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I’ve been planning on moving my e-mail from Google Mail to my new PC router so I’ve been looking for a web mail solution that supports similar features to Google Mail. I chose RoundCube WebMail because it has a clean user interface and, like Google Mail, it uses AJAX, which make it more responsive. I’ve used my fair share of Web 1.0 web mail clients in the past and don’t really want to go there again.
One of the must-have features for any e-mail client that I use is threading since I am subscribed to a number of mailing lists and get a high volume of e-mails each day. Unfortunately RoundCube doesn’t have this feature and when I looked at the road map I could see it wasn’t scheduled for the near future.
So I decided to bite the bullet and work on adding message threading to RoundCube myself.
See my progress so far

Tags: Programming // 1 Comment »

My wife and I have set ourself the challenge of feeding ourselves for a week on only £15. Head over to the blog to see how we got on!
porridgeandjam.blogspot.com

Tags: Uncategorized // 1 Comment »

When you backup your system using this technique the system is backed up in a crash-consistent state. When you restore from the backup it’s like someone yanked the power cord out of your computer at the time you started the backup. The file system used in Windows Vista Home (NTFS) can cope with that so for the most part your files will be ok but some programs may not (e.g. they might have been halfway through writing a file).
It’s also important to note that robocopy does not copy NTFS junction points. This is normally harmless but it can stop some older, poorly written programs from working.
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You can schedule the backup script to run on a regular basis, e.g. once a week.
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Firstly, if you do not have the Windows Vista Setup CD:

1. First try pressing F8 when your computer is botting. If the Advanced Boot Options screen appears select Repair your Computer. Skip steps 1-5 below.
2. If the Repair your Computer option is not shown or you cannot get to the Advanced Boot Options screen, visit this website: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/how-to-make-a-windows-vista-repair-disk-if-you-dont-have-one/

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How to restore your system onto a new hard disk (in the event your old one dies).
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1. Create a directory to contain the programs required to perform a backup (e.g. call it Backup).
2. Copy vshadow.exe and dosdev.exe to that directory.
3. Create a file called backup.cmd with the following contents:

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robocopy is included with Windows Vista Service Pack 1- older versions won’t work.
Vista Service Pack 1 may be downloaded from here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsvista/bb738089.aspx
vshadow is included in the Microsoft SDK
The Microsoft SDK may be downloaded from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=E6E1C3DF-A74F-4207-8586-711EBE331CDC&displaylang=en. You need to install at least the Win32 Development Tools. vshadow.exe may be found in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.1\Bin\vsstools.
You also need another program, dosdev, which allows you to mount a Volume Shadow Copy as a normal drive with a drive letter.
dosdev may be found in Microsoft Product Support’s Reporting Tools, specifically MPSRPT_CLUSTER.EXE. That file may be downloaded from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=cebf3c7c-7ca5-408f-88b7-f9c79b7306c0&displaylang=en. Do not run MPSRPT_CLUSTER.EXE when you download it. Instead open the file with 7-zip and extract dosdev.exe.

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Windows Vista Home doesn’t come with the Complete PC Backup feature found in the Business and Ultimate editions.
The good news is you can use some freely available Microsoft tools to perform regular scheduled backups of your complete PC that can be restored onto ‘bare metal’ (e.g. a new hard disk to replace one that failed).
The backups are performed using two programs:
vshadow – performs a Volume Shadow Copy (or snapshot) of your hard disk
robocopy – “Robust File Copy”
The vshadow command takes a snapshot of your hard disk. The snapshot includes files that would not normally be accessible by programs, such as registry hives.
The robocopy command can be used to copy files from the snapshot to a backup directory (e.g. on an external hard disk). The options passed to robocopy ensure that metadata such as security descriptors and file times are copied along with the files.

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Intel(R) 82801GR/GH SATA AHCI Controller
I upgraded my new PC from Windows XP to Windows Vista. After doing so I noticed the PC would intermittently hang. The hard disk light would stay lit for a while then go out, then the computer would resume. In the System Event Log I found this message:

The device, \Device\Ide\iaStor0, did not respond within the timeout period.

Searching on Google I found this article on Intel’s website:
http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/cs-025783.htm
The article suggests upgrading to the latest version of the Intel Matrix Storage Manager drivers should solve the problem. It didn’t. However I noticed this paragraph in the article:

Because the setup change means that LPM is enabled by default for all Windows Vista platforms, using a device that does not completely follow the specification may result in one of the listed issues.

I found the registry settings for the iaStor and iaStorV drivers at:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\iaStor\Parameters
and
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\iaStorV\Parameters
Then for each port (Port0, Port1, etc.) I changed the LPM and LPMDSTATE values from 1 to 0. This solved the problem.

Tags: Systems // 1 Comment »