Crabtree Consulting LLC
Fixing computers since 1995.
Ubiquiti USG vs Dream Machine Pro
I love the Ubiquti USG for home users (and even small businesses). It has good performance, offers all of the typical features that a home power user or small business would need (port forwarding with groups for IP phones, VPN, DHCP reservations) and it is very...
Windows 7 Log Compression Fills up your hard drive
Having a hard time with Windows gobbling up your hard drive? You'll be interested to learn Microsoft has known about the problem for more than two years and done nothing about it. There's a manual fix, which I will discuss, but it isn't clear if this solution...
Shrink Windows to fit an SSD and repair boot loader
SSD's are a very popular upgrade and offer a huge performance improvement. But even though their prices have come down, they are still fairly expensive. Many laptops and desktops come with a 1 TB mechanical drive, but the user may feel that a 500 GB SSD would be...
Windows 10 upgrade – how to make it successful
As a computer tech, I have seen many different problems when users upgrade to Windows 10. I've also seen a lot of suggestions on the web that don't help at all. So here are my suggestions on making your upgrade successful: Troublesome software Software that is...
Ubuntu /boot partition is full
If you install Ubuntu and use the default options for partitioning you will eventually run out of space on your /boot partition when performing updates. Here is a command that will clean up your /boot partition of unnecessary packages. apt-get remove `dpkg --list...
Enable TRIM on OS X Yosemite!
OS X Yosemite update 10.10.4 now supports TRIM for aftermarket SSDs! To enable it, open the Terminal and type: sudo trimforce enable Accept the scary agreement and it will reboot. That's it!
VLAN for guest wifi on Zyxel USG router with Engenius access points
The goal here is to add a second SSID from the Engenius access point for guest internet access that does not have access to the network resources on the private wifi network. First of all I am using the Zyxel USG20 and an Engenius ECB600. Other similar hardware will...
Enabling Turbo.264 hardware encoder with EyeTV
I bought EyeTV software a few years ago and bought the Turbo.264 hardware encoder with it. It worked pretty well and would allow me to use my Core2Duo Mac Mini to stream live TV to my phone. Several updates later, I'm running Yosemite and EyeTV 3.6.7 and the Turbo.264...
HDHomeRun Prime HDHR3-CC experience with Windows Media Center
I have used the HDHomeRun dual tuner for ATSC (digital-over-the-air) TV for years. But recently my Dad decided to get digital cable from Time Warner, so we decided to try the Silicon Dust HDHomeRun Prime HDHR3-CC. This tuner uses a CableCard along with a "tuning...
Time sync issues with boot camp and Windows
MacOS assumes that your machine time is GMT. Windows assumes that your machine time is correct for your time zone. So each time you switch operating systems the time is wrong in one of the systems. The fix is to tell Windows that your machine time is GMT (universal...