ajua Online

Searching for an easy way to convert DTS audio to AC3 I found a great application called PopCorn MKV AudioConverter. You can download it here.

Many video files in MKV like movies or concerts contain DTS audio and some setup boxes or old A/V receivers can’t decode it while AC3 is a more standardized format, even for old players.

I gave a WD TV to my mom for christmas but her Home Theater didn’t have an optical input and the WD TV needed to output DTS audio via its optical output because it can’t decode that format.

By using this tool, only the audio will be converted and then remuxed again to a new MKV file, while the video will remain untouched.

Using PopCorn MKV AudioConverter is as easy as it gets. When you open it, it will automatically download all the needed files and tools. Then, its just a matter of specifying the source file, the destination file and deciding whether or not you want to keep the original DTS audio track inside the MKV file along with the new AC3 audio.

You can choose a file or a folder if you want to convert many files at once. If you want to keep the original DTS track, make sure to select the checkbox Preserve DTS Track.

When you are ready, click the Run button and the process will begin. It only takes between 5 or 10 minutes for 1 file depending on your computer.

You can use it to convert audio in other formats, not only DTS, if you want to.

The guys at TechSpot posted an easy guide on how to dual boot Windows 7 along with Windows XP or Windows Vista.

Now that Microsoft’s latest operating system, Windows 7 (beta) is publicly available, almost everyone is itching to get their grubby paws on a copy and take it for a test drive.

However, because this is only a beta release most people simply aren’t willing to part with their established installations of Windows Vista or XP. With that mind, we’re going to look at one easy way of dual booting Windows 7 Beta with either Vista or XP in three painless steps…

Read the Guide

This tutorial has been updated to work with the new version of Windows Live Messenger (Build 14.0.8089.726).

As i always do with my unattended installations, i try to modify every installer i can to fit my needs.

With Windows Live Messenger 9, this time i wrote a little tutorial in case you want to modify it to include patched files and to fit your particular needs.

Some readers are reporting errors viewing this post with IE. Please view it with Firefox while i figure out what’s going on. Thanks.

Read more…

Making images of hard drives is a useful way of having backup copies of all your information, including your entire operative system.

For many years, only a few companies made this kind of programs and they were expensive. But now, there are some free alternatives that make this possible without spending any money. Besides, they are pushing commercial products to lower its prices because of the new competition.

The industry is lead by two applications, Acronis True Image and Norton Ghost. These two are great and include an impressive array of options that many of the free applications don’t have. But most users won’t use them anyway.

DriveImage XML

The first application i want to talk you about is DriveImage XML, from Runtime Software.

Official description:

DriveImage XML is an easy to use and reliable program for imaging and backing up partitions and logical drives.

The program allows you to:

• Backup logical drives and partitions to image files
• Browse these images, view and extract files
• Restore these images to the same or a different drive
• Copy directly from drive to drive
• Schedule automatic backups with Windows Task Scheduler

Macrium Reflect Free

The second one is Macrium Reflect Free.

Official description:

• Create a disk image whilst running Windows using Microsoft Volume Shadow copy Service (VSS).
• Image to Network, USB, FireWire drives and DVD.
• Built in scheduler.
• 32 bit and native 64 bit versions.
• Industry leading compression levels and speed.
• Linux based Rescue CD with Network access and full GUI. Only 6.5MB in size!
• Built in CD/DVD packet writing engine. Supports packet writing to DVD DL media with Windows Vista.
• HTML log files.

No Excuses

There are free tools to make those important backup disk images. It is up to you which one to choose.

Personally, i liked Macrium Reflect Free feature set.

I just came across this tool when doing some reading on jailbreaking the iPhone 3G in Mac OS X.

WinPwn is supposed to unlock the iPhone 3G in Windos, so you can use it with any carrier or service provider. I don’t have an iPhone so i haven’t try it.

This tool is made with resources of iPhone Dev Team, the guys who unlocked the iPhone 3G in Mac OS X. This guys have a blog. You may want to read it.

Website

There are many Firefox extensions that still don’t work with versions 3.0 and higher yet.

I updated Firefox to 3.0.1 and discovered that one of my favorites, Tab Mix Plus, was not compatible.

After investigating how the extensions and versions work, i found an easy way to modify some of them to work with Firefox version 3.0 and higher.

Follow this instructions and hopefully you will get yours to work:

1. Manually download the extension you want to modify. You can right-click and choose Save Link As to save the XPI file.
2. Rename the XPI extension to ZIP and open it with WinRAR, WinZIP or 7.Zip.
3. Extract the file install.rdf and open it with Notepad or other text editor.
4. Look for this line: em:maxVersion=”3.0″ and change it to the last version of Firefox you have. In this case i have 3.0.1 so i changed it to em:maxVersion=”3.0.1″.
5. Save the file and update it inside the ZIP archive.
6. Change the ZIP extension back to XPI and install it. A fast way to do it is to drag it to a Firefox window. The install extension dialog will appear and if all went right, you should be able to use it.

Be aware that this is not guaranteed to work with all the incompatible extensions because some of them work different or they may have different features for the browser versions.

I have made this modification to MinimizeToTray and it works great as well.

Most applications today insert entries in the context menu of file and folders, making it display a little slow (specially on windows XP) and making useless entries sometimes.

What is really bad, is that many of them don’t provide options to enable or disable those entries.

Fast Explorer makes configuring your context menus really easy. It displays a huge list of entries organized by file types. When you select a file type, the program displays its actual entries in the right side of the window so you can uncheck the ones you don’t want to appear when you right-click on this kind of files.

This way, you can get rid of entries you don’t need and make your context menu display faster and make it smaller by displaying only the entries you want or need.

Website Download

Many sites list hashes, a unique file string based on different algorithms, for their file downloads so that every user can verify the integrity of those files, or even check if the file they got its the same that the one that is on the site.

HashTab makes this a snap by adding a tab called File Hashes to the properties window of every file. If you need to verify a file, right click on it, select Properties and click on File Hashes tab. It automatically hashes the file and shows the calculated string based on the algorithms you choose.

It supports the most used algorithms, including MD5 and CRC32. Another great use for this is to check pairs of files to see if they are identical, because this algorithms produce unique strings for every file, except when they are 100% identical..

I use this very often for patched files in unattended installations or if i want to check a file i got from somewhere else, comparing it with the hash provided in the official source.

HashTab does not support SFV (Simple File Verification) files. If you are looking for a program to check SFV files, i use SFVLite, which is great for checking this type of  files.

Website & Download