Tech Tips

I’m sure most of you have encountered this type of error, at one time or another, while using Windows: It appears when you try to delete a file or folder that is currently in use by an application. To be completely accurate, the file needs to be in use and locked by the application to prevent external edits – the lock is likely the reason we see the error message. Sometimes it is really obvious which application has a locked handle on the file – for example, if it is complaining about a Word document – perhaps the document is still open in Word. Personally, I consider scenarios like that acceptable because they can be solved easily; unfortunately, all too … Read more

Lately, I’ve been getting 2-3 of these errors whenever I try to open Firefox: I tried re-installing it, and also repairing it – but neither solved the problem. After spending some time googling to find a solution, I found a great knowledgebase article from the Mozilla guys themselves. Since it was difficult for me to find, I decided to offer the solution here too. Here’s the description of the problem, from the article: The term chrome has been used in Mozilla development for 10 years, referring to the that part of the Firefox window that lies outside of a window’s content area. Toolbars, menu bars, progress bars, and window title bars are all examples of elements that are typically part … Read more

Last night I set up Subversion on my main development machine, which is running Vista. To do this, I followed the steps outlined by Jeff Atwood on his Coding Horror blog. His article was very helpful – it allowed me to install Subversion rather painlessly, despite the few HTML glitches I encountered in his instructions. This morning, I opened the “Show log” page for a particular file using TortoiseSVN, and noticed one of the revisions I checked in was missing a comment. I right-clicked it, and selected “Edit log message”, wanting to add a comment then and there.  A little text editor popped up, and I typed the message. After I pressed OK, I was hit with this: Solution To … Read more

What I’m going to cover now is a pretty minor feature of Windows. I would of skipped this article, but I encountered a few people that never heard of this trick. I’ve personally found it useful in scenarios where I was working with custom file extensions… for example, I knew that a particular file with the uncommon extension “.def” could be opened in Microsoft Access.  The file extension “.def” is not typically associated with Microsoft Access, but I knew it was a valid file. To explain how the feature works, consider your typical, everyday “Open File” dialog: In this example, the dialog wants you to select a “.torrent” file by default. Because this is the active filter, you only see … Read more

Have you ever been in a situation where you’re not sure why your hard drive is as full as it is, and you wonder what exactly what is taking up the most space? I’m pretty sure most computer users have encountered this before. What I used to do when I hit this problem was look around for big folders on my drive. This ultimately works, but it takes some searching to find the problematic folders – and you’re likely to miss some stuff. Determined to find a better approach, I looked around for an application that could help me, and eventually found one called WinDirStat that utilized a method called treemapping to help users visualize their disk usage. I tried … Read more

When I first tried Steam’s Backup Tool, I was pretty impressed. The tool allows you to backup your games through a Steam interface, and what it does beyond a simple copy-paste is this: it compresses the game files, but also allows you to split the compressed files so that they can fit on multiple CDs or DVDs. It also allows for backing up multiple games in one shot, housing them all within the same set of CDs or DVDs. I liked the concept, and so I backed up my Left 4 Dead files to a DVD using this method. To my surprise, when I tried to restore the game afterwards, I encountered this error message: I executed the “steambackup.exe” file … Read more

Ever needed to measure the distance between two HTML elements, without achieving it through code? I found a tool a while ago that allowed me to do just that; it was, essentially, a virtual ruler. Called Pixel Ruler, this free application makes a ruler appear on your screen. You can place it anywhere you want, horizontally or vertically, and use it to measure pretty much anything. It is a little buggy at times, but I still recommend you give it a try.

When you’re rebooting a computer, and you need to know exactly when it is back online, try using this command: ping -t <target> <target> can be an IP or domain name. This command will keep pinging the machine endlessly, which can reveal exactly when the computer is back on the network. As long as you keep getting “Request time out”, the machine isn’t online yet. When you get a reply, as illustrated below, you know you can connect to the machine. Personally, I tend to put this window on my secondary monitor, while I continue working on the primary monitor.  As soon as the machine is online, I close the window or press CTRL+C to prevent the ping from going … Read more

So, here’s the thing:  I was taking screenshots for another article, and then I noticed that the cursor was not present in them – and I needed it to be. I’ve used Print Screen for a long time now, and I never really needed the cursor to appear. Whenever I did need to have it the screenshot, it was for work – and there, we have Snagit, which has an option to show the cursor. While SnagIt is a great application, I wasn’t ready to buy a license for home use just yet. I wanted to look for free tools first… so I began my search. I found out a couple interesting applications along the way. Snipping Tool (Windows Vista … Read more

A couple of years ago, I discovered a new way to close windows in Microsoft Windows. To be fair, I didn’t discover it on my own – I saw a colleague of mine using the alternate approach, and I asked her about it. I was surprised that although I had used various Microsoft operating systems (95, XP, 2000, 2003), that particular trick eluded me. Here’s how it works. You know how you can normally close a window by clicking on the top right corner? The “X” button? Well, you can also double-click on the top left corner, and this will usually also close the window. The reason I say “usually” is because some newer applications, like Google Chrome, for example … Read more