Helpful Hints » Windows Apps

Playing Blu-ray movies with VLC media player from your HDD

pycckuu — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 21:14:58 +0000

Was pleasantly surprised that you don't need to install any of the heavyweight media players to cope with a Blu-ray movie on your PC or a laptop. Solution is much simpler and VLC does it's job.

Open VLC. In VLC media player go to Media → Open Folder... (or CTRL+F). Choose movie from your hard disk drive. If you have many audio tracks in your movie, you need to go to Tools → Preferences (CTRL+P) and in Audio tab choose your Preferred audio language.

Wireless sharing of your Desktop PC internet connection

pycckuu — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 22:20:36 +0000

Problem: Ability to share Desktop PC internet connection to a laptop or your iphone/htc wirelessly.

Solution: First of all you need to purchase an USB Wireless Adaptor (since there is no wireless in a pc by default), in order to share your connection wirelessly (your laptop is a must have wireless already). I purchased it from eBay for 6$.
1.Open Network and Sharing Center
2.Under "Change your network settings" choose:

3.Next choose → Set up a wireless ad hoc network

4.Give your network a name, a password (example on picture) and save this network

Screenshots with Media Player Classic

pycckuu — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 08:23:37 +0000

Problem
Ever needed to make snapshots from a video clip? It can be done easily with Media Player Classic!

Solution
Open a video file in Media Player Classic and stop it!
Go to File → Save Thumbnails...
Choose Image width and the number of columns and rows within your picture with screenshots!
Click save.

Windows 7 64-bit Skype 5.1 freeze-out

pycckuu — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 15:03:41 +0000

Problem
I have experienced a lot of shit with this new skype 5.1 and was wondering why is it so bad. It was working at most 3-4 minutes in video-mode then it froze. Then i found several solutions actually - only activating all of them helped me!

Solution

Quit Skype
Go to Control Panel → Sound → Speakers → Advanced! There uncheck "Give exclusive mode applications priority".
Press Start and in search field type "%appdata% \Skype" find file shared.xml → Delete it!
Press Start and this time type "%appdata% \Skype\YourSkypeName" (where yourskypename = your skype account name). Find file "config.xml" and "config.lck" → Delete both files.
Reboot

Controlling uTorrent remotely through web

pycckuu — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 16:41:45 +0000

Many of you probably are wondering how to download files from office, and when you get home your movies are ready to be watched. It is possible with uTorrent too!

Just go to Options → Preferences (or ctrl+p) → Web UI

To control uTorrent from the web use this url: http://yourip:port/gui. To determine what ip address you own you may visit: whatismyipaddress.com

Mozilla Thunderbird 3.0.3 mail synchronization bugs

pycckuu — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 07:25:55 +0000

After installing new version of Mozilla Thunderbird, many of you noticed that it really slows your pc downloading all the messages (especially if you have thousands of them). I found a solution that suits me the best.

Go to Tools → Account Settings → Synchronization & Storage. If you want to save all your mail on your mail server — the best solution would be to choose to save only the latest messages on hard drive.

Removing Skype 4.2 from taskbar in Windows 7

pycckuu — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 14:34:50 +0000

Many of you are dissapointed with the new version of Skype 4.2.0.155 and Skype 4.2.0.158 also, it has new feature which really slows the work, but most annoying is the fact that you can't remove Skype from a taskbar when it is minimized to system tray. This is the solution i have found recently:

quit Skype,
right click on Skype icon on your desktop and click properties,
in the Compatibility tab check and choose Windows XP (Service Pack 3),
Click OK, and start Skype.

Another option is to rollback to Skype 4.1.0.179, which is my personal choice, because 4.2 is a real bug.

Downloading a streaming video with VLC media player

pycckuu — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 18:06:01 +0000

First of all we need to find play list link on the server. Look for a source on the web page (ctrl+u in Mozilla Firefox) and find something like: http://site.com/video.asf or it could be even .wmv, save it to your hard drive. Then open it with a notepad - inside you will find a link to a video which is being streamed, and we will use only this link.

Open VLC media player and click ctrl+s or Media → Streaming. In Network tab, choose protocol and paste your link from the notepad, click Next. Add a destination file, browse for a folder and make a file with any extension (you may rename later. In profile choose desired codec to be used to encode a video file (you should have this codec installed on your system).

Click Stream. I should say that the process of downloading a streaming video equals to the length of the video + connections times etc.

Quick Computer benchmark with WinRAR

pycckuu — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 08:23:13 +0000

If you want to quickly benchmark or desktop or laptop, and not willing to install any additional software, you may use WinRAR (most of you have it installed i suppose). So, open WinRAR or just any archive you have. Then click Alt+B or Tools→Benchmark and hardware test.
I recommend you closing all the applications and everything from tray for benchmark results to be the maximum.

Feel free to post your results with WinRAR in comments!

Using your Skype account through web at imo.im

pycckuu — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 10:05:41 +0000

This is the solution i was looking for a long time. I can't install Skype at work, since it is prohibited, so i needed to access it somehow. Just visit http://imo.im enter your Skype user name and password and that's about it. This service can be used mainly for chats, webcam and voice are also available and you may connect with your friends on line.

This website is also capable of connecting you to MSN, ICQ, Yahoo talk, Google Talk, MySpace/Facebook networks.