Toshiba Tecra 8100 No Display

Having owned the Tecra 8100 for about 4 years now, it appeared that it was finally time to invest in a new Laptop when I returned home last night out to a blacked out screen of the Laptop.

As there was no display on the screen, I decided to use an external monitor to analyse the problem which also failed to show anything. At this point I thought either the display driver or the LCD screen of the Laptop has finally given in or it could even possibly be a faulty HDD.

Without any error beeps what so ever and and even lacking a BIOS screen, I decided to strip the laptop, and being a Tecra it was relatively easy to remove the HDD, memory and the CD Rom drive. It is important to note here to remove the battery pack first to avoid any chance of a short circuit. However, removing the LCD Screen and the Keyboard was slightly trickier. Having removed all the main components I started to put them back one by one firmly in place, and testing them as I went along.

Having failed to succeed by swapping the memory modules harrumph. I figured that it was one of the memory slots (slot A in my case) that had must have got damaged some how. As taking the memory module out from the memory slot in question brought the Laptop back to life.

Although on Windows 2000, using one memeory slot it only has 64MB. But its up and running now....

File Preview increases the Size of Word Document

These days chances are that if you are working in MS Word 2000, the document most probably contains an image or a few images. If a word document is opened up in MS word, there is a feature of enabling preview for the document. This can be found under File> properties and then by clicking on the Summary tab, as indicated in the screens.

This feature is simply activated by placing the tick next to 'Save preview picture', followed by clicking on OK and Exiting the Saving the document. However a point to remember is that although this can be a useful feature for some, it most definitely increases the file size - by at least 10 times. For instance, in the above example the size of the document is about 40KB, but once the option of file preview is ticked the same document is over 480KB in size.

iTunes 7.0.2 upgrade

I found that the most easiest and effortless way to upgrade from iTunes 7 to iTunes 7.0.2 in a windows environment is to:

- Download the latest version itunessetup.exe here from apple to you C: drive

- Click on Start Button > Click on Run and type the following exactly as it appears below:
c:\itunessetup.exe / quiet

- Click on OK.

- This will initiate the installation, but as its running in a 'quiet' or 'upgrade' mode you won't see an installation screen or a progress bar.

- Give it a couple of minutes or so for the installation to finish

This will install iTunes 7.0.2 as an upgrade, without uninstalling the previous version.

Converting Images into AutoCAD Format

I was attempting to convert an image in jpg or bmp format into an AutoCAD format, and this is when I came across Img2CAD.

Img2CAD is a stand-alone program that converts scanned drawings, maps and images into accurate vector files (such as DXF, HPGL, WMF, EMF, etc) for editing in any CAD application.
As I was particularly interested in having a format suitable for AutoCAD. The program effortlessly converts images in bmp or jpg formats into a dxf format, which is suitable for AutoCAD.

Getting started couldn't be simpler by selecting or browsing to the image or images (The images or a folder containing images can also be dragged and dropped if preferred), followed by choosing the output format (in this case dxf for AutoCAD) and specifying the output folder. The conversion then takes place by simply hitting the Convert Button.

A Free Trial Version is available to download from Img2CAD