New Home - New Grotto! (Coming Soon)...

It's been a bit of a weird year the last 12 months with the Covid19 Coronavirus causing many of us to go in to periodic isolation.  Despite these shenanigans I have managed to do one thing - I've moved house!

I now have a dedicated room that has now become the new Retro Computing Grotto.  I've barely moved boxes in (let alone unbox and sort things out) so the short YouTube video below shows you the Grottos current state and is a sign of things to come...

Symantec Norton Ghost Boot Disk Blank DOS Box Screen Ghost Wont Run

Having problems getting Symantec/Norton Ghost?  If all you are getting is a command prompt within Windows PE (as shown below) then check the amount of RAM you have!  In the example below the laptop only has 256MB of RAM by upgrading to 512MB (or more) Ghost then loaded OK.

HP/Compaq Laptops - Spares and Repairs

Earlier on today I took a quick look through all the 'Car Boot Sale' laptops that I've got and I've found another 7 nx9000 series HP/Compaq laptops so I now have 9 in total that I need to fix/repair/refurbish!

First things first, I need to see what Spares and Repairs I might have as a few of these laptops have missing HDD Caddys and covers for the RAM etc so time to rummage through my Spares and Repairs box for HP/Compaq laptops...

Way before the Covid19 Pandemic came to light I picked up a job-lot of laptops from a car boot sale and I'm slowly starting to refurbish them!

In this YouTube video I will show you how I use my 8 Steps To Refurbishment to get the laptop back up and running!

What Do You Do With BIN and CUE Files?

First of all, exactly what are .BIN and .CUE files?  Well, a .BIN file is similar to that of an .ISO file, in that it is an image of a CD etc. and the .CUE file is a metadata file that defines how it is burnt to disk - as simple as that!

Unlike ISO files though, you can't burn them to a disc natively in Windows so you'll need to download and install a utility to do so - I'm going to use ImgBurn as it's a great utility and it's free!

ImgBurn can downloaded from the official website www.imgburn.com or via www.ninite.com

Burning a disc using ImgBurn couldn't be easier, simply insert a blank disk, open up the utility and Click on Write Image file to disc

Then click on Browse for a file

(The file you are looking for is the .CUE file)

Once you have Opened the .cue file all you then need to do is click on the Write button:

DONE!

Asus USB Blu-Ray Drive Not Showing Up After Windows Update

After upgrading/updating to the latest version of Windows 10 (20h2) my Asus USB BluRay Drive has disappeared, it's not in This PC or Disk Management or Device Manager...

However something strange is listed in Device Manager:

I've never heard of Initio Default Controller before nor appear to have any devices by that name connected to my computer so I did a little research and the way to fix this issue is to do the following:

• Disable the Initio Default Controller in Device Manager (right click etc)
• Right-Click the disabled item and click on Properties
• Click on the Driver tab
• Click on Uninstall and uninstall it (if prompted, click the checkbox to uninstall the drivers)

• Remove the Asus USB BluRay drive from your computer
• SHUTDOWN (not restart)
• When your PC has finished shutting down, reconnect the USB drive
• Power On your PC and it should now be working OK