MSN Plus was a popular add on for MSN Messenger (Windows Live Messenger) throughout the 2000’s. One of the features MSN Plus had was the ability to log chats, then in later versions of MSN Plus encrypt these chat logs. Encrypted chat logs we’re certainly a good idea, however as the years go on things change. MSN Messenger has long since been merged with Skype and development of MSN Plus has ended. So what can I do about the all the encrypted chat logs I have spanning almost 10 years? It’s still possible to view the chat logs if you install an old version of MSN Messenger, which will then allow MSN Plus to be installed so your encrypted chat logs can be opened as normal. To me installing two programs which are no longer supported (and not even possible to download unless you have archived a copy) was certainly not ideal in my mind, so I wanted to find a way to decrypt all my old chat logs. As it turns out back in 2006 a MSN Plus community member going by the alias of CookieRevised created a batch file that would decrypt (or encrypt) all MSN Plus chat log files found…
For Christmas I purchased my Dad a NowTV HD box, this is essentially a Roku 2 media player which Sky have re branded to run their NowTV app. Now before I continue I will say I think NowTV is actually really good, with the NowTV HD box came a 6 month Sky Entertainment pass, which gets you access to 13 TV channels you can stream on up to 2x devices at the same time, and access to a huge Netflix style back catalog of content. My dad has really enjoyed watching many series on this, along with some of his favorite programs on Discovery and Sky Atlantic. Anyway getting to the point of this blog, my Dad had told my mum their was a documentary about a band she likes on the NowTV box and wanted to know if she could get NowTV on the main TV in the living room. As this TV has a Chromecast connected to it I said if she installed the NowTV app on her Nexus 9 tablet she could simply Chromecast it to the TV like she can with the BBC iPlayer and other simlar apps. After installing the NowTV app, signing in and trying…
I recently found my MSI Wind U100 Netbook out and thought as Windows 10 is currently a free upgrade for Windows 7 and Windows 8 user i’d give it a try and see how well it runs on the MSI Wind, a 7 year old netbook. MSI Wind U100 Background: The MSI Wind U100 is a netbook (small laptop) that I purchased in 2008 which got me though my second and third years of University. Back then thin / small laptops such as the Macbook Air didn’t exist. However in mid 2008 “Netbooks” became the next big thing in the computing world. These were essentially small / light laptops with a 9 or 10″ screen powered by an Intel Atom Processor. The Intel Atom was really power efficient at the time, which allowed netbooks such as the MSI Wind U100 to have a 6 hour battery life. Back then i remember thinking this was amazing, previous to that your average laptop was 15″, big, bulky and you would be lucky if you got more than three hours of battery life out of it. I remember taking my 15″ Acer Ferrari 4000 laptop to University a couple of times in my first year. I quickly concluded it…
Update: The Windows 10 1511 Build 10586 released in November 2015 now nativity supports colored title bars. The title bar colours can be configured in Settings > Personalise > Colours. The white title bar for active Windows on Windows 10 is a bit bland / lifeless and it can often make it quite hard to distinguish between and active window or an inactive window. Plus lets be honest a bit of colour never hurt anyone, especially if you are spending 8+ hours a day using a PC. Below, the bland white title bars on Windows 10: So how do i get a colored title bar on Windows 10 and add some colour on my desktop? First you need to download the Colored Title Bar Theme for Windows 10 created by Mare-M on DeviantArt. You will also need UxStyle Community Edition, UxStyle allows Windows 10 to load unsigned themes, essentially user created themes which were very popular in the Windows XP days. The latest version can be downloaded from UxStyle project page on Github. Unzip then install UxStyle, this consists of a tiny system service and a kernel driver that are loaded into memory which patches Windows on the fly to allow unsigned themes to load, meaning no…
Downloads for Mac Mini Late 2012 Windows 10 Drivers By default Windows 10 will have the majority of the drivers out the box that are required to get Windows 10 fully running on the Mac Mini Late 2012, however you will find some drivers are missing, or simply do now work correctly. To get Windows 10 working correctly on a Mac Mini Late 2012 model you will need to download the following drivers Bluetooth Wireless Audio HDMI Display Audio For all the drivers above click the link to download the driver, then unzip them. The Audio and Wireless drivers are just .exe’s you can install, the Bluetooth and HDMI display audio drivers need to be installed through device manager, to open device manager click the start button and type “Device Manager”. For the Bluetooth and HDMI Audio drivers, simply right click on the device in device manager and select update driver, then browse to the driver you downloaded and unzipped. After installing the four drivers above your Mac Mini 2012 should have drivers for everything on Windows 10: