This has happened to me several times. I’ve got a computer running Windows with a Realtek brand Networking Adapter (the ethernet port where you plug your internet cable into), and I’ll install a Windows Optional Update (a driver for the adapter), and then my computer can’t connect to the network anymore.

The Windows Update screen looks something like this, although this screenshot does not show a Realtek Networking Controller Driver

Fortunately, I have multiple computers, so if one isn’t able to surf the web for troubleshooting purposes, another is. So if this happened to your one and only internet access point, you’ve probably found this wonderful blog by using a neighbor or friend’s connection.

The Fix

1. Download the “Windows Diagnostic Program” utility from Realtek’s driver download page, unzip, and install.
2. Then run the tests and play around with it. I’m not sure which feature fixes the problem, because the few times I’ve had to use it it doesn’t seem to be doing anything, then I suddenly notice my little networking icon doesn’t have the red “x” on it anymore and it’s connected to the network.

Go here to download the Windows Diagnostic Program.

Realtek Software and Driver page - Download Utility to Fix Issue

Realtek Networking - Windows Driver Update - Download Utility to Fix Issue

The Realtek utility program is pretty stripped down, so you’re not going to get lost in it. Just go through, expand the navigation tree (the little “+” next the the highlighted “General” next to the light bulb icon), and start pushing buttons like “test” and “refresh” and hopefully it works for you after 5 or 10 minutes. Here’s a screenshot of what the utility should resemble on your computer.

Realtek-Diagnostics-Utility_1-Courtesy-Softopedia.com

And if that didn’t work? Try this:

It’s likely that Windows doesn’t like your ethernet adapter in “auto” mode.

Next Page for instructions >>

If you’ve never done this before, this post will provide a list of tools, tips, and considerations on how to install a submersible sump pump and pipe the water out of your home.  Do it yourself & save money (but not time).

I bought a new sump pump recently and had never installed one before.  I wanted to hard pipe the installation, but had never glued PVC pipe together.  I looked on Google to see how long I would have to wait after gluing before I could turn the pump back on, but found precious little info regarding the subject.  So I figured this would make a welcome post for a few of you DIYers out there.

Sump Pump: Submersible vs. Pedestal

On my local Public Radio station, I heard a trusted home improvement expert say that pedestal pumps aren’t as preferable as submersible pumps.  I didn’t even know what a submersible pump was.  He also suggested at least a 3/4 horsepower model for most homes, although after doing some research, I don’t see why a quality 1/2 HP submersible model won’t work for most.  When my pedestal sump pump went on the fritz soon after, I went to the hardware store to pick up a new pump.

Submersible Sump Pump

Pedestal Sump Pump

What’s the difference between these pumps?

Pedestals are less expensive than submersibles.  They’re louder because the motor sticks up above most sump holes, making it difficult to put a lid on the sump hole.

Pedestals typically wear out sooner because the motor is air cooled, whereas the submersible has cool groundwater surrounding it to dissipate heat through.

Do you see the long float switch on the pedestal pump with the little guide-arm in the middle?  Yeah, that gets bent easily, and then the float gets stuck either up or down, both of which renders the pump useless.

Some people only care about lowest price, which is silly.  For the rest of us, the price details as I’ve found them are as follows:

A good submersible, 1/2 to 3/4 HP, 4600 Gallons Per Hour, Lifetime Guarantee (yes, lifetime) should run between $160 and $200 on sale.

A pedestal should be somewhere between $75 and $120.  In other words, submersibles are twice as much as pedestals, but worth it in my opinion.

Got the Pump.  What Else?

Click here for a printable PDF Shopping Checklist to take to the hardware store.

Submersible Sump Pump Install Shopping List

The Usual Stuff:

Sharpie Marker, Hammer, Tape Measure, Reciprocating Saw (or hand saw).

Sharpie Marker

Claw Hammer

Tape Measure

Reciprocating Saw with metal cutting blade

reciprocating saw blades, use metal cutting type

Ridgid brand PVC pipe saw

If you don’t have a reciprocating saw, get a hacksaw, or something like this Ridgid PVC / Plastic saw costs about $20.

Next Page >>>

Since most of us with new flat screens don’t also have newly constructed houses to match, let’s talk about how to run the television’s power, HDMI, RCA, and any other cables through the wall.

These are the tools to get ahead of time:

Drywall Hand Saw

Wire Fish Tape ex.1

Wire Fish Tape ex.2

Now let’s talk about the hardware you’ll need:

• Two (2) Wall Plates
• Two (2) Existing Construction Gang Boxes
• Cables [in my case: two 15 ft. HDMI (1 for DirecTV, one for HTPC), one RCA cable (goes from TV to surround sound receiver), one TV power cable (of course, this comes with the TV)]

Wondering where to buy this stuff?  I recommend mycablemart.com.  And no, they’re not paying me to write this.  I found the company through a Google search the week before Christmas, and bought a wall mount bracket, face plates, gang boxes, and 2 HDMI cables at a very competitive price.  I made this purchase late afternoon 2 days before Dec. 24th, and by the time I got home from the office the next day, the package was waiting for me in my garage.  That’s fast shipping during the hectic Holidays.  If you have a better place to shop for this stuff, by all means, leave a comment about it.

Pass Through Wall Plate

Existing Construction Wall Box (front view)

Single Gang Existing Construction Wall Box

So why did I buy the “Pass Through” face plate?  Because it seems like A/V equipment is always changing the inputs/outputs as the years fly by.  I didn’t want to pigeon hole myself into a limited set of i/o ports.  With the pass through plate, I have the option of running different cables through the wall as needed (although I don’t plan on doing this often, as it’s a pain).

That said, if you want something a little more customized and even more “finished” looking, check out these wall plates:

Audio Wall Plate

Keystone Type Wall Plate

Installation:

• Get out the Sharpie, put the Single Gang Wall Box up to the wall, and trace the inside of it with your marker to get the general size of the rectangular hole you’re going to cut into your wall.
• Do this twice–one down by the baseboard, and one up by the TV’s wall mount bracket.  Make sure these holes are directly in-line with each other, in the same stud bay.  Otherwise it will be difficult or impossible to run the cables.
• Take your drywall hand saw and cut the rectangular holes out.  Just wiggle the saw in, no need to go any deeper than the drywall (say about 1/2 inch).  After you cut the rectangular shape, see if the wall gang box fits.  It probably won’t, so do some fine tuning and shave away areas that need it.
• Fit the wall gang boxes in the holes.  You don’t need to tighten them down yet.
• Feed the wire fish/snake wire through the top hole, down through the wall, and fish it out through the bottom hole.  This may be easier said than done, and it’s good to have a helper.  In my experience, the “wire fish” tool is necessary… we tried a wire clothes-hanger, and it wouldn’t work.
• Now that you’ve got your fish wire hanging out the bottom hole, take your cables and tape them to the fish wire in a manner that makes them “aerodynamic” and not bulky.  Remember, you’re pulling all these wires through a wall with insulation, other wiring, or whatever is inside.  You need your cable bundle to be as sleek as possible to avoid getting caught on other stuff as you pull it up.
• Now have your helper push the cables up from the bottom as you pull up your fish wire from the top.
• Once you get the wires ran, make sure you really have all of them.  I finished up the entire job before I realized I forgot the TV’s power cord!
• Get your screwdrivers and turn the screws in the gang box so that the little “arms” squeeze tight against the back of the drywall.
• Thread the cables through the openings in the pass through face plates (or plug them into a customized face plate if that’s what you bought).
• Turn the screws on the face plates to attach them to the gang boxes.

Pass Through Face Plate

That should be everything!  Now hang your flat screen back on the bracket, plug your cables in, and enjoy that “clean” look.

Finished Look

If you’ve never heard of “HTPC,” and you somehow stumbled upon this post because you like Home Theater stuff, then comment on what you’d like to know more about, and I can answer with another post or email.

An ultra-quiet, powerful PC for your home entertainment center.

I’ve built many Home Theater Personal Computers over the last several years, and I know what works and what doesn’t.

This HTPC comes with RF (radio frequency) remote and keyboard made specifically for “Media Center” PCs.  These are great for when you would rather lay on the couch and enjoy your leisure than sit at a desk.  The keyboard has a mouse trackball and other buttons on the front of it so you can easily navigate the internet from the comfort of a recliner, or just use the remote, which also has a track ball and mouse buttons if you don’t need to type.

At this pricepoint, I offer 2 styles of cases.  They are of high quality steel and aluminum construction, and come in either silver (pictured) or black.  An oil dampened action lets the front cover open when pushed on, which hides the DVD tray and front audio/USB/Firewire jacks (great for copying movies from your digital camcorder to your HTPC, and then burning to DVD).

The front display is a 16×2 digit Vacuum Flourescent Display, pictured below.  The display can be customized depending on what software is installed to drive it.  The display also has an invisible infrared eye in case you want to use an IR remote control.

This unit has enough graphics power to push HD televisions, including 1080p resolution, at least up to 65” (which is the largest I’ve used it with).  If you would like your HTPC to double as a game console to play graphics intensive games like “Crysis” or “World of Warcraft” on highest settings, I would suggest you purchase an add-on low profile video card ($125) and wireless controllers ($45 each).

This video card has a 256MB bus, 512MB of DDR3 memory, and is Low Profile Ready.  I find cards with a lot of power, bus width, G-DDR3 (or faster) memory, and most importantly: the card must be cool and quiet.  Video cards must be quiet and cool, so they don’t heat up the rest of the case which causes other fans to work harder and become noisier.

Consider adding a video card only if you watch a lot of BluRay videos on a large HDTV; record HD home videos, process/transcode and burn to DVD; play graphics intensive video games; or design by CAD/ use Graphic Design programs like Adobe CS4.  Otherwise, the “On Board” Radeon 3300 graphics processor coupled with the 2.7GHz dual core CPU should fulfill all other visual needs.

I’ve used ASRock or MSI motherboards in my HTPC builds for 2 years now.  They offer reliability and more features per dollar than other manufacturers, in my experience.

The Gigabit LAN port allows you to stream HD video, music, and other large files faster than 100Mb/s LAN ports commonly provided with today’s computer hardware.  This enables you to connect your HTPC to a Gigabit Router and network with other computers in your home, if desired, and helps to ensure that your internet and router/network connections aren’t the tightest “bottleneck” in your home computer system(s).

Alternatively, you can set up 1 efficient and low powered “server” computer in your home to back up all other computer’s files, and store all of your videos, movies, music, documents, pictures, etc… in one place that all the other computers can access quickly through Ethernet connections (or even wirelessly, if desired).  I can answer questions on setting up small home “servers” to have one centralized location to back up and store files from your other home computers, or even stream info back and forth over the internet from your work computer to your home computer.

This HTPC has a dual core 2.7GHz CPU chip, with a “whisper quiet” cooling fan (rated 17 decibels, which is nearly inaudible to most people).  This advanced and powerful CPU has the power to assist the graphics processor with playing back seamless HD video, but is efficient enough to run at only 65 watts, which helps keep temperatures down and fans quiet… and it’s a little friendlier on your electricity bill.

In this unit includes a Blu-ray/HD-DVD player and Blu-ray burner.  It also will play and burn standard DVDs and CDs.  If you would like a Blu-ray player only (doesn’t burn Blu-ray DVDs), or a standard DVD burner/player, the price of the unit would be reduced.

If you have a High Definition TV, I suggest you at least get a Blu-ray player, as Netflix and Blockbuster have joined the movement toward by offering a large assortment of Blu-ray titles, and eventually Blu-ray will become the standard DVD format.

Other Components:

Memory: This HTPC has 4 gigabytes of high quality RAM (2 x 2Gb modules), with 800MHz speed.  The RAM modules I choose sometimes differ from build to build, but are always one of the parts specifically suggested by the motherboard manufacturer.

Hard Disks: This HTPC has two (2) 500 Gigabyte Western Digital Caviar Black hard disk drives.  It’s important to have high quality drives in a Media Center HTPC because using it as a DVR to constantly record television, and playing a lot of large files (music, home videos, etc…)  will put hard drives through their paces.  WD Caviar Black disks have 2 processors for increased speed, 32 Mbs of cache, and they have one of the most robust spindles in the hard disk world, securing the platters at both the top and bottom of the drive.  Most PCs do not have disks of this quality in them, and I’ve noticed the difference in speed and reliability since I started building with Caviar Black drives.

The reason for having 2 disks in the computer is for an automatic backup.  After you’ve gone to the trouble to move all your music, video, movie, and photo files to the HTPC, it’s important to back them up.  Windows can be set up to automatically back up on a weekly basis.  If you already back up your computers through a network to another central location, then you would not need 2 drives.

If you would like to increase disk drive space to two 1 terabyte disks (doubling the space), it is $160 extra.  Adding any more disk space (up to 4 terabytes) would depend on current market price the disks.

Power Supply: The power supply for this HTPC is a Corsair 400watt single rail, 80%+ efficiency unit.  These are known for their exceptional quality, durability, and quiet performance.  Single rail units are preferred as they don’t split the wattage across multiple rails, possibly yielding less power per device than needed.  80%+ efficiency helps to keep temperatures down, important when an HTPC is placed into a cramped shelving unit.

Tuner Card: A Hauppauge 2250 low profile dual tuner card is included with the HTPC.  Hauppauge is a leader in Tuner Card manufacturing, and after having tried several brands and makes of these cards, Hauppauge is the one that has provided the highest quality signal and reliability.

This card can be used to tune in High Def (Clear QAM) antenna signals, analog cable signals, and digital cable boxes and/or Dish Network/DirecTV boxes can be plugged into it (including the HighDef versions), providing the ability to use your HTPC as a Digital Video Recorder (DVR), so you can set up schedules to record your favorite shows, just like any other DVR (TiVo, DirecTV, Dish, etc…)  You can also record 2 shows on 2 different channels at the same time, and even watch a previously recorded show while those 2 shows are recording.

Hauppauge 2250 with additional A/V in ports shown above

This HTPC is pre-loaded with Windows Vista Home Premium, which includes the Windows Media Center functionality.

This copy (for a limited time) also includes a manufacturer provided coupon for a FREE upgrade to Windows 7 when it is released in the fall of 2009.

Windows Media Center:

Windows Media Center ties it all together.  This is the “Hub” of the Home Theater Personal Computer.  It allows the user to easily flip through intuitive menus with a remote control.

For an interactive demo of Media Center, click or copy + paste this link into your browser:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/mediacenter/demos/windowsmediacenterdemo/default.html

For the WMC Homepage, go to the following link:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-media-center/tv-windows-vista.aspx

Shop Around: If you like the idea of buying a Home Theater PC, but you’re wondering if my custom builds are a good value, please feel free to shop around.  I’ll even provide some links to other HTPC builders’ websites (see below).

Cannon PC – $2,083.00
http://www.cannonpc.com/productcart/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=74

Go to “Customize” to upgrade the components to a more appropriate “apples to apples” comparison.

Okoro Media – $2,205.00
http://www.okoromedia.com/model.asp?model=LX100

Go to “Customize” to upgrade the components to a more appropriate “apples to apples” comparison.

Installation:

If you’re in Central Iowa (if you’re close, some exceptions made) I can come to your home and install the HTPC, including connection to your TV & other devices (like digital cable/dish box), connection to your internet/router, set up of Media Center (including channel scans), and some education to make sure you’re comfortable with the remote control and other functions.  I charge between $150 and $250 for this service, depending on your proximity and complexity of set up.  I have not seen any online HTPC sellers that offer in-home setup.

Otherwise, I can just ship the HTPC to you, which is $40, and I can answer questions you may have via phone or email.  This option is recommended for those who consider themselves relatively “tech savvy”.

In both cases, I require payment before shipping or delivery through PayPal.  Custom HTPCs usually take me between 1 and 2 weeks to assemble and test before delivering or shipping.  I will need to communicate with you throughout the assembling of your HTPC about your current television and subscription details (dish/cable + what sort of connections used, i.e.: HDMI, DVI, Component, etc…)