How to Disable CD/ DVD Drives?

This is a very funny trick as well as very useful when you trying to prevent your friends from using your CD/ DVD Drive. If you can successfully do it, your CD/ DVD drive will not function until and unless you enable it. Let's have a try.

1. First, right click on My Computer icon from desktop and select Manage. 
2. Now you'll be able to a new window named Computer Management.
3. Look at the left panel and hit on Device Manager. 
4. Now the list of devices of your computer will appear. Search for CD/ DVD Drives.
5. Now collapse the CD/ DVD section by clicking the arrow.
6. Now right click on the Drive and choose Disable. 
7. From now CD/ DVD drive will not be able to play any disk. But you can just open and close it. 

To enable the CD/ DVD drive, follow the same procedure. All you need to do is just choose enable in the step 6.

Note: In this way you can disable your Mouse, Keyboard, Modem, USB Port too! Choose Uninstall if you don't see the Disable option. If you uninstall your Mouse or Keyboard they may stop working. Don't be afraid. Just unplug the cable and plug it again. And restart your PC. 

Advice: This tip is only valid when this is necessary. Do not upset people by applying this trick. 

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What is the Difference between LCD & LED Monitor?

Couple of years ago, giant monitor manufacturers declared that CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) monitors will no longer bee available in the market as it consumes heavy power produces low quality output and most importantly better technology is available I mean LCD Display.  

CRT Monitor was the only one choice of customer for a long time. Then LCD overthrows it from the market. But LCD's time was too little. Within a very short time another technology that is LED has arrived and the time of LCD is almost finished now. 

Many people are often confused with the two terms - LCD and LED. As they look same, both are thin and smart so many people can't make a difference between the two. In this post I wanna clarity the difference between the two. 

LCD Vs. LED Monitor: Basic Difference

LCD (Liquid Crystal Display)

LED (Light Emitting Diode) 

LCD and LED monitors are based on the same basic technology for image display, but differ in case of back-lighting technology used. While LCD monitors use cold cathode fluorescent lamps for backlighting, LED monitors use light emitting diodes. This is the prime difference between the two display technologies. 

So, to be honest, LED monitor is the improved version of LCD. 

LCD displays have to rely on external lighting, as their display is created through manipulation of light, passing through polarized liquid crystals. The back-lighting affects picture quality substantially and light shed by LEDs offers superior picture quality, compared to LCDs.

This is because LEDs offer much more gradation in intensity and a larger light wavelength spectrum, giving a truer color quality. These types of monitors offer a better dynamic contrast ratio too. So if you compare LED vs. LCD monitor for gaming and other intensive graphic applications, LED monitor is surely better choice, as they provide vivid and more natural colors, with better gradation.

One of the basic problems of LCD is that it can't display true black color. But LED can produce true black color by entirely switching off LED.

LED is somewhat slimmer than LCD.


LCD Vs. LED Monitor: Power Consumption

LED is a very recent as well as latest technology. They are preferred over LCD Monitors due to its overall high quality and less power consumption. It consumes much less power than LCD to operate. 

LED monitors consumes as much as 40% less power than conventional LCD monitors. 

LCD Vs. LED Monitor: Durability

LED Monitors are Eco-friendly as mercury is not used in their production. Since LED produces less power output over time, so they are more durable than LCD monitors. 

LED Vs. LCD Monitor: Cost

This is the one and only factor that holds back LED Technology. I mean the LED monitors are little bit costlier in compared to the LCD monitors. The difference is also not so high. However, the cost gap is lowering gradually with time as the demand for the LED is increasing. 

Note: Most of the today's laptop producers use LED display. And almost all laptops' screen are now built with LED technology! 

Direct X Diagnostic Tool: dxdiag

If you use computer often you need to analyze your system configuration. If your PC gets damaged and necessary to take it to the service center then you should check the system configuration. Unfortunately if the experts of service center are dishonest then they might change your system. For example you have 2 GB RAM. They can replace it with an 1 GB RAM. Your Processor may be Dual Core. They can replace it with a Pentium 4 processor.

With DirectX Diagnostic Tool you can see the detailed information about the hardware and drivers installed on your system. You can view the system manufacturer, system model, processor capacity, RAM, DirectX version, Video Card, Sound Card and so many.

To open DirectX Diagnostic Tool, simply go to the Run by pressing Window Key + R, then type dxdiag and hit enter. Now a Yes/ No option may appear. Just hit on the yes button. Now you will see a window named DirectX Diagnostic Tool.

 Well in this window you can see several options ie. System, Display, Sound etc. System tab will show you the overall information of your PC. Display will show your graphics properties and Sound Tab will show information about sound. 

Lost your Motherboard CD? Simply go to the Manufacturer's Web Site!

Every motherboard manufacturer and most of the other device manufacturers provide a driver CD for the hardware to make it compatible with Operating Systems. Except some plug and play device such as Monitor, Keyboard, Mouse, Speaker most of the other devices have a driver CD. 

But in case devices like printer, scanner, webcam, sound card, graphics the driver is essential. Even some modems don't work without external driver. 

At least 20 to 30% people lost their driver CD due to their carelessness! And when they re install the OS they lost sound and graphics options! And try to find a CD here and there. And unfortunately driver CD are not same for different models of devices. 

But it is very simple to recover the lost CD! You can find it from the manufacturer's website. For example, if you lost your HP Laptop's Driver CD, just visit www.hp.com. And Search by writing the device name and model in the search box. 

Here are some of the common websites that may be helpful for you:

1. Intel

2. Gigabyte

3. HP

4, Realtek

5. Asus

6. Canon

7. Compaq

After visiting this sites, you may find several pages like Download, Help and Support, Support & Driver etc. You can either go this pages or simply search in the search box by entering the product name and model. 

How do you know what is the name your system manufacturer? 

This is also a common questions. Go to the run (press Window Key + R) and write dxdiag. Then hit the enter button. If a Yes/No Option appears hit on the Yes button. 

Now you will see a Window named DirectX Diagnostic Tool. You will find the details of your PC from here. 

Under the System Tab you will find system manufacturer name. This is your motherboard.

Under the Display Tab you will find the graphics manufacturer name.

Under the Sound Tab, you will find the sound manufacturer name. 

Goodbye BIOS

Goodbye BIOS, Welcome UEFI

Your computer's basic input/output system (BIOS) is about to become history and be replaced by Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI). Without compatibility problem, it has no pitfalls. 

When you turn on your system, a primitive system that dates back more than 30 years, the basic input/output system (BIOS), turns your cold hardware into a functioning system that your operating system can then boot from.

Can you imagine?! 30 years in the field of technology! Where things are changed within 30 seconds BIOS are surviving for 30 years! How can it be possible? Due to the compatibility problem this obsolete technology is surviving for a long time. Now it is time to change and upgrade. 

Hardware manufacturers are slowly replacing BIOS with the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI). That's all well and good, but one UEFI feature, Secure Boot, could be used to lock PCs into being only able to boot one operating system: Windows 8. 

So, what's really going on here? Is UEFI just a way for Microsoft and its most loyal original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to keep Linux and other alternative operating systems out or is it more than that? To answer that question, let's have a look at what is UEFI.


What is UEFI

If you've computer hardware business, you know that BIOS has been terribly back dated for decades. For example, a BIOS only has 1 MB of executable space. That means a BIOS has trouble to start up the multiple peripheral interfaces (USB, eSATA, ThunderBolt, etc.) devices, ports, and controllers on a modern Computer. Just as annoying, the BIOS was never meant to initialize more than a handful of devices so even if you can get all devices ready to go it will take up to 30 seconds after you turn the switch on before your PC is ready to start booting. 

Hardware manufacturers knew that BIOS was obsolete even before the 21st century dawned. But, until recently they couldn't agree on how to replace it.

In 1998, Intel started work on the “Intel Boot Initiative” (IBI), later known as Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI). While Apple, in its Intel-based Macs, and HP, with its Itanium 2 servers, used it, the other OEMs and, needless to say, Intel's rival chip vendors, weren't initially keen on adopting EFI. In 2007, Intel, along with AMD, AMI, Apple, Dell, HP, IBM, Lenovo, Microsoft, and Phoenix Technologies, finally agreed to use UEFI (the re-branded EFI) as the universal replacement for BIOS.

Don't mistake UEFI as being purely a BIOS replacement. It's not.

UEFI is a mini-operating system that sits on top of a computer's hardware and firmware. Instead of being stored in firmware, as is the BIOS, the UEFI code is stored in the /EFI/ directory in non-volatile memory. Thus, UEFI can be in NAND flash memory on the motherboard or it can reside on a hard drive, or even on a network share!


Even in a UEFI system there will still be a little bit of the BIOS in the firmware to enable UEFI itself to "boot" up.


The UEFI advantage

The first thing you'll notice about UEFI systems is that they boot faster and you can have even larger primary drives. The BIOS is unable to boot from hard disks with more than 2.2 TB. That's a hard limit set in the Master Boot Record (MBR) that you can't fix. In the BIOS MBR, the maximum space for a drive is determined by the formula: 2 to the 32nd times 512 bits. This is an old hard drive addressing scheme. What it means in practice is that all but the most up-to-date computers can't boot with hard drives that are larger than 2.2TB. With 3TB drives now becoming common, OEMs have no choice but to move to UEFI on high-end PCs.

UEFI uses the GUID (Globally Unique ID) Partition Table, both to replace the MBR and address partitions. With GUID, you'll be able to boot from hard disks as large as 9.4ZB (zetabytes). How big is that? Well, everything -- and I mean everything -- on the Internet is believed to be just over 3ZBs. I don't think we have to worry about UEFI not being able to manage any drive it's likely to run into anytime soon.