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Ever wish you could make one of your computer’s drives invisible to anyone snooping around on your system? Well, happy days are here my friend! Whether you have sensitive docs, pictures, or any other private data, this is one of the easiest ways to keep them safe. Keep in mind that you’ll still be able to access your hidden drives; you just won’t see that they exist in Windows Explorer or the My Computer folder. Back up your registry before you start!

1. Open Regedit.

2. Navigate to one of these strings:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer - this only changes the settings for the current logged in user

HKEY_LOCALMACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer - this changes the settings for all users on the machine. You may have to create the key folder “Explorer” manually.

3. In the Explorer key folder, create a new DWORD value by right-clicking Explorer, then choosing New DWORD value. Name the value “NoDrives” (without the quotes). This value defines local and network drive visibility for each logical drive on the computer. All drives will be visible as long as this value’s data is set to 0.

4. Following the table below, enter the decimal number corresponding to the drive(s) you want to hide as NoDrives value data. When you right-click on NoDrives and choose Modify, make sure you select Decimal base, not Hexadecimal.

Drive Number to hide
A: 1
B: 2
C: 4
D: 8
E: 16
F: 32
G: 64
H: 128
I: 256
J: 512
K: 1024
L: 2048
M: 4096
N: 8192
O: 16384
P: 32768
Q: 65536
R: 131072
S: 262144
T: 524288
U: 1048576
V: 2097152
W: 4194304
X: 8388608
Y: 16777216
Z: 33554432
All drives 67108863

If you want to hide more than one drive, you simply add the drive amounts together for a combined total.

For example, to hide the D:/ and T:/ drives, add the decimal value for the D:/ drive to the decimal value to the T:/ drive.

8 (D) + 524288 (T) = 524296

To disable all of your visible drives, set the value to 67108863.

You must reboot your PC to see your changes.

A great article on overclocking the EEEPC with the EEECTL utility can be found at the link source below. I personally bought the 900MHZ system anyway, but there are some other great features such at:

Fan Control

Temperature display

Adjust CPU Clock Speed

Adjust CPU voltage

The most recent feature changes of the utility display the following:

PCIEX speed can now be controlled too, fan can be controlled automatically with the user-defined rules, hotkeys are now much easier to configure, command line parameters are back(-c “path\to config\file.ini”(can be used once) and -e module.method(can be used multiple times, see eeectl.ini for the short list of the most useful available methods).

EeeCTL should work with any BIOS on 701(4G[surf]) & 702(8G). 700(2G) is not supported and most likely won’t be.

Some features may not work on Windows Vista.

Definitely worth checking out. I may push my EEEPC Beyond the 900MHZ, stock barrier, but we’ll see. Some interesting pictures with regard to post performance, and a comparison of prior performance below.

Source: Scale Gamer

Currently, memory speeds are going higher and higher with each day, and while it isn’t such a big thing to see DDR2 memory rated somewhere around 1000MHz, most DDR3 modules produced so far were rated as “DDR3-1333″, and sometimes “DDR3-1625″ or “DDR3-1800″(of course, nothing stopped various producers coming up with their own speed ratings, less common). I said “so far” because, one of these days, Team Group released a new product that broke the 2GHz barrier!

Team Group’s memory modules rated DDR3-2133 are a part of their older Team Xtreem series, and they are currently providing the highest bandwidth available in memory modules that can be found on the market. Apart from the 2133-rated ones, Team Group also offers DDR3-1700 and DDR3-1600 modules.All these DDR3 memories available under the Team Xtreem flag use custom heat spreaders to keep them cooler, increase reliability, and overclocking possibilities, as well as to make them more attractive to our eyes. For now, probably not many of us would consider buying 2GHz DDR3 memory, because the performance of this kind of memory doesn’t fully justify its price yet, but it’s good to know where we stand and where we’re headed…

Cool little tutorial on getting customized ringtones on your Kyrocera M1000 (Lingo).

Creating the ringtone:
I’m sure there are better tutorials out there for this, but I used the free Audacity. Simply take in your mp3 of choice, trim it down to your favorite 30 seconds, use the high-pass filter to drop everything below 100Hz (the ringer can’t really pump out the bass), and then use the default dynamic-range compression. Mix it down to a single mono track, and save as a 22KHz, 64kbps mp3. The total file size needs to be under about 500K.

Getting the Ringtone into the Lingo
You’ll need a website of some sort to upload the mp3 too, any free service will do, but the key is, there needs to be a direct URL to your mp3. If you can’t think of something easier, HotLinkFiles will work. Note the complete URL for the mp3. Enter the URL (using the handy QWERTY keyboard) into the web browser, and wait a minute for it to download. It will ask if you want to save the mp3 in your ‘Sounds’ directory– you do.

Activating the Ringtone
Just navigate into your ‘Media Gallery’, then ‘Sounds’ and then ‘Saved Sounds’. Your new mp3 should be at the top of the list, but find it and press ‘Options’ and then ‘Assign’. From there you can make it the default ringer or whatever you like.

Source: Gadgetize

So Apple have announce the Mac Book Air. While this notebook does look nice, the features really just ruin its chances of ever being a dedicated machine. In my eyes at least.

Let’s take a look at the target audience however (my opinion of what I think they’re target audience is anyway). With the features being as limiting as they are (No etherenet port, no optical drive, soldered RAM, among the others) the target audience seems to me at least, to be a business professional. Someone on the road, with a lot of money, who isn’t looking for a desktop replacement, just an easy to use, super portable laptop.

But for the price tag, is it really worth it? It seems all of the Apple fanboys are getting caught up in the hype. But is it really worth it? Here are 11 points made against the Mac Book Air. You be the judge.

1. Battery not user Replaceable Unlike 99% of other laptops out there, the battery is not user replaceable. This means no swapping out of a secondary battery to alleviate dependency on an AC source. Also, this leaves customers at the mercy of Apple for replacements. Good news is that the announced cost is a reasonable $129 for a battery replacement that includes installation.
2. No Optical Drive This one is obvious. I must say though, I am impressed with how Apple manages to turn any flaw into a selling point — just like how they turned the iPod Shuffle’s lack of a screen into a “Life is Random” feature. Without an optical drive, Apple claims that you can experience true wireless productivity by buying and watching your movies from iTunes instead of watching them from your DVD.
3. Mono Speakers The built in speakers on the Macbook Air are weak and sound airy (sorry) from the hands-on videos so far. Worst of all, they’re mono, not stereo! Are we back in the 90s?
4. Fixed RAM The Macbook Air ships with 2GB of RAM by default. This RAM is onboard though, meaning there is no option to upgrade or to add more RAM.
5. Slow 1.8″ Hard drive The base model comes with a 1.8″ hard drive. As most computer enthusiasts know, 1.8″ hard drives top out at 4,200rpm. Compared to regular 2.5″ notebook hard drives that are at least 5400rpm (or even up to 7,200rpm), the Macbook Air hard drive is slow.
6. Slow Processor 1.6 C2D by default is amongst the slowest Core 2 Duo processors you can get. And to upgrade to the (marginally) faster 1.8ghz processor costs an arm and a leg.
7. Ridiculously priced upgrades The Macbook Air is only available in two options, the base model or the upgraded model. With the base model pushing two grand after taxes, it is already an expensive laptop. For some reason, Apple has the nerve to charge an EXTRA $999.000 for a faster but smaller 64GB SSD drive and a 0.2ghz faster processor. Granted, SSD is currently still quite expensive but not $999.00 expensive.
8. Single Link DVI Output Probably not a big deal to most but if you’re sporting Apple’s 30″ Cinema Display, you’ll be disappointed to know that the Macbook Air won’t support it. The 30 incher needs Dual Link DVI.
9. External Optical Drive exclusive to Macbook Air The $99 external Superdrive is hardware dependent on the Macbook Air. This means you can’t just plug it into any computer and expect it to work.
10. Remote Disc is not a full alternative to an optical drive Remote Disc allows you to use the CD/DVD drive of another computer on the network. That’s all nice and dandy but it doesn’t replace an optical drive. When you’re away from home, not anyone will let you install Remote Disc software so you can borrow their optical drive. This has been available on every operating system for years *cough* map network drive.
11. No ethernet port. Come on… really?

The more and more I get interested in the EEE PC by ASUS, I’m interested in it’s benchmarks, and real world usability. There isn’t too much information out there believe it or not. This will most definitely put the general consumer into the spectrum of knowledge.

This is an interesting article regarding the benchmarks, and overclocking in the aforementioned EEE PC. The article includes 3D Mark scores, and even a guide to overclocking the processors on the EEE PC. Very cool!

Link: Wiki Article 

I’ll be getting a new ASUS EEE Pc in the next couple of days. While it does pack some useful features in to an extremely small, usable form factor, there are some things internally that could use some upgrading. We’re not talking about ram, hard drive space, or processor, we’re talking about major additions. The following link explains in full detail, with pictures how to install / upgrade the following:

• USB hub
• GPS with antenna
• Bluetooth
• Card reader
• Flash drive
• Power switch
• Wifi
• FM transmitter
• Modem

A very cool read, and for any modders out there planning to own an EEE PC, definitely doable by all standards.

Link: Wiki Article 

A lot of people are beginning to take advantage of Cricket Mobile. It’s really gaining speed here in San Diego, and has been for quite some time in the more eastern regions of the U.S. Why wouldn’t it? The prices are great, there is no contract, unlimited sms, picture sms, internet, all kind of thing. Albeit, the internet from this network is a joke, but it’s generally pretty limited by the phone its self. Which brings me to my next point.

With all of these great prices and deals coming out of Cricket, people often get to the store, or start doing their research. Then they find out, the phone selection for cricket is terrible. The only thing close to a ‘cool’ or interactive phone, is the Kyocera Lingo. The lingo has a terrible internet display, comes with no serial cable, headphones for driving, and often de-synchs from the Cricket network causing missed calls, the inability to send sms messages, and more really weird issues. It breaks very easily, and costs well above what it should ($200.00). But it’s arguably the ‘best’ and most popular phone in their line up. What can be done about it?

Cricket works on the CDMA cellular network. That means a lot of VZW (verizon), and SNXTL(sprint) will work (granted sprint phones getting internet access is a bit trickier.) The two most common phones to be ‘converted’ are the Treo 600/650, and the LG enV. This guide is for the Treo 600/650. I may do one for the enV at a later date. Also, it should be said now, you may render your phone useless if caution, and patience is not exercised while doing this. But in the end, you will have a PDA on the Cricket network, even though Cricket tells you that just won’t work.

Guide just after the break.

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Apparently thousands of machines are effected by this “infinite loop” error. What happens most often is, during game play, or watching a video - the screen blurs, blinks, buzzes, and shows odd bars of random color all over it.  Upon restarting, you get a BSOD (Blue screen of death), with a stop error.

” … the device driver was caught in an infinite loop…..”.

What is that supposed to mean? You can restart, and restart, and restart your computer, and nothing happens. Same error over and over again. It’s caused by ATI2DVAG.DLL . So far, it corrupts many machines on different platforms, with different video cards and interfaces (however AGP/PCI seem to be the most effected).

ATI/AMD seem to have no fix, or any real information on it. Some of the posts about this error date back 3-4 even 5 years now! And still… it goes unfixed by ATI/AMD.

There’s a post over at the TechSpot forum

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