This weekend I had to help a friend fix their laptop. It was an old dell LT, running windows XP, that worked when plugged into the network cable, but couldn’t find any wireless networks. There is a few things you can try to do to fix this.

Make sure there isn’t an on and off switch for the wireless radio. Look around the machine. The front and side of the machine is a common place for an external wireless Internet switch.

Check to see if the “wireless zero” service is enabled. Windows runs on a bunch of background services that  most users don’t know about. There are services for automatic updates, printing, and pretty much everything that windows supports. Anyway, pushing ahead, this is how you check to see if this service is running.

1. Right click on “my computer”.
2. Click on “manage”
3. A new window will open called “computer management”. On the left menu, click services.
4. Once u click services, a list of services should populate in the right frame. Look for “wireless zero”.
5. Right click on wireless zero and click properties.
6. Make sure that the service is started, and set to “automatic”.

Your computer might use 3rd part software to connect to wireless networks. Some wireless netcards need to use a 3rd party software to work correctly. Netgear, Belkin and Linksys wireless adapters are common external wireless Internet adapters. They normally plug into a USB port,  a PCI slot, or a PCMCIA slot. These attachments need to use 3rd party software to connect to wireless routers. You should search the start menu and the program files folder on the C drive for software that may be related to these devices. If you can’t find them, then you should contact the support center for the brand you are troubleshooting.

The Computer Might have a hot key that enables and disables the internal wireless hardware. Some machines have built in wireless hardware. Manufactures like DELL and HP, like to clutter their keyboards with hot keys that do extra functions. Some of these functions could be: changing the brightness of the monitor, changing battery power, raising and lowering the volume, and many other things. You might also notice a key labeled “fn”. “fn” stands for function, the function key works the same way shift works when making symbols like #$%^&. You hold the fn key down and it will changed the function of certain buttons. On some machines, fn + f2 will toggle the internal wireless radio from on to off. A lot keyboards and computer manuals do not label this. Make sure to hit it only once, and then try to refresh your network list.

I hope this little guide puts you on the right path to getting online! Good luck!

I was looking for a free solution for doing backups on a peer to peer network. After a few minutes of sifting through google I came across sync back. Setting it up was easy. Quick download and install. There is a check box that I had to un-check that wanted to put the yahoo toolbar on my computer. Other than that it went smoothly.

How does it work:

It’s a pretty straight forward back up. You open the software and create back up profiles. A back up profile is back up instructions with a nickname. You select the folder you want to back up, then you select where you would like it to go. Sync back copies all the files over as they are, it doesn’t use its own compression. This makes it really easy to restore files you need without having to rely on the back up software for restoration. Sync back also supports backing all the backup files into a password protected zip file, in case your backing up sensitive information to an unsecured location.

My Personal experience with this software:

I run a small office network with a few different windows machines. As in most office settings it’s hard to force users to work off the network, working locally is much faster. However I still want to protect their files. The solution I came up with was to install sync back on all their machines and run nightly backups Monday-Friday to the network. This worked out very well. Now all I have to do is back up the network to a remote drive and walk out of the office.

I also tried to use sync back to back up the network. This is a much bigger task than using it on personal desktops. The software worked well enough, but I wasn’t  confident that it was copying everything. The total size of the files on shared file hard drive is 120GB. When sync back finished its task I noticed that the backup hard drive only had 108GB of data on it. I could do some tweaking, but I don’t think I would be comfortable using this software for such an important back up.

Conclusion

Sync Back is an easy to use, free, back up software. It does a good job on small non complicated backups and has some nifty options. I wouldn’t recommend that any IT people use the free version on important back ups, because it seems a little buggy, and losing data (and your job) isn’t worth it.

Instructional Video

I did a quick youtube search to see if anyone had some live examples on sync back in action. I found this “how to” video. It should answer any other questions you may have about this software.

It’s been a few months but I am back online. The economy took it’s toll on our server space was lost along with all the old blog posts. I will be making some attempts to recover them, however even If I can’t, I will resume my blogging. If you are new to this blog, let me tell you what I post.

On this blog you will be able to find:

Coding tutorials,
Application Reviews,
Gaming industry news, opinion, and more,
News about Anthonydamasco.net, clients, and associated developers,
And some Funny stuff

Feel free to leave comments, I am the type to reply to developers in need, and to give advice, so don’t be shy!