fixed ati 5770 driver atikmdag stopped responding error in Windows 7

I purchased an ATI 5770 graphics card early this year when I built my latest PC. Sporting a gigabyte of RAM, and supporting DirectX 10, it was a reasonable purchase for a mid-range video card. Unfortunately, I encountered an error with ATI’s Catalyst drivers for the card. When the system was running a heavy duty video game, or something else intensive on the graphics card, it ran flawlessly.

When it was seemingly doing nothing, I would occasionally get an error that the “display driver atikmdag stopped responding and has successfully recovered“. Thanks to Windows 7, other than a few seconds of a blank screen, there was no downtime. It became annoying to deal with on a weekly basis, so I looked into what was going on with the card. Read more…

remove the categories bar from the heatmap wordpress theme

The only place I could find that this might be documented was in a support forum for the Heatmap theme, which you have to have a membership to access. So I figured out how to do it on my own. Read on to find out how. Read more…

replace bad capacitors on a Dell Optiplex GX620

Small form factor Dell GX620 systems were plagued by bad capacitors. Some in the power supply, others on the system motherboard. I don’t recommend replacing components in the power supply, but the capacitors on the motherboard aren’t too hard to replace.

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embrace life – wear your seatbelt

Awesome seatbelt safety ad from what appears to be the Sussex Safer Roads campaign Read more…

Epson Perfection 610 drivers for Windows 7 64bit

I recently built a new PC and use the 64 bit version of Windows 7. I had no trouble finding drivers for my printer, and various other hardware, but my Epson Perfection 610 wasn’t recognized and Epson’s website didn’t list it as Windows 7 compatible, even in the 32 bit flavor. Fortunately, there’s an undocumented way to get it to work. Read more…

Team Fortress 2 Giveaway WINNER

Lance E. from Pennsylvania, USA is the winner! Check your email Lance, you will find out how to redeem your gift.

Thanks to everyone that entered, check back often, there may be more in the future.

Team Fortress 2 Giveaway

One person will get Team Fortress 2 FREE.
Read the rest to find out how to enter (hint, no surveys..) Read more…