How to Change the Logon Screen Background in Windows 7

How would you like to change the logon screen background in Windows 7 so as to give your Windows a customized look and feel? With a small tweak it is possible to change the Windows 7 logon screen and set your own picture/wallpaper as the background.

Customizing the logon screen background in Windows 7 is as simple as changing your desktop wallpaper. Well, here is a step-by-step instruction to change the logon screen background:

1. The image you need to set as the logon screen background should be a .jpg file and its size should not exceed 245KB.
2. The image resolution can be anything of your choice. However I prefer 1440 x 900 or 1024 x 768. You can use any of the photo editing software such as Photoshop to compress and set the resolution for your image. Once you’re done, save this image as backgroundDefault.jpg.
3. You will need to copy this image to the following location:
   C:\Windows\system32\oobe\info\backgrounds
   You will need to create that path if it does not already exist on your computer.
4. Now, open the Registry Editor (Start -> Run -> Type regedit) and navigate to the following key:
   HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\
   LogonUI\Background
   If the key Background does not exist, then right-click on LogonUI, select New -> Key, and then name it as Background.
   Now locate OEMBackground (listed on the right side). If it does not exist, right-click Background and select New -> DWORD and name it OEMBackground.
5. Double-click on OEMBackground and set the Value Data to 1.
6. Now log-off to see the new logon screen background. If you would like to revert back to the default background, just set the Value Data back to 0.

Using a Tool to Change the Logon Screen Background:

The above steps will give you a detailed instruction on how to change the logon screen background manually. However, there is a nice tool to completely automate the above steps so that you can do everything with just a few mouse clicks!

The tool is called Windows 7 Logon Background Changer from Julien-Manici.com. This small tool is very easy to use and contains a set of preloaded images to choose from or you can set your own desired image as the logon screen background.

I hope you love this post! Pass your comments. Cheers 

How to Know if Someone Accessed My Computer When I am Away

How to Know if Someone Accessed My Computer When I am Away

Do you have a feeling that someone tried to access your computer when you stepped out for a lunch or quick coffee break? Perhaps your colleague or the person sitting in the next desk tried to log in or play something wicked on your computer while you were away for a quick session.

So, how do you know if someone tried to access your computer in your absence? Well, here is a way by which you get notified every time when such an attempt is made.

The website called MouseLock.co gives a solution here. All you have to do is visit the site’s homepage, sign in to your Gmail account and select your secret point (unlock code) from the screen. Once you do this, you will have to place your mouse cursor into the slot shown and click on it. This will activate the mouse lock feature on your computer screen.

So, when an unauthorized person tries to move the mouse in your absence, he will be given just a few seconds to select the unlock code. Upon failure to do so, you will get an instant notification about the intrusion in your mailbox.

If you have a webcam attached to your computer, you can even get the photo of the person trying to intrude. This will make it easy for you to figure out who actually was the person.

As this is an easy to use web application, you can use it any time just by loading the MouseLock website without the need to install anything on your computer. Even though MouseLock does not manage to prevent the intrusion, it will give you an instant notification about it, so that you aware of what is happening at your desk when you are away.

How it Works?

MouseLock operates by using the “mouseLeaveEvent” from JQuery to track the mouse movements. On the other hand, it uses the “getUserMedia()” API that is supported by Chrome and Firefox to capture the webcam photographs.

Speed Up a Slow Windows 10, 8, 8.1, 7 or XP Computer

Speed Up a Slow Windows 10, 8, 8.1, 7 or XP Computer

Having a slow computer is not something most users fancy, but that is what most of us end up with after prolonged usage despite having the latest hardware. Understandably, there are also a few of us who are trapped with a low-end PC and are forced to get as much out of it as possible. This article caters to both these type of users as it not only explains how to make your computer as fast as it was when new but also how to reduce the footprint of your system to utilize your PC's current system resources in the best possible way.

First thing first. Make sure your PC isn't infected by a virus, worm or other malware

Anyone who has used an infected computer will verify how painfully slow a computer becomes when infected by a virus. More tech savvy users will counter that an infected computer's speed depends upon the type of malware. To be honest, it does. However, based on my personal experience, I can say that while some malware are designed specifically for making computers slow and unresponsive, most malwares tend to decrease a computer's performance. 

If your computer is infected, the first thing you need to do is deep scan your entire hard drive to remove all traces of the virus. Also, scan your secondary storage devices to make sure that they are clean as well. Additionally, make sure to follow best security practices to avoid getting infected in the future.

Remove unused and unnecessary programs

Now that we are sure that your computer is not slow because of a virus, you need to get rid of all the unnecessary programs that you have installed on your PC. To remove these programs, go to Programs in theControl Panel and uninstall your unnecessary programs one by one. If you are like most Windows users (including me) and are having a tough time figuring out which programs to uninstall as all of them seem important, follow this rule: If you have not used the program in the last month, it probably is unnecessary. It is better to uninstall that program given that you can reinstall it whenever required. It also is a good idea to remove all the useless software that came bundled with your computer. If you want, you can remove unused Windows features as well to further tone down your operating system.

Try faster alternatives to your everyday programs

If you use applications that require too much computing power to operate, you are better off replacing them with applications that do the same job as them but faster. Few resource hogging applications that you can replace are:-
1) Most resource intensive antivirus software can be replaced with the lightweight 

MICROSOFT SECURITY ESSENTIALS.
2) Microsoft Office can be replaced with OpenOffice, an open source alternative that also has loads of amazing additions.
3) Adobe Reader can be replaced with the free Foxit Reader.
4) The newer versions of Internet Explorer are pretty fast. However, if you have been using an older version, it is time to upgrade IE or replace it with either Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome. This will also give you faster internet speeds.

Remove unnecessary startup programs

Startup programs are the programs which start automatically each time a user logs on. Not only do they result in a slow startup, but they also run persistently, until you close them manually, continuously consuming valuable system resources (CPU and RAM) while they are running. So, disabling unnecessary startup items results in both a faster startup and a more responsive computer, as these applications not running continuously means more RAM and CPU will be available for the operations you perform on the computer.

To disable unnecessary startup programs, type msconfig in the search bar in Start menu (in Windows 10,Windows 7 and Windows Vista) and on the Start screen in Windows 8 and 8.1. On Windows XP, type this in the Run dialog box. This will start the System Configuration utility. Click on the Startup tab and disable all the applications that you think are not essential on your computer's startup. Restart your computer to see the changes. Keep in mind to not disable your security products as that will make your computer more susceptible to getting infected.

Restart your computer often

This is assuming that you continuously use your computer for long periods of time. Each time when you close a running program in Windows. it frees the memory that the program was occupying. However, it may so happen that some parts of the memory do not get freed which results in less system resources available to you to use which ultimately results in a slower PC. When you restart your computer, these occupied spaces in the memory get freed. Although, this memory issue has been somewhat fixed in recent versions of Windows, it still is a good idea to reboot your computer at least once a day.

Check your hard drive for errors

Over time, as you use your computer, chances are that some errors might creep in your hard disk which negatively affect your computer's performance. The best way to solve this issue is by using the inbuilt Disk Check utility available in all versions of Windows. To use it, execute chkdsk /r in the Command Prompt. Remember to open the Command Prompt as an administrator. It might prompt you to restart your computer. Execute Y to restart your PC. The chkdsk/ r command scans your computer's hard drive for errors and recovers readable data. Depending upon the size of your hard disk, this step might take some time. This step might increase your computer's performance phenomenally if there are a lot of errors on your hard drive.

Make sure you have enough free space

System speed is not only dependant upon CPU and RAM. If your hard drive is above 95% full, you will notice that your system hasn't been running at the fastest speed. This happens because Windows require empty space for swap files to increase in size and also as space for temporary files. It is imperative that the more cluttered and filled a hard drive is, the more difficult it is to read. To solve this issue, delete unnecessary data or move it to external storage devices.

Repair protected Windows system files

As you use your computer, it is possible that one or more system files get damaged or get corrupted which might effect your system's performance in a negative way. Thus, it is important to check that all your system files are original and behaving as they should. The best way to check your operating system's files is through the System File Checker. To run the System File Checker, open Command Prompt as an Administrator and execute sfc /scannow. This command will check all your system files and if it finds that some of them are modified or corrupt, it will replace them with the original. This step can take anywhere between 5 to 15 minutes but is one that you should perform especially if your system has ever been infected by a virus.

Disable unnecessary visual effects

The visual effects that make your computer look beautiful also slow it down considerably. So, if you want to get the best performance out of your computer, you should disable all these visual effects. To disable these visual effects:-
1) Press Windows Key+R to launch the Run dialog box.
2) Execute sysdm.cpl.
3) Go to the Advanced tab in the following Window and click on Settings in the Performance section.
4) Then encircle Adjust for best performance. If you want to use visual styles and themes, check it (located at the very end of the list).
5) Click on Apply to apply the changes.

Disabling these visual effects could lead to a considerable improvement in your system's performance especially if you are on Windows 7 or Windows Vista and using the Aero interface without a graphic card.

Do not run multiple antivirus programs

Make sure that no more than one antivirus program is running on your PC. An antivirus's resident protection takes a lot of resources. So, having more than one antivirus program would bring about a significant reduction in your computer's speed.

Disable sound schemes

Whenever you perform an action in Windows, a sound is played to indicate it. Although it leads to a better user experience, it also contributes towards slowing your PC down. To make your PC a lean work machine, you should disable these sounds. To disable these, open Sounds from the Control Panel or alternately type mmsys.cpl in the Run dialog box. Go to the Sound tab and select "No Sounds" from the Sounds scheme dropdown list and click Apply.

Update Windows and make sure that you are using the latest drivers for your hardware

Having all the updates ensures that your computer is running the best possible version of your operating system and your hardware is being utilized by the best possible code. Also, an updated operating system makes you more secure against future intrusions by performance reducing malware.

Use a Registry Cleaner to keep your Registry in good shape

The Windows Registry is a place which keeps information about all installed programs and active system files on your system. Over time, as you install and uninstall programs, the Registry can get filled with useless entries which might increase its size making it difficult to read. This happens because most uninstallers don't remove the program's Registry entries during an uninstall. Also, the larger the Registry is on your computer, the more time Windows will take to start.

To solve this issue, use any free Registry cleaner to remove useless entries. Depending upon the number of entries in your Registry and its size, you might see a significant increase in your computer's performance.

Delete Temporary Files

Temporary files are stored in your computer as Windows operates. They are files that contain your recently accessed files list, log files, your internet history, form history, cookies and temporary internet files. Over time, the number of these files increases and cleaning them becomes important. You can use CCleaner (mentioned above) to clean them or the inbuilt WindowsDISK CLEANUP utility by executing cleanmgr.exe in the Run dialog box. You can also schedule a disk cleanup to ensure that it happens automatically.

Disable Windows Search Indexing Service

The Windows search indexing service scans all the files and folders on your system and stores information about them in a database to make searches faster. Naturally, this results in consumption of resources. If you don't use Windows Search often or are willing to trade faster searches for a faster computer (as you should), disable the indexing service. To disable it, execute services.msc in the Run dialog box. In the work area on the right side, locate Windows Search service and double click on it. In the following Properties dialog box, select Disabled from the Startup type dropdown and click OK. Restart your computer. Your searches will be slow but your computer will be faster than ever.

Check Device Manager to look for hardware conflicts

Open Device Manager to see that all the connected hardware are functioning properly. If you find a hardware conflict, take the necessary steps to resolve it. If the conflict cannot be resolved, disconnect the problematic hardware until you find a solution.

Change to High Performance power scheme

If you are running your computer on a battery and notice that it is running slow, change the power scheme to high performance to increase system speed. Keep in mind that it will increase the amount of power consumed by your computer. To change the power scheme, open Power Options from the Control Panel. You can directly search for Power Options in Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 from the Start Screen/Menu.

Check if your computer is overheating

If your computer is overheating, then it is possible that it is causing your computer to run slowly. This is because most modern processors slow down when the computer is overheated to allow the computer to cool down. 

To prevent your computer from overheating, make sure that the cooling fan works properly and that there is no dust clogging the air vents as it will prevent air flow which will result in poor cooling. Clean your computer's case with a light brush and place it somewhere where it can be effectively cooled by air. If you use a laptop, a cooling pad might be of help.

Defragment your hard drive

When Windows stores a file on your hard drive, it does not look for a single place to store your file as a whole. Instead, it stores the fragments of the file randomly, i.e storing them at whatever empty space it can find the quickest. Due to this, the fragments of a single file can be scattered all across a hard disk. A hard drive that has many files distributed like this is called as fragmented. Naturally, this results in slower file access times because Windows needs to find all these pieces and put them together (something like a jigsaw puzzle) before the file can be accessed.

This is what defragmentation corrects. When you defragment a hard drive, the scattered pieces of a file are put together and stored on the hard disk in continuous cells (assuming a hard disk to be made up of a large number of cells with each cell representing a particular storage space).

To defragment your hard drive, you can use the in-built Windows Disk Defragmenter utility. It can be searched on the Start Screen/ Menu in Windows 10, 8 & 8.1 and is located at Start>Programs>Accessories>System Tools in older versions of Windows.

Use ReadyBoost to increase the speed of your Windows computer

If you are running a computer that does not have enough RAM, using a flash drive with the ReadyBoost technique can and will give you significant improvement in speed. As with ReadyBoost, your flash drive becomes a cache that stores files that you might immediately require giving you faster access times than if those files had been stored on a hard disk. 

Keep in mind that ReadyBoost depends upon the condition of your flash drive and was intended to increase speeds of devices which were short on RAM. If you already have a sufficient amount of RAM, chances are that you might see very little to no improvement in speed by using it. 

Reinstall Windows

This is one of the more drastic methods and should only be used if all the methods mentioned above fail to bring any significant increase in your computer's speed.

If you haven't reinstalled Windows in a really long time, it is possible that because of constant use, the system has got bogged down with useless clutter in a way that no amount of tweaking will fix its condition. Then, reinstalling Windows is the only option.

Reinstalling Windows brings about a definite increase in speed but gives you a new PC without all your software and customization. Modifying it according to your needs will take a lot of time though but that is something you must sacrifice for a faster PC.

If you use Windows 10, Windows 8 or Windows 8.1, you can refresh your PC without affecting your installed apps and settings. To refresh your Windows 8 PC, open Update and Recovery by going to Change PC Settings from the Settings button that appears when you move your mouse pointer to the right side of your screen. Windows 10 users can directly search "Refresh" from the Start menu. Under it, click Recovery. Then under Refresh your PC without affecting files, click Get Started.

Upgrade to a solid state HDD

Although solid state hard drives are a lot faster for writing and reading data than older optical hard drives, their heavy price is something that keeps them out of the range of many. Still, if you do manage to get one for your PC, the change in speed will be immediately visible.

If all else fails, get more RAM

RAM or the Random Access Memory contains all files of the currently running programs that are immediately required by the computer. Accessing files from the RAM is much faster than doing the same from a hard disk. This means that more the RAM you have, more the programs you can run without compromising on speed. RAM upgrades do not cost much and are one of the best ways to speed up a slow computer.

Watch ASCII Star Wars in Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8 & 10

Watch ASCII Star Wars in Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8 & 10

Every one of us has watched Star Wars on television, computer or in a theater. It is the same movie with aliens fighting each other for galaxies and such stuff. There is nothing new in it. But wait, have you watched an ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) version of Star Wars and that too in Windows usingtelnet? A network protocol known only to computer wizards. Well if you have not, then you must do it now!

There is a complete copy of Star Wars done entirely in ASCII characters that you can watch in the Windowsoperating system (or any OS that supports telnet). The only thing required to watch it is an internet connection; speed does not matter.

To watch it on Windows XP, Mac OS X and Linux

1. Go to Start, Run. (Only for Windows users)
2. Now type "telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl" without the quotes and press Enter. Users of Mac OS X and Linux can directly execute this code in the terminal window.

On Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 7 and Windows Vista

Telnet is turned off by default in the latest versions of Windows. So, in order to watch star wars, you must first enable telnet by going to Control Panel › Programs › Turn Windows Feature On or Off and ticking both the telnet check boxes. After doing that, follow the steps given below:-

1. Go to Start, Search in Windows Vista and Windows 7 and Windows 10. On Windows 8 and Windows 8.1, open the main Start page.
2. Type telnet and press Enter.
3. In the following command prompt window, type "o" without quotes and press Enter.
4. Now type "towel.blinkenlights.nl" without the quotes and press Enter.

If you do not need telnet anymore, you can turn it off.

A command prompt window like the one in the image will open with the movie being played in it. See the movie yourself. Did you enjoy watching this new version of Star Wars? Well, I did and know it for sure that you would have too.

Make your Computer Welcome You

Make your Computer Welcome You

Do you watch movies? Have you always loved the way how Computers in movies welcome their users by calling out their names? I bet that you too would want to know how you can achieve similar results on your PC and have a computer said welcome. 

Then you are at the right place, this article describes exactly how you can make your computer welcome you like this.

With this trick, you can make your Computer welcome you in its computerized voice. You can make your Windows based computer say "Welcome to your PC, Username."

Make Windows Greet you with a Custom Voice Message at Startup

To use this trick, follow the instructions given below:-

1. Click on Start. Navigate to All Programs, Accessories and Notepad.
2. Copy and paste the exact code given below.

Dim speaks, speech
speaks="Welcome to your PC, Username"
Set speech=CreateObject("sapi.spvoice")
speech.Speak speaks

     3.  Replace Username with your own name. 
     4.  Click on File Menu, Save As, select All Types in Save as Type option, and save the file as Welcome.vbs or "*.vbs".
     5.  Copy the saved file. 
     6.  Navigate to C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Startup (in Windows XP) and toC:\Users\ {User-Name}\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup (in Windows 8, Windows 7 and Windows Vista) if C: is your System drive. AppData is a hidden folder. So, you will need to select showing hidden folders in Folder options to locate it.
     7.  Paste the file.

 

Now when the next time you start your computer, Windows will welcome you in its own computerized voice. 

Note: For best results, it is recommended to change sound scheme to No Sounds.
You can change the sound scheme to No Sounds by following the steps given below:-

1. Go to Control Panel.
2. Then click on Switch to Classic View.
3. Then Click on Sounds and Audio Devices.
4. Then Click on the Sounds Tab.
5. Select No Sounds from the Sound Scheme option.
6. If you wish to save your Previous Sound Scheme, you can save it by clicking Yes in the popup menu.
7. Click on OK.

Try it yourself to see how it works. In my personal opinion, this is an excellent trick. Whenever I start my PC in front of anybody and the PC welcomes me, the fellow is left wondering how brilliant a computer do I have.

How Backup Data Services Can Save You Thousands

How Backup Data Services Can Save You Thousands

You probably already know that backup data services can save you thousands of dollars—so why aren’t you using them already? Are you hoping that you’ll have the one disk drive on Earth that will never fail? Or are you thinking that you’ve already done a good enough job backing up your data? Here are a few reasons you’re still at risk and how backup data services can save you money and help you sleep well at night.

Backup Data Services Aren’t Google

So much of what we do today happens “in the cloud.” Google stores our email on highly-redundant servers, Yahoo! Flickr stores our photos in a huge data center, Twitter and WordPress store our blogs and microblogs in dozens of facilities internationally. And if any of these businesses managed to lose our data, they’d lose our business too—so they have a strong vested interest in keeping our data safe. In a sense, all of these services are their own backup data services.

But no matter how much of your data is in the cloud, there’s still probably something that isn’t backed up. Maybe it’s something private you don’t trust Google or Yahoo! with, or maybe it’s something from before you switched to GMail or WordPress. It could even be a personalization on your computer—a special configuration file you labored over, your accounting files, or your painstakingly-assembled music collection.

These files are your life. Try living without them right now: create a new user account on your computer (call it Test or Testing) and start using it full-time. You can use any online service, like GMail, but don’t touch any of your old user’s files. See how long it takes you to start missing your data. It probably won’t take that long—and that’s why you need backup data services.

How Much Money Will Backup Data Services Save You?

While you’re still logged into the Test user account and missing your data, start making an inventory of all the data you miss. Next to each item, record how much it would cost you to recreate it (in hours of work) or to buy it again (in dollars). Multiply your hours of work times what you’d charge for your services and create a grand total. For example:

• MP3 collection: 1,000 songs at $0.99/song: $990
• 12 years accounting history: 40 hours per year at $20/hour: $9,600
• Unfinished book: 200 hours at $20/hour: $4,000
• Total: $14,590

And that doesn’t count priceless photos and documents which can’t be recreated, such as private vacation photos, personal diaries, and your own artwork.

How One Hour A Year With Backup Data Services Can Save You $14,518.12

Using backup data services isn’t hard and it isn’t expensive—especially not when compared to losing all of the data on a typical computer. You can even try some of the best online backup data services for free.

One of the most popular ways to backup files (and also share some of those files with other people) is Dropbox. Dropbox is free for the first two gigabytes of backup and it’s dead simple to use. Go to Dropbox.com and download the client for your platform. (Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux are all supported.) Install the client and it will create a Dropbox folder on your desktop. Simply put any files you want to backup into this folder and they’ll be automatically backed up on Dropbox’s servers.

Every file backed up to Dropbox’s servers exists on at least four different disk drives—and at least one of those disk drives is guaranteed to be at least 500 miles away from the other three disk drives, ensuring that not even a typical natural disaster can destroy your data.

Dropbox has a ton of other great features which you can read about on Dropbox.com, but it does have one detraction: it’s the most expensive of backup data services listed here after you leave the free 2 gigabyte plan. A 100 gigabyte plan costs $19.99 a month, which is almost the cost of buying your own 100 gigabyte disk drive each month to use with the Windows Backup Wizard.

A cheaper alternative which offers all of the same great backup features as Dropbox (but none of the file sharing options) is Mozy, which costs $5.99 a month for 50 gigabytes or $9.99 a month for 125 gigabytes. Plus, you can get discounts if you pay yearly instead of monthly.

With Mozy, you can also go out and select the files you want to backup instead of having to drop them into a folder as you do with Dropbox.

One of the best features in both Dropbox and Mozy is that they backup your files as you work on them. Here’s how it works: every time you save a file, Dropbox and Mozy (and other backup data services that do the same thing) detect that the file has changed. They use your Internet connection to send only the changes to their servers—that way the backup happens almost instantly and takes up the bare minimum of your Internet bandwidth.

You can also use this feature in reverse: if you discover that you made a bad edit in one of your files but it’s too late to undo it, you can ask Dropbox or Mozy to undo the edit for you. They both save at least 30 days of changes, so you have up to 30 days to discover you made a mistake. That’s one feature you can’t easily get in the Windows Backup Wizard.

Conclusion: The Math Behind Backup Data Services

It isn’t hard to find $14,590.00 of data that hasn’t been backed up on a typical computer. Even without any bulk discounts, Mozy costs only $71.88 a year—so if your computer crashes at the very end of the year, you’ll have saved $14,518.12 by using backup data services.

The Secret Hidden Interface To Fix Linux Printer Problems

The Secret Hidden Interface To Fix Linux Printer Problems

Linux printer problems are some of the hardest to troubleshoot. The printer either gives you no error or something meaningless like “L32: Paper Jam” when there’s no paper jam. On the other hand, Linux just likes to say, “Printer Error: Printer Paused”. How do you fix these intractable problems? It turns out there’s a secret Linux printer interface that lets you toggle all sorts of advanced features.

Linux Printer Problems Are Nothing New

As with so many other things, Unix pioneered network printing. When Linux cloned Unix, it inherited all of Unix’s printing software—and all of Unix’s printing quirks too.

Back when Unix was young, printers were much simpler devices than today’s multi-function inkjets and laser printers. Yesterday’s printers were all line printers—printers that printed one line of text at a time like a typewriter. Printing to a line printer was simple—Unix just sent a file to the printer and the printer did all the rest of the work.

Later people wanted to support more than one font. They also wanted graphics. So users replaced line printers with dot-matrix printers which were capable of printing almost anything with low-resolution—including fonts, bolding, underlining, graphics, big letters, little letters, borders, and much more.

Unix first began to have printing problems in the era of dot-matrix printers. Each printer manufacturer began to evolve their own language—and Unix had to learn how to speak each different language. Advancements in printer technology brought color and much higher resolution printers to, but by that point almost no two printers spoke the same language.

Worse, for Unix and the then-new Linux, by this time Windows was the predominate operating system and few printer manufacturers attempted to include support for Unix in their printers. What Unix needed was a standard language that could describe pages and which would be easy to convert into the various printer languages.

The language that was chosen to fulfill that need was the first product designed by Adobe Systems when it was founded in 1982. It was called postscript and it’s still used on every Unix, Linux, and Mac OS X system today. Postscript is also the basis of the widely-used PDF file format.

Linux Printer Problems From Turning Postscript Into Printed Text

Every Linux program with a Print button generates postscript, but only about 10% of printers understand postscript directly (mostly business laser printers from Hewlett-Packard). So Linux needs to convert postscript into each printer’s specific language, a task for which it uses the Foomatic program.

Foomatic includes a database of over 3,400 printers as I write this (more are added every week). For each printer in its database, Foomatic has a special piece of code that can turn postscript into the language the printer speaks. Printers that speak good postscript need only a few lines of Foomatic code. Printers with weird languages require thousands of lines of Foomatic code—code that likely includes several bugs.

It would be too hard to teach every Linux program how to use Foomatic to turn postscript into printer language and then to tell each program what printer you use so it would use the right foomatic file. So, instead, a company wrote a program that accepts postscript files from programs on your computer, uses Foomatic to convert them, and then prints them using your printer.

The program calls itself the Common Unix Printing System (CUPS). Apple Inc. purchased it a few years ago and made it Mac OS X’s default print method. Default support in Apple has been a huge boon for Linux users—it means that many printer manufacturers provide Foomatic drivers for their printers so that they work on Mac OS X, which means the printers also work on Linux.

The Hidden Interface To Fix Linux Printer Problems

CUPS normally runs in the background, but it also has a hidden interface that any user on the computer can access. (But you will need to root password to change settings.) The interface runs on its own tiny Web server so you access it using your Web browser—on your Linux computer, go to the following URL:http://localhost:631

(The above URL means, use the HTTP protocol (http://) to go to the host namedlocalhost (an alias for the current computer) and access the Web server running on port 631—that’s the default port for CUPS.)

Once there, you probably want to click the Administration tab to troubleshoot and fix your Linux printer problems. If you have a printer job that’s stuck, you can click the Manage Jobs button to resume, cancel, or restart it. This is also where you’ll see additional information about what went wrong.

If you need to change a setting on your printer, click the Manage Printers button and Edit the printer you want to change. You can also print a test page from this screen.

If you try to change any printer or server settings, CUPS will ask you to login. The login name is root and the password is the root password. Ubuntu and other beginner-friendly Linux distributions don’t create a default root password, so you need to add one yourself using the following instructions:

1. Make sure you’re logged in as an administrator account. Usually, the first account created on a computer is an administrator account.
2. Open a terminal and type sudo password root.
3. Sudo will ask you for your user password. Enter it now.
4. The program password will ask you to enter a new root password, enter it now. Choose a secure password—anyone who guesses your root password can control your whole computer and access any private files. After you type your password, the password program will ask you to type it again for confirmation.
5. The password program will tell you that it’s updated the password successfully. This means you can now log in to CUPS using your new password.

Using CUPS Admin To Fix Printer Problems

On the printer Administration screen are two important buttons: Edit Configuration File and View Error Log. To find the details for your problem, view the error log. If there isn’t enough information there, you can change the log level by editing the configuration file—look for the setting labeled “LogLevel” and change it from warnto debug. Be sure to save your settings. Then all you need to do to fix your printer problems is check the log, find the error, and fix it.