Category Archives: Troubleshooting

Should You Open an Internet Cafe?

I’ve been in the internet cafe business since 2009. Though the business is no longer as profitable as it was 3 years ago, I don’t see myself quitting or moving on to the next business venture yet. I have seen many fellow computer shop owners who have decided to close their doors, and most of them, I believe, weren’t ready with what the business entails, which resulted to their demise.

My computer shop

Up until now, people have been asking me about my computer shop business, asking various questions to help them decide if they should start their own. I always turn them down after I throw them a couple of inquiries which led me to believe they’re not ready yet. And it’s alarming that many of them think they can open an internet cafe or computer shop just because they know how to use a PC.

Owning an internet cafe is not an easy task. You have to be familiar with, not just software, but also hardware issues that may arise. You have to be ready for them, and when I say ready, I mean you have technical knowledge of how to fix them. Otherwise, you’ll be paying tons of your hard-earned profits to technicians to come visit your shop just to get your problems fixed.

I know of some technicians for hire who would even try to trick computer shop owners who they conclude are not really technically knowledgeable. Which is why I find professional remote technical support teams like iTok far more reliable when it comes to providing valuable technical help for personal users or for a much larger scale like an internet cafe. Thankfully, with practice and intense reading and conversations with fellow computer shop owners, I learned to resolve my issues on my own, which is the most important thing to consider before anyone even thinks about opening a computer shop business.

My internet cafe clients

So, before you spend your earnings to start or open your own internet café, ask yourself – are you knowledgeable or experienced enough to handle a business that requires technical or computer know-how?

How to Disable the F1 or Any Key in Windows

I’ve had my laptop, an HP Compaq CQ40-340TU, for almost 3 years now and, to be quite honest, it’s been mostly problematic using this after the first 8-10 months. It’s supposed to run on Windows Vista, but it was running too slowly so I had to downgrade the operating system to XP SP 3 (which is why I didn’t bring it in for repair.. plus this was purchased in Cebu 😀 ). I even wrote a tutorial on how to slipstream the SATA drivers and how to complete the whole downgrade process on my other blog. Since I was only using compatible drivers, eventually, everything else started failing.

Key Tweak - Keyboard Remapper - my savior!

I’ve long wanted to throw this one out or sell this. However, when I decided to restore this back into shape a couple of weeks ago, it actually cooperated and worked almost seamlessly. ALMOST. I had ONE tiny little problem – the F1 key got stuck.

Yeah, it’ll open up tens to hundreds windows of the Help Center. Since I disabled most of the Startup applications here, including Help Center because I don’t think anyone actually still uses it, it only opened up multiple instances of dialogue windows. It pissed me off bad enough that I had to finally resort to disabling it for good.

No, it’s not that there’s anything wrong with thehingesof the F1 key. I had to remove it completely and tried all sorts of things to disable it physically from being pressed, but it didn’t work. What sucks is it will slow down the whole bootup because it’ll continuously give the command to open my computer’s system information window. So, I searched for a way to tweak the registry to disable the F1 key completely and found a solution to my problem – Key Tweak.

Key Tweak actually works by editing the registry so you can map the keys or to reassign them. I’ve tried to do the registry editing manually to no avail. I tried 2 other applications before this, and they didn’t work as effectively.

So, how do you use this to disable any key on your keyboard? Read on.

Disclaimer: Please make sure you backup your registry before doing this. I cannot be blamed for any damage this software may cause on your computer. It worked for me and I sure hope it’ll work for you too.

 

Who Should Use Key Tweak?

Why would anyone use this program to disable keys? It can be for some various reasons:

  • You got one or more keys that are stuck.
  • Some of your keys are no longer functioning properly.
  • You hate accidentally pressing function keys when playing games, etc.
  • You want to assign / remap different tasks on the function keys or your any other key.
  • You have a persistently problematic laptop like mine. 😀
  • You want to play a prank on someone else. 😀

Key Tweak will edit this registry entry for you:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout

Again, I suggest you backup your registry first before continuing to the step-by-step procedures.

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How to Fix Error 501 on Windows Live Writer

I have already blogged about why you should switch to Windows Live Writer for your offline and even online blogging editing needs. I also posted a guide on how to setup Windows Live Writer. Now, let me share with you a couple of the errors you might encounter while using this awesome blog post editor.

I have been using WLW for over a year now and I’ve encountered a couple of errors that I managed to fix myself and with a little help of Google. One of the worst problems I experienced was getting this Error 501 whenever I edit the font style.

Error 501 on Windows Live Writer when changing the font style

This error came as a surprise since I didn’t change anything with my internet options. I can’t really remember if I installed something that should mess with the settings, but for some reason, I started getting this error.

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