Computer Tech & Tips

How to remove a Hard Disk GPT Protective Partition in Windows XP

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Seagate-Hard-DiskI recently received a nice gift from a friend, a 1TB hard drive. Yes, I have a nice friend. I bought an external enclosure case for this drive from www.newegg.com and installed the drive in the enclosure. Next, I attempted to use the drive on my XP Professional based computer. After plugging in the USB adapter my system did recognize the drive, but I was not able to view it in “My Computer.” No drive letter was assigned to it. So off to the handy Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Storage -> Disk Management tool. The drive was in the list of drives but labeled “GPT Protective Partition.” There was no way available to format this drive with the Disk Management tool.

Doing some research my understanding is that this drive was formatted in a Mac or 64bit system. Thus the GPT Protective Partition. I did find a solution and I share it here:

How to change a GPT Protective Partition to one usable in Windows XP:

We will be using Windows XP diskpart tool to clean this drive which will remove all data and partition structures from the disk. Then XP’s Administrative Tools to initialize and format this GPT disk to a XP usable MBR disk.

1. Go to XP’s Command line (click on “Start Menu,” then “Run,” type in “cmd” in textbox, and hit “OK”)

Type in “diskpart” in command line.
Type in “list disk” in command line to show all disks in this machine.
Use “select” to set the focus to the specified partition, for example “select disk 7” (as mine was listed).
Use “clean” command to remove GPT disk from the current in-focus disk by zeroing the sectors of the drive.

2. Go to “Disk Management” in “Administrative Tools.”  You will see the disk is “unallocated” now. Right click on disk info, choose “Initialize Disk.”

3. Right click on disk info again and choose “Format Disk.” You can assign any unused drive letter during this step. The disk will proceed to format, depending on the disk size this will take some time. Do not turn off your computer till this step is completed.

4. When finished the drive will now be list in “My Computer” and be usable on your XP sysytem.

Warning: This procedure erase all data on the selected disk!

Firefox 3.6 Officially Available, Brings Speed Increases, One-Click Themes & More

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Source: Lifehacker: Firefox 3.6 Officially Available, Brings Speed Increases, One-Click Themes, & More.

Windows/Mac/Linux: The oft-delayed but much improved 3.6 version of Firefox has landed, offering up faster performance, one-click themes, safer add-ons and plug-ins, better font handling, and a lot more. Grab it now.

We’ve been downloading and trying out Firefox 3.6 from the first alpha, and from what we’ve seen, 3.6 is a bigger update than the minor decimal point iteration would indicate. It ranked second only to the cutting-edge Chrome builds in our speed and performance tests, which meant there was real improvement in startup time and page rendering.

What’s new? :

  • Instant themes: Point 3.6 at the Personas gallery, and you can hover over a theme to see how it would look in your browser. Click to apply it, and it’s your browser skin. You can then manage your Personas from the Add-Ons menu.
  • Out-of-date plugins notifier: Start your browser up with an outdated, and potentially virus-friendly, Adobe Flash or other plugin, and Firefox will tell you and provide an update link.
  • Full-screen ‘open’ video: If you’re looking at a video streaming in Ogg or another free format, Firefox can play it full screen.
  • WOFF support: More intriguing for developers than users, but, still, Firefox now accepts and downloads smaller-sized Web Open Font Format fonts, allowing sites to more quickly show you their text the way they intended.
  • Faster, faster, faster: Mozilla promises better JavaScript, startup time, and rendering speeds.

You can read up more on what’s new in the 3.6 release notes, but you’re probably going to want to discover its features for yourself.

Firefox 3.6 is a free download for Windows, Mac, and Linux systems.

Get Firefox web browser at [Mozilla]


How to send & receive Yahoo Mail (free version) from POP applications

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Normally to send and receive email from Yahoo via an POP application like Outlook or Thunderbird you must upgrade your yahoo email account to a premium account. Apparently yahoo is (unofficially) allowing pop access via their free mail in some situations.

Here are some ways to possibly access your free yahoo email account via Outlook, Thunderbird or other POP applications:

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