IT Gang - A place for tips and tricks

Since I installed my brand new Fedora 10 distribution a while ago I was unable to use Skype for more than just a chat engine. I had no sound and no recording device, so I was unable to call my friends. And since I am using Pidgin as a Yahoo Messenger replacement on Linux, which I am not really familiar (or fond on the other hand), I was getting a little frustrated of the silence and loneliness surrounding me.

Today I decided to fix this matter so I started searching for what to do to enable Skype sound. I found many threads, but none of which really fixed the issue. In the end, I started the plain old fashioned way of testing the configurations one by one to see which will work. And eventually, I did find the right one. I make a succesfull Skype test call to echo123 and also called one of my friends, Paul (thankx), to confirm that my "out-of-the-barrel" sounding is gone forever!

Please note that because of the many things I tried before getting this to work, I might miss something from this process. If this will not fix the Skype sound for you too, then what you can try is to remove the "Alsa to PulseAudio backend" (alsa-plugins-pulseaudio-1.0.18-2.fc10) rpm (I did it using the System->Administration->Add/Remove Software GUI tool, search for "alsa").

Ok, so I set my audio settings to look like the image below (System->Preferences->Hardware->Sound):



Then, in Skype Options (right click the tray icon, choose "Options", then in the left select "Sound devices") you should have something like below:



Again, this is not a general tutorial, guide or FAQ about how to enable Skype sound/mic, this is what worked for me and might also work for you. If you have problems, leave your comment and maybe we can sort it out for you too.

I just found out this cool tip on how to have multiple instances of Yahoo Messenger opened on the same PC. I tested it on my Windows XP and it works! You can have multiple instances opened with different user accounts (one for office and one for personal use).

Without this trick, if you already have YM open and try to open it again, it will not. Instead, it will just focus on your current instance of YM.

All you have to do to fix this behavior is add a little key in the Windows Registry, and you're set!

Open up registry editor (press the Windows Start button-> Run -> regedit). Go to (in the left tree):
HKEY_CURRENT_USER->Software->Yahoo->Pager->Test. In the right panel, right click and select New->DWORD value. Enter plural as the name of the value, then double click and set it's value to 1:



That's all! You don't even need to restart your computer. Now, when you open Yahoo the second time, it will open a new instance that you can use to login as a totally different user on the same machine!

Happy chatting!

PS: You can do a similar trick for MSN, but you need to use a tool for this purpose: MSN Polygamy 8.1

Ever wondered which program has a particular file or directory open? Now you can find out. Process Explorer shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded.

The Process Explorer display consists of two sub-windows. The top window always shows a list of the currently active processes, including the names of their owning accounts, whereas the information displayed in the bottom window depends on the mode that Process Explorer is in: if it is in handle mode you'll see the handles that the process selected in the top window has opened; if Process Explorer is in DLL mode you'll see the DLLs and memory-mapped files that the process has loaded. Process Explorer also has a powerful search capability that will quickly show you which processes have particular handles opened or DLLs loaded.

The unique capabilities of Process Explorer make it useful for tracking down DLL-version problems or handle leaks, and provide insight into the way Windows and applications work.

Process Explorer works on Windows 9x/Me, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Server 2003, and 64-bit versions of Windows for x64 and IA64 processors, and Windows Vista.

Now here's a little extra trick you can do with the Process Explorer. You can find out what connections an application is using to communicate over LAN or Internet.

Have you ever wondered what IP address one of your YM or Skype friends has? Using Process Explorer you can now find out. Just open PE, find YM or Skype in the process list, double click on it and select the TCP/IP tab. You will now see all active connections for the process that use the TCP/IP protocol. Leave this window open and start chatting with your buddy. You will see the IP address appear (if it's not already in the list) and highlighted. While the communication is in progress, the highlight will be green, then red (communication stopped), and then it will not be highlighted anymore (might even disappear from the list).

You can use the same technique for Internet Explorer, Firefox, or any other application that creates TCP/IP connections.

Happy exploring your processes!