Code Purple — The Compaq/HP Booby Trap

I did a full restore, reformatting the hard drive and reinstalling Windows Vista on a HP system. Everything went like clockwork…

Until I rebooted the machine. Then I got an error that there was a “Configuration error” and that I should call “Customer Care” with “Error Code Purple.” T that point, I could only power off the machine.

What in the world was “Error Code Purple,” I wondered. A quick search on the net revealed that this was a booby trap placed in HP and Compaq computers in which a “tattoo” or numerical signature of the motherboard and hardware configuration is created at the factory and encoded into the restore disks on a particular computer. When you re-install your system, it checks to make sure the system has not been modified. If you have modified your system, the “tattoo” generated by the checking program will be different than the original, and the system will not boot.

In order to fix this, you have to send in your computer to Compaq, or take it so some place like CompUSA or BestBuy where they will modify the “tattoo” so you can run your software on your computer again — until the next time you upgrade memory or swap a card or DVD player.

For a fee, of course.

But not all was lost as I found couple of interesting and simple solutions to bypass this issue and continue with the rest of the installation. Here is one of them for HP systems based on Vista.

When the screen comes up that tells you about the code purple, do this:

Hold shift key and press f10

Type this below in command prompt with spaces like shown

cd C:hpbinCheckDMI

press ENTER

Now, type:

dir

press ENTER

Now you will notice that there are bunch of files listed, we need to find CheckDMI.cmd and rename it as below.

ren CheckDMI.cmd CheckDMI

press ENTER

The file should now be changed. Exit out of command prompt and restart your computer. And walaa…

You’re done! Congrats…you just successfully fixed your Code Purple problem. Now you don’t have to waste half a month of shipping your computer back and forth from an HP tech shop to get it “repaired for free”

What is the origin of the phrase “thinking outside of the box”?

There is a famous puzzle. 9 dots arranged in a square, like this

Your job is to connect all of the dots using only 4 straight lines without lifting your hand off the paper, crossing each dot only once. The only way to do it is to extend at least one of the lines beyond the perimeter of the “box”.

This solution never occurs to most people. They see a box, and their thinking is limited by that.

Click below to check out the book by Mike Vance.

Typing ‘ﷺ’ in MS Word and MS Office Documents

To type ﷺ in MS Word or any MS office Document:

(1) Type FDFA.

(2) Type ‘Alt+x’. (Hold on to ‘Alt’ key and press ‘x’ key.) As soon as you type ‘Alt+x”, ‘FDFA’ is converted to ﷺ

Unicode for ‘ﷺ’ is ‘FDFA’.

Below table gives Unicode Values of common Arabic Words/Phrases:

Arabic Phrase/Word	English Transliteration	Unicode
ﷲ	Allah	FDF2
ﷺ	Sall Allāhu ʿalay-hi wa-sallam	FDFA
ﷴ	Mohammed	FDF4
ﷳ	Akbar	FDF3
ﷶ	Rasool	FDF6
ﷻ	Jallajalaalahu	FDFB
ﷹ	Salla	FDF9
ﷸ	Wa-salam	FDF8
ﷷ	Alayhe	FDF7
ﷵ	Salam	FDF5
ﷱ	Qala	FDF1
ﷰ	Salla	FDF0

For example, if you want to type ﷲ, then

(1) Type ‘FDF2’.

(2) Type ‘Alt + x’ (Hold on to ‘Alt’ key and press ‘x’ key). MS Word or any Office document will then convert FDF2 to ﷲ.

For the Unicode for all the Arabic characters, refer to this link.

Note: This technique works for all MS Office products. In case, due to some issue, if it doesn’t work for you, then add ‘U+’ to the Unicode and repeat the steps mentioned above. For example, for typing ﷺ, type ‘U+FDFA’ and type Alt+x.

To know the general techniques for inputting characters via Unicode in Windows, Mac, Linux, etc., check this Wikipedia link. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_input).

Create a Secret Hiding Space in Windows

How to create a secret hiding space for your data within Windows.
by The Windows Club

The Windows operating system offers many tweaks and tricks. If you are aware of these, then you can complete your tasks quickly and in a simple way. You may never need to use any third-party software, if you are good at using those tricks. Among those many tweaks available, I will let you know, how to hide data in a secret text file compartment, created using a Notepad in Windows 8 / 7.

We normally save our bank account numbers, credit card numbers, important passwords and so on, in text files and place them on our desktop to access them easily. But, if your system is being shared with others, then there is chance of this information being compromised.

What I suggest is, follow this method of hiding data whenever necessary and remove those text files immediately once you are done with your work, as once anything is made, there are many ways to break it. This method makes use of the Alternate Data Streams of the NTFS file system, which Windows supports.

Article Continued Here

Error deleting – File name is too long

I am almost positive you have run into this error before. Recently I have had 1000s of files like this.

Where did they come from? Both times it was a hidden cache folder for DropBox and AeroFS. I had been playing with both to see if I wanted to use them to sync my files.

Well, I found a simple way to blow these away in one shot, and you can use a tool within windows to do it.

It seems that robocopy can handle these long file names. What you do is you create an empty folder, and then use it to synchronize the copy while telling it to delete all the files that do not exist in the source (Your empty folder)

So if you are running into this, and just want the whole folder gone, get to a command line and create an empty folder.

I created one at c:empty

And lets say for our example here the offending folder is c:BadFolder

You would call robocopy like this:

robocopy c:empty c:badfolder /e /mir

The /e tells it to visit all sub folders even if they are empty, the /mir will tell it to delete any file or folder that does not exist in c:empty – which is everything.

So there it is. A simple trick to get around those pesky files that windows says are too long – no special tools needed.