HP MicroServer N40L and Gigabit HD 6450 horizontal flickering line

Posted on May 7, 2013 by thydzik

I recently purchased a HP MicroServer N40L and half-height Gigabit Radeon HD 6450, after installing Windows 8 I noticed that a third from the screen was a flickering white horizontal line, noticeable when playing movies in full screen or moving the mouse around the right start bar.

The problem doesn’t lie with the MicroServer of Windows 8 (or even your monitor), it is the Gigabit Radeon HD 6450 at fault here. Luckily, there is a relatively easy fix, a BIOS update.

Download Easy Boost (about half way down the page)
Download the Easy Boost manual
Install Easy Boost
Follow the “VBIOS backup” procedure, you will also find your BIOS type either F1# or F2#, mine was F21
Download the correct BIOS (F11 if you have F1# or F22 if you have F2#), you can also see the BIOS offers “Fixed screen flicker problem”
Follow the “Flash VBIOS” procedure.
Reboot

Thanks to this RedFlagDeals post for the procedure.

Replace the hinges and LCD screen on an ASUS F3J laptop

Posted on September 22, 2012 by thydzik

Today I will be walking you through a laptop hinge replacement on an ASUS F3J laptop. As usual I purchased the replacement hinges from eBay for $11 including shipping to Australia. You can only buy a pair of left and right hinges, so you can choose to replace both.

I also purchased a pair of plastic hinge covers from eBay for a relatively expensive $14 including shipping to Australia, I could have probably saved some money and used my existing ones with a bit of glue since the clips had broken.

First a photo of the damaged hinge, you can see the right hinge sheared off completely which is quite dangerous as the associate cables should easily be damaged further. Further, you will notice that there is no plastic hinge cover. The left hinge was fine and still holding the screen in place, but I suspected it may have been weakened by the rotational torque so replaced it as well.

Replacing the hinges are fairly straight forward, first remove two sets of screws on the back of the back of the laptop as per the photo below.

Turn the laptop upside down and remove a screw holding the left hinge in place from the bottom.

Turn the laptop back to its normal position and open the screen to an obtuse angle exposing the plastic hinge covers. Remove these by slightly compressing them and pulling on the back side first.

Once these are removed the hinges are visible. This was already the case for my broken right hinge.

Remove the two screws holding the hinges to the laptop, once removed you should be able to remove the LCD screen from the laptops base completely, be careful though as the data cables would still be connected. You can easily disconnect these cables, this frees the LCD screen a little more except for a single pair of wires which doesn’t seem to look like it was easy to disconnect.

Now with the screen removed from the base, remove the eight rubber screw caps exposing the screws. With a Philips screwdriver remove the eight screws.

With the eight screws remove the surrounding plastic bezel can be removed exposing the LCD screen.

From here remove another set of four screws holding the LCD screen assembly on the plastic backing.

Finally, remove four small screws from either side of the LCD screen.

You should now have the two hinges removed. This is the same procedure if you want to replace the LCD screen. Install the new hinges by following the above instructions in reverse.

To reinstall those rubber screw caps a drop of glue may be required to hold them in place.

Once the hinges are installed, installed the plastic hinge covers and you’re done.

Replace noisy ASUS F3J laptop CPU fan

Posted on July 23, 2012 by thydzik

Here is a quick post on how to replace a noisy CPU fan on an ASUS F3J series laptops, the replacement is so easy that it really doesn’t need a how to guide.

I purchased the new fan on eBay (as usual) for $7.70 including postage.

Remove the following seven screws as circled, the circled blue screw is a unique extra long screw.

The exposed old existing fan, to remove unscrew three screws.

The air-hole when the old fan is removed.

Finally, the new fan inserted and screwed into place.

Roundcube installation on shared hosting with Firefox Webmail Notifier

Posted on February 16, 2012 by thydzik

This tutorial is going to explain how to install the webmail IMAP client Roundcube on shared hosting and then integrate it with the Firefox plugin Webmail Notifier.

Firstly, why the need to install Roundcube in the first place, don’t many hosting companies already provide it built into cPanel? Yes, they do, but the benefit to hosting it yourself is plugins! There are hundreds of plugins that allow you to do pretty much anything. The main reason for me for moving to a self-hosted Roundcube was the plugin Accounts, which allows multiple IMAP accounts from the single interface.

Let’s begin. For the below example, I am going to use the required configuration for Hostgator shared hosting, it maybe different with a different host.

Install Roundcube

Download a copy of Roundcube from roundcube.net, and extract it to the desired location, i.e. mydomain.com/mail (which you could then create a subdomain mail.mydomain.com pointing to it).

In Firefox navigate to mydomain.com/mail/installer for the Roundcube Webmail Installer, click Start Installation and make sure you meet the server environment requirements.

Database setup

Login to cPanel phpMyAdmin and create a new MySQL database called roundcubemail or similar, create a new user and assign it full access privileges to the new database. Fill the Database setup section with user and password details.

IMAP Settings

The IMAP Settings for Hostgator shared hosting are;

default_host – the primary domain name, in my case it is thydzik.info

default_port – remains at port 143

username_domain – this is the IMAP email address, in my case it is something@thydzik.com

SMTP Settings

The SMTP Settings for Hostgator shared hosting are;

smtp_server – mail.mydomain.com, in my case it is mail.thydzik.com

smtp_port – remains at port 25

smtp_user – the IMAP email address, in my case it is something@thydzik.com

smtp_pass – the IMAP email address password

Click create config, then download the two files main.inc.php and db.inc.php and upload them to mydomain.com/mail/config.

Click continue and Test IMAP config to make sure everything is working. Delete the installer folder.

Installing Webmail Notifier Roundcube plugin

Download the Roundcube Plugins pack from MyRoundcube and copy the plugin folder webmail_notifier to mydomain.com/mail/plugins/webmail_notifier. Change the file name of mydomain.com/mail/plugins/webmail_notifier/config.inc.php.dist to config.inc.php.

Edit the file mydomain.com/mail/config/main.inc.php and add webmail_notifier to the list of plugins, similar to;

// List of active plugins (in plugins/ directory)
$rcmail_config['plugins'] = array('someotherplugin', 'webmail_notifier');

Login to Roundcube and navigate to the Settings (top right corner), Navigate to section Mailbox View, there will be a new section New Message, download the script from the Get Firefox Webmail Notifier Script download icon.

Installing the Firefox WebMail Notifier plugin

From the same Mailbox View section you can navigate to the Firefox WebMail Notifier plugin page using the Get Firefox Webmail Notifier Addon download icon. Install the plugin and restart Firefox, a grey envelope should appear in the Add-on Bar. Right-click the envelope and select Options, click the Scripts button, then Add and select the localhost.js previously downloaded from the Get Firefox Webmail Notifier Script.

In WebMail Notifier configure a new account, using the localhost script, enter the IMAP details as previously detailed;

Username – this is the IMAP email address, in my case it is something@thydzik.com

Password – this is the IMAP email address passpword

If everything was successful you should now see a Roundcube icon and be notified of all new emails.

Webmail Notifier with Roundcube configuration successful

Blog of Travis Hydzik

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Category Archives: Tutorials

HP MicroServer N40L and Gigabit HD 6450 horizontal flickering line

Replace the hinges and LCD screen on an ASUS F3J laptop

Replace noisy ASUS F3J laptop CPU fan

Roundcube installation on shared hosting with Firefox Webmail Notifier