HOWTO: force filesystem check on reboot in MS Windows (NT family)

These tricks may be well-known, but still handy for busy volumes (e. g., the system one):

0. Open a command prompt (cmd) with administrator privileges (either via "Start → Run..." menu, "<WinKey> + <R>" hotkey, or other methods you like).
1. Two options.
   1. Marking volume "dirty":

      > fsutil dirty set C:
      Volume - C: is now marked dirty
      

   2. A milder option, just scheduling the volume to be checked on startup:

      > chkntfs /C C:
      
      

2. Reboot safely.
3. Watch the CHKDSK operation progress...
4. DONE!
   (You can check the CHKDSK logs later in the "Event Viewer" (eventvwr.msc or simply eventvwr for short)).

References:

• MS TechNet Library - Windows Server:
  • Chkntfs
  • Fsutil dirty
• MS Knowledge Base:
  • CHKNTFS.EXE: What You Can Use It For
• MS Windows XP Professional Product Documentation:
  • Microsoft Windows XP - Chkntfs
  • Microsoft Windows XP - Fsutil: dirty

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Last updated: 2016-05-20

MS Windows installation on Sun / Oracle computer with SPARC CPU (video tutorial)

MS Windows XP & 7 (and more): installation on Sun Fire V240 server (with UltraSPARC IIIi CPU) — video tutorial (in Russian) :-)

HOWTO: make MS VS 2005 work with WPF etc.

WPF ("Windows Presentation Fundation", just another MS Windows GUI API from .NET 3.0 "WinFX", this time XML-based) is fully supported in Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and newer.
If you use VS 2005, you'll not find an option to create a WPF project from the New Project dialog (WPF was released as part of .NET Framework 3.0, while VS 2005 is for .NET 2.0).

Here are the required steps to get an ability to build WPF projects with VS 2005.

1. Download .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 (if you don't have an up-to-date .NET 3.x version installed yet).
2. Download a small add-on for VS 2005:
   Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (WCF & WPF), November 2006 CTP
   Mirror: CNET | Download.com
   Note: MS has released that package as a CTP ("Community Technology Preview", MS' term for some kind of beta / preview SW releases); it's unsupported, so upgrade to VS 2008 or later is recommended.
3. Install the downloaded MSI package.
   If the installer exits with an error (regarding the bad / already installed / newer .NET version), you should start it manually (i. e., from MS Windows Command Prompt, you know: <Win>+<R>, cmd, <Enter>) with a specific option:
   

   > cd P:\ath\To\Installer\Folder
   > msiexec /i vsextwfx.msi WRC_INSTALLED_OVERRIDE=1

   It allows to ignore that error and continue the installation process.
4. After that, a new option titled Windows Application (WPF) should appear as part of (new!) .NET Framework 3.0 subcategory for C# language in the New Project dialog of the Studio.
   Enjoy!

See also:

1. Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (WF)
2. Wikipedia: WCF / WPF / WF | .NET Framework

Free & open source data encryption software: quick list

Here is a quick list of free & open source on-the-fly filesystem (FS) encryption software.

• Entire disk / volume / partition encryption & "virtual disk" (container file)-based software:
  • LUKS / dm-crypt [Linux (FS driver is implemented at kernel level); encrypted volumes are supported by FreeOTFE in MS Windows];
  • FreeOTFE [MS Windows];
  • DiskCryptor [MS Windows];
  • TrueCrypt [MS Windows, Mac OS X, Linux] (discontinued in 2014-05).
• File-level encryption tools:
  
  • eCryptfs [Linux (FS driver is implemented at kernel level)];
  • EncFS [Linux (FUSE-based FS); experimental MS Windows port exists: encfs4win];
  • antigift (a ccrypt wrapper) [Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, MS Windows].

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Last updated: 2014-06-19

MultiMedia Players in Windows and Linux

For MS Windows, my favourite audio player is foobar2000 [official site / Wikipedia]
(I'm tired of Winamp [official site / Wikipedia], and especially of the Windows Media Player [Wikipedia]; some people may like something else, e. g. AIMP [official site / Wikipedia]).

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For playing video, I use VLC media player [official site / Wikipedia], MPC-HC ("Media Player Classic - Home Cinema") [official site / Wikipedia] and (very rarely) MPlayer (incl. forks).

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In GNU/Linux, there are 2 powerful media players I frequently use (mostly for playing video): VLC and mpv [official site / Wikipedia].
mpv is a popular fork of MPlayer [official site / Wikipedia] & mplayer2 (itself a fork of MPlayer; now abandoned); they say it has more features and more rapid development process than the original one.
Sometimes I used mplayer[2] with a (now abandoned) GUI called gnome-mplayer.
BTW, I neither like nor use GNOME Videos (formerly called Totem) [official site / Wikipedia].
And some users also like xine [official site / Wikipedia] and Kodi (formerly XBMC) [official site / Wikipedia].

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There are some pretty console audio players: mpg123 (probably the best MP3 player around) [official site / Wikipedia], cmus ("C* Music Player") [official site / Wikipedia], moc ("music on console") [official site / Wikipedia], mp3blaster (now obsolete) etc., but I prefer mpv there :)

And now about GUI audio players. Some years ago I used XMMS ("X MultiMedia System") [official site / Wikipedia] (now discontinued) and Amarok [official site / Wikipedia] (it was too overweight for me). In the near past, I used Rhythmbox [official site / Wikipedia]; when Banshee [official site / Wikipedia] became the default player in Ubuntu, I was very disappointed (it was much more buggier than Rhythmbox and used that C# / Mono / .NET / etc. stuff); then I tried to use LXMusic (it uses XMMS2 [official site / Wikipedia] backend and has a minimalist GUI) for some time, used Exaile [official site / Wikipedia] a few times...
...and finally switched to Audacious [official site / Wikipedia]
(Audacious is a fork of (now defunct) Beep Media Player [official site / Wikipedia], which itself was a fork of XMMS; BTW, it supports Winamp skins; not to be confused with Audacity [official site / Wikipedia], a popular audio editor).

Some other popular players:

• Clementine (Wikipedia)
• DeaDBeeF
• Qmmp (Wikipedia)
• Quod Libet (Wikipedia)
• etc.

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Last updated: 2016-12-11