Changing the USB setting on Galaxy S3 running Android 4.3 to enable USB connection to PC

I was banging my head trying to figure out why my Samsung Galaxy S3 (SGH-T999) was not able to be accessed as a media device on my PC. After a long search, I finally found that it was to do with me USB settings for my Qualcomm Modem (it might have been changed after the upgrade to Android 4.3).

The "USB PC Connection" in the "Settings" is no longer available. So, now, how do I check/change my USB settings on Android 4.3 on my S3?

Here's how.

1. Ensure that you have downloaded and installed the USB driver on your PC for your phone from:

http://www.samsung.com/us/support/downloads (select the model of the phone)

2. Enable Developer Options:

     • Settings > More > About device

     • Scroll down to "BUILD NUMBER"

     • Tap it a couple of times (about 5 times) - an alerts tells you how many more times to tap

     • "Developer options" would now have appeared (Settings > More > Developer options)

     • Under "Developer options", tick the check box for "USB debugging"

3. To change the Qualcomm Modem settings, dial *#0808# for Android 4.3 (*#7284# on Android 4.2)

4. You will see the following screen:

5. For me, "MTP + ADB" worked. (MTP = Media Transfer Protocol)

6. Click "OK". If your PC does not detect the phone, reboot the phone.

You should not be able to access your phone via a USB connection on your phone running Android 4.3.

Opening "My Computer" from a Windows Explorer shortcut

When clicking on the Windows Explorer shortcut on the Windows Taskbar, by default, it will open up the "Libraries" folder. If you prefer to open up "My Computer", change the Windows Explorer shortcut "Target" to any one of the following:

%windir%\explorer.exe /e,::{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}

%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /e,::{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}

Fast way of getting your public IP address

There are many ways of getting your public IP address (which is assigned to you by your ISP). The fastest and easiest way to get your public IP address is by accessing icanhazip.com.

Other ways include:

• Google the following: what is my IP address - at the top of your search page, you will see the text "Your public IP address is" followed by your public address.
• http://whatismyipaddress.com/
• http://www.whatismyip.com/

All of the above should give you the same results.

If you do not want to use the browser, and prefer to use a saved script, copy and paste the flowing code snippet into a file with the .vbs extension (you could name the file get_public_ip.vbs).

Option Explicit
Dim http : Set http = CreateObject( "MSXML2.ServerXmlHttp" )
http.Open "GET", "http://icanhazip.com", False
http.Send
Wscript.Echo http.responseText   'or do whatever you want with it
Set http = Nothing

This script will get the public IP address from icanhazip.com.

To run the script, navigate to the folder holding issue the command at the command prompt (assuming the file name is get_public_ip.vbs):

cscript get_public_ip.vbs

Chromium for Windows

So, Chromium vs Google Chrome. Get it? Google Chrome is a customized browser built by Google, which was taken from the open source project, Chromium. Google has added a whole load of its own hooks into Chrome, allowing for Google to gather a stack of information about the user of Google Chrome.

If you are not paranoid about your browsing activities being "monitored", then you can continue using Google Chrome. For those who prefer not to disclose their browsing activities to Google, it would be highly recommended to use the Chromium browser instead. So, the question is, "Where can I download the Chromium browser for Windows?". Keep reading.

There is no real official installer .exe created for Chromium. All current and past build of Chromium (and future builds which are to come) are stored in the Chromium nightly build repository. In this link you would find folders named by numbers, which represent the build number of the Chromium browser. A current stable build is Chromium 20, i.e. build folder 136319. All builds beyond this build number are for Chromium 21, which is still in progress - so, as much as you could download and use the newer builds, there might be risks that something(s) might be broken. Any how, if there is a problem with one version, you could always download and try another.

Since there is no installer for Chromium, you would need to perform a couple of manual steps in order to set things up (these steps apply if you are attempting to upgrade/downgrade Chromium as well). So, here goes:

1. In the build folder, download the file "chrome-win32.zip".
2. After the download completes, unzip the contents of the zip file to your Program Files folder (if you are using a 64-bit Windows OS, you would need to unzip to the "Program Files (x86)" folder).
3. Traverse into this folder and double-click the chrome.exe file to launch the Chromium browser. (Don't be misled with the fact that the exe file name is "chrome" - it is not the same as Google Chrome)

The Chromium browser should have launch successfully and the look and feel should be very much similar to Google Chrome. At this point you can also add any extension from the Chrome Web Store as they are fully compatible with Chromium (as they are with Google Chrome).

After launching the Chromium browser by running the chrome.exe file earlier, a couple of operations happened in the background to get Chromium set up for use on Windows. You would find that:

1. a shortcut for the Chromium browser has been created on your desktop
2. a registry entry was created at “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Chromium”
3. the following directories were created (depending on the OS you are using):
• on Windows 7, the folder "C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Chromium" would 
• on Windows XP , the folder “C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Application Data\Chromium” would have been created

Updating Chromium

Chromium doesn’t have a built in mechanism of looking for updates and upgrading itself. So, it is a manula process of upgrading Chromium. To change the version of Chromium (upgrade/downgrade), just follow the same steps (Steps 1-3) above.

If you do not like Chromium or if you want to stop using it, all you would need to do is to go to the folder containing Chromium (in the folder "Program Files" or "Program Files(x86)") and remove/delete the folder completely. If you are an advanced user, you can also remove the folder created by Chromium in your applications data folder and also remove the registry entry (both should have been created automatically by the application).

There you go. Those are the steps on how to use Chromium on Windows.

Moving incomplete µTorrent downloads to a different computer

If you use µTorrent, you might have wondered how to move your download to a different computer, without losing the progress of the downloads which have started but have not completed. Now, here is how you can do it.

Prepare the files for transfer:

1. Shutdown µTorrent
2. Copy the contents of %appdata%\utorrent folder to a portable storage device (USB drive, etc). Actualy, the most important file which is required is resume.dat. But I would suggest copying the entire folder, just for simplicity's sake.
3. Copy the folder/files in which the partial downloads of the in-progress downloads are to the portable storage.
4. Copy the files from (2) to %appdata%\utorrent on the second computer
5. Copy all the files from step (3) to the second computer
6. Download BEncode Editor from https://sites.google.com/site/ultimasites/bencode-editor
7. Using BEncode Editor, edit the resume.dat in %appdata%\utorrent by using the function 'find/replace' to change the path or drive letter if the destination path of the partially downloaded file has changed.
8. Start up µTorrent and the download should continue from where it left off on the older computer.

Enjoy!!!

Changing the Windows 7 Logon Screen image

There are numerous ways to change the background of the Logon Screen in Windows 7. All possible methods, including the steps, can be found in the tutorial below:

How to Change the Windows 7 Log On Screen Background

From the tutorial in the link above, the easiest way IMHO is to use Julien Manici's Windows 7 Logon Background Changer. The application's title speak for itself - it does exactly what it says it does - and it is really simple and hassle-free. And to top it off, it is FREE!!!

PC Hardware Review websites

Here is a list of some websites which contain PC hardware reviews:

• Tom’s Hardware Reviews
• Overclockers Club
• Legion Hardware
• Hardware Canucks
• HardOCP