I am posting this about getting surround sound music in Windows 7 and this could probably work with Vista.

If you are using a motherboard that uses some built-in sound and you installed the drivers from the manufacturer’s website, you may notice there is no way for you to get surround sound. But here’s how you may fix that.

First, have you noticed the surround sound works fine with a movie or other media but not your music. If this is true then your hardware connections are not the issue. This solution is pretty simple to try too. Uninstall your soundcard driver and delete it. You should have a checkbox in 7 to delete the files as well. Reboot and this time let Windows install the driver from Microsoft. Then go into your sound devices and set it to the number of speakers you have. Now you may see only a choice of two being stereo and 7.1. Even if you have a 5.1 speaker system, choose 7.1. After that, go back to sound devices and click Properties. You may see a tab called “Enhancements”. If you do, be happy. Go to that tab and check the box called “Speaker Fill” if you see it. Hopefully it’s there. That is the enhancement that gives music surround sound.

The alternatives if that’s not open to you is another program besides iTunes. With Winamp, you can find a plug-in hopefully that worked with Vista for surround sound. I would link it but I had trouble finding it anywhere and had a copy of it on another computer. The plug-in is called Vista Sound 51 version 1.0.0.14. I found a link to a bugged earlier version which doesn’t work.

Also if you own Nero Show Time (part of Nero), you can play music in that with surround sound.

I don’t understand why the manufacturer’s drivers would remove the enhancement tab ability but this is one time Microsoft got something right and everyone who removed it was dead wrong.

Firefox web browser has a new update.

3.5.5 is a stability update mostly. You can download the new Firefox from Mozilla Firefox’s official site.

For those who only use Internet Explorer (Windows users) or Safari (Apple users), Firefox is a cross platform browser. Safari does have a Windows version of course now.

I have used Windows 7 beta, the RC, and now the RTM version of Windows 7.

If you used the beta and/or RC, there is a way to update to the RTM if it’s that important to you. Now if it isn’t then do a clean install. And for this to work, you will need either Windows 7 Ultimate or Enterprise final version. Home Premium, Basic, and Starter will not work!

1. Boot into the Windows 7 RC (or beta but most won’t still be using that since the shutdown date already passed).
2. Copy the files from your final version Windows 7 DVD to a folder.
3. Go into that folder and inside that is a folder called Sources.
4. Edit the file in the folder called cversion.ini and change Minclient number to 7000.0. Close and save.
5. If you are upgrading to final version of Ultimate, skip to step 10. If you are upgrading to final Enterprise, go to step 6.
6. Go to, Start, Run: and type: regedit.exe
7. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersion
8. Change the key : ProductName from “Windows 7 Ultimate” to “Windows 7 Enterprise”
9. Change the key: EditionID from “Ultimate” to “Enterprise”
10. DO NOT RESTART
11. Now go to that folder with your copied files from the DVD and run setup to start the upgrade process.
12. You will have to reactivate Windows by right-clicking Computer and going to Properties. And you will have to click the “Change Product Key” to enter the product key that came with your Windows 7.

Again, this will only work if you bought the full version of Windows 7 Ultimate or Enterprise. Since the beta and RC was Ultimate, going to Home Premium is considered a downgrade and things can be unstable even if it does work at all. For not losing items with Home Premium, I would suggest backing up and restoring after a clean install.

Now for you Vista users and particularly those who have Vista Ultimate. You remember those extras that Microsoft said they would give and didn’t really deliver too much? You upgrade to Windows 7 Ultimate and those things will no longer be available to you. The upgrade takes them away. Me personally I don’t care. I occasionally powered up the Texas Hold ‘Em Game when I had nothing else to do and actually remembered it was there. All 3 or 4 times over the years. Same with Dreamscape. Keep that in mind when you go to Windows 7. If things are that important to you in Vista, then you may think about dual-booting.

Windows 7 has been so far through beta and RC, very rock solid compared to Vista and with what it brings over Vista, I can do without Dreamscape or deciding to go all-in. It would have been nice if Microsoft didn’t mess with what programs were there already in the upgrade or even leave it to the person’s choice. Such as if they upgrade, it stays and if they do a clean install it’s gone.

Windows 7 can make use of larger flashdrives for it’s ReadyBoost that Vista limited it’s use to 4 gb of a flashdrive memory.

My only issue to date with Windows 7 came in playing a few online games. And it wasn’t even a problem in Windows as it was a problem with nVidia’s drivers for my GeForce card. One driver (185.x and 186.x) caused problems with a few games before the final version of Windows 7 was released. However since the release, the latest driver (191.x) from nVidia causes a problem with Champions Online. I’ve found the driver that gives me stability in all the games I played is the 190.38 driver.

I have yet to find a program that ran in Vista that did not run on Windows 7. And most of the time ran even better.

Microsoft is beginning to make me think they do pretty good every other OS they do. 98/98SE was nice for it’s time. ME was a mistake. XP was pretty solid for it’s time. Vista has issues. Now Windows 7 is so far pretty solid. It makes me weary about whatever they do next.

Here’s the promised post finally.

Are you old enough to remember Space Invaders? Some will answer yes and others will answer no.

Are you old enough to remember Pac-Man or Ms. Pac-Man? Same as above.

Do you remember Mortal Kombat?

Now, those who answered no, how about Marvel vs. Capcom?

King of Fighters 2003?

If you still answer no, just how old are you? j/k’ing. 🙂

Anyhow to bring these and many other games back to life, there is a program called MAME. And many people have used this program to bring home the 80’s and 90’s arcade experience by building their own arcade cabinet powered by MAME or paid for one. I’ve built one myself using an arcade cabinet of a Pacmania game and an old computer system. The current version as of this writing is version .134. I’ve used it since version .3x from way back in 2000. The number system is a little different than normal programs. The number after the period is like normal counting. So .30 (thirty) is older than .134 (one-hundred thirty four). I think the devs didn’t think they would reach over 100 and still be behind the decimal. /shrug

The cabinet itself I lucked into. I found someone who posted on a forum that he would give the cabinet away for free to anyone who would come pick it up. And I found it a few days after he posted it but sent him a message asking if he still had it. He did and I went to get it.

The system doesn’t require it to be something like an ultimate PC gaming machine. Actually it could work with a computer you are willing to throw away or donate how old it can be. MAME can run on any pentium class machine but later builds would recommend at least a Pentium III. Depending on if you will run it from command line or not depends on the version with or without GUI. On my cabinet, I run a loader and have it boot to the DOS of Windows 98.

Running the GUI version vs command line version has pluses and minuses. GUI is easy and you can visually point and click which game to run. Command line version seems to work with some ROMs that won’t work with GUI version for some odd reason.

I purchased a HotRod SE joystick from Hanaho which ran me about $100. If you are building a cabinet it is well worth it. Another one is the X-Arcade Joystick which I saw was sold at Fry’s even. However, Hanaho gives you a disk with some ROMs.

The legality of the ROMs is sort of the problem with MAME. You shouldn’t have the ROM unless you actually have a right to own it. Hanaho reached an agreement with some of the copyright owners to distribute their games with the HotRod joystick (or if you buy a full cabinet from Hanaho). Therefore I will not link where you may find ROMs on the internet.

Printing the marque for my cabinet was done pretty cheap through Kinko’s. The backlight for it was a regular black florescent light I picked up from Home Depot. It took about 3 days for me to complete the project. First day was mostly spent cleaning out the cabinet and painting it. Second day was mostly spent finish the painting, moving inside, getting the marque ordered, head back to Home Depot to get the light and get the computer that would be used loaded and configured. I use EmuLoader on mine. Final day was mostly finishing touches and taking the HotRod apart so it would fit my cabinet and mount it. Everything else that followed was just cosmetic.

The biggest expense was the joystick. Everything else together didn’t even equal the joystick price thanks to the fact a cabinet landed in my lap.

With MAME you can relive the past with some of the games and I have seen some done in this decade as well make their way into MAME.

Special Update:

Microsoft did an “update” to version 3.5 .net framework that silent installs a plug-in into Firefox without even saying a word. This update crashes Firefox. And you can’t use the add-on area of FF to uninstall it.

You will have to delete a dll file to fix this. MS did a sneaky install to FF when it did a 3.5 .net framework update.

1. Go to x:WindowsMicrosoft.NetFrameworkv3.5Windows Presentation
Foundation directory (replace x with your system drive letter which is
in most cases c)

2. Copy the NPWPF.dll file in that folder to a backup folder (or just flat out delete it if you are feeling bold)

3. Delete the file (if you weren’t feeling bold)

4. Try running FF but if you get an error then reboot the machine
and run CCleaner or Advance SystemCare to clean temp and fix the
registry.

Microsoft really is underhanded here considering what they didn’t like Google doing to IE in a similar fashion.

Last time I promised to talk about old school arcade gaming. That post will probably be pushed back to next week.

I thought the world was rid of this annoying advertisements on TV until I saw one this morning on ESPN2.

First
the ad does point out the free scan does require a purchase. It’s a
bait-and-hook spyware installer site. They install shit then tell you
to pay them to take the same shit they installed off your PC. Who needs
that crapola? DO NOT GO THERE!

Don’t you wonder why the ad
mentions it was in Forbes but not a PC magazine? Who the F reads Forbes
for tech news? Forbes is a business magazine and I’m sure if we search
enough we can find other things “featured in Forbes” we don’t need in
our lives. Maybe Forbes also said this site is a piece of crap.

If
you need to speed up your PC because of unwanted junk files, you can
use CCleaner for that. I’ve used it for years. I even remember before
it was called CCleaner and had it’s full name of Crap Cleaner. It will
clean your crap that FF.com will put on your machine as far as it’s
temp files. Go to CCleaner’s Site and download the
slim version which just gives you the CCleaner program and not the
toolbar extra.

To get the rest of the crap that site installs,
make sure you have something good like Malwarebytes which you can get
at MalwareBytes Official Site .

Having the likes of Ad-Aware and SpyBot as well can help clean up what FinallyFast puts on your PC. And Advanced SystemCare Free at Advanced System Care’s Site is also something else that can come in handy.

Boot into safe mode and run CCleaner then run Malwarebytes then run those others then run CCleaner again and also clean the registry.

This is a warning message to warn people to not get infected with all the crap that site like FF put on machines in the old bait-and-hook.

My widescreen LCD monitor started acting up a little while back. First it had horizontal lines running from top to bottom. They would go away as the monitor went through the day but would return the following day when I turned it on.

Then a couple of weeks ago, the monitor was hard to start and stay running. It would start but the screen would go black after a couple of seconds but trying to turn it on a few times, it would come on and stay on until I’d turn it off that night to sleep. Then it finally wouldn’t pop on for good.

I opened the monitor up and noticed a couple of bulging capacitors and one actually had a small leak. It was such a small leak that it was hardly noticeable. Now I never soldered anything before so I tried to go the route of just buying a replacement power supply. That was until I saw the prices people who had them were trying to sell them for. $125?! Nah, I don’t think so! You can buy a brand new LCD for less than that.

I priced the parts I’d need. Soldering iron, solder (although the iron came with some but I wasn’t sure if it was the 60/40 or not so bought some), desoldering braid (total waste), and four capacitors at Radio Shack. It cost me about 20 dollars for that.

The braid did me no good. It was not helping at all. So the following day I went back to Radio Shack and got a desoldering iron/pump. Now my total bill came to about 30 dollars.

I had a doomed non-working video card I’d thought I’d use as my test dummy with the desoldering iron/pump. I was struggling on that thing for almost an hour with no luck thinking it was futility. I then just bit the bullet and figured what do I have to lose if I mess up the power board in there. It’s not like it was working anyhow. Getting the bad caps off the power board took about 2 minutes to get all four off. I guess that old video card was too old and that solder just wasn’t going to come off.

Now I learned that I didn’t have to replace all four because once I replaced the one with the little leak mark, the LCD powered right up like it did when I first got it. But since I got the new capacitors already and the others had small bulges, I replaced them anyhow.

And now my LCD is back and working just like new.

Before you try to do this if you have a similar situation, I would say if you can just replace the board for a fair price, do it if you do not have soldering experience. If you want this to be your first soldering job, be sure to check out a lot of good informational videos and write-ups all over the web. I would list them but there are far too many and so many are excellent.

Next post, I will talk about something that used to be on Stunbolts in the early days. If you were alive in the 80’s and remember the video arcades of the time, you won’t want to miss how to bring all that home to you and it could be done pretty cheap. That is if you have patience, an old computer you are about to throw on the side of the road, and very little know-how.

Welcome to Stunbolts Tech.

This site will be all about technology. Look for more technology postings very soon.