Sep/0923
InterVideo WinDVD BD for VAIO
I recently upgraded to Windows 7 through my school’s MSDNAA program. For all my drivers, I used Windows Update and everything pretty much worked out of the box. However, recently, my friend bought a 50” HDTV and we wanted to test it out by using my laptop’s (VGN-FW270J) Bluray drive. I looked all over in Sony’s Drivers & Downloads site but All I could find was updates and not the installer. I called Sony and they straight up told me that they didn’t support Win7 until Oct 22nd and that if I wanted to play Bluray without spitting out some cash, that I had to reformat using my recovery partition(which I luckily didn’t format while installing Win7). I looked all over the web for a solution and I couldn’t find any so I took matters into my own hands. I booted up Linux and crawled through the recovery partition and bumped across some files that looked like installation files that were compressed in some way (.MOD). I did some looking around and it turns out that there is a program called Mod2WIM, which temporarily displays your hidden recovery partition and copies over all the installer files (mod & sny) and then converts(unlocks) them to be WIM, a format that is used by Windows to pack / mount installers. After mounting a couple (using gimagex – a graphical inteface to the imagex program that is included in the mod2wim download) , I found WinDVD BD, which was file “MODJ-128993.wim”. After mounting, I just opened the setup.exe file and voilà! The installer popped up.
So If you have a Sony VAIO Notebook computer which comes with WinDVD BD preinstalled and wishes to play Bluray without reformatting or anything crazy like that, go ahead and download it here.
And if you wish to install some of the other software that comes preinstalled which your computer, here is the software I used and some explanatory screenshots.
Mod2WIM [Download] ( Click to enlarge )
ImageX [Download] (GUI Version GImageX) 
The files I were able to obtain from my partition were:
437M MOD-Quickbooks_Starter_Edition.no_3.wim
435M MOD-VAIO_Movie_Story.no_35.wim
312M MOD-OneCare.no_36.wim
307M MOD-Office_2007_Home_and_Student_Trial.no_6.wim
300M MODJ-126940.no_15.wim
252M MOD-MS_Works_Bundle.no_5.wim
190M MODJ-126695.no_17.wim
189M MODJ-128993.no_31.wim
180M MOD-Music_Box.no_34.wim
161M MODJ-126708.no_26.wim
137M MOD-VAIO_Help_and_Support.no_48.wim
90M MODJ-126813.no_24.wim
68M MODJ-126259.no_7.wim
65M MOD-VAIO_Media_Plus.no_40.wim
46M MODJ-126696.no_20.wim
46M MOD-AOL_Software.no_47.wim
44M MOD-Wireless_Connection_Utility_EVDO.no_46.wim
29M MODJ-126299.no_9.wim
20M MODJ-126885.no_21.wim
19M MODJ-126296.no_8.wim
18M MODJ-126887.no_28.wim
16M MODJ-127038.no_25.wim
16M MODJ-126883.no_22.wim
12M MOD-Napster_Pre_Install.no_32.wim
12M MODJ-126880.no_23.wim
8.5M MOD-VAIO_OOBE_And_Welcome_Center.no_49.wim
7.7M MOD-VAIO_Care.no_50.wim
6.8M MOD-MS_Office_2007_Activation_Assistant.no_33.wim
6.8M MODJ-126798.no_19.wim
6.1M MODJ-126955.no_14.wim
5.6M MOD-VAIO_Wireless_Wizard.no_41.wim
5.1M MODJ-120274.no_2.wim
4.8M MODJ-126894.no_13.wim
4.6M MODJ-126779.no_12.wim
3.7M MOD-CSUP.no_39.wim
3.2M MODJ-128897.no_30.wim
2.9M MODJ-126728.no_27.wim
2.7M MOD-VAIO_Startup_Assistant.no_45.wim
2.2M MODJ-126943.no_18.wim
2.2M MOD-Documentation.no_44.wim
2.2M MODJ-126957.no_16.wim
2.0M MOD-VAIO_My_Memory_Center.no_11.wim
1.7M MOD-VAIO_Survey_Standalone.no_43.wim
1.7M MOD-Media_Center_User_Guide.no_4.wim
1.5M MOD-SetAutoFailover.no_42.wim
412K EPC-RenewCPU.no_51.wim
304K MOD-Registration_Warranty.no_10.wim
184K MOD-Puma.no_37.wim
128K MOD-OEM_Information_Registry_Settings.no_38.wim
16K MODJ-128994.no_29.wim
4.0K MOD-PowerPlay_Setting A.no_1.wim
I hope this helps out somebody out there.. and if you find it useful; don’t forget to thank in the comments section.
Aug/091
Simple Formatting on Gmail Chat
A couple of weeks ago I was chatting using Gmails’ integrated chat feature. The other person then sent a bold formatted message, then I found it interesting. So I started Googlin’ for more formatting options and found that you can actually type in bold, italics, and strikeout. Pretty neat huh?
So here’s the formatting:
- surrounding text with *, as *bold*, turns out bold
- surrounding text with _, as _italics_, turns out italics
- surrounding text with -, as -strikethrough-, turns out strikethrough.
I looked and looked for underline but never found it. If anyone knows how to, please comment.
Update: There’s no way to underline in Gmail chat. Some say holding z, doesn’t work.
Jul/090
How to Search Inside files from Ubuntu (Unix) Terminal
‘grep’ is what your looking for.
Here’s the command:
grep -Rs search query /some/directory/*
Also, if the terminal bugs you, you can enclose the search query using double quotes ( and possibly also single quotes)
Good luck!
Apr/090
Effects of Soft Drink Consumption on the body
This is my research paper for COMP-102 class. It took me some time to research and edit this paper so might as well make it available to the world.
Attachment:
Soda: The Smooth Criminal (PDF)Sep/081
Firefox Easter Egg[s]
Some Easter eggs from Mozilla Firefox:
On the URL type about:mozilla and some weird story will appear. I don’t know about the origin of this but you should give it a try.
On the URL type about:robots this should work on Firefox 3. Again, this is a really random easter egg.
Enjoy!
Sep/080
Lower the RAM usage of Firefox
Have you ever noticed that when using Firefox and opening many tabs, Firefox eats up a lot of RAM, well 
maybe its not true for people that have computers with 2 gigs of RAM. Anyway, here is a way to reduce considerably the use of RAM used by Firefox; when you minimize Firefox, it will free up some RAM, well, not some; A LOT.
Here it is:
Aug/080
Obscura Digital’s VisionAire Technology
A few days ago I was browsing through the internet, when I stumbled upon this new technology called “VisionAire”. Well, the people at Obscura Digital call it that way. Read the whole thing here:
Or watch the sampler; I’m telling you, it will blow your mind, maybe:
Jul/082
How to fix show hidden files and folders option
A while ago I found out that the ‘Show Hidden Files and Folders’ option was not working properly on my computer. I did some Googling and found out that is caused by a spyware/adware/malware (whatever) that messes up the Windows Registry from updating properly, thus disabling the option to ‘Show Hidden Files and Folders’. The check box (radio button) works, but as soon as you close the Folder Options Window, the option is disabled again. Anyway, here are some ways to re-enable the option:
Jul/080
Successfully deploy a ghost Image to Many computers at the same time.
My Scenario: Need to format and install XP Pro on 33 Dell Dimension PC’s, same model and components. Need to fix the “same computer name” problem because the computers will be joining the network.
Non-Explained solution:
Install XP on one computer, download all updates, drivers, install software needed in all computers, set up Sysprep, shut down, boot up Ghost and create image, Run GhostCast server, load up image, Boot Hirens Cd (or ghost network floppy) on the computers and Multicast the Image to All of the computers. Simple Huh? 
Tutorial after the break.
Jun/083
How to fix access denied file delete error
Here is a trick that is used to delete files or folders that display this error when deleting:
Error Deleting File or Folder
Cannot delete [file]: Acess is denied.
Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use.
Annoying huh, here it is:
- Open a command window. You can do this by going to Start -> Run and typing cmd. If you are using Vista, go to Start, then in the search field type cmd or command.
- Now that you have the command window open, you’ll have to set a schedule. To do this, type:
at [time] /interactive cmd
and press enter. It should say Added a new job with job ID = 1. Where it says [time], you type in the current time in your computer plus one minute, be sure to set it in military time! (For example: If its 1:26, you would type:
at 1:27 /interactive cmd);
-I hope you understand military timing. - Now, you have to wait one minute or a few seconds until a new command window appears. When the new command window appears, fire up task manager (Ctrl + Alt + Del), and end the process explorer.exe. (Go to the Processes tab. Select explorer.exe from the list then click on End Task) Now your explorer window should disappear, leaving opened the newly opened command window.
- Now, on the window, type in explorer.exe, and your explorer windows should reappear with SYSTEM privileges; wait a few seconds while the SYSTEM user account is set up. Now you should be able to delete that annoying file of yours.
To get back into your own username, just login again.
Still having trouble? Please comment.