If you are looking for a way to speed up your computers read and write speed and you like taking chances, then Striped Volumes are the way to go.

A striped volume uses the free space on more than one physical hard disk to create a bigger volume. Unlike a spanned volume, a striped volume writes across all volumes in the stripe in small blocks, distributing the load across the disks in the volume.

How does it work ?

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Localization:

For those of you tuned in from around the world – welcome. I’m a Kiwi (a person from New Zealand) and this article was written primarily to address NZ Windows Media Center users lack of access to the Electronic Program Guide from Sky Broadcasting.

Having said that, there are topics covered herein that could well be of use to others beyond the borders of New Zealand. Our primary tool in this article is “Big Screen EPG” that’s now being used by many people around the world to push the contents of an XMLTV file (the EPG information) into the Windows Media Center database. If this sort of thing is of interest to you, please read on.

Did you miss the previous posts in this series?

• Big Screen EPG Puts the “E” in Electronic Program Guide [Part 1 of 3]
• Big Screen EPG Puts the “E” in Electronic Program Guide [Part 2 of 3]

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Before I sign off for the holidays, I have one last gift for you all. I know, I know, I’m a generous guy. Some may say to a fault.

After perusing many of the excellent themes for Windows 7 Media Center, I found there weren’t many dark themes out there, those that were tended to be incomplete.

So I set to work on making my own theme, it’s by no means perfect but at least makes an attempt to be a ’complete’ theme.

Hit the link below to see some more screenshots and get a link to the download.

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You’ll recall from New and Improved EPG that Big Screen has just released a final (not a beta) version of their Big Screen EPG program that grabs program guides from the internet, prepares them, and loads their data into Windows Media Center’s Program Guide to use in conjunction with the WMC Live TV function. We ran through a basic setup of the program in part I, in part II we’ll cover the setup process in more detail, examining the options and perhaps arriving at a transparent process that will provide you with the best EPG for the New Zealand broadcast area.

Did you miss the previous post in this series?

• Big Screen EPG Puts the “E” in Electronic Program Guide [Part 1 of 3]

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not a very big fan of changing themes on my computer. I like to find my look and stay with it. But that’s just me I guess, I’m boring that way. But for those of you who love to experiment with different looks and design, here are some official Country Specific Themes for you to play with.

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We received a couple of comments to this post asking whether it was possible to have a button to toggle the Navigation Pane in Windows 7’s Explorer.

After some digging around i’ve come up with a solution.

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