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.

 http://rapidshare.com/files/282725115/WinDVDBD.rar

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.

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.

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!

Attachment:

Soda: The Smooth Criminal (PDF)

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!

Here it is:

1. Start by typing about:config on the address bar in Firefox. If in Firefox 3, click on the “Promise, I’ll be careful” and promise you’ll be careful.
2. Now right click anywhere inside the window and select New -> Boolean
3. In the box that appears copy and paste config.trim_on_minimize and press enter.
4. Then select True and then press enter.
5. Restart Firefox.

Now that you’ve done this, if you open up Task Manager and Firefox, try minimizing Firefox and see how much RAM is freed up. See for yourself!

Obscura Digital’s “out of the lab” blog.

Or watch the sampler; I’m telling you, it will blow your mind, maybe:

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:

You’ll have to browse through the Windows registry in order to do this. Be sure to know what you are doing.

Method One: (This one worked for me)

1. Open up the Registry Editor. Go to Start -> Run or press ‘Windows Logo key + R‘ and then type “regedit“, without quotes. Press Enter.
2. Browse through the keys: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\Folder\Hidden\SHOWALL
3. Look at the right side of the on the Window and there should be a key called “CheckedValue“, this should be a DWORD key. If it’s not, delete that key.
4. Now, create a new DWORD value. Right Click -> New -> DWORD Value. Name it CheckedValue and press enter. Now double click and set it to Hexadecimal with a value data of 1.

This should re-enable the option to show hidden files and folders. Here’s another method. I think this method just directly enables the option, showing hidden files and folders (thus, not fixing the main error) but you can try it anyway.

1. Fire up regedit. -You should know how by now.
2. Browse through the keys: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\
   Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
3. In the right side area, find the key named “Hidden“, double click it and set the Value Data to 1.
4. Close the Registry Editor and check if this has fixed the problem.

What you need:

• A network =) and a computer in the network with enough space to host the ghost image (~6GB or ~3 with max compression)
• Norton GhostCast [download] – Comes with Symantec Ghost Corporate Edition 2003
• Windows Deployment Tools (SYSPREP) – Located In your Windows XP Cd under SUPPORT>Tools>DEPLOY.CAB or, [download here]
• Hiren’s BootCD [download] (and an empty CD to burn it to) or Network Boot Disk.

Here are the steps:

1. Install your OS, Drivers, Apps on a computer.
2. Extract the contents of Deploy.CAB or SYSPREP.ZIP on a folder on your image computer.
3. Run the Setup Manager(setupmgr.exe) and Create a new answer file.
4. Select Sysprep Setup and your desired OS
5. Fully automated.. – Change the desired settings and make sure to add a computer name
   
6. Finish and Create your sysprep.inf file.
7. If you want to fix the Computer name set up error, open the sysprep inf file you just created with a text editor (ie. notepad) and look for the line that contains ComputerName=[yourvalue], edit it and add a asterisk to the end of it. Save It(What this is doing is automating the whole set up but then the asterisk is going to cause an error, allowing us to input the desired computer name, and after that it is fully automated again!).
   
8. Open Sysprep.exe and press Ok
9. Check the “Use the Mini-Set Up” Option, Insert your Hirens Boot CD into your CD drive, and press the Reseal Option (caution: It shuts down your computer).
   
10. Set up your BIOS to boot from your CD drive and start your computer from the cd.
    
11. Select Disc Clone tools & Then Norton Ghost > Ghost with network support.
    
    >
    >
12. You dont need to add a cd, and you dont need to log on to your domain either.. actually I recommend not doing it, because of the “^{multiple connections to a server or shared resource by the same user, using more than one user name, are not allowed}” error.
13. Start GhostCast Server on the computer you will be having the computer image stored.
14. Set your session name, set the create image option, browse where your image is going to be stored and press Accept Clients.
    
15. Back on the other computer;press Ok, select Ghostcast>Multicast
    (If you dont see this, is because the BootCD couln’t detect your network card.. try restarting or good luck on making your network floppy !! )
16. Join the session you created in Step 14.
    
17. Select the drive to create the Image, Press Ok
18. Select Compression and Proceed with Image Creation.
    
19. Once your image file is stored on your computer, start the computers you want this image to be replicated into and boot to Hiren’s BootCD (Repeat steps 10-12 on all the computers).
20. Repeat step 14, but this time select Restore Image and browse the image file you created in step 17.
    
21. Join the Session in all of your computers and then; on your computer running ghostcast server, Press the [Send] Button.
22. Once the image restore is complete you can go ahead and restart the computers and this will set up the computers automatically and ask you for the computer name(Ignore step 7 if you don’t want the set up to do that)

Good Luck! ~anebg

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.

3. 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.
4. 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.