SOLVED: Dropbox gets stuck downloading “n” files…

October 10th, 2011 by steve

I love dropbox and have referred it to many people and businesses.

If you’d like a referral, let me know. By your asking and my referring, we both get bonus free space!

Recently, on one of my computers, Dropbox had been stuck “Downloading 7 files…”

This problem  persisted for several days.

At first, I tried uninstalling  dropbox and deleting the C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Dropbox folder and even deleting all the hidden dropbox files (.dropbox files) in my dropbox folders. But upon re-installation of dropbox, the problem persists.

In the end, I ran chkdsk /F /R.

Upon reboot, chkdsk found many errors and fixed them.

The dropbox problem went away.

How to prevent this in the future:

Usually a file error like this happens when your OS stops unexpectedly — as in a hard shutdown. So be sure to exit things nicely.

How to assign a “ringtone” as a gmail alert on an android

September 1st, 2011 by steve

SOLVED!

If you want to set up an audio alert to notify you of new email on your gmail app, open the gmail app and do the following:

  1. menu
  2. more
  3. settings
  4. “your account name”
  5. labels to notify
  6. inbox
  7. select a  ringtone

I don’t know why they buried this feature so deeply.

Disabling the Sleep Button on an HP Keyboard

August 29th, 2011 by steve

For reasons only their engineers know HP designed a keyboard with a sleep button only millimeters away from the escape key.

Often the reason I am hitting the escape key is because I just hit the wrong key an instant before. HP’s brilliance in putting their propriety sleep key right beside the escape key increases the frustration, making me wait for the PC to re-awaken if I accidentally hit the sleep key.

All the suggestions I found online failed to disable this function of this keyboard, but finally — SOLVED!

Here’s my fix. Click the image to see a larger rendering.

It only took about a minute. Oh — and it took two screwdrivers.