to create a Hackintosh sporting OSX 10.5, for under $240, found at http://www.uselessninjas.com/guides/msiwindosx/.

After this, you should be able to create iPhone apps on a more reasonable budget.

I hope this was helpful,

- Jeff

If you have started doing any SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for your website, you may have noticed that http://www.example.com andhttp://example.com are regarded as two separate website addresses, and can compete against each other for page rank in search engines.

The way you can fix this is by writing a 301 redirect using Mod_Rewrite in your .htaccess file. To do this open your .htaccess file in the root directory of your web server. If you don’t have one, create a new text document, and save as a file instead if a txt file in the dropdown menu, and name it “.htaccess” without the quotes.

Open the file in notepad and write:

RewriteEngine On
rewritecond %{http_host} ^example.com
rewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

In both places where it says “example.com” replace it with your own web address, and then save it and upload it to the root directory of your server, and you’re done!

Now when you type your website in as http://example.com, it should redirect to http://www.example.com!

If you have any more questions about this, feel free to reply.

- Jeff

If you are worried about viruses or spyware infecting your computer, or would just like your computer running smoothly, I would suggest getting an external hard drive to back up all of your data, and periodically format your hard drive and reinstall your operating system.

To make this easier, you might want to take a screen shot of your current programs, so that you can get them again (press print screen, open paint, edit > paste). Also, it would be wise to back up all of your hardware drivers onto a USB flash drive, or your external hard drive.

I think if you use your computer very regularly, it would be good to do this at least once every 6 months, and if you don’t use it all that often, at least once per year.

If you would like to know how to format your hard drive and reinstall Windows (or whatever operating system you’re using) I will be writing a tutorial for that soon.

I hope this is helpful!

- Jeff

I have noticed that some routers have problems connecting computers to the internet that are running Windows XP.

After messing with it for a bit, I found that Windows XP can only accept a limited amount of characters for a router encryption code, so when you enter your WEP or WPA code that is 26 or 54 characters long into the wireless settings, XP won’t accept the code.

Assuming that you still would like to keep your router encrypted, a solution that I have found that works, is to access your router’s settings (usually by opening a web browser and typing your router’s gateway into the URL, which you can find if you go to start > run, type in cmd, press enter, type ipconfig in the command window, and press enter again.) Once you are in your routers settings, go through a wireless setup, or however your router changes an encryption code (you can call your router’s manufacturer if you need help with this) and simply make the encryption code smaller, so that Windows XP will accept it.

So simply put, just make your encryption code smaller to fit XP’s wireless standards. Another option is to always instead use your router’s wireless software instead of Windows XP’s.

If anyone is having a similar problem, and this doesn’t do the trick, feel free to reply.

- Jeff