Hack a Dead PC Power Supply Into a Rechargeable Lantern

If you have access to a dead computer power supply you can use the case, power switch, wiring, and power port along with a 5v lead acid battery and a landscaping lamp bulb to create a rechargeable lantern.
Computer power supplies can burn out after several years and unless you're an advanced electronics hobbyist they're not worth trying to rebuild. Instructables user 300mpg notes that You can reuse many of the components as long as you're careful to follow proper capacitor safety procedures. To make the lantern you'll open up the power supply and remove all internals except for the power switch, power plug, and wiring. Cut out the fan grating and fit a 12v landscape lamp, but don't permanently attach it until you test the wiring. Wire the switches, lamps, and battery together and test the function of the lamp. Once that's done cut two openings in the top of the power supply case for a handle made from the the wiring bundle that connects the power supply unit to a motherboard—zip tie the ends together from inside the power supply unit and you'll have a comfortable handle for your lantern. Now you'll just need to cleanup the case and glue the battery and lamp to the casing; adding foam spacers between the case and the battery would be a good idea and used mouse pads work well for this..
From the original design you would connect a 12v sealed lead acid battery charger to the positive and negative connections on the power supply plug. As commenters on the Instructable pointed out, mounting a battery charger inside the case might be a superior design as then you already have the plug and can reuse a standard 3-prong computer power cord.
This seems like a fun project that makes dead components useful again and is worth doing as long as you follow all electrical safety procedures.



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Apollo Brings CyanogenMod’s Official Music Player to All Android Devices

Android: Cyanogen's built-in music player is much better than the stock Android player, and now it's available for all devices at Google Play, rooted or no. It's debut comes packed with added features, like voice search, automatic artist and album art image fetching, gapless playback, homescreen and lockscreen widgets, and the ability to pin your favorite tunes to your homescreen.

Apollo comes in two flavors, an ad-supported free version, and Apollo+, a $0.99 version that pulls out the ads and entitles you to faster updates from the developer. Both versions offer the same features otherwise though. The app features gestures to move between screens, a persistent player on the bottom, super-fast search, notification playback controls, headset control support, and more. Everyone gets homescreen widgets, while Ice Cream Sandwich devices get lockscreen widgets and Jelly Bean devices get Lockscreen player controls.

Before you shell out for the paid version, give the free version a spin. If you've ever run CyanogenMod on an Android device, you may be familiar with the player, and if you currently are, you already have it. The app doesn't support third party services yet and only plays local music right now (so no Google Music for you,) but the dev says upcoming releases will bring tablet support, Last.fm scrobbling, the ability to specify your own media directories, customizable widgets and controls, and more

Apollo (Free) | Google Play

Apollo+ ($1) | Google Play via Android Police

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How to Get Rid of a Virus (Even When Your Computer Won’t Boot)

So you've contracted a virus that's taken over your computer, and you can't even boot up to try and troubleshoot the problem. The solution: Create a rescue CD, boot into a safe environment, and rid your PC of any nefarious software while it sleeps. Here's how to do it with minimal effort.

Here, we'll show you how to put one together and use it to eradicate any viruses on your system.
Note: This is meant to be a beginner's guide to system rescue. If you're an experienced user, you may prefer to use something like Hiren's BootCD, which contains a ton of other diagnostic tools you can use to figure out what's wrong with your computer and retrieve important data. For the purposes of this guide, though, we're trying to make it as simple as possible, so anyone can get the job done with minimal effort. If you're already familiar with the process, be sure to send it to your friends and family so they can be too!

How to Create Your Rescue Disc

If you can't boot into your computer, you'll need to borrow one from a friend to burn your rescue disc, but other than that, all you really need is a blank CD. Here's what you need to do:

Download the Avira Rescue System and save it on your spare computer. Avira is one of our favorite antivirus programs, and it makes creating a rescue disc very easy—though if you prefer, you can download similar discs from Kaspersky, AVG, and other antivirus makers 

Insert a blank CD or DVD into your computer, and double-click on the Rescue System installer that you downloaded. Pick your disc drive from the list, and it will install the rescue disc for you. Note: If you don't have a CD drive, you can download this Avira Rescue ISO from this page instead, and use Unetbootin to create a bootable flash drive instead. It takes a bit more work, but it'll work on computers that don't have a disc drive.
 Once your disc has finished burning, insert it into the affected computer and press the power button. If it boots into the Avira Rescue System interface, skip to the next section.

If your computer doesn't boot into the Avira Rescue System interface, you'll need to tweak a setting in your system's BIOS. To do so, reboot your computer. When it first boots up, you should see a screen that says something like "Press DEL to enter setup." Press and hold the key it requires to enter setup. Everyone's computer is different, but somewhere in those menus you should find an option that says something like "Boot Order." Change that setting so that your CD drive is number one on the list, save your settings, and exit. When you reboot, you should find yourself in the Avira Rescue System.

How to Scan Your Computer with Your Rescue Disc

Now that you've successfully created your rescue disc, it's time to clean out that infection. Once you've booted into the Rescue System, here's what you need to do:

When you first boot up, Avira will ask you if you want to boot into the AntiVir Rescue System. To do so, type 1 and press Enter. It will then go through the process of booting.

 When it's done, you should be greeted with the screen at the right. You can browse around the Configuration if you want, but you should be fine with the default settings. Just go to the "Virus Scanner" tab and click "Start Scanner" in the bottom left-hand corner.

As the scanner runs, it should repair any infected files it finds. When it's done, reboot your system and see if you can boot back into Windows. With any luck, Avira should have done its job and you'll at least be able to get back into your system.

If you're still having problems after running your rescue CD, you may need to take more drastic measures. However, if your rescue CD worked and you can boot your computer up correctly, you're almost home free. You should probably run your regular antivirus program to see if there's anything else left on your system, and clean up any malicious files it finds.

Once you get everything running properly, it's time to think about long term protection. After all, you don't want to have to do this again. Make sure you have a good antivirus program running at all times. You don't have to pay money for one, either—Microsoft Security Essentials is more than good enough. While you're at it, you should set up a simple backup system so you never lose your important files to a virus or other disaster again.

 Or you can also use Windows Defender Offline From Microsoft.


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Power a Laptop with AA Batteries

Like most electrical devices laptops have specially-designed batteries and battery charges designed to use an exact voltage and amperage and deviating from those values can be bad for the long-term life of the device, but if you're in a bind or just want to study electricity you can wire together a series of AA (or even AAA) batteries to power your laptop.
Electronics weblog FunnyHacks demonstrates in the video above how you can wire AA batteries to an adapter plug that will plug into your laptop's power plug and provide anywhere from 30 minutes to four hours of power depending on your laptop's power load, how many batteries you're using, what kind of power output those batteries have, and how you have them wired. You'll need to a bit of calculation to make sure you have enough batteries to meet both your minimum required voltage to power your laptop and enough amperage to last long enough to get your work done using a mix of series and parallel wiring setups.
Of course we're not actually recommending you use this hack on your current laptop as it's possible to short out your power supply or do even greater damage, but if you have a still-functioning laptop that's over a decade old with nothing better to do it may be an interesting project to try as it'll help reinforce basic electrical knowledge and fits into the MacGuyver book of "things I'd like to know how to do but not necessarily ever do them" that many of our readers enjoy learning.


 more info and video here

If really NEED to!

With Windows 8's radical user interface many familiar windows elements are not present or must be accessed differently. If you're missing the shutdown button and don't want to use the new charms bar you can add back your shutdown button the start menu manually.
Educational weblog WonderHowTo shares that, to make a shutdown button for your start screen, you must first create a desktop shortcut (right-click, new shortcut) and enter this line of code in the location field:

Shutdown.exe —s —a 00

Name the desktop shortcut Shutdown and click Finish. Finally, right-click on that shortcut and choose Properties then Change Icon and from the menu that pops up you will pin the shortcut to your start menu. The video above shows you how to complete each step.


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FREE eBook: Windows 8 for IT Pros (Updated - Final Copy)

In this 147-page eBook, you'll find 11 chapters of detailed technical content covering the following key improvements for supporting PCs with Windows 8: Get it Here

Uninstall Your Windows Product Key So You Can Use The License on Another PC

Do you have an old PC you want to sell, but also want to use your Windows license on your new PC ?

There is a hidden command in Windows that allows you to do just that. Read on to find out more.

Note: Between Microsoft and your OEM there are a number of different laws that determine whether you are allowed to use your license on another PC, so follow this tutorial at your own risk. 

Additionally before you go through the tutorial you will want to check that your product key is still attached to your PC/Installation CD, if it is not , do a quick Google search on how to recover it.

Uninstalling Your Product Key

The first thing we need to do is get our activation ID, to do this fire up an administrative command prompt and run:

slmgr /dlv

Windows will open a message box and tell you a bunch of information about the license status of your PC, take note of your activation ID.

To uninstall your product key you need to use the /upk switch, along with your activation ID:

slmrg /upk 507660dd-3fc4-4df2-81f5b559467ad56b

If you do it correctly you will be told that your product key has been uninstalled.

Installing Your Product Key

Installing your product key on your new PC is just as easy, all you need to do is fire up an administrative command prompt and use the /ipk switch.

If your key is valid you will be told that your key was installed.

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