Without it you can’t transfer your songs to your Sony NW-A3000 player,…or so I thought until yesterday! There are a few ways to transfer your songs to the player, let’s start with the easier one, shall we?

JSymphonic, an open source application (1 file!) written in Java, thus making it platform independent. It’s not fancy, it hasn’t the functionality of SonicStage, but that’s exactly what I did not want.

The biggest plus? JSymphonic supports up to Generation 7 of Sony’s portable music players!

You can transfer your songs from/to the player, delete them, erase the whole HDD, that’s it. You want more? Well, get SonicStage then. Since the whole application resembles only 1 file, you can easily place it inside the player thus being able to transfer songs from/to any computer anywhere anytime.

Note: In order to run JSymphonic you need to have Java Runtimes installed.

Now, the not so easy method!

1. Plugin your mp3-player
2. Backup your files by renaming your directory “OMGAUDIO” to something else like “OMGAUDIObackup” or copy them onto your HDD…
3. Create a new directory “OMGAUDIO”
4. If you have any mp3-player that is not protected: create a file named “nocode.txt”  inside the OMGAUDIO directory
5. If you have a protected mp3-player make sure you have at least ONE of the following:
   • MP3FM correctly installed with a MP3FM/DvId.dat file: see the official Sony page about MP3 File Manager
   • Make sure you have the decodeKey.dat from the keywizard in the directory “GYM” (Grab Your Music): more info at: http://clientes.netvisao.pt/~sonygym/index.htm
6. Download and copy ml_sony to your WinAMP-plugin folder

That’s it. Now run your WinAMP and start copying to/from your Sony’s mp3-player. I know a lot more work than JSymphonic, but there are folks out there using WinAMP.

Now least not last the Volume Limiter Hack!

Sony’s portable music players have, by standard, a volume limiter enabled to protect you from hearing impairment. Some of you couldn’t care less I presume or the normal volume is too low for you, so here’s how to hack it..

Enter the test mode, but ignore step 3:

Proceed to alter the settings according to

After that turn off the mp3-player, and voilá u hasz got moar volumez!

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No mater how much I turned my registry upside down, how much I deleted, something was missing. I just couldn’t find it. “F’k it!” I thought, and turned to google.

Lo and behold, I stumbled upon Unassoc. Simple, small, no installation! Oorah!

Simply search for the desired file type and click “remove file association (user)”, after that Windows 7 will use the global file association. If you still have the wrong application as your standard application then do “delete file type”.

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Especially the access algorithm seems to be doing exactly squat. Files which are being accessed all time aren’t moved at all, like they are supposed to. Anyway, I ditched the junk and set out to find me another defrag application.

I tried Defraggler, which was very nice but way too simple. I needed more. I tried PerfectDisk, it was better but not what I was looking for. I took a look at Auslogics Disk Defrag, something different, but still not what I wanted.

Until I stumbled upon MyDefrag…Why MyDefrag ROCKS:

My very first thought was “WTF is this piece of garbage?”, but trust me, this is, by far, the best defragmentation tool out there.

Why? Because you can write your own defragmentation algorithms. Yea, you read right, your own algorithms.

That is, when and if you’ve read yourself through some tutorials how to write defrag algorith scripts. All you do is write your script in Notepad, save it as yourscript.MyD, move it to your MyDefrag installation folder, start up MyDefrag, select script (algorithm) and off you go!

MyDefrag comes with a couple standard and most used scripts, such as Sort by Access, Sort by Size, Standard Defragmentation, Move to End of Disk, Optimize Daily/Weekly/Monthly, and many more. So you don’t have to worry to read tons of tutorials how to write ‘em.

There are also plenty of user made scripts on the official forums and the internet. Hit google.com, I guarantee you’ll find a script just for your needs!

Though I strongly suggest you learn how to write your own scripts, only then will you tap into MyDefrag’s true potential. Because let’s face it, nothing beats scripts tailored to your specific needs and only you know what they are!

On a practical note, I do see an increase in performance after using my own scripts, although not a very big one, but an increase nonetheless.

Example scripts that come with the installation are Sort By Last Access , Move To End Of Disk, Consolidate free space, or an user written one Full Optimize from the MyDefrag forums.

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Well, recently I stumbled upon what you may call an “application center”, KLS Soft’s WSCC aka Windows System Control Center.

Essentially, WSCC provides a convenient GUI and lists all of Sysinternals’, NirSoft’s and Window’s own utilities in a comfortable order. There are 2 ways to run WSCC, though.

You can choose not to download every application which results in longer starting times of each application. Because every time you start WSCC the application needs to be downloaded and cached. The cache is emptied upon closing WSCC and you have to re-download said application upon starting WSCC again.

Or you can choose to download every one of the applications via “Updates” in the upper right corner in a chosen folder resulting in shorter starting times.

WSCC is a must-have for everybody who likes to know what’s going on with their system! The sheer amount of utilities should satisfy almost any need!

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What it essentially does is, it scans the whole hard drive, renders different images depending on disk usage and assigns them to each single file and folder. There’s a way to show more details, meaning going deeper down to show the usage of each single file, or less details showing only the folders.

SpaceSniffer is more focused on clean graphical display than detailed information, like WinDirStat for example. You can directly manipulate the files/folders from inside the application. Double clicking a “block” will cause it to show you more detailed information (files) about it.

One use, suggested by Caschy, would be to delete unnecessary files if you plan to do backups. Saves time and disk space. I’m sure there are other uses for it, I personally use it to check usage by each application I have installed.

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The biggest problem most of us face while recording gameplay clips with Fraps is its disk space usage. Fraps records everything uncompressed, continuously (free version is limited to 30 sec.) and sequential. Meaning from start till stop the “whole” clip is split into single 4GB files (I believe due FAT32 filesize restrictions).

The length of a single 4 GB clip depends on the resolution and the in-game scene you record it in. For example, for me a 4 GB clip has about 90 sec. worth of gameplay in 1920×1200 resolution.

Because of this uncompressed real-time recording your frame-rates drops significantly while playing. There is NO way to keep up 40+fps with Fraps running unless you have one hell of a monster system.

Imagine what happens when you want to capture a 30+ min gameplay clip. Either you buy yourself a Terabyte HDD or you use a very simple trick: recording in half-size, upscaling and sharpening. Read the whole How-To guide!

Recording in Half-screen/size

Before we start with VirtualDub transcoding, upscaling and sharpening, we first have to record our gameplay. We do not record our gameplay in full-screen/size mode, as usual, but in half-screen/size:

This means if you have a game running at 1920×1200 resolution, Fraps will record it at 960×600, or if you run it at 1280×1024, Fraps will record 640×512, etc. Which in turn translates into much more gameplay time in each 4 GB file.

Another example: While recording in 1920×1200, I only got about 90 sec. (1:30 min) per 4 GB file, recording in half the resolution (i.e. 960×600) resulted in about 360 sec. (6 min) per 4 GB file. Whole 270 sec. more!

Upscaling and Sharpening

We want HD Quality, so we’re going to upscale and sharpen our recorded clip. Start up VirtualDub, open the uncompressed file, change in “Video” -> “Full Processing Mode” and “Audio” -> “Full Processing Mode”, then set your VirtualDub according to this screenshot:

Save your settings via “File” -> “Save processing settings” or Ctrl+S, so you can simply load them in the future. Saves a lot of time!

Addendum: Regarding “Threads”; QuadCores = 6, DualCores = 3.

You’ll need VirtualDub and a codec-pack which has the H.264 codec, like the “K-Lite Mega Codec Pack“. The settings in the screenshot are the same ones like in “VirtualDub 720p HD settings for YouTube! [Good quality, small file size]“, what differs, however, is that we are also going to use the “sharpen” filter.

We call the method to resize a lower resolution (960×600) to a higher resolution (1280×720, in this case), UPSCALING (sometimes also refereed to as up-converting). For your information, 1280×720 is the Standard HD (720p) resolution. The other is Ultra-HD or Full-HD (1080p, 1920×1080).

However due the upscaling method we lose quality, which is where the filter “sharpen” comes in. Upscaling from lower to higher resolutions causes the image to “blur”. Sharpen removes the blur and, well, sharpens the image.

You’ll have to experiment with the slider in preview mode around a bit, until you find the result best to your liking. I found myself settling down between 23-30, depending on each clip.

When everything is set, start transcoding via “File” -> “Save as AVI”.

Two important VirtualDub settings you should not forget:

“Options” -> “Preferences” -> “Threading”: Set the “Video Compression Threads” to 1. This is important if you have a multi-core CPU to make use of the multiple cores and in turn speed up the transcoding process.

Since VirtualDub Version 1.9.4 there’s an option to use your GPU as part of the transcoding process. Make use of it to additionally speed up your transcoding process. “Options” -> “Preferences” -> “3D accel”, hack in the box.

Addendum 16.05.2010:
I’ve been getting mixed messages. Apparently using “3d accel” causes it to render slower than usual on some systems. I can confirm that. With 3d accel turned on, a 10min video takes about 1 hour 10-20 minutes, while turned off it takes about 1 hour max. You’ll have to experiment on your system!

Addendum 23.10.2009:
There’s currently a problem causing VirtualDub 1.9.4/5/6/7, crashing under Windows 7. The culprit is 3D accel! Turn it off under “Preferences” -> “3D accel” and enjoy VirtualDub once again!

Update 22.03.2010:
Updated Setting Screenshots

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But no it wasn’t. The lag was caused by Firefox’s session saving feature. A simple and fast change in it and “poof” went the lag.

• Open Firefox and type in “about:config” (without the “) in the Address Bar and hit Enter.
• Type in “session” in the “Filter” line at the top of the list.
• Find “browser.sessionstore.interval” and double click it. The 10000 milliseconds (equals 10 seconds) is the interval in which Firefox keeps saving your session in case of a crash; same amount of time between video lags.
• Change it to something different. 120000 equals 2 minutes, 300000 equals 5 minutes or something else you desire. I went with 600000 (10 minutes), because I don’t particularly care about session saving.

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A long time ago I had DriverCleaner, a tool to remove certain driver leftovers! Lately I’ve had to battle with some odd issues about my graphic card driver leftovers. They just won’t delete. I wanted a clean de-installation because some games started to act up.

So I set out to look for a modern and up-to-date (and possibly free!) alternative to DriverCleaner and I came across Guru 3D’s Driver Sweeper. I recommend this application! It’s up-to-date (latest 23.07.2009) and deletes everything (as far as I can see, it resolved my issues at least).

Drive Sweeper deletes ATI (Display), NVIDIA (Display and Chipset), Ageia (PhysX), Creative (Sound), MMouse (whatever that is) and Realtek (Sound) drivers. I wanted it to delete my ATI driver leftovers.

According to Guru3D it also runs on any modern Windows system including Win7:

System requirements:
The Guru3D – Driver Sweeper is fully tested on Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Windows & 7 RC. Both 32-bit and 64-bit versions are supported.

The absolutely best and sure way to delete anything is first to uninstall it via its official Uninstaller, then reboot your system into Safe Mode and fire up Driver Sweeper. Skiping Safe Mode also works but some files might not get deleted in the process.

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Over time it’s get filled up with unnecessary and old info if you want, and there’s a simple method to ditch those useless info and speed up your Firefox considerably, or like most of the guides say to “vacuum” it.

Use it once in a while, I’ve seen an improvement on my Firefox since I used it.

1. Go to “Tools” -> “Error Console”
2. Paste this in the “Code” text box:

   Components.classes["@mozilla.org/browser/nav-history-service;1"].getService(Components.interfaces.nsPIPlacesDatabase).DBConnection.executeSimpleSQL("VACUUM");

3. Press enter or click “evaluate”
4. Your Firefox will freeze for a short time, just wait
5. Enjoy your speed up Firefox!

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Voilá!

Reading the beta testers reviews and various blogs, Windows 7 seems to be THE true sequel to Windows XP. Vista was a disaster (I’m not going into detail with this one), to be honest. Thank god my friend had the Ultimate and I could borrow and test it before wasting my money. It was absolutely horrible to have Vista running.

The biggest plus for Windows 7 is the so called XP Emulation. Win XP Applications which normally wouldn’t run under Vista because they ain’t programmed for it, WILL run on Windows 7 even if they are not programmed for Windows 7 because Win 7 will emulate a Win XP Mode. This way you can run you beloved Apps without fear.

The downside is the feature is CPU depended. Meaning old CPU’s who don’t support it won’t be able to run the Win XP Mode. According to Tom’s Hardware, those Intel CPUs will be able to run the Win XP Mode. Another downside is its huge resources demand. For the Win XP Virtual Mode 2GB are the minimum.

According to AMD, those CPUs will be able to handle Win XP Mode:

“With the exceptions of Sempron-branded processors and pre-Rev F Athlon branded processors, all of the desktop processors shipped by AMD include AMD-V and therefore support Windows 7 in XP mode.”

“Also, all AMD Opteron processors shipped by AMD from Rev F forward include AMD-V.”

If you are still not sure and don’t believe me, check your CPU by yourself.

Edit: Found another tool, Microsoft® Hardware-Assisted Virtualization Detection Tool.

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