random PC tips

The Nokia 5 is a great phone for it's price. But it seems to have some problems with the tethering hotspot function. The hotspot often stops working after a while. It seems to happen when you move between base stations. After that, you can no longer connect to internet with your tethered computer. A reboot of the Nokia 5 will help, but you need to do this all the time and it's quite annoying. I found out that a reboot isn't needed. The problem with the tethering seems to be caused by the Nokia 5 not giving a working DNS address to the tethered computer. If you change the DNS addresses of your computer to 1.1.1.1 and 8.8.8.8 (both are free to use public DNS servers), the tethering will work without booting you Nokia 5.

I had problems with the Kodi Youtube plugin where it didn't want to play live streams. To fix that error, do the following in Kodi: Open the Kodi Youtube addon From left side options menu, select "Addon settings" Select "MPEG-DASH" subpage Check "Use MPEG-DASH" and press OK. That should be all! But for me, it didn't work at first. Shortly after I set that up, Kodi decided to crash and restart. Luckily after that everything worked. So you might want to try to restart Kodi if it doesn't work at first. You should also have the "Inputstream Adaptive" plugin installed and up to date. You can check this in by: Select Add-ons  Select My addons Select All Scroll down to "InputStream Adaptive" You might want to check it's settings and check for updates. Versions I have at the time of writing: OS: OSMC Kodi 17.6 Youtube plugin 5.5.1 by bromix

Here are instructions on how to create a Windows 10 sleep timer that will close your browser after a specified time. It's great for those who like to watch Youtube at night. Just copy and paste this into notepad, then save the file with a .bat file extension, for example sleepbrowser.bat. The below script will close Firefox after 60 minutes. You can easily edit the delay in minutes. Just edit the row "SET SLEEPDELAYMIN=60". If you use Chrome, Opera, Internet explorer or Edge, just replace the part 'firefox.exe' with your browser's executable name. This works also as a sleep timer for any other type of program than just browsers. You could make it close Spotify or Winamp as well. Here is the batch script. echo off SET SLEEPDELAYMIN=60 SET /A SLEEPDELAY=60*SLEEPDELAYMIN echo Will close Firefox after %SLEEPDELAYMIN% minutes timeout /t %SLEEPDELAY% /nobreak echo Killing Firefox... taskkill /F /T /IM firefox.exe I use the script also to start t...

When trying to set explorer to open .txt files with Sublime Text 3, I couldn't select Sublime Text at all. After browsing for the sublime_text.exe, the list of programs still didn't show Sublime Text as an option. It seems that Sublime Text 2 had left the registry in a broken state. The solution for this is to install CCleaner and running the registry cleanup, TWICE. After that, reinstall Sublime Text 3 . Then right-click on a .txt file (or whatever file type you want to open with ST3) and select Open with... - Choose default program... - Browse... and find sublime_text.exe. Now you can select Sublime Text.

The Fall is the best adventure game I've played for years. It's a very innovative scifi-themed game with a really dark plot and great atmosphere. But I was having a big problem: the game crashes every time after a certain scene where the main character is being hacked into. You are supposed to press the ESC key at that point, but pressing it causes a crash and a return to desktop. This happens at least with my setup, Windows 7 32-bit, and the Steam version of the game. Fortunately, there is a solution: 1) right-click on The Fall in your Steam library and select Properties 2) press on the "Set launch options..." button 3) Type in this text:  -force-d3d9 After that I had no problems at all. The reason for the crash seems to be in the new DirectX version. The above launch option forces the game to use the older DirectX 9. Have fun with one of the best adventure games around!

Thunderbird search index gets corrupt from time to time, and here's a short guide how to make it work again. I was able to search for things and got some results, but I was unable to open them when clicking on the results. Instead, Thunderbird opened an empty window. How to fix it in Windows 7 and Vista: 1. Close Thunderbird 2. Open Windows Explorer and go to C:\Users\YOUR_USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\SOMETHING.default, where YOUR_USERNAME is your windows username and SOMETHING is the random profile ID that Thunderbird has created for you. 3. Delete the file global-messages-db.sqlite 4. Start Thunderbird and go to Tools -> Activity Manager. You can see Thunderbird rebuilding the search index. This can take a very long time! Now you can enjoy the working search, as least as long as it lasts! If you use another OS, the global-messages-db.sqlite might be in a different location. Here's a guide how to locate your Thunderbird profile folder .

Here's some tips on how to write a shell script to backup stuff from your Android phone to a Windows machine. This should work on any version of Windows, but I've only tested it on Windows 7 and Windows 10. First, you need the Android SDK installed. The command line tools are enough, you don't need the full Android Studio. You will be using the adb.exe found within to do the transfers and removing of files on the phone. Second, you need an ADB (Android Debug Bridge) driver for your phone installed. Most phone manufacturers provide ADB drivers on their websites. Note: Seems that the ADB bridge is nowadays supported in Windows 10 and recent mobile phones without any extra drivers. I haven't had to install ADB drivers at all recently. Third, your Android phone needs to be in developer access mode . You should do a couple modifications to the script below. These include setting the ADB path variable and setting the destination folders for sound recordings and images...