My android phone started to prompt me with “force close” messages every time I tried to use the camera.

For some reason the application was crashing each time I tried to start it. I tried to find a replace  the application with another from android market but for me it was hard to find an app which is simple and rich as the stock. Additionally the replacement apps was difficult to be connected with camera button on my phone and none of them (at least none of the ones I liked) was able to record video.

So I had to find a solution to application crash…

My first thought was to reset the device to its defaults but I was not liked the idea of  installing again all the apps and restoring the home screen layouts.

So I tried to search on forums for a different way. Meanwhile I used CameraMX  as a working alternative, a very good and free camera app.

Back problem…

I tried to re install the camera application (The camera application was easily extracted from a ROM file, thanks to XDA developers forums) but the problem persisted.

I was struggling with the problem for few more days I was pretty sure that something was going wrong with application settings or other additional files on my phone.

And the solution found: I deleted the thumbnails on the image folder of my SD card and restarted the phone. It seems that the little thumbnail window which indicates the last shot was responsible for the app crash, for some reason the thumbs was unable to load and the application was crashing.

Sometimes Blue Screens Of Death (BSOD) are very hard to solve. These screens usually caused by hardware (or even from hardware driver) issues. On my previous post I mentioned that I had to replace my graphics card fan.

Usually something like this is a typical situation, but for me it was the beginning of a nightmare. Few hours after the replacement I went face to face with a BSOD caused by graphics card. Actually this was a terrifying experience since I thought that I during the new cooling system installation I destroyed my card.

I tried to remove the graphics card and inspect it visually and nothing suspicious found. After that I fitted back the card to its PCIx slot and tried to use the PC for few hours…

For my disappointment the a blue screen was appeared again while I was surfing on internet. For the next few days I was experienced blue screens every few hours. Meanwhile I tried to use different driver versions and run some Graphics Card stability tests. All the above pointed that something wrong was going on with the hardware, however system and GPU temperatures was on a low level (around 40 degrees Celsius) and PSU voltages was normal.

For another time I tried to inspect the hardware, this time more carefully! And There was the root of the evil: I overlooked that the new cooling system was added few more grams on the already enormous graphics card and this weight caused the plastic case clips which are responsible to keep the card firmly fitted to motherboard  was unlocked while I was turned the computer tower to its vertical position under my desk. Straight ahead I removed these clips and I fitted the “old-fashioned” screws in place. I double checked that the card is locked on PCIx slot and I tried to use my computer as normal.

TADA: the system is up and running with no problem at all!  right now I’m  running for over 20 days with no blue screen. The system is stable and I can work without the fear of losing my work.

I have an ASUS HD5770 graphics card installed on my desktop PC which covers all my needs. I was very happy with it until today when I saw a warning message on a system diagnostics utility (AIDA64) that the GPU temperature exceeded 65 degrees Celsius. Checking the card I found that the fan was stopped.

I tried to remove it and clean it but I noticed of a really strong smell of burning electronics… So I tested it and I found that the fan circuit was burned!

After the bad news I tried to find a replacement fan on local and international market asking on forums and checking on manufacturers and electronic parts distributors. More bad news for me was coming from search to search. This cheap fan (model FD7015H12S  - a product created from FIRST-DO in china), isn’t common for the market so its impossible to find a replacement. The fan is frameless, using three holes in on the back plate to fit on the cooler system.  I cant fit any other fan  there and the only solution for the moment was to fit an extrernal 80×80 cm fan to support the card temporarily.

After that I tried to find a good cooler replacement  for my vga card.  I came up with Scythe Setsugen 2 which claims to be compatible with my graphics card.

Now I wish I had a more common vga card than HD5770 and be able  to replace just this damn fan easily and with a lower cost.

XtreMP3 is a project which is started as a challenge to create the world most simplified media (mp3) player.

So I originally created a player equipped with just one button…

This player was maybe the world’s tiniest (and most simplified) player. There was only one button available and all the commands was assigned to this.

Anyway, as the time passed I started realize that the interface should be different. So a tray icon added and all the functionality moved under a handy context menu. The player equipped with global hotkeys and other useful functions and after a long period of testing and debugging the fist public executable is out.

The player official link is http://xtremp3.codeplex.com/ where users you can find the Alpha 2 BETA 1 (updated) release, program documentation and  the source code as well.

I will be happy to get feedback and suggestions on codeplex community by users and help me to make a tiny yet powerful streaming player by adding more features.

Beezo 2.0 is the next step on Beezo.net mixing site. The site is back but this time is a bit different.

I have previously posted twice about Beezo.net (http://eserver.gr/blog/?s=beezo). I was impressed by the whole concept and disappointed when the site went down due legal reasons.

Now the site is back “live”, but this time the creators are a bit more careful with the mixed stuff posted.

More info you can find here: http://www.beezo.net/01/?p=157

Enjoy!

This one of my best support experiences (although is regarding a faulty product).

OCZ seems to really care about its reputation and for its customers.  And I have to admit that my recent experience with the RMA and support department was the best I ever had!

OK faulty products is something that I’m familiar with. I’m not complaining about that. This is the reason why lot of manufacturers are offering long term warranties to keep customers satisfied in case that the product fails. In some cases the lifetime warranty gives the sense that manufacturer is pretty sure that the product will not fail no matter what, but even in these products the possibility to get a faulty one it still exists. So when you are facing with a faulty product you need to get support and hopefully a replacement.

Here is my great fear:

When it comes to service and RMA departments I’m “crossing my fingers” to find a person (or a company) who is trying to help me rather than convince me that the product is good and it doesn’t require service or replacement. My bitter experience with in the past with some vendors makes me a bit “service-a-phobic”.

However OCZ is a different company.

Their best and prompt service department is the best I ever seen. They quickly answered to my RMA request by giving me authorization to return the faulty memories and replace them next day! Their response is one of the best in the market which will make OCZ my first choice in future buys.

This is the way support should be, keep on OCZ and thank you.

Android SMS issues. What a letdown!

I just noticed that my mobile phone was not receiving SMS messages.

Usually I’m receiving bank notifications on my mobile phone, this way I’m informed in real time for transactions on my bank account. These notifications stopped appearing on my phone two weeks ago…but i didn’t noticed. Yesterday my wife texted me a couple of “remember-the-milk” messages. I received nothing!

So I started to wondering what is going on with my cell phone… I was suspicious with some apps installed on my phone so had to try my SIM card to my old Sony Ericsson device, and guess what? I bunch of SMS messages was received!

After that I returned to my Android device and I was checked thoroughly the settings (network and apps settings). I found nothing to indicate that something is going wrong with SMS.

So next step was to search on the internet about it. So finally I went face to face with my problem: The phone doesn’t receive any SMS (and in some cases email message) when the Low Internal Memory indication is active!  -  Issue 4991: Can not receive SMS when internal memory is low and  Issue 11045: cannot receive SMS messages when internal memory is low. And as far I can see there is no fix for it, at least until Android version 2.2 the issue is still there.  The only solution is to remove apps from the device to make the low memory message disappear and get the phone back to work.

You can see the comments on the bug reports to see that this is a common issue and its not actually related with the available space on the phone, since the devices still have enough space to receive text messages.

What can I say this is the last thing i was expected to face from a modern device operating system. Even back in 90′s with my first mobile device, an Ericsson GH-688, I never missed a message.

Its great to have lot of apps installed on my mobile phone, its great to have fancy automation, its great to customize my phone, but the most important thing is to have a device which can work as a phone!

Just found something that must not be existed! A bug under readyboost function on Winodws 7.

OK its a bit deep and it seems not to affect the computer function but if you like to see it for yourself where it lays keep reading.

To be honest I can’t say for sure the this function is helping my computer but since I have plenty of USB sticks around my desk and because my USB ports are enough I’m using one 4GB usb stick as Readyboost dedicated.

Anyway…

Today I just tried to rename the drive cause I’m always forgetting what kind of disk is that M drive which is always full.  So I decided to rename it to something more specific: “READYBOOST”.

Afterwards I tried to check if the drive is dedicated to ReadyBoost function. For my surprise the system prompt me that the drive drive cannot be used for readyboost due insufficient space on it!.

So I thought that the system kicked out the USB stick during the remane process and the readyboost cache file is just lying on the drive taking the whole space.

But when I tried to delete the file the system denied it! The file was still active. The only solution was to rename back the drive to its previous name (nothing) and check again the drive properties where the drive indicated as a dedicated readyboost drive.

I’m not saying that is a bug that is a nightmare… but come on Microsoft you can do better than this!

My previous post ”Web Music Selection (Vol 2) – DJ’s creating buzz” was a direction to a great site found on the web with mixed music offered for free by professional DJs
However there is a sad update on this. According to this forum thread ”due to legal and financial reasons, www.beezo.net can no longer host dj mixes.“ that was posted on twitter by Enrie and after that the site is not accessible anymore. In addition the twitter account for beezo.net news (https://twitter.com/#!/beezo411)  has no new tweets since Jun 25 2011.

I think that’s a pity! Beezo.net was a great site to listen good mixed music for free and from DJ’s side was a very good way to promote their work.

My desktop computer is usualy loaded with programs or other custom made utilities which are running silently in system tray or sometimes I ’m running lot of programs just minimized to windows taskbar. Usually when I’m coming to shut down the PC, most of the times late at night before I go for sleep, I need to kill all open applications before I hit the shut down command otherwise the system will start prompting me for programs may still working and for some reason the operating system is quite “polite” with them. Windows 7 are waiting for the program to accept its termination signal in order to proceed with the system shutdown. Meanwhile it prompts user a selection screen to wait or force shut down of each program. OK that’s a pain. The whole proccedure can take about half a minute or even more for me to wait for each screen and answer to each window and force close every program. When I say shut down I mean shut down! So I found a solution which is quite easy.

A simple command line and the system takes care everything and sends to windows a force shutdown message or even better a desktop shortcut (http://j.mp/keQmEM). Double click it and kiss goodbye any hard ass program which blocks the system shut down. But I went one step forward on this: I have created a simple utility to do this for me (instead using a modified shortcut). This utility can be set to automatically shutdown, restart, logoff or lock Windows based PC upon its execution (giving a short period of time to user to cancel the operation and set some program specific parameters).

You can download the utility from the following address:   http://j.mp/jESAXf I suggest you to use this utility to immediate shutdown your system but be warned of open programs and documents which are need to be saved.