I just had to put something here as I have been buying and returning failed/corrupt USB pens.  In the past few months I have been trying to upgrade my 16Gb USB Integral Pen from Play.Com to a 32Gb equivalent.  I use my USB pen as the "My Documents" folder on every computer I use.  It was fine with my 16Gb one but my 32Gb ones have all failed at some point.

I went for a cheap one on Play.com (Verbatim 32Gb@£49.99 & Kingston DataTraveler@?) and an even cheaper one on Ebay.com (Leather 64Gb@£29.99).  In hindsight, the Ebay one was obviously going to fail (faking the disk size).

I got badgered by my colleagues to splash out and get a worthwhile pen.  Aside from some other failures, I decided to get the bulletproof, waterproof, fireproof, shockproof 32Gb USB Pretec Pen (as advertised by Gadget Show on Five.tv).  Turns out this is an incredibly fragile pen. If files are being written to it and it gets nudged, this will corrupt the pen.  BTW I don't use the "remove device safely" rubbish as my old pen never did and it was fine for over a year.  The default setup in windows XP is that it doesn't need it.

Bulletproof, waterproof, fireproof, shockproof BUT NOT joe-proof! ...

 This is an issue relating to the Time Server Synchronization error.  Basically you start up windows live messenger and get the following error:

{rokbox title=|Messenger Error 80048820|}/images/screenshots/windows_live_error_80048820.png{/rokbox}

The Issue

People have reported that although they have manually set the date/time on their computer, this gets changed by the windows time server (time.windows.com) when connected to the Internet and for some reason it doesn't display the right date/time.

The Quick Fix

First off, check there aren't any Update for Windows 7 releases at Microsoft's Windows Update

• Microsoft Windows XP

1. Open up windows explorer
2. Go to Tools -> Folder Options
3. Click on the File Types tab
4. Scroll down and select (NONE) Folder as file type
5. Click on Advanced
6. Click on New...
7. For the Action type what ever you want the context menu to display, I use Command prompt from here
8. For the Application value type c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe (this will be different on winnt, browse if unsure to your cmd.exe program)
9. Click on OK > OK > Close

• Added by default since Microsoft Windows 7

 Thought I'd put a note about this as I spent ages rewriting an entire system.  The HTTP_REFERER environment variable can be changed by the user anyway but I was using it as an additional validation check.

The only solution is to not use it for verification purposes as it will only work in every other browser except Internet Explorer (more specifically versions 6 and 7...???)

For more details: http://www.webmaster-talk.com/php-forum/19149-_server-http_referer-fails-under-internet-explorer.html

 This is in the case that you have only one optical drive which is a minimum of a CD Writer and you want to make a copy of a CD.

1. Insert original CD in the drive
2. In the CD Drive dialog box, click CANCEL
3. On the desktop, double-click on MY COMPUTER
4. Right-click on the CD drive and select OPEN
5. Go to EDIT > SELECT ALL > EDIT > COPY
6. PASTE to a temporary folder
7. Select all the files, right-click on them and select SEND TO > DIRECTCD