If you use Firefox and suddenly find yourself having to re-enter your username and password for websites that used to “remember” who you were, you might have encountered the same bug I just battled with for a while. Here’s the fix:

For Windows Vista (and probably Windows 7) users, open My Computer and browse to C:\Users\[your username]\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[random characters].default . Make sure Firefox is closed and delete cookies.sqlite. I also deleted prefs.js, but that might have been unnecessary. Try it out and you should be good to go.

After about eight years of building websites, I’ve decided to share a few tips and secrets that I wish I had known about earlier. It’s easy to become intimidated by the sheer volume of technology available in this field, so I figure I’d do my good deed and post a summary of what I’ve learned about this monstrous topic. Continue reading this post…

At first, I thought Vista Business Edition came with no games at all, being geared towards the work environment and all. Luckily for you Solitaire and Minesweeper fans out there, that’s not true. Here are the steps to bringin’ the Windows games back:

Start > Control Panel > Classic View (on the left-side menu) > Programs and Features > Turn Windows Features On or Off (on the left-side menu) > and put a check mark in Games. Done!

Since MKV2VOB has been updated, this post is obsolete. I can now recommend it for converting MKV files for the PS3. Download it at http://www.mkv2vob.com.

More good news for Playstation 3 owners. While mkv2vob was a step in the right direction, I found another page that uses a new set of tools to accomplish the same task with even better results (reliable seeking, more consistent conversions, etc.). Check it out at the Playstation.com Forums.

To simplify the process, here are the direct links to the files you’ll need:

• mkvtoolnix
• MKVExtractGUI
• h264info
• tsMuxeR

Since these apps are updated constantly, I highly recommend you follow through the guide and visit each page individually.

Since the stripped-down Express version of SQL Server 2005 doesn’t include a tool to automate backups, I recently had to find a way to reliably backup my databases each day.

Requirements:

• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition
• Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio Express
• Windows Task Scheduler
• Some sort of text editor (of course)

Continue reading this post…

If you ever need a quick way to convert a FLAC file to or from WAV, it couldn’t get any easier. Some genius created a super-simple frontend called FlacDrop for drag-and-drop FLAC encoding and decoding. Just unzip the program, run FlacDrop.exe, and drop your FLAC or WAV file(s) into the small program window. That’s it. You can access the program’s options by right-clicking in the window.

You can find FlacDrop on SourceForge’s FLAC page and many other lossless audio sites.

I found this out when preparing my music for a high-fidelity music download service called MusicZeit. Highly recommended!

No software-fixing advice this time… Today I added six song excerpts to my Entide MySpace page. Check them out and keep in mind the album will be for sale online in the next couple of days.

More info at Entide.com.

Sometimes when plugging in a flash drive, an old USB mouse, or similar devices, Vista can’t find the drivers in its own driver store and begins searching online. The process takes a while and is usually a waste of time.

There are two ways around the problem, but I believe any permanent solution is up to Microsoft (Vista SP1, please?).

1. Cancel the “New hardware found” wizard, right-click My Computer, choose Manage, and click Device Manager. Find the device(s) with a yellow error icon, right click, and choose Update Driver. Tell it to look in C:\Windows\System32 and include subfolders. The driver should install fine. If not, look to the manufacturer to find the driver software. This is a quick fix, but the problem is likely to occur again the next time you plug the device in.
2. Click Start, then choose Run. type “C:\Windows\inf” and hit Enter.As a side note, you’ll need to tell Windows Explorer to show hidden files, if you haven’t already done so. Inside any Explorer window (such as the one that was just opened), hit Alt on the keyboard to bring up the classic Windows menu, click Tools, then Folder Options. Go to the View tab and change the “Hidden files and folders” option to “Show hidden files and folders.”
   Scroll down to INFCACHE.1. We need to delete the file, but the Users group doesn’t have permission to delete it by default. Right-click INFCACHE.1 and choose Properties. Go to the Security tab and click the Users group, then click Edit. Add Modify permissions and click OK. A confirmation box will appear about changing permissions on a system folder, on which you can safely click Yes. Click OK on the Security page and delete the file.Though this isn’t necessarily a permanent fix, it seems to help with a lot of Vista driver issues that I’ve run into.

This error came out of the blue after an application I built had been working fine for months. If you ever run into this exact error, with the question mark at the end, there’s little info to be found on the net about it. That’s why I’m sharing the solution here. Why it happened is still a mystery, but here’s how you fix it:

For whatever reason, the SQL DataSource I was using showed parameters such as “id = ?” and “name = ?”. These are no good. A correctly-configured DataSource will show parameters as “id = @id” and “name = @name”. If you find such question marks in your source code, either delete and recreate the DataSource in Visual Studio, or click the Smart Tag, choose Configure Data Source, and follow these steps:

• Under “Choose Your Data Connection,” make sure the correct Connection String or Database is selected and click Next.
• Under “Configure the Select Statement,” switch the option from whatever is there to the other (temporarily), then click Next until you can click Finish.
• Click the Smart Tag and Configure Data Source again, then revert everything back to your original settings, and the problem will be fixed.

A strange bug for sure.

I was floored when I read the release notes for the Playstation 3’s 2.10 update. Sony finally added the capability to play DivX, XviD, and WMV movies directly through the PS3 — something customers had been begging for since we got our filthy hands on the (supposed) powerhouse media player/game console. A quick test proved that it handled standard-definition and high-definition videos beautifully. Unfortunately, the good news was followed by a bummer realization: The majority of new HD content found on the internet is in MKV (Matroska) format. Does Sony plan to add support for such a popular format as well? I haven’t heard anything official yet. But there’s hope…

A program called mkv2vob can quickly and easily convert Matroska-format files into DVD-style VOB’s that are easily read by the PS3.

Digital Digest also has an article for those of us who would love to convert MKV and other various formats into PS3-compatible videos. The guide isn’t perfect, but it should get the job done for most experienced geeks, especially ones who know what a high-definition MKV file is in the first place.

One snag I ran into involved setting the location of the Nero AAC Encoder. When going into Tools > Settings > Program Paths, keep in mind that you won’t see NeroAACEnc listed until you click the Audio tab underneath the Program Paths tab.