Search Engine Bar in Firefox doesn’t work

The Search Engine Bar in Firefox simply doesn’t work. If I put some word/ text and click the magnifier icon, it doesn’t respond at all. Tried to uninstall and reinstall, also with different version, it didn’t help. This is the solution :

Close the browser and then go to the profile directory and rename formhistory.sqlite to formhistory.sqlite.old. (or delete it). Restart the browser and the problem resolved.

This is how to find the profile directory :

WINDOWS VISTA :

1. Click Windows Start button
   and type %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ in the Start Search box near the bottom of the Start menu, without pressing Enter. A list of profiles will appear in the top left of the Start menu
2. Click on any of the profiles (e.g. xxxxxxxx.default) to open it with Windows Explorer

WINDOWS XP/ WIN2K:

1. Click the Windows Start button, and select Run.
2. Type in %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ then click OK
3. Windows Explorer opens a folder containing your profiles.

Based on this experience, I think if I uninstall Firefox and clean all the profiles before reinstalling, I would be able to solve the problem. Means, uninstall – reinstall might not solve a problem because of the files left after uninstalling.

Make an Audio CD from Youtube

First of all, this is only for very limited internal use. I don’t post it to teach you do against copyright, but just to show you how the technology behind video and audio formats. Learn this steps carefully.

1. So, you can find so many video clips with your favourite songs, can be in youtube or other sites. Choose it, and download it.  My favourite downloader is PQFLV downloader. See my post about it. Anyhow you can find many other free ones. Your downloaded file must be in .flv (flash movie) format.
2. Extract the audio from that .flv file with Audio Extractor, I use AoA Audio Extractor, a freeware downloaded from this site. This software serves me very well. Fast and good quality. You can have the output in .mp3, .wav or .AC3; Up to here, you have already your audio file, but you have you make it playable in your CD player.
3. If you have several songs/musics to be put in one CD, the songs/musics might have different “volume”, means one might sound louder than the other; that would disturb the listener. So, you should normalize them. I use a freeware named MP3Gain to do it. You can download it here. This is the screenshot:
4. To make an audio CD that is playable in a common CD player, you have to burn it to “Audio Track”. You can use your Nero or any free CD writer software to do it.  As an example, I use here a Ashampoo Burning Studio Free. You can download it here. The producer website doesn’t give the link to download it anymore. They have the paid one, but based on my experience, this company often launch the new updated version and give free the old ones.

Open the Burning software, and choose “Burn Music” –> “Create an Audio CD”

Click Add, and browse your files. Click “next” while finish.

Go on, and your Audio CD will be ready!

Driver for USB flash disk in Windows 98 old edition

I have an old Acer Travelmate with original Windows 98 old edition.  There is an USB port there, but the new devices don’t provide the driver for windows 98. Some still provide for Win98 SE.

I found this site where I download the driver, and magically it works!!! I tried with SanDisk and even the generic USB flash disk.

The driver software is so small that I can put in a floppy disk. Then I attach the USB flash disk, and when it ask a driver, I locate it to that driver file. After short installation, the computer recognize my flash disk.

When I put another flash disk, again it ask driver. I just locate it to the driver have been installed, and it works.

Alternative of Webshot.com

People like to have nice, automatic changed desktop wallpaper and also the calendar from webshot.com; Unfortunately, by the time, this site and the webshot desktop program is more and more disturbing with their pop up/ advertisement. The program is working in background all the time. Many are questioning whether it can be considered as malware/ spyware.

I had had idea to look for another program that can serve as webshot desktop. Finally I got even better ones.

For wallpaper, I use Wallpaper Master from www.jamesgart.com, you can download it here.  I suggest you to make a folder for your wallpaper photo collection. You can get a lot of beautiful pictures for wallpaper in the net – not only from webshot.com. Just google, or use this link to find a list of sites providing wallpaper pictures.
This program need only 4.11 MB of your harddisk and 5.5MB of your RAM. It use your RAM only if you run it.  I run it automatically in start up and set it to automatically exit after 30 second.

You can set the changes, the position etc. in the setting panel.

Then, for calendar, I found a small free program named “Desktop Calendar” from this site.  They have the free and the pro version. For me, the free one is more than enough – even more than what you get from webshot.com.

This small program needs only 1.11MB of your harddisk and 9.3 MB of your RAM.

This is one example of its appearance:

If you move your mouse on the calendar, a menu will come out.

And if you click “Setting”, you will find this dialog box.

With this program, you can set your events.

Yes, get rid from webshot.com!

“Hidden” attribute is greyed

I made a copy of one folder from a flash disk of my friend. I didn’t check how was it in the flash disk, but after a few days, I realized that the folder is in “Hidden” attribute. Means, it was hidden and it could be seen because my computer setting is in “show all hidden file”. When I right click that folder and click “Properties”, I found the atrribute of Hidden is checked and greyed so I couldn’t uncheck it.

This is how to reset the hidden attribute:
* Go to command prompt (Run -> cmd)
* type the command :    attrib -s -h <directory folder>
* enter