HP G6 running like it should

Further to my last post about the SM Bus Controller issue, I've just completed a full re install of Windows 7. After updating the BIOS (previous post) I was able to boot direct from the DVD drive which meant I could properly format the disk and start again. I then re installed the drivers I wanted from the HP website apart from The display/graphics adapter drivers. I then installed the SM Bus Controller I'd taken from the Lenovo website. The Catalyst program comes with it which enables you to control the resolution etc. You do not need to install any other graphics/display drivers.

This laptop is finally running like it should have when it came out of the factory. God knows why developers spend fortunes developing hardware only to slow it down with a load of bloatware. 

HP Pavilion G6-1336SA Can't boot from CD/DVD USB etc

In a nutshell you need to flash your BIOS. Its not painful. Just visit the HP website and let the auto detect device figure out what model your laptop is and within the list of downloads should be a BIOS upgrade. I remember doing this used to be quite an upsetting process however it was utterly simple! Click click click and now when you press "Esc" at boot up, it shows the boot menu you're used to with other computers, rather than just the Windows repair options.

HP Pavilion G6-1336SA SM Bus Controller

I have a HP G6, looks great and feels like its well made, however the amount of bloatware on it was crazy, making it depressingly slow. I decided to format the whole thing and do a fresh install of Windows 7 minus all the guff that HP included.

The HP website quite helpfully has a auto detect function that lets you know what drivers you need, however after everything was installed (minus a few things I didn't feel I needed) I kept getting the SMBus Controller showing as not being installed in the Device Manager list. Did lots of searching, manually scrolling around the AMD website for drivers, forums etc etc and couldn't actually find a solution. So, I hunted about myself and found that Lenovo use the same chipset in one of their devices. Click this link to visit their page and hey presto! SMBus Controller problem gone!

Samsung Galaxy Note 2 sim card errors

For the last couple of months I kept getting an error message telling me that I had no sim card and that I needed to restart my device..  Very very annoying.

On inspecting the sim card I noticed that it had bowed slightly. I can only imagine the heat of the phone being on constantly must cause plastic to bend? Anyway I needed to find something that would wedge between the sim and the phones case.

I found a pack of little rubber stops that fit on kitchen doors,  shaved a little bit off the top with a stanley knife and stuck the sticky bit to the sim. Job done!  It works. Legend.

Getting sound to work on a HP Media Center m7240.uk with Windows 7

Oh my golly its been a while since I last wrote anything on this.. its not to say I haven't been busy fixing/bodging stuff its just I haven't had chance to write about it!

Well, this is a little update, only a small job but one that had been royally p*ssing me off. I recently installed Windows 7 on my HP Media Centre. It'd been happily running XP however, after getting a laptop a laptop with 7 on it, I realised how good this operating system was. Anyhoo, install it.. and everythings good.. except for the sound!!

I tried a number of different things, downloading the XP audio driver from HP and installing it using compatibility mode (right click on the .exe file, click properties then head to the compatibility tab), no dice, then went to Realtek for the most recent driver from them, installed it.. no dice!

So after a little bit of head scratching/crying, I decided to check out the system settings (bios) and have a look at the onboard audio settings (before this I uninstalled the audio devices through device manager) I knew they were set to AUTO but figured I'd have a little play with that.. changed it to ENABLED logged into Windows 7 then watched as the audio devices reinstalled themselves.. hey presto.. sound!

I've noticed quite a few PC's upgrading (fresh install of 7) have not had the audio drivers install like graphics etc. My Dell GX280 had no sound until I'd messed around with it for a while and neither did my Toshiba TC1100 which required me to download the most recent but one XP audio driver and install that?!?

I don't know why its being so awkward but it was.. and yet its all working now like nothing ever happened.

Next on my to do list.. cut down a tree, rebuild rear suspension on BMW 5 Series, get my T25 aircooled started.. change wheel bearings on my Jeep Cherokee XJ.. put in a new kitchen, sort out leak in flat roof....

I intend up update this blog with all of those adventures..

Oh and landscape front and back gardens..

Google Plus.. D minus.

I'd been hearing about Google Plus for a while and was quite excited about trying it out. I've loved pretty much all of Googles products so far, some times they can be a little fiddly and not the easiest to manoeuvre or know exactly what it going on.. Google Images/Photos for example.. they've only just tweaked it to tell people you've already shared an album with that you've uploaded new pictures. Anyone who had favourited your work wouldn't know you'd added anything new until you literally grabbed their head and pointed it at the screen. That seems to have been resolved now and its a jolly good thing too.

Anyhoo, I finally got an email from someone inviting me to join Google Plus. I signed up.. basically its a social networking site, on that basis it will suffer if few of your friends use it.. few of my friends use it, which wasn't a major problem as I'm not a big social networking (facebook/twitter) user. What did irritate me however was the level to which it stuck its nose into literally everything I did.

I do pretty much everything through Google and in a weird way its become quite an important part of my life. If you think about it.. you're sharing your messages, thoughts, pictures, video's even current location.... literally all those things that used to be tucked away in albums or diaries or known only to close friends and family (or neither) with this massive brightly coloured company that's primary business is essentially sharing information/telling tales. There is an (large) element of trust there between you and them.. you and Google. Like it or not, that's the situation. So, when it comes to them fooling around with your information, its quite easy to start spooking people.

Whereas Facebook sits separately from your emails and photo's only working with what you decide (to a degree, they've received a lot of criticism for the amount of data they're capturing without your knowledge i.e "would you like to sync your contacts with Facebook... great I'll take EVERYTHING and their phone numbers too") to share with it, i.e specifically picking out an image and uploading it, Google Plus will merge all your pictures and then let you decide what you're sharing from there. Instead of you being able to continue to work with your existing Google products as before, it'll weasel its way into everything and then let you chose whom you share with rather than whether you share at all.

I upload a lot of my photography to Google Images using Picasa (both great ideas) and went to look at them today. Instead of being greeted by the nice simple layout of old Google Images I was met with Google Plus and a bunch of someone else's pictures.. I didn't really want to see that other persons pictures, I wanted to see mine. Imagine walking into a room in your house, expecting to see it decorated the way you'd left it, only to find it altered to someone else's taste and with someone else's work. Agreed Google has always made updates and alterations to its products before and they've generally worked very well however its always been based around your content and not someone else's.

I feel that they might be underestimating how personal a lot of their products are to people and how easily people could become upset by the way their things are being played with. By all means create Google Plus and by all means give me the option to share my photo's or messages or calendars with others but have Google Plus as an extra not a "be-all" as it was quickly becoming, down to every picture I took with my Android phone immediately being sent to Google Plus to be shared... I mean seriously, not everyone is an exhibitionist and some things aren't meant to be shared, just enjoyed by the creator.

Chrome RSS

Hey! Its been a little while but I'm back now and hopefully full of more little nuggets of something you might find helpful.

First up... I've been using Chrome for a while now and love how fast and simple it is. Xmarks works with it (although there's no need for it if you only ever use Chrome between your devices as Chrome has its own built in bookmarks sync function) but for a while it missed out on some simple things that made Firefox so handy. For example, RSS feeds. It was always handy to be able to see from the address bar when an RSS feed was available and be able to easily subscribe to it... well now, thanks to the following extension from Google.. you can do exactly that with Chrome

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nlbjncdgjeocebhnmkbbbdekmmmcbfjd?hl=en-GB

Perhaps that little nugget wasn't worth the wait...