IT DEVICES

How to Calibrate Your Monitor in Windows and OS X

Most people don’t ever really 
bother calibrating their monitors because everything looks fine when 
they first set it up and so they just stick with that. I’ve also done 
this myself many times, but recently, I tried calibrating my monitor and
 found that it looked much better than what I had been used to.
Windows 7, 8, 10 and Mac OS X all have built in wizards that help you
 calibrate your monitor so that it’s not too bright or too dark. For me,
 my monitors were always super bright and I starting using a third-party
 program called <a href="https://justgetflux.com/" target="_blank">f.lux</a> that adjusts the color of the monitor during the night.

Once I calibrated my monitors, I didn’t need to use f.lux as often, 
even at night. In addition to brightness, the colors on the screen 
looked better after the calibration. In this article, I’ll talk about 
how you can calibrate your display on Windows and Mac.

<h2>
Calibrate Display – Windows</h2>
To start the calibration wizard in Windows, click on Start and type in calibrate. You can also get there by going to Control Panel, clicking on Display and then clicking on Calibrate Color in the left hand menu.

This will start the Display Color Calibration wizard. Go ahead and click on Next
 to start the first step. The first thing it asks you to do is to open 
the menu for your display and reset the color settings to factory 
default. In my case, I just reset the whole monitor to factory settings 
because I wasn’t sure what settings I had already changed. If you’re 
using a laptop, just go through each step.

Click Next and you’ll have to adjust the gamma 
setting first. Basically, for all the steps, you’ll need to match the 
screen to the center image, which is considered the best setting. It 
also shows you the too high and too low settings so you can clearly see 
when you’ve adjusted too much.

Note that when you try to adjust the slider in the Windows program, 
the monitor may reset to its own default settings. Most of these 
settings you have to change via the monitor on-screen menu itself and 
not using the program (unless you’re calibrating a laptop display). You 
just use the program to make sure it looks like the image that is 
considered good.

For example, here is a picture of my Acer monitor and the on-screen 
settings that can be adjusted. In my case, I had to adjust the gamma 
value from this on-screen menu because it wouldn’t let me change it 
using the slider in Windows.

After gamma, you will need to adjust the brightness in order to 
distinguish the shirt from the suit and have the X barely visible in the
 background. You can skip brightness and contrast for laptop screens.

Next up is contrast. Again, adjust the setting on your monitor. For 
contrast, you want to set it to the highest value possible before the 
buttons on the shirt start to disappear.

The next screen will help you adjust the color balance. Here you want
 to make sure all the bars are grey and that there are no other colors 
present. In newer monitors, this is taken care of and if you try to 
adjust the sliders, the monitor will just reset to the default values, 
so you can just skip this part if that is happening to you.

Once you finish this, the calibration is complete. You will now be able to click on Preview and Current to see the difference between the what you had before and what it looks like now.

I would also leave the ClearType Tuner box checked before clicking Finish.
 This is another short wizard that will make sure the text is appearing 
crisply and clearly on your monitor. You basically have to go through 
five screens and choose which text looks best to you.

That’s about it for calibrating a Windows monitor. Between the 
monitor software and this wizard, you really don’t need anything else 
unless you are a professional, in which case you’re probably going to 
have a high-end monitor anyway.

<h2>
Calibrate Display – Mac</h2>
For Macs, the wizard is a little bit different when it comes to 
calibration. It also depends on what version of OS X you are running. I 
have written this article running OS X 10.11.2 EL Capitan, which is the 
latest version.

To get started, click on the little Apple icon at the top left of your screen and then click on System Preferences.

Next, click on Displays in the list.

Now click on the Color tab and then click on the Calibrate button at the right.

This will bring up the Display Calibrator Assistant introduction screen that will guide you through each of the steps.

The Mac wizard is actually pretty smart and will remove any of the 
steps that your monitor cannot support. For example, I ran this on my 
MacBook Pro laptop and the only adjustment I could make was to the 
target white point. It skipped brightness/contrast, native luminance 
response curve, and gamma curve. If an external display is connected to 
your Mac, you’ll get the other options.

For target white point, you can either use the native white point for
 your display or adjust it manually by unchecking the box first. I found
 the native white point gave a better color tint to the display than 
what was set when the OS was installed.

I didn’t have an external display for my Mac, so I couldn’t get the 
other options like luminance, gamma, etc, but you can probably figure it
 out as you go through the wizard. The Admin step just asks if you want to make this color profile available for other users or not and Name step lets you name your new profile.

The summary screen will give you some technical details about the 
current color settings for your display. OS X also has another 
tool called the ColorSync Utility that lets you repair 
color profiles, view all profiles, and calculate the RGB values for any 
pixel on your screen. Just click on Spotlight and type in ColorSync to 
load it.

As I stated earlier, most people won’t ever worry about calibrating 
their monitors because most of them do a pretty good job by default. 
However, if you are picky about how everything looks on your screen, 
it’s worth giving it a shot.

Softwares Troubleshooting How to Calibrate Your Monitor in Windows and OS X

Most people don’t ever really bother calibrating their monitors because everything looks fine when they first set it up and so they just s...

How to Burn CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray Discs in Windows

3:20 PM Unknown 0

Starting with Windows 7, 
Microsoft has included the ability to burn CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs 
directly from Windows Explorer. So if your PC comes with a CD, DVD or 
Blu-ray disc burner, you really don’t need any <a href="http://www.online-tech-tips.com/free-software-downloads/free-blu-ray-burning-software/" target="_blank">third-party disc-burning software</a>.
In this post, I’ll walk you through the steps for burning a disc and 
the different options you have when burning. If your drive supports it, 
Windows can actually burn a disc that acts like a USB drive, meaning you
 can add and delete stuff from the disc.

<h2>
Burning Discs in Windows 7, 8, 10</h2>
The easiest way to start the process for burning a disc in Windows is
 to pop in a CD, DVD or Blu-ray disc into your drive. Windows should 
automatically popup a dialog asking what you want to do with the disc.

Note that if you put in a CD, you’ll see the extra option to burn an 
audio CD also. If you put in a DVD or Blu-ray disc, you’ll only see the 
option to burn files to disc.

<h3>
Burn Audio CD</h3>
If you want to burn an audio CD, select the Burn an audio CD
 option, which will use Windows Media Player to get the job done. If the
 popup dialog doesn’t appear, just click on Start, type in Windows Media
 Player to open it and then click on Blank Disc in the left hand menu.

On the right hand side, click on the Burn tab and then simply drag and drop your audio files into the section that says Drag items here to start creating your audio CD. Note that it is very important to check whether you are burning a Data disc or an Audio disc. A data disc will let you burn hundreds of audio files, but may not be playable by normal CD players.

An audio disc will be playable by any CD player, but will be limited 
to only 80 minutes of audio. You can change the setting in Windows Media
 Player by clicking on the burn options dropdown that is to the right of
 the Start burn button.

Once you have chosen your setting and added all your files, go ahead and click the Start burn button and the burning process will begin.

That’s about it for burning audio CDs. Make sure to check out my previous post on <a href="http://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/how-to-rip-an-audio-cd-and-convert-wma-files-to-mp3-for-free/" target="_blank">ripping audio CDs using Windows Media Player</a> also.

<h3>
Burn Data Disc</h3>
If you chose the Burn files to disc option instead of Burn an audio CD option, you’ll get another pop up window asking you to choose how you want to use the disc: Like a USB flash drive or With a CD/DVD player.

If you choose the first option, you can add, edit and delete files 
from the disc, but you can only use the disc on computers running 
Windows XP and later that support Live File System. 
Also, it depends on whether or not your drive supports the feature or 
not. Lastly, the disc itself has to be a rewriteable disc. If you have a
 CD-R or DVD-R only disc, then you won’t be able to use this option.

There doesn’t seem to be any clear indication as to whether a drive 
will support the feature or not, so you basically just have to try it 
and see if it works. When you click Next, it will format the disc and 
then you’ll get another popup indicating it’s now ready for use.

Now simply drag and drop files and folders onto the disc like you 
would a normal USB flash drive. The only difference here is that you’ll 
see it takes a bit of time when adding, deleting, or editing files on 
the disc.

At this point, your disc is not ready. If you try to eject it, you’ll get a message saying Preparing to eject – Please wait while this session is closed so the disc can be used on other computers.

Closing the session means that Windows has to burn any added files 
and remove anything that you deleted, etc. In order to avoid this, you 
can also just go to Explorer, click on This PC and then right-click on 
the CD/DVD/Blu-ray drive and choose Close Session after you make any changes to the content on the disc.

If you were to choose the With a CD/DVD player option when the How do you want to use this disc dialog came up, a new Explorer window will pop up where you can start to drag and drop files to your disc.

When you have added all the data you want to the disc, click the Finish burning button that will be located under Drive Tools – Manage.
 Note that this will burn the disc and finalize it, meaning you can’t 
delete or edit the data once it is burned to the disc. You can, however,
 still add more data to the disc at a later point.

The Burn to Disc wizard will popup where you can give the disc a title and choose the recording speed. Click Next and the burn process will begin. The time will depend on how much data you are burning and the recording speed.

When you pop in the disc again, you can add more files and you’ll see
 two sections in Explorer: current files on disc and files to be written
 to disc. Click Finish burning to add the new files to the disc.

<h3>
Burn Video DVD</h3>
Lastly, you might want to burn a video DVD in Windows, which you can 
do, but it requires using another tool. If you are using Windows 7, you 
can simply use the Windows DVD Maker program to <a href="http://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/burn-wmv-to-dvd/" target="_blank">burn videos to DVD</a>.
 Windows 8 and Windows 10 removed Windows DVD Maker, so you have to use a
 third-party program like DVD Flick, which I also wrote about in the 
linked article.

You can also read my previous article on how to <a href="http://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/dvd-photo-slideshow/" target="_blank">burn photo slideshows to DVD</a> using DVD Maker for Windows 7 and another tool for Windows 8/10. Also, if you are on a Mac, be sure to check out my article on <a href="http://www.online-tech-tips.com/mac-os-x/burn-dvd-mac-os-x/" target="_blank">how to burn DVDs in OS X</a>.

Troubleshooting How to Burn CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray Discs in Windows

Starting with Windows 7, Microsoft has included the ability to burn CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs directly from Windows Explorer. So if your...

Troubleshoot Cannot Connect to Internet in Windows

3:19 PM Unknown 0

Having problems connecting to the
 Internet on your Windows machine? Windows does a pretty good job of 
determining if there is a problem in Windows that is preventing the 
computer from accessing the Internet and then fixing it, however, not 
all Internet problems are related to the computer.
Before your computer can access the Internet, it needs to pass 
through the cable modem or router provided by your ISP. A misconfigured 
or malfunctioning router will prevent all your devices from connecting 
to the Internet.

In this post, I’m going to talk about all the different ways you can 
try to fix Internet connection problems. I’ve broken into down into 
three categories: solutions related to the OS, solutions related to the 
computer and solutions related to network/router/ISP.

Before you begin, try to determine what category your problem falls 
into. For example, if you are not able to connect using Internet 
Explorer, but Firefox or Chrome work, then that would be an OS related 
issue. If nothing on your computer connects to the Internet, but another
 computer on the same network can connect, that would be a computer 
related issue. Finally, if none of your devices can connect, it’s 
definitely a router/modem or ISP issue.

<h2>
OS Related Problems</h2>
<h3>
Toggle Automatically Detect Settings option</h3>
If you are having problems with only IE, check the Automatically Detect Settings option in LAN settings. You can get there by going to Tools (or clicking on the gear icon), Internet Options, Connections, LAN Settings.

Make sure that Use a proxy server for your LAN is unchecked and that Automatically detect settings is checked.

<h3>
Disable Enhance Protected Mode</h3>
Enhance Protected Mode is a feature in IE 10 and IE 
11 that makes your browsing more secure by enabling additional security 
features. It is usually not enabled by default unless in a corporate 
environment. It can prevent certain add-ons from working if they are not
 compatible.

If you are having trouble connecting to the Internet using IE 10 or 11, go to Internet Options, click on the Advanced tab and make sure Enable Enhanced Protected Mode is unchecked.

<h2>
Computer Related Problems</h2>
If nothing on your computer can connect to the Internet, but other 
computers work fine, then you know there is something wrong with that 
one particular computer. Let’s go through some possible solutions.

<h3>
Check All Hardware</h3>
The first thing to do is to check the obvious stuff. If you are using
 a hard-wired connection, make sure the cable is plugged in fully into 
your router and computer. Also, try a different cable in case there is a
 problem with the cable.

Secondly, if you are connecting via WiFi, make sure that it is turned
 on if you are using a laptop. Some laptops have physical switches that 
let you turn off the wireless functionality. On some laptops, you have 
to press a key combination like Fn + F5 to enable/disable the wireless 
card.

<h3>
Turn Off Firewall/Anti-Virus Programs</h3>
This is another really common cause for Internet connection problems.
 Lots of people buy these Internet protection suites that include 
anti-virus, anti-malware, firewall, web security, and other software. 
Sometimes the software goes overboard and it ends up messing up your 
connection to the Internet.

You can usually try turning off just the firewall instead of the 
entire software suite. However, I would suggest disabling everything at 
least once to make sure it’s not the security software causing the 
Internet problem.

<h3>
Check TCP/IP Settings</h3>
Next, we want to make sure that the network card is getting an IP 
address from a DHCP server and does not have a static IP address 
assigned. To do this, click on Start and type in ncpa.cpl and press Enter. This will bring up the list of network adapters in Control Panel.

Right-click on the one that is currently connected and choose Properties.
 Note that if you have multiple adapters connected like Ethernet and 
Wi-Fi, you should disconnect one as having both connected at the same 
time shouldn’t necessarily cause any problems, but sometimes it might.

Click on Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) and then click on Properties. In the next dialog, make sure that the Obtain an IP address automatically and Obtain DNS server address automatically radio buttons are selected.

<h3>
Enable/Disable/Uninstall Network Card</h3>
The next step you can take is to try disabling the network card and 
then enabling it again. Sometimes that will help the computer get an IP 
address if it didn’t already have one. You can do this by clicking on 
start and typing ncpa.cpl again. Right-click on the network card and choose Disable. Once disabled, just right-click again and choose Enable.

If this doesn’t work, you can try uninstalling your network card 
completely. When you do this, you have to restart your computer and 
Windows will reinstall the network card automatically.

Click on Start, type in Device Manager and then expand Network adapters. Right-click on the network card you’re using for network and Internet access and then click on Uninstall.

<h3>
Update Drivers</h3>
If you are running a newer version of Windows on an older machine, 
then you might have to upgrade your drivers. For example, if you 
upgraded Windows 7 to Windows 10, you might have to download the latest 
Windows 10 drivers for your network card.

Check out my previous post explaining <a href="http://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/ott-explains-what-are-drivers-and-why-do-you-need-them/" target="_blank">how drivers work in Windows</a> and how you can <a href="http://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/windows-tips-how-to-automatically-backup-or-update-your-computers-device-drivers/" target="_blank">update your drivers automatically</a>.
 For your network card, it might be easier to just visit the website for
 your computer manufacturer and download the latest driver for your 
network card from there.

As you can see from the screenshot above, my Dell computer is not 
tested for Windows 10. That means if I upgrade, some hardware may not 
work with that operating system. Be sure to check before you upgrade. 
Even if you upgraded your OS and the latest driver isn’t available for 
your version of Windows, it’s still worth downloading the latest version
 of the driver and seeing if it fixes the problem.

<h3>
Try Network Troubleshooter</h3>
If nothing has worked as of yet, try to use the network troubleshooter in Windows. You can do this by going to the <a href="http://www.online-tech-tips.com/windows-7/network-and-sharing-center-overview/" target="_blank">Network and Sharing Center</a> in Control Panel. At the bottom you will see Troubleshoot problems.

Now click on Internet Connections and run through 
the wizard. Windows will try to detect the reason for the connection 
problem and fix it. It has worked for me on several occasions, so it’s 
worth a shot.

<h3>
Reset TCP/IP</h3>
If you’re still without Internet, you might have to reset the TCP/IP 
stack. You could run the commands yourself via command prompt, but 
Microsoft has a small utility you can download that does it for you. 
Check out this <a href="https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/299357" target="_blank">KB article from Microsoft</a> on how to reset the TCP/IP stack and click the download button for your version of Windows.

If you are running Windows 10, you can try to use the one for Windows 8.1 and it should work.

<h2>
Router/ISP Related Problems</h2>
If none of the devices on your network can connect to the Internet, 
it’s probably a modem/router or ISP issue. Here is what you can do.

<h3>
Restart Router/Modem</h3>
The simplest solution and the one that works the most often is 
restarting your modem or router or both. If you have a combined 
modem/router from your ISP, just restart that device. If you have a 
separate modem from your ISP and your own router, restart both of them.

In the latter case, you should actually turn both of them off and 
then turn the ISP modem back on first. Wait until all the lights are 
green or active and then turn on your wireless router. If you have any 
switches, etc. connected behind the router, turn those on last.

The easiest way to restart your router is to find the power button on
 the back of the router. Just about all routers have a power button. If 
not, just unplug the power cable from the router, wait 30 seconds and 
then plug it back in.

<h3>
Reset Router</h3>
If restarting your router doesn’t work, you may <a href="http://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/reset-wireless-router-default-settings/" target="_blank">have to reset your router</a>.
 This is a last resort step because it will erase all the wireless 
settings for your router. If you want your devices to connect back 
without having to re-enter the WiFi password, you’ll have to setup the 
wireless settings exactly as they were before you reset the router.

The reset button is usually a tiny hole in the back on your router 
that you have to press for a certain amount of time ranging from 10 
seconds to 30 seconds using a pin or paper clip.

If you just have one device not connecting to the Internet, it could 
be a problem with the wireless security settings. If you have a device 
that does not support stricter encryption standards like WPA2, you might
 have to lower the security settings so that the device can connect.

<h3>
Contact ISP</h3>
Sometimes, your ISP may be having issues in your area and it could be
 causing Internet connection issues. Other times, your ISP may block 
your Internet connection if it detects too much spam originating from 
your IP address or if you get caught downloading a lot of illegal stuff.

If one of your computers has become infected with a nasty virus or 
malware and you don’t know about it, it could be using your computer and
 your Internet connection for bot-net attacks, etc. Contact your ISP and
 see if they have any complaints on file with you or if there is some 
outage in your area.

Your ISP will also be able to connect to your router directly and run
 tests to make sure everything is configured properly. Hopefully, one of
 the above solutions will fix your problem

Troubleshooting Troubleshoot Cannot Connect to Internet in Windows

Having problems connecting to the Internet on your Windows machine? Windows does a pretty good job of determining if there is a problem in...

How to Burn an ISO File using Mac OS X

3:18 PM Unknown 0

Looking for a way to burn an ISO image file to a CD or DVD on your Mac? Luckily, just as you can <a href="http://www.online-tech-tips.com/windows-8/mount-an-iso-image-in-windows-8/" target="_blank">mount and burn ISO images files in Windows 8/10</a> without additional software, you can also do the same thing in OS X.
There are a couple of different ways you can burn an ISO image in OS X
 and it really depends on what version you have installed. For the last 
several years, you could use Disk Utility to mount the ISO image and 
then burn it to a disc.

However, with the latest release of OS X, 10.11 El Capitan, Apple has
 removed the burning functionality from Disk Utility. You can still burn
 ISO images in El Capitan, but you have to use Finder instead. The 
Finder method also works on older versions of OS X too.

Lastly, you can use Terminal and the hdiutil command
 to burn an ISO image to disc if you are comfortable using that tool. In
 this article, I’ll show you all three methods for burning ISO images in
 OS X.

<h2>
Finder Method</h2>
The Finder method is now the most universal method for burning ISO 
images in OS X since it’s supported on pretty much all versions. It’s 
also extremely easy to do. First, open a new Finder window, navigate to 
the location of your ISO file and then single click on it to select it.

Now go ahead and click on File and click on Burn Disk Image at the bottom of the list.

If you don’t already have a disc in your drive, you’ll be asked to insert one. Then just click the Burn button to start the burn process.

Another quick way to burn the ISO image file is to just right-click on the file and choose Burn Disk Image. As long as you have a disc in the drive, the burn process will start immediately.

<h2>
Disk Utility Method</h2>
If you are running OS X 10.10 or lower, you can also use the Disk Utility method to burn your ISO image. Open Disk Utility by clicking on the Spotlight icon (magnifying glass) at the top right of your screen and type in disk utility.

Now click on File and then Open Disk Image.

The ISO image will show up in the left-hand side along with the list 
of hard drives, etc. Click on the ISO file and then click on the Burn button at the top.

Pop your disc into the drive and click the Burn button to start the 
process. As mentioned earlier, this no longer works on OS X 10.11 El 
Capitan.

<h2>
Terminal Method</h2>
Lastly, if you love using the Terminal, you can type a simple command to burn the ISO image file.

<pre>hdiutil burn ~/PathToYourISO/filename.iso</pre>
I would suggest copying the file to an easy location like your 
desktop and renaming the file to something short too. In my case, I 
copied the file to my desktop and renamed it to just ubuntu.iso. I 
navigated to the desktop by typing in CD Desktop and then typed in hdiutil burn ubuntu.iso.

If you have a disc in the drive before you run the command, the burn 
process will start automatically. Otherwise, it’ll ask you to insert a 
disc. Those are all the ways you can burn your ISO image on a Mac 
without third-party software!

TIPS How to Burn an ISO File using Mac OS X

Looking for a way to burn an ISO image file to a CD or DVD on your Mac? Luckily, just as you can mount and burn ISO images files in Windows ...

How to Calibrate Your Monitor in Windows and OS X

How to Burn CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray Discs in Windows

Troubleshoot Cannot Connect to Internet in Windows

How to Burn an ISO File using Mac OS X

Labels

Blog Archive