Missing Optical Drive In Windows

I’ve had this problem crop up on the same machine twice in the last 3 months so I thought I would throw it up here. Back in March a friend of mine went to play a DVD in her laptop only to find that the DVD-ROM didn’t even show up in Windows Explorer. Nothing I initially did had any effect, but I knew the drive wasn’t bad because it would boot the Windows Vista disc. After some searching I finally found the steps below that fixed it right up. Although I still haven’t found the cause, this brought it back both times it disappeared. Thanks to RandomFix.com for the information.

1. Click on the start menu.
2. In the search box, click run for Windows XP, type in “regedit” without the quotation marks.
3. Double-click on the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE key to expand it and then go ahead and browse until you reach SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ Class \ {4D36E965-E325-11­CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}.
4. In the right panel you’ll see something along the lines of “UpperFilter” and “LowerFilter” you want to click on each “filter” key and hit delete. Click yes when it asks to confirm if you wish to delete the key.
5. Restart Windows.
6. Check in Windows Explorer, My Computer for XP, for the DVD-ROM.

Site Layout Finally Finished

I have finally gotten the site layout done. It took me quite awhile, not having much design skill, to get it the way I wanted it. I almost gave up and went with an existing WordPress theme. However, I recently came across a few things that helped me bring it together nicely. I will be talking about them here soon. I may continue to play around with the style of the comments, but it appears that it is time I start actually adding to the content. I have a few ideas in the works for posts and I will start throwing the site around to friends and family after my next post goes up. Hopefully I can keep the momentum going and keep at it.

Secure Website Passwords

One thing that is suggested every time someone talks about password security is to use a separate password for every website they visit. While I do make an effort to make my passwords more secure, I just felt that there were too many things to worry about in order to make something like that work. First thing being remembering all of the passwords. There are software packages, 1Password for Mac and RoboForm for Windows, that will remember them and even fill out the log in forms for you. Both of these are great but a bit more than I was looking for. If for some reason I lost the database containing all the passwords I would have a hard time resetting each one. Secondly, I needed a solution that would allow me to log into any of my site accounts on another computer that did not have the program installed and all of my passwords stored on it.

I just recently came across what I now use to implement this very policy. SuperGenPass is a bookmarklet that you install in your browser just like an ordinary bookmark. It allows you to remember just one password, which is used to generate unique, complex passwords for the web sites you visit. It generates them every time so it never stores them on the hard drive and your master password is never transmitted so you don’t have to worry about it getting out. I like the fact that if I use another computer it takes literally 20 seconds to add it regardless of that systems browser or operating system. I can also leave it on that computer without worrying about my accounts. Check out SuperGenPass.com. There home page explains it quite well.

UPDATE 08/02/08: As pointed out in the comments below by David A Teare, Co-author of 1Password, 1Password is compatible with SuperGenPass which means you can use SuperGenPass to log into accounts created by 1Password. Thanks David.

UPDATE 08/05/08: I have looked into it and it turns out that 1Password’s digest password generator is NOT compatible with SuperGenPass. It is compatible with the older GenPass:

Important note: GenPass is no longer being updated. It is still functional and will remain available on this page, but new users should use SuperGenPass, an updated version of this tool that incorporates new advanced features and a better user interface. Please also note that GenPass is not compatible with SuperGenPass—given the same input, they generate different passwords.

So it is not possible to use 1Password with SuperGenPass without using SGP to generate the passwords then store them. The only reasons for doing this would be to use one less step on your home computer when logging into a site or to use other 1Password features like the digital wallet.