Posted by Sumit on
July 23, 2008
Command Line Ctrl+Alt+Del
A cheery hello to all geekshoppers. This is your friendly neighborhood geek ^^
*sputter* *hang* aaarggghh.
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del and most of the times the world is back to normal again. But see the catch is, the Task Manager (The friendly application you pull up by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del) is also, well, an application with a handsome GUI and everything. And loading it up when your system is already dying is a touch difficult at times.
Enter the cmd. For those of you who don’t know what that is, cmd is the command line. It is a kind of an emulation of DOS (the dark predecessor to Windows) from within Windows. Anyway, you can call up cmd by going to Start>Run and typing cmd in the “open” line and pressing enter. Alternatively, you could just press the Windows key+R on your keyboard and the run window will appear.
Going for the kill via the command line/cmd makes things more efficient and faster.
You will need to use 2 commands, tasklist and then tskill OR tasklist and then taskkill. Details of their use follow:
Tasklist: Summon up tasklist by, err , typing “tasklist” on cmd. It will show you a list of all the running processes on your computer. What you need to care about is the memory usage and the PID (process ID) of that program. Any program running on your system is identified by its Process ID and so obviously, we use it to kill a program if we need to.
There are some parameters that can be passed to tasklist to modify its output as per our requirement.
tasklist /v : More information about things like Status, User name, Window Title etc.
Filtering processes: You can filter processes based on multiple parameters. However, if you are in a “about to be/nearly hanged” kind of a situation, you can simply use the following commands to to find processes that are not responding.
tasklist /fi "status eq not responding"
Use the folliwing to list the processes eating up more than “X” MB.
tasklist /fi "memusage gt X000"
Becoming a tasklist pro: Use tasklist /? to gain more insights about the whole tasklist phenomenon.
(NOTE: Tasklist comes bundled with Windows XP Professional, but it does not come with the Home edition. But no worries, those with the Home version of XP can download it here (Rapidshare) or here (non Rapidshare) and can put it in the system path. See how to put things in your system path at the end of this post.)
Tskill : This command is used to end a process, using its name or its PID (Process ID).
Kill with name: Use tskill processname to kill a process with name “processname”.
Kill with PID: Similarly use tskill processid to kill a process with PID processid. (Obvilously, Tasklist can be used to find the PID of a process.)
Professional Killers: To get more info on advanced syntax of the command use tskill /?
(NOTE: You get Tskill with both Windows XP Professional and Home :) .)
Taskkill : Taskkill is essentially tskill, but with more bang for your buck. Apart from specifying the PID or the name of the process to kill, we can use filters to kill the matching processes (as in tasklist).
Kill with name: Use taskill /IM imagename to kill a process with the given Image name. For example:taskkill /im notepad.exe /f (forces notepad to be killed.)
Kill with PID : Use taskill /PID processid to kill a process with the given processid.
Filtering Taskkill: Processes to be killed can be filtered based on multiple parameters. But what what we are essentially interested in doing is use the command to forcefully shut down all the processes that are not responding/eating up too much of our memory.
Killing Not responding programs:
taskkill /f /fi "status eq not responding"
Close down all programs using more than X MB.
taskkill /f /fi "memusage gt X000"
Help?: To get more info on advanced syntax of the command use taskkill /?
(NOTE: Taskkill is only a part of Windows XP Professional. But then again, this is the Geekshop. Download it here (Rapidshare), or here (Non Rapidshare).)
PS: Adding stuff to your system path:
Go to Start and right click on My Computer.
Go to properties and System Properties window will open up. Go to the tab called “advanced” and click on “Environment Variables”.
Go to the System Variables section and select “path” in it. Click “Edit” after selecting path variable.
At the end of the long list of already present statements, add “;” and enter the complete path of the folder where you have kept taskkill/tasklist. (Something like c:\mysecretfolder\taskkill). Save it and taskkill/tasklist should be accessible from your command line.
Alternatively, you could simply paste the exe files in WINDOWS/system32 folder.
Posted by Sumit on
June 14, 2008
[How To] Installing Windows XP on Dell XPS 1530
As Jayesh said in his last post, we are going to appeal to more people and more genres. So here it is, “The Santa Geekshop”
So you got a fresh new laptop. Spent some 60K to make it into a monster of a machine. All the Core 2 goodness coupled with multi gigs of ram and what not.
Enter Windows Vista.
Wow.
The “Aero” and (dog) “flips” amaze for the first few runs but then a question pops to mind. Why is my sweet sweet machine running as if I am running a Pentium 2 machine with 64 MBs of RAM? You suddenly realize that you may have bought a bust machine and break into a sweat. Then you decide to call up your friendly neighborhood geek and he promptly informs you “Windows = Sh*t” and “Vista = Sh*t Unleashed, get Linux/Mac”.
But we, here at The Drunk Santa, are here to inform you otherwise. Vista still blows, but you still have XP SP2. It is possibly one of the best Operating Systems ever made and we insist you buy an original copy as soon as you can. Because the Microsoft Genuine Advantage is just so very orgasmic. And because we fear karma. Maybe the roadside CD-wallah at VT/Lamington will help you in this regard. But be sure to check if its original or not. That is what counts.
Note: Beyond this point, this post will deal with how to install Windows XP on a Dell 1530 since that is what I have. Things may work with other Dell/Non Dell models. You can try if you are a bit adventurous. Links to the XP drivers have also been included.
Step 1: Backup all data in a drive other than the C: drive on your computer. Or preferably in an external drive.
Step 2: Restart. Press F2 to get into the BIOS. Follow these steps, or else the XP CD will refuse to detect your Hard Disk. (The arrow keys the tab key and the enter key are what you need to work with the BIOS. Pressing Enter on any section’s name with a “+” next to its name expands it. You will need to expand the 2nd section to get to the options mentioned below.)
2.1: Go to the section called SATA Operation and select the ATA option in place of AHCI.
2.2: Go to the Flash Cache Module section and select OFF in place of Enabled.
There are other ways around this but, well, they are more complex and I don’t really like typing all that much. You won’t really notice any difference in terms of performance, security, stability and all other such buzzwords.
Step 3: Save and Exit. Your laptop will restart now.
Step 4: Press any key when it tells you to. (You need to have the original XP disk in your drive before this.)
Step 5: Press “Enter” and keep on accepting all the nonsense.
Step 6: On the partition screen read the instructions and delete the C: drive. ONLY DELETE THE C: DRIVE IN CASE YOU HAVE BACKED UP YOUR DATA IN OTHER PARTITIONS.
Step 7: Create a new partition from the empty space created on deleting the C: drive. Its simple, you just have to read the instructions on that screen keep pressing the required keys.
Step 8: Select the freshly created C: and press Enter. Select Quick format from the list of options that appear.
Step 9: Keep pressing next, next and more nexts. When your laptop restarts, don’t “press any key” when it asks you to.
Step 10: You will get your copy of XP installed in around 30-45 minutes. ( It is pretty straightforward and umpteen guides exist for installing XP on the computer. Just google it. :) )
Step 11: Ahh. All is well but you don’t have any sound. And no Ethernet. And nothing else for that matter. Officially Dell has no XP drivers for this machine. But it does have drivers for other machines with the same parts in them. So after some research, I’ve come up with the XP drivers for XPS. 1330 users will need a different driver for their Ethernet. All the other drivers should work though.
Bluetooth Drivers
Fingerprint Drivers
Ethernet Drivers
Touchpad Drivers
Graphics (Nvidia) Drivers
Dell Quickset
Remote Control Drivers
Sound Drivers
Sys Utilities Drivers
Webcam Drivers
WiFi Drivers
Update:
Here are the chipset drivers (Will solve the “no drivers found for base system device” problem)
These drivers are the same as those that ship in the drivers DVD. They work fine with XP too.
And so here you are! All the windows goodness with no almost no Blue Screen of Death and blazing performance. Have Fun!
Disclaimer: The author(s) do not accept any responsibility for anything that may go wrong while you try this out. Although, I have tried and tested this technique umpteen times on my own machine, there can never be any guarantees. I suggest you read the guide carefully and follow the steps exactly. Best take a printout and keep it with you if you are doing this for the first time.
Posted by Sumit on
May 16, 2008
Big Religion
Statutory Warning:
This post may contain a lot of religiously offensive material. Well, if you think about it, not really, but there’ll always be the boneheaded. And since we love our audience so much..
Okay, so I went to see Akshardham (Delhi) today. For those of you who don’t know what that is:
“BAPS Swaminarayan Akshardham in New Delhi, India, is the world’s largest comprehensive Hindu temple. It measures 356 ft. long, 316 ft. wide and 141 ft. high, covering an area of 86,342 sq. ft. The grand, ancient-style, ornately hand-carved stone temple has been built without structural steel within five years by 11,000 artisans and volunteers. His Holiness Pramukh Swami Maharaj, revered spiritual leader of BAPS, consecrated the temple on 6 November 2005.”
It has its name now in the Guinness Book of World Records too.
Yay for us?
On a personal level, I felt more disturbed than awed by the sight. See what bothers me here is, this is vaguely reminiscent of the times when all progress was chucked out the window and buildings, magnificent ones, were built left right and center. This was the time when dear old Mughal and co. were in the driving seat. The rich were filthy rich and the poor were dying. Enter the British.
When the poor were dying and illiteracy was rampant, when there are regions in this country where art forms along with artisans are dying, when children young and old are sold off and ruthlessly disabled to be used as beggars, when we won’t talk about sex in our houses while we have a huge and an un-talked problem of forced incest and when issues like child education, child labor and diseases like AIDS are mostly ignored; what we need is a huge mandir. Sure. We already went ahead and demolished the Babri Masjid, killing off countless people in the process. Lets have another huge mandir, the Raam Janambhoomi mandir. That’ll help India shine. Oh and while we’re at it lets throw in a few Peace memorials and random parks (which serve no real purpose since they are no where near residential areas) for fun. Yes, what we need is more pointless structures, more money and time being wasted behind parliamentary discussions on “Is the name Bombay Scottish ruining our culture”, more commonwealth “villages” that’ll show how super fu**ing advanced India is and some more random boneheads, who just can’t comprehend what “cosmopolitan” means breaking things and making good people lose money.
Anyway, the coolest part of Akshardham is, its a temple, sure, but its also a mall and an amusement park at the same time; an amusement temple if you will. An IMAX, boat rides, light and sound and an air conditioned food court. It is amazing how God has so subtly been converted into a business plan.
Oh did I hear someone say “Teach children values and culture?” and “If thats what holds their interest why not?”. Why don’t we just package candy with a picture of God on top and a “did you know” underneath? That’d do the job pretty too. And we’ll make a killing on profits too. But no, that is where we cross the line. We can murder in the name of God, we can occupy any land we want (which might belong to some good man who has invested his life’s savings in it) and keep a few random stones and call it a temple, we can damage public property, we can dupe foreigners hell we can purchase some kid, teach him some random “shlokas” and put the bugger on the job. But candy wrappers? Really? Is Santa drunk today?
Moral of the story, culture and the heritage comes first. We are a nation of a billion (minus some) blind people who just refuse to see the past screaming “I’m friggin history, don’t repeat me!”.
And we’re a big country, the homeless will find some railway track to live beside anyway.