Author: Jan

Fixing UEFI boot problem

Earlier today my UEFI boot record somehow got screwed up on a Dell Windows 10.

The Boot Configuration Data for your PC is missing or contains errors.
File: \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD
Error code: 0xc0000001

One could use the USB OS installation drive to boot into recovery mode and choose command prompt hoping BOOTREC would solve te problem

bootrec /fixMbr

Only to run into this error

 The system cannot find the path specified

Using DISKPART followed by LIST DRIVES didn’t show the internal drive at all, hence the error…

What I did to solve this was creating a new recovery USB on a working Windows 10 installation.

Here’s a video tutorial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UzphLuk5II

Booting with the recovery USB, DISKPART showed the internal drive with no error and by using these three commands your UEFI boot record will be fixed and you are good to go…

  1.   BOOTREC /FIXMBR
  2.   BOOTREC /FIXBOOT
  3.   BOOTREC /REBUILDBCD

Restart your computer, et voila! UEFI boot record fixed…

At least it worked for me 😉

Pitfalls when moving your BOX cloud to another computer

Beware that BOX doesn’t sync dot files, and ignores some other filetypes.

At first you might not notice, and when you do it might be too late (when you don’t care for accurate backups). Then there’s another dangerous pitfall when you try to bypass the necessary first sync from the cloud.

Preparations

  1. Make sure all files are synched through the box sync app on your old computer
  2. Make a backup copy of the ENTIRE Box Sync folder on an external drive
    Typically under c:\Users\<username>\Box Sync\

Migrating to a new computer / installing on a secondary computer

1) Download and install the BOX app
2) Run the BOX app and login
3) Let BOX download everything from the cloud onto your computer. Do not copy the backup to your new computer! Chances are BOX sees these files as new ones and your sync will eventually end up with an unexpected amount of duplicate files!

Now you may wonder why you need the backup or the old copy of the Box Sync folder?

BOX does not support certain files, they are not synched, but you’ll find them in your existing backup.
If you use a MAC, if you are a webdeveloper, chances are that you have a lot of files that start with a dot.

.htaccess
.gitignore

but even all files ending with .bak are ignored, and many more like .PST and so on …

This is not a problem that is only related to BOX. Other cloud storage services have similar downsides. Stack also doesn’t .htaccess files to their cloud storage, although they recognize the need (especially for webdevelopers). There shouldn’t be a problem with folders starting with a dot.

All these files are considered ‘hidden’ by BOX, though they are not!
You need to copy those files manually to the new BOX location.

So that’s why BOX cannot be considered as a complete backup in the cloud!

How to deal with dozens of ignored files?

If you had a lot of dot files, it will be a burden to copy these files manually. But fortunately there are lots of applications which can make life easer for you. I use Total Commander (Commands > Synchronize dirs…) to make sure all these dot files are copied to their respective locations.

FileZilla als portable app installeren

Download het ZIP-bestand rechtstreeks van de FileZilla website (kies show all download options). Download niet via http://portableapps.com

Volg vervolgens de procedure op http://www.portablefreeware.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=84339#p84339

created settings sub-folder
renamed fzdefaults.xml.example file from docs sub-folder to fzdefaults.xml
edit fzdefaults.xml so the string $SOMEDIR/filezilla/ from Config Location line now reads settings
moved fzdefaults.xml from docs up one level (same as filezilla.exe)
run filezilla.exe

Getest met FileZilla_3.23.0.2_win64.zip op Windows 7 Enterprise.

Result: config files are saved in settings sub-folder, but the icons cache is still created in AppData.

Kiosk

If the “Kiosk mode” setting is set to 1, FileZilla will not write any
passwords to disk. If set to 2, FileZilla will not write to any
configuration file. The latter is useful if FileZilla gets executed from
read-only media.

Geen update checks

If the “Disable update check” setting is set to 1, the capability to
check for new FileZilla versions will be completely disabled.

Getting started with WAMP: setting up

Memory exhausted problem

“Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted”
I encountered this problem a few times, and setting memory_limit to a higher value didn’t seem to work

In php.ini:
memory_limit = -1;

Changing www root on WAMP

Open httpd.conf

Change

Listen 0.0.0.0:80
Listen [::0]:80

to

Listen 127.0.0.1:80
Listen [::1]:80

Change

DocumentRoot "C:/wamp/www/"

to

DocumentRoot "C:/Users/name/Sites/localhostwamp/"

Change

</pre>
<Directory "C:/wamp/www/">
<pre>

to

</pre>
<Directory "C:/Users/.../Sites/localhostwamp/">
<pre>

Setting mySQL password

go to shell (right click mysql shell in taskbar)

update mysql.user set Password = password('yourPasword') where User = 'root';
flush privileges;

go to phpmyadmin directory c:\…\wamp2.5\apps\phpmyadmin4.1.14\config.inc.php

replace:

$cfg['Servers'][$i]['auth_type'] = 'config';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['user'] = 'root';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['password'] = '';

with

$cfg['Servers'][$i]['auth_type'] = 'cookie';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['user'] = '';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['password'] = '';

Or watch this dummy video tutorial:

Set login session to something less restrictive for testing purposes

in your config.inc.php file (apps/phpmyadmin…)

$cfg['LoginCookieValidity'] = 604800; /* 1 week */
$cfg['MaxNavigationItems'] = 1000;

mysql error logging

add these lines to my.ini

log-queries-not-using-indexes
log-warnings
long_query_time = 2
log=C:/Webservers/wamp2/logs/querylog.log
log-slow-queries=C:/Webservers/wamp2/logs/SlowQueryLog.log

import sql-data into mySQL database

Right click Wamp icon in taskbar > mySQL

show databases;
use <databasename>;
source c:\Temp\queries.sql;

mysqldump in wamp (not via mysql console!)

Go to the wamp mysql directory via cmd prompt

cd c:\Webservers\wamp2\bin\mysql\mysql5.6.17\bin\

Now ‘all’ mysql commands are available:

mysqldump -u root -p dbname table1 table2 > output.sql

[SOLVED] XAMPP Row size too large, innoDB sql import

Ran into some problems recently with XAMPP. Exported a large mySQL production database and tried to import it locally in XAMPP (through Shell access).

Error: ERROR 1118 <42000> at line 437919: Row size too large <> 8126>. Changing some columns to TEXT or BLOB or using ROW_FORMAT=DYNAMIC or ROW_FORMAT=COMPRESSED may help. In current row format, BLOB prefix of 768 bytes is stored inline.

First I tried changing table to ROW_FORMAT=COMPRESSED doing so:

ALTER TABLE <tablename>
    ENGINE=InnoDB
    ROW_FORMAT=COMPRESSED
    KEY_BLOCK_SIZE=8;

No success with that. Then I changed innodb_buffer_pool_size to 32MB (default setting was 8 or 16) in my.ini (mySQL config file in XAMPP)

xampp control panel

# Comment the following if you are using InnoDB tables
#skip-innodb
innodb_data_home_dir = "/Sites/xampp-portable-win32-1.8.3-5-VC11/mysql/data"
innodb_data_file_path = ibdata1:10M:autoextend
innodb_log_group_home_dir = "/Sites/xampp-portable-win32-1.8.3-5-VC11/mysql/data"
#innodb_log_arch_dir = "/Sites/xampp-portable-win32-1.8.3-5-VC11/mysql/data"
## You can set .._buffer_pool_size up to 50 - 80 %
## of RAM but beware of setting memory usage too high
innodb_buffer_pool_size = 32M
innodb_additional_mem_pool_size = 2M
## Set .._log_file_size to 25 % of buffer pool size
innodb_log_file_size = 10M
innodb_log_buffer_size = 32M
innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit = 1
innodb_lock_wait_timeout = 50
innodb_file_per_table = 1
innodb_file_format = Barracuda

Doing so made it possible to import a 1GB sql table without any problem.

The above applies to XAMPP portable version xampp-portable-win32-5.5.19-0-VC11.zip

 

Winamp 5.666 change media library location

One of my previous posts guided you to the process of moving your library location from drive X to drive Y with the aid of a HEX-editor. This was tested for Winamp version 5.61. It was a rather complex approach, since iTunes XML import did not work in that version.

I have tested this again with Winamp version 5.666 and XML export/import works perfectly.

  • Make a backup copy of  your Winamp profile (c:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Roaming\Winamp\*)
  • Open Winamp
  • Remove everything from your current playlist
  • On the media library tab, click local library
  • Click Library button and export media database

Open the generated XML file, and with a program like notepad++, you can find & replace the <key>location</key> values to the new location. Save the file

  • Reopen Winamp
  • Remove everything in your library
  • Close and reopen Winamp
  • On the library button, choose import media database and point to the new XML file you created

That’s it!

 

PHP UTF8 test-template (jQuery, Bootstrap)

This is just a webdevelopment template for PHP (all errors, xdebug), HTML, jQuery, Bootstrap (UTF8 encoding).

<?php
ini_set('display_errors' , 'On');
error_reporting(E_ALL);
session_start();
header("Content-Type:text/html;charset=utf-8");
ini_set('xdebug.var_display_max_depth', -1);
ini_set('xdebug.var_display_max_children', -1);
ini_set('xdebug.var_display_max_data', -1);
?>
<html>
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
    <title>Your Page Title</title>
	<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/bootstrap@5.3.3/dist/css/bootstrap.min.css" integrity="sha384-QWTKZyjpPEjISv5WaRU9OFeRpok6YctnYmDr5pNlyT2bRjXh0JMhjY6hW+ALEwIH" crossorigin="anonymous">
	<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/bootstrap@5.3.3/dist/js/bootstrap.min.js" integrity="sha384-0pUGZvbkm6XF6gxjEnlmuGrJXVbNuzT9qBBavbLwCsOGabYfZo0T0to5eqruptLy" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/bootstrap@5.3.3/dist/js/bootstrap.bundle.min.js" integrity="sha384-YvpcrYf0tY3lHB60NNkmXc5s9fDVZLESaAA55NDzOxhy9GkcIdslK1eN7N6jIeHz" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>

<script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.6.0.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-migrate-3.3.2.min.js"></script>

</head>
<body>
	<div class="container">
		<div class="row">
			<div class="col-md-12">


			</div>
		</div>
	</div>
</body>
</html>

30 tips voor de dodentocht

Veel succes aan iedereen die de 100km aanvat.

Mijn twee uitgebreide verslagen van succesvolle tochten vind je in 2008 en 2009, maar ook die van 2007 waar ik vlak voor 50km op een domme manier opgaf.

In 2019 wandelde ik hem ook uit, maar dat verslag ligt nog altijd in de schuif…

Tip 1: Het aangeboden eten zit boordevol energie, eet ervan, ook al heb je niet meteen honger #Dodentocht #doto14
— July 31, 2014

Tip 2: Drink bij elke tussenpost, hou het bij één Duvel als het echt moet 🙂 #Dodentocht #doto14
— July 31, 2014

Tip 3: Je zal ook een overweg passeren, loop niet uit je sokken als je de bel hoort om er nog over te raken. Even rusten #Dodentocht #doto14
— August 1, 2014

Tip 4: Stap de hele dodentocht je eigen tempo, laat je niet verleiden om in het begin de snelheid van de groep te volgen #Dodentocht #doto14
— August 1, 2014

Tip 5: Spreek bemoedigende woorden voor collega-deelnemers, ook al komen ze van de andere kant van de wereld #Dodentocht #doto14
— August 1, 2014

Tip 6: Een koplamp kan nuttig zijn, zo zie je waar je stapt en kan je plassen ontwijken #Dodentocht #doto14
— August 2, 2014

Tip 7: Even een dipje? Een babbeltje kan afleiding brengen. Denk niet: hoeveel nog? Maar eerder: hoeveel al! #Dodentocht #doto14
— August 3, 2014

Tip 8: Voorzie wat muziek of een leuke podcast op je mp3 speler #Dodentocht #doto14
— August 4, 2014

Tip 9: Fluostrips zorgen ervoor dat je beter opvalt, de politie helpt je trouwens bij het oversteken van drukke wegen. #Dodentocht #doto14
— August 4, 2014

Tip 10: Geen voorbereiding? Het kan, maar luister naar je lichaam én luister naar de vrijwilligers van het Rode Kruis. #Dodentocht #doto14
— August 4, 2014

Tip 11: Hoe ouder de deelnemer, hoe groter de kans dat hij aankomt. Meer tips nodig? Een babbel met hen is goud waard. #Dodentocht #doto14
— August 4, 2014

Tip 12: Schoenen uitdoen kan enorm deugd doen, maar denk eraan dat je voeten kunnen opzwellen. #Dodentocht #doto14
— August 5, 2014

Tip 13: Alleen deelnemen? Goede moed, je hebt 10.000 vrienden! Mobiliseer ook wat vrienden die vanop afstand supporteren #Dodentocht #doto14
— August 5, 2014

Tip 14: Van sokken wisselen? Meningen lopen uiteen. Naadloze sokken zijn wel een must, dat hoeft echt niet duur te zijn #Dodentocht #doto14
— August 5, 2014

Tip 15: Denk niet aan de finish, denk eerder aan de afstand tot de volgende stop. Elke post is opnieuw een overwinning #Dodentocht #doto14
— August 5, 2014

Tip 16: Kom je met het openbaar vervoer? Vertrek niet te vroeg, spaar je krachten. 2u op voorhand is ruim voldoende #Dodentocht #doto14
— August 5, 2014

Tip 17: Zorg dat je voor de start nog wat drinkt. De eerste tussenpost is pas na 7,7km http://t.co/0FmbWzEXg0 #Dodentocht #doto14
— August 5, 2014

Tip 18: Neem niet te veel mee. Een rugzak of zelfs buideltas kan al na enkele kilometers irriteren #Dodentocht #doto14
— August 5, 2014

Tip 19: In de tussenposten kan het druk zijn. Neem drinken/eten aan en wandel eventueel wat door en rust verderop #Dodentocht #doto14
— August 6, 2014

Tip 20: Heb je blaren? Deze kan je laten verzorgen bij het Rode Kruis. #Dodentocht #doto14
— August 6, 2014

Tip 21: Zie je iemand al wandelend in slaap dommelen, spreek hem aan voor hij valt! Het gebeurt wel degelijk #Dodentocht #doto14
— August 6, 2014

Tip 22: In het begin komen de gegevens van de scanning niet altijd even snel door. Wacht tot het rijsttaartje! #Dodentocht #doto14
— August 6, 2014

Tip 23: Wordt het toch warm? Geen nood! Vriendelijke buurtbewoners stellen graag hun tuinslang ter beschikking #Dodentocht #doto14
— August 7, 2014

Tip 24: ‘s Nachts is het fris om niet te zeggen koud, een lange broek en trui komen van pas, tenzij je een ijsbeer bent #Dodentocht #doto14
— August 7, 2014

Tip 25: Laat bagage bezorgen halfweg, je kan daar wisselen van kledij indien nodig. Geen gezeul #Dodentocht #doto14 pic.twitter.com/shtgwQQjxX
— August 7, 2014

Tip 26: Opgeven? Meld je aan bij de post ‘opgevers’. Het kan een tijdje duren vooraleer je terug richting Bornem kan #Dodentocht #doto14
— August 7, 2014

Tip 27: 100km is niet alleen lichamelijk, maar ook mentaal een veldslag. Achteraf is die gewonnen strijd onvergetelijk #Dodentocht #doto14
— August 7, 2014

Tip 28: Als je dit nog leest: ga dan maar snel slapen! #Dodentocht #doto14
— August 7, 2014

Tiip 29: Alles klaar voor de trip? Indien mogelijk is het enige wat je nu nog rest… rust! #Dodentocht #doto14
— August 8, 2014

Move your music library from Winamp to iTunes

In a previous post I helped you to switch your music library from iTunes to Winamp, without losing any metadata (such as last play date, play count, rating…). Now Winamp has stopped releasing new versions, some might want to switch back sooner or later. I’ve made the switch as a kind of experiment to see whether it would be possible to keep (the most valuable metadata). iTunes won’t be able to please me in the near future, but as time goes by, it might be the only easy way to sync with my old iPod Classic and iPad.

What do you need?

– Winamp 5.666 (media library required, standard Winamp installation)
– Your favorite txt notepad software with find/replace features (Notepad++, GVim, …)
– iTunes 11.2.2.3

It will please you to hear that moving the library back to iTunes is less complicated than the reverse option.

Steps

Start up Winamp

Winamp export media database

The default view has a button called ‘library’ at the bottom of the left column (media library column). Click, and choose ‘export media database’. This will create an iTunes XML library database.

Start up your favorite txt editor

Open the XML file created by Winamp in the previous step. Replace F below with the drive letter on your system. Find:

<key>Location</key><string>file://localhost/F:%5

Replace with

<key>Location</key><string>file://localhost/F:/

(so the only thing that needs replacement is %5 to /)

Save and close XML file

Start up iTunes

iTunes import XML database from Winamp

File (Alt + F) > Library > Import playlist… Choose the XML file

If you have lots of media files, this will take some time.