Posts Tagged ‘Hacks’

A Workaround to View DVD Movies in Windows Media Center on the Xbox 360 using Windows Home Server and the My Movies Add-in

Wednesday, November 12th, 2008

The basics of my current setup:

  1. Xbox 360 Elite with the latest updates from MS Live (as of 11 November 2008)
  2. Windows Media Center (WMC) on this Xbox was setup through a Notebook PC running Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 along with Windows Media Player 11 (WMP)
  3. After setting up WMC, the Xbox was then set up to view shared media from a Windows Home Server (WHS) on an HP EX475 [see my guide on how to do this here]
  4. My Movies for WHS (v2.49) is installed on the WHS. The x86 client (v2.49) is also installed on the notebook PC for easier metadata editing. I think settings in the WHS Home Server Console are basically the default settings (ie just set up to watch my /Videos share)
  5. I have setup “//SERVER/Videos/Movies” where I have individual folders for each DVD in my collection, within which I have the ISO for the DVD. This works fine on WMC on the PC’s in my house, but this will not work with the Xbox (and apparently with any other extender), thus the following steps have helped me get around this

  (more…)

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Posted in Help and How-To | 2 Comments »

How to remove ActiveX Controls in Internet Explorer 7 (Windows Vista)

Saturday, May 31st, 2008

I was having a problem with a website, and thought it might be due to an incorrect installation of an ActiveX Control. I found two sources from Microsoft; the first of which did not seem to address my question, the second one did. But I wanted to post screenshots because it was not entirely obvious how to do this.

This refers to Internet Explorer 7 on Windows Vista Service Pack 1.

METHOD 1

The first post that I found from the Microsoft Knowledge base has you go through the control panel. For one, this KB needs updated because it refers to Windows XP terminology and could be confusing to those using Vista.

(more…)

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Simple (and free!) Tool for Checking GPU Information

Tuesday, May 27th, 2008

I found a very cool application that checks info regarding your installed GPU and it works with ATI and NVIDIA graphics cards. This is free, small, and simple; created by the folks who make ATI Tool which I used to use for overclocking back when ATI made decent GPUs.

It is called GPU-Z, which you can download from FileHippo here, or go their website at CPUID. Here are screenshots using version 0.2.2 on a Lenovo ThinkPad T61: (more…)

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Posted in Reviews | 1 Comment »

Simple (and free!) Tool for Checking CPU, RAM, and Motherboard Information

Tuesday, May 27th, 2008

I found a very cool application that checks info regarding your installed CPU, RAM, and Mobo. This is free, small, and simple.

It is called CPU-Z, which you can download from FileHippo here, or go their website at CPUID. Here are screenshots using version 1.45 on a Lenovo ThinkPad T61:

(more…)

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How To: Convert .pss files to .avi

Wednesday, May 30th, 2007

Note: The following procedure was successful using Windows XP SP2

What you will need:

1.) PSS Plex
2.) AVI Synth 2.5.7
3.) DGMPGDec v1.4.9 Beta 9
4.) MF Audio v1.1
5.) Virtual Dub v1.7
6.) Regular old Windows Notepad or any other text editor

STEP 1: Converting .pss to .m2v (Converting to an MPEG2 file or more commonly known as DVD video)

1. Open PSS Plex.

2. Choose “DEMULTIPLEX”. (more…)

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How-To: Extract Full Motion Video (FMV) from Final Fantasy X-2 as a .pss file

Wednesday, May 30th, 2007

Note: The following procedure was successful using Windows XP SP2

What you will need:

1.) Final Fantasy X-2 PS2 Game Disk (NTSC U/C version)
2.) DVD Decrypter 3.5.4.0
3.) WinHex 13.6

Please use your friendly Google to search for DVD Decrypter as sources for this change and, frankly, it is illegal now to post direct links to this. On a related note, please don’t post asking how to crack WinHex. Just pay for the damn thing or get creative with some further Google searching.

I have adapted much of these instructions from DemonSpawn and Castor Troy, but I have also done my own experimenting to create the best quality extraction, so I have added a couple more steps.

At this time, I can only say that I was able to confirm extraction by using the above software with the following method:

STEP 1: Copy FFX-2 to Your Comptuer

1. Insert your copy of FFX-2 into the DVD drive of your PC.
2. Open DVD Decrypter.
3. DVD Decrypter should read your disk and look something like the following:

4. Open Mode -> then choose ISO -> Read

(more…)

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