Archive for the 'Tips & Tricks' Category

Remove Dusts On Heatsink Solves CPU Overheating Problem

Published November 26, 2007 in Personal and Tips & Tricks. 5 Comments

I noticed my CPU was running at very high temperatures a few weeks ago. Just the other day, I decided that I had enough with the CPU overheating problem. I took out a screwdriver and proceeded to removing the heatsink from the motherboard. The screwdriver wasn’t used to unscrew any screws (there isn’t any screw to the heatsink and fan) but to help remove the fan from the “cage”.

It has been many years since I last did anything like that. It took me a few minutes just to remove the heatsink and fan! Once I have successfully removed it, I was staring at the motherboard where the heatsink and fan used to be and felt really strange. It took me a couple of seconds to realize what was the problem.

Motherboard without a processor

Can you spot the “problem”?

That is when I realized my real problem has just started. I turned the heatsink that I was still holding around and found what I was looking for — my Pentium 4 processor. The processor was stuck firmly onto the bottom of the heatsink. It was as if the two were “glued” together by the thermal paste applied in between them. The overheating problem must have sealed them together.

Processor stuck to heatsink

I tried to separate them with my hands but they were dead stuck to each other. I had no choice but to continue with my plan to clean the heatsink and fan while leaving the problem to be solved later.

I removed the fan that was attached to the top of the heatsink. It was my first time doing it so I proceeded cautiously. I didn’t want to hurt myself but more importantly, I do not want to drop it causing damage to the processor. I was shocked when I saw the condition of the heatsink.

Heatsink covered with dusts

No wonder the CPU was overheating! There was a thick layer of dust covering the top of the heatsink. The air blown into the heatsink was somehow disrupted by them. I removed the thick layer of dust with a few pieces of tissue paper. You have no idea how much dust they were.

Heatsink looks as good as new after cleaning off dusts

That is a spanking clean heatsink. There are still some dusts in between the heatsink plates but I have removed most of them. It was time to solve the processor problem now. The only option I had in my mind at that time was to carefully place the heatsink back onto its slot. Since the processor was stuck to the heatsink “in the right position”, theoretically, the processor would slide into its slot correctly too.

It was still a huge gamble because the processor pins could easily bend when I am sliding it back and forth hoping that it would slide into its slot. When I was quite certain that the processor was in place, I had to “lock” the heatsink and fan into its slot. This will then push the heatsink firmly down. I said a short prayer before doing this because if the processor wasn’t in place, all of its pins will be bend causing maximum damage.

An error message greeted me when I booted up the computer. It mentioned that “CPU wasn’t found”. I thought I must have caused some damage to the processor or it wasn’t in place properly. However, I also noticed that it was able to detect the presence of a Pentium 4 3.0Ghz processor. I knew there was still hope. I entered BIOS and exited it while saving the changes. My computer booted up like normal the next time around.

Operation Successful

Everything is back to normal now. I notice that my CPU is running at a much lower temperature as well at around 50 degrees most of the time. It used to run at 60-70+ degrees previously. My CPU fan speed can now reach over 3,000 rpm compared to previously when it was stuck at only 2,700 rpm max.

Speedfan stats

This little clean up saved me from buying a new heatsink. If you have CPU overheating problems as well, you can try cleaning your heatsink and fan. Just make sure you know what you are doing before attempting to try this though. You do not want to make things worse.

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Solution To GMail Hang In Internet Explorer

Published November 6, 2007 in Tips & Tricks. 3 Comments

In my previous post, I noticed that the latest changes in GMail caused Internet Explorer to slow down. The IE7 that I am running on will hang for 3 to 5 seconds whenever I click on something within GMail. Strangely, this problem only occurs in IE and not Firefox.

GMail slow in Internet Explorer solution

The Google team must have noticed the problem and has prepared an option for IE users to revert back to the old version. After signing in to your GMail account using Internet Explorer, you will notice an “Older version” at the top right of the screen. All you have to do is to click on that link and you will be sent to the previous version.

If you were having the same problem like me, this should solve it.

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How To Open .ppsx File In PowerPoint 2003

Published October 26, 2007 in Tips & Tricks. 5 Comments

I received a .ppsx file last night from a friend. I recognize a .pps file as a PowerPoint file but have never seen a .ppsx file before. I had a feeling that it was a PowerPoint file so I proceeded to open it with my Microsoft PowerPoint 2003. I was smacked with the error message below instead.

PowerPoint can’t read the outline from [file_name].ppsx. No text converter is installed for this file type.

The error occurred because .ppsx files are created using PowerPoint 2007. Unfortunately, the file is not backward compatible. You will either need to ask your friend to re-save it so that it is usable for the 2003 version, or you can try out the hack below.

After searching around I found this tip on how to open a .ppsx file using PowerPoint 2003. All you need to do is to download the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. [download here]

You might need to install all high priority Windows Updates for this to work.

After installing the software, right click on the .ppsx file that you want to open. Select Open With and then Microsoft Open XML Converter.

How To Open .ppsx file in PowerPoint 2003

You should be able to open your file now.

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How To Gain Organic Search Traffic

Published October 23, 2007 in Tips & Tricks. 3 Comments

One should never underestimate the amount of traffic that search engines can bring into your blog or website. Once you have the right ingredients in place, you will notice a sharp increase in organic traffic from search engines. There are many ways that you can increase your organic search traffic. I would like to summarize the whole concept in gaining organic search traffic using two words — demand and supply.

Demand

You will need to know what people are searching for. There are probably millions of searches a day and you need to at least know what people might be searching for. Unless you work for a search engine company or have some reliable sources, it is hard to know exactly what the most searched terms are.

An alternative method to guess what people may be searching for is by looking into the mass media such as newspaper, television, radio and even blogs. What are the most talked about topic lately? Is there a new product or service that is aggressively promoted recently? Maybe there is a virus breakout and thousands of people could be searching for a possible solution for it?

Supply

When there is demand, there will definitely be supply. As if there is some “natural law” or something, the higher the demand, the higher the supply will be.

The same logic applies in the demand and supply for organic search traffic as well. It is only natural for people to be writing about things that many will be searching for. This is where the problem occurs. When there are more people writing about the same topic, the higher the competition will be.

When that happens, the next solution you will need is how to rank higher for certain search terms so that your blog or website will be displayed higher in the search list. This opens up a whole new topic altogether. There are many ways to get this done, be it legal or not.

Two roads ahead. Which one to take?

The road less takenFrom my point of view, there are two roads that you can take to increase your organic search traffic. You can either choose the road most traveled or the road less traveled.

Certain topics take up a larger piece of the search traffic pie. It is tempting to join this group since there is more demand. However, that means that you will need to compete with many others in this field. You will need to do more research on how you are able to get a higher ranking with certain search terms in order to maximize your chances.

On the other hand, you can always write about things that may not have as much demand compared to others. The benefit is that you will have fewer competitors in this field. This is probably what they call as the long tail of the search engine traffic. At the end of the day, you may even get as much or even more organic traffic compared to competing in the larger pool.

Share your experience, opinion and thoughts

What is your experience in this field? Which road did you take? Which road do you suggest new bloggers take? Of course, in reality there aren’t two distinctive roads that a person needs to choose from. One can always walk in between to generate maximum benefit from search engine results. Anyway, kindly share your thoughts on this.

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How To Prevent Others From Loading Your Page In A Frame

Published October 15, 2007 in Tips & Tricks. 5 Comments

Last month, I found out that someone was loading one of my pages in his website using a frame. Whenever the website is loaded, my page will appear as if it was the owner’s. I do not know what this person is trying to do or gain from it but I found a method to defeat it.

There is an article at Web Developers Notes on how to prevent web pages from loading in frames. You only need to insert the javascript code below in the HEAD section of the document that you would like to protect.

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JAVASCRIPT" TYPE="TEXT/JAVASCRIPT">
<!--
if (self != top)
   {
   top.location.href = self.location;href;
   }
//-->
</SCRIPT>

How does it work?

The paragraph below is quoted from the article. It explains how and what the code does.

The code tests whether the top page is the same as the page being displayed. If this is not the case, the URL of the top page is changed to the URL of the present page. Thus, your page always loads in a full browser window the way you wanted it.

Verdict

I have tried it out and it works like a charm. Try clicking here to check out the previous website that was loading my page in a frame. Now, the page redirects to my original page. Notice the URL at the top of the page shows it is loaded from my blog.

If you want to prevent others from loading any of your pages in a frame, use the code provided above.

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