Windows

The Mysterious Shrill Tone After Dell Dimension Lockup

September 24, 2006

Tonight my computer froze. Windows itself was locked up. That, like, almost never happens.

But even more unusually, after several seconds of being locked up, suddenly a shrill tone came out of my Dell Dimension 8400 computer tower. It sounded like a prolonged BIOS beep. I turned off the computer right away. And then decided to turn it back on to see if it would boot successfully.

It booted up just fine, thankfully. I did some online research and I found an article that said the following:

Executives at Creative Technology Ltd. said they believe they’ve isolated the so-called “squeal of death” associated with the company’s Audigy sound cards, and that it’s not tied to the sound card itself.

The “squeal,” which consists of a shrill tone caused by an audio loopback after a PC locks up, has been tied to a specific PCI bridge chip used in at least one motherboard from Soyo Computer Inc. The same squeal has also been tied to a PCI glitch in PCs manufactured by Dell Computer Corp., according to Steve Erickson, vice-president of audio development at Creative Labs, Fremont, Calif.

[...]

Creative has worked to track down the source of the squeal. In one of the cases, Creative found the glitch was tied to the AT123S PCI arbitration chip from Attansic Technology Corp., often used to avoid system conflicts in motherboards with a large number of PCI devices. Under high bus loads, the chip locks up the sound, causing the squeal, Erickson said. The chip has been found on the Soyo SY-K7V Dragon Plus motherboard, which uses the Via KT266A chipset.

Hmm, that “under high bus loads, the chip locks up the sound, causing the squeal” sounds about right, considering I was “only” exporting an audio file, editing another, and opening Outlook 2003 at the same time, with a bunch of other programs open. Tsk tsk.

One thing though: it sounded like the tone was coming from inside the computer. The article didn’t say whether this squeal came through the speakers or whether it was internal, so unfortunately I don’t know for sure whether this is the problem.

But next time, I’ll think twice before I bog down my computer to that extent!

Windows Screenshot Tips

June 20, 2006

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Here are some of my favorite screenshot tips that I have discovered for Microsoft Windows. Enjoy!

1. Take a screenshot

It couldn’t be easier: just press the Print Screen key on your keyboard (sometimes abbreviated to Prnt Scrn) and the contents of the screen are copied to the clipboard. You can then paste the screenshot into Paint, Microsoft Word, or another program.

If you just want to copy the contents of the currently selected window, hold down the Alt key while you press the Print Screen key.

2. Grayscale anything (Windows XP only)

Here’s a sneaky trick: You can easily turn any part of the screen into a grayscale version. First, make sure the part you want to capture is not in the center of the screen. The click the Start button and click Log Off.

As you probably know, after the Log Off dialog appears the screen will slowly fade from color to grayscale. But if you use the screenshot tip mentioned above, you are able to use that XP “eye candy” to take a screenshot of the now-grayscale screen.

3. Overcome screen-capture prevention

If you use tip #1, you may come across programs that prevent you from taking screenshots. If you’re sure that it’s legal to take the screenshot you want to take, you might be able to overcome this by first holding down the Ctrl key and tapping Esc twice. Then press Print Screen. Note that it will not work to tap the Windows key twice.

Windows Interface and Icons: Trademarked?

June 15, 2006

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Windows icons aren’t used in just Windows. They’re everywhere: in software and on websites.

I haven’t been able to find any information on the Microsoft website that prohibits the use of these icons, so I guess that means it’s okay, right?

For Windows XP, maybe. But according to a screenshot of the “About Windows” dialog in Windows Vista Business posted on the SuperSite for Windows:

The Windows Vista™ Business operating system and its user interface are protected by trademark and other pending or existing intellectual property rights in the United States and other countries.

Of course, the OS name at the beginning of the sentance will vary if you’re using a different edition of Windows Vista.

But compare this to the legal info found in the “About Windows” dialog in Windows XP:

Copyright © 1981-2001 Microsoft Corporation

Yep, just a copyright notice.

Obviously, the legal information in the About Windows dialog has changed significantly from Windows XP to Windows Vista.

Does this mean that programmers and web developers will be unable to use elements of the Vista interface, including icons? If so, does this interface protection cover just Vista itself? Or does it also encompass programs included with Vista, such as Windows Media Player 11 and Windows Internet Explorer 7? If IE7 is protected with a “trademarked interface,” does that mean that usage of the IE7 feed icon is illegal? What other implications might this possibly have?

I have previously considered the use of Windows XP icons on websites to be okay. Many popular sites use them, and Microsoft hasn’t complained about it as far as I know. In addition, the usage of Windows icons presents a consistent user experience for new PC and Internet users.

But it looks like this might be changing. For me as a programmer and web developer, I would find it very helpful if Microsoft would make it clear what exactly they want to prohibit and what they want to allow.

What do you think?

Microsoft Considers Atom to Be an RSS Format

May 20, 2006

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Looks like Microsoft will be considering Atom an “RSS format” in Windows Vista.

From the Windows Vista Developer Center RSS homepage:

Windows Vista will support all common RSS formats, including: RSS 1.0, 2.0 and Atom 0.3. We will support Atom 1.0 when it’s released.

And from the RSS Support in Longhorn article:

RSS, as we use it in this document, refers not to a single format (such as RSS 2.0), but to the general concept of feeds of syndicated content. It should be considered to cover all feed formats that meet the basic criteria of updateable [sic] collections of items.

I do see why Microsoft has chosen to define RSS this way, and at the same time I don’t.

There really isn’t a term that exclusively encapsulates both “RSS” and “Atom.” You could say the word “feed,” though that can include other formats such as OPML.

But don’t you think “feed” is more technically accurate and user-friendly than “RSS” when describing both RSS and Atom?

New From Apple: Windows XP on Macs

April 7, 2006

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Wow. Apple did it. They created a beta program called Boot Camp that lets you dual-boot Windows XP on a Mac. And according to the SuperSite for Windows review, published just today, it works quite well.

Paul Thurrott (author of SuperSite for Windows articles) gave an interesting an opinion on why Apple would do this:

One might wonder why Apple would create such a thing. After all, with barely 2 percent of the market for computer operating systems, should Apple be trying to win market share for Mac OS X and not offer a way for Mac users to run Windows? Not exactly. Unlike Microsoft, Apple doesn’t actually make a lot of money directly from sales of its OS. Instead, Apple makes most of its money–even now, in the heady days of iPod supremacy–by selling computer hardware. So one might think of Boot Camp as a win-win. Apple wins because a much wider audience of users can now consider its Mac systems, secure in the knowledge that they can run Windows if they want to. Microsoft wins because these users will still be using–and paying for–Windows. And best of all, we as users win, too, because now we can have the best of both worlds: the elegance of Apple hardware coupled with Windows, the operating system that runs all those applications we want to run.

Some Mac users don’t see it that way. They’d like you to believe that Mac OS X is all anyone would ever need, and they’re actually quite a bit distressed that anyone would want to run Windows on a Mac. Get a life: This software will open up the world of Apple to a much wider audience and if OS X is as great as they think it is, surely some of those people will start spending time with OS X instead of Windows. I can’t really see the issue there.

The review also said that:

A future version of Boot Camp will be included with Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard,” due in late 2007. That version, presumably, will support Windows Vista as well.

I do daresay that I’m actually getting somewhat excited about this. I’ve never wanted to switch from Windows because it is, as I consider it, the ultimate progamming platform. With a dual-boot setup like this, I could still do programming etcetera on Windows and then doodle with Mac OS X if I ever wanted to. Hmm…