This error affects all Source engine based games, including Left 4 Dead 2, Portal 1 & 2, Team Fortress 2.
In my case the issue was caused by using LapLink PCMover to transfer stuff from a 32bit (older) Windows PC to a 64bit one. This broke part of WMI, triggering some rather weird errors later down the road.
A VPN connection is still mostly regarded as “business solution”, only useful to connecting employees to the company network. But this is no longer true nowadays.
VPNs can be very useful in protecting the integrity and security of data transfers, no matter who the two communicating parties are. To learn how to set up a connection and connect to a VPN server…
There are mainly 3 types of VPN servers: Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP), Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP) and OpenVPN.
In this tutorial I set up a PPTP server on a CentOS VPS as its supported by almost all devices natively: Windows, Linux, Android, iOS and Mac.
Since Vista, Microsoft implemented a more serious protection system concerning core operating system files.
Because of this, replacing, editing, deleting or making any changes to protected files is a tedious task, requiring the additional step of obtaining the appropriate rights and permissions on the files first.
At random times, especially after a long computer uptime (over 2 weeks), all windows animations and especially any Flash-based video player would become sluggish and render at about 10-15FPS.
This happens independent of where using the computer or letting it idle while it is running. The solution…
KVM (Qemu) virtualization comes with a batch of useful basic command line tools to administer virtual machines without having to use the graphical VM manager.
To view the list of all virtual machines present on the system…
I finally found the proper uTorrent (wine/Server) replacement for Linux (preferably headless) systems – qBittorrent.
Unfortunately there seems to be no repository out there providing qBittorrent for CentOS 6, so I had to compile it from source – not the easiest task I have to admit.
Webmin (Virtualmin) has great service monitoring capabilities, restarting any failed services that it detects. Unfortunately, it cannot and does not monitor or restart itself it it crashes.
Still, since on (most) Linux systems it comes with a service manager, this can be used to check its status. The included bash script does this and restarts it if necessary…
One may find himself in the face the scenario of having to fix a friend’s infected computer and needing internet access to install/run cleanup utilities while at the same time trying to avoid spamming the internet and get the public IP blacklisted or even blocked.
Using a router running DD-WRT, this is easy to do using custom firewall rules…
When one needs to quickly check the individual PHP memory_limit value for a long list of virtual servers (presumably hosted by Virtualmin), going from folder to folder and reading the contents of the etc/php.ini file is one (loooooong) way of doing things. Fortunately, there’s an easier way, with the help …
I recently purchased a Tenda N3 (micro) wireless router to use as a wireless extender in the house. Since it took me about an hour to figure out how to pair it up with my main WRT54GL wireless router, I decided to write this short how-to guide.
The Tenda N3 is a cute little thing, small enough to tuck away and forget it’s even there.
Sony Ericsson’s Vivaz has several hidden menus codes for diplaying software (firmware) version, bluetooth address, wireless MAC address, total call time, performing a soft reset, a full reset or entering the service menu.
To see the codes…
