Month: February 2012

Re-Register all of the DLLs on your computer

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If you’ve recently had a virus or other random problems with your computer, such as the Blue Screen of Death, Windows Update not working, or Internet Explorer crashing, someone may have have advised that you use the System File Checker, or they may have told you to re-register all of the DLL’s on a computer. What the heck are they talking about?

What they want you to do is to go through your computer with a fine-toothed comb and find any system files that may have been corrupted. That sounds like it could take hours and be extremely difficult, lucky for you: it isn’t!

  1. Open a command prompt (for most of you, you can simply click the Start Menu, then go to All Programs, Accessories, then click Command Prompt).
  2. Type the following, and press enter:
    sfc /scannow
  3. You can also use the switch (the part after the slash) “scanonce” to scan the computer when you reboot, or “scanboot” to ALWAYS check the computer on bootup, but I adise sticking with either scannow or scanboot.

That doesn’t actually re-register all of the DLL files, however it does compare all of the major system files to what they should be based on a cached version or version from the base Windows install, and repair them if corrupted. To re-register DLLs takes a little longer, but it can solve a lot of problems when applications report that a file can’t be found or is missing. Open another command prompt and enter each command below one at a time, being sure to press enter after each one.

In the example below, I point to System32. If you’re using a 64-bit computer, change directory to syswow64.

cd
cd windows
cd system32
for %1 in (*dll) do regsvr32 %1 /s
for %1 in (*ocx) do regsvr32 %1 /s

Now reboot your computer. This doesn’t check the files themselves, but it re-registers them in the system, so if, for example, two programs shared the same file, and you uninstalled one of the programs, it may have left the file behind but broken ‘links’ (so to speak) to the file, thereby breaking the second program. So, I encourage you to run this as a quick way to try and fix some problems you may be having with program crashes, Windows Blue Screens, RUNDLL errors, etc…

2011 – Beefy – The Adventures of Beef Thompson: Vampire Hunter

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Beefy is a nercore rapper who loves his fans. So much so that his latest album, The Adventures of Beef Thompson: Vampire Hunter, is available is a “Donation What You Can” priced album. Which could include it being free, if you really want.

You might not know him from the likes of MC Frontalot, or MC Chris – but you should get to know Beefy. If you listened to last week’s Music Monday album, Bremelanotide, then you were introduced to Beefy the same way I was. You may have also seen him in the documentary Nerdcore_Rising. Most of his songs are positive, upbeat, and downright fun to listen to. The songs revolve around themes closest to nerds like us, with songs on this album such as PAXXX, Outlaw (based on Red Dead Redemption’s storyline), and Twenty Sided Rhyme.

While you’re there, you can stream several other albums from Beefy’s Bandcamp Site, or you can elect to buy them and name your price, if you need those MP3s on the go!

How do I remove / replace the hard drive in the Xbox 360 S?

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Even though the Xbox 360 S or “slim” doesn’t have a big hard drive unit attached to the top or side of the console, there is still a hard drive in most models of this latest revision of the Xbox 360. The 4GB model does not have a drive included, but the very popular Xbox 360 250 GB model has a hard drive hidden on the inside. If, for some reason, you need to remove and re-seat the drive or replace it entirely, the steps are quite simple.

You simply need to remove a small plastic cover from the end of the console and pull the plastic tab to remove the drive. The steps, and some easy to understand pictures are on support.xbox.com, as always, and the link also includes how to remove the hard drive on the original Xbox 360 (which is mostly self explanatory). Good luck with it!