After a scenario like a system restore or failure, you may find it necessary to restore your wallet from a backup. Here is a simple guide on how to do this in Windows XP/Vista/7/8.

This process is going to be more or less the same for all coins, however there can always be exceptions that do not follow this format.

You can see a video walk through on youtube! CLICK HERE!

1) Download Client

Go and download the latest version of coin wallet for your coin you are looking to restore.

Dogecoin
Bitcoin
Litecoin
Potcoin
Mazacoin
Darkcoin

2) Sync Wallet

Install the client. I have installed the latest DogeCoin client for this demonstration.
Load the client and allow it to update the block index.
After it completes, completely exit your wallet client.

3) Replace Wallet.dat

Navigate to your clients storage location, and locate wallet.dat. Rename it to wallet.dat_old.

Windows Vista/7/8
C:\Users\ User Name \AppData\Roaming\ coin name

Windows XP
C:\Documents and Settings\ User Name \Application data\ coin name

Copy your backup wallet.dat into the folder.

4) Load Wallet

Load up your wallet and you are all set.

That should do it.

TL;DR
Start -> Run -> ” explorer %APPDATA%\<crypto coin> ” copy old wallet .dat into directory, replacing the current one

Please let me know if you have any questions.
If I helped you out, consider throwing me a couple of coins.

Dogecoin

D6CXEGQAgHFEUE4JvzdvRNVPEh9cypJwqk

Potcoin

PSwdWSBR9vRcMXNhMY8n2oDdJRtXWqTW4V

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Things you will need:
Modem
Router
Computer
Patience
The ability to follow directions.

Preface:
Sometimes, for whatever the reason, you may want to obtain a new global IP address. Depending on your service provider, these IP addresses could be leased dynamically, which typically change frequently, or statically, which change less often, or if all.  These addresses may be issued by your MAC address.

In my case, my addresses re issued statically, so they are issued depending on what my MAC address of my router is. I began to think of a way that I could change the static address, without doing anything extraordinary. This is what I figured out.

WARNING:

This should be fairly straigh forward and easy, but like with doing anything under the hood, you could mess something up or lose access to the internet. Proceed at your own risk. I take no responsibility for any damage you may incur.

Step 1
Write down your current IP address. Unplug your modems power. Set the cord to the side, do not reconnect at yet.

Step 2
Log in to your routers administrative interface with your favorite browser. In my case it was set to http://192.168.1.1 (This will change depending on the setup of your router. You should consult the user manual, manufacturer’s website, or in some cases the backside or bottom of the router for the correct address.) You should also be sure to have your admin username and password handy.

Step 3
Look for an option to clone your MAC address, and select it. Look on the back/bottom of your router for your MAC address and either enter is into the boxes, or hit clone. Keep in mind that if you select clone it may take the address from one of the wired computers, and not the router.

Step 4
Now that you have your MAC address in the clone boxes, change one letter or number. By doing this you are more or less spoofing your MAC address.

Step 5
Reboot your router. Once the router has fully powered on, reconnected the power to your modem. Check your IP address again and see if it has changed. If it did, Congratulations, you just changed your IP address, browse to all the IP blocked sites you want

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GOAL:
To Transfer an active windows installation to new hardware.

What you will need:
– Basic computer hardware knowledge
– Your Windows 7 Product Key
– Old windows machine still in working order.
– New  tower without hard drive.
– The driver for the Wired of Wireless network controller of the NEW hardware.
– The ability to follow a guide.

Warning:

While these steps have been tested by myself, I can make no guarantees that this will work for each and every setup. As good practice dictates, you should always backup your most important items (pictures, documents, movies, music, favorites, etc…) to some kind of external media (DVD, Flash Drive, External Hard Drive) as a precaution. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Preface:
Have you wanted to upgrade your computers components, but was not crazy about the idea of having to re-install windows and all of your programs and personal files? Well, no need to fret, as windows supports a utility for doing just that. This article is written from a Windows 7 perspective, but the same steps can be performed under Windows Vista with more or less the same results.

Step 1
Prepare your system. REMOVE YOUR CURRENT USER PASSWORD(s).  Make sure your computer is exactly how you want it. Install any software or updates that you want included on the new machine. Remove any junkware or programs that you do not want. Empty your recycle bin. Much of this is optional, but does not hurt.

Step 2
Navigate to the “ C:\Windows\System32\sysprep ” directory.
Launch the “sysprep.exe” program.
What this utility will do is allow you to ‘Generalize’ the system. By generalizing your system, you are for all intents and purposes wiping out all of your installed drivers. When you wipe out the installed drivers, you can place your current hard drive into a new hardware environment.

Step 3
Now that you have sysprep.exe utility loaded, you will want to do set the options EXACTLY as seen below:

System Clean up action: Enter System Out-of-Box Experience (OOBE)
Generalize: Checked
Showdown Options: Quit
Make sure that these settings are EXACT. This is crucial for the following steps.

Once sysprep.exe is finished it will exit. There will be no user input.  What this is has done is generalize the system, and restored the out of the box state (OOBE).

Step 4
At this point in time you will want to shut down your computer. Unplug the machine (remove the battery if on a laptop) and remove the hard drive.

You can now install the hard drive into your new machine, and power it on.

Step 5
Have your product key ready, as you will need it to finish the installation.  The OOBE wizard will take you through the initial setup. Keep in mind that your current username will be in use, and you can not reuse it. What I would recommend is setting the username to something random or generic, perhaps the manufacturer of the computer, or your favorite animal or food.

Step 6
When the computer loads the welcome screen for the first time, LOG INTO YOUR OLD USER ACCOUNT, DO NOT LOAD INTO THE NEWLY CREATED USER.

Step 7
Click start orb. In the run box type “add or remove user accounts” and hit enter. When the following window opens, select the newly made user account. Then select “Delete Account” from the left had column. Finally select Delete Files.

Step 8
Make sure you have your Ethernet adapter installed (hopefully you obtained the driver prior as suggested). Try to run Windows Update to install your basic hardware, or manually install your new hardware. Once you have installed your new hardware, CONGRATULATIONS you have successfully ported your old install to new hardware!

If I helped you out consider buying me a beer

Recently I was setting up Boot Camp on my old white Macbook.  I decided to use a fresh copy of Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit.

The install went fine and as Apple suggested, I copied over the windows support files. Awesome. I opened the folder and selected the setup file, and was immediately given the message:
“Boot Camp x64 is unsupported on this computer model”

This had to be a mistake. This model clearly supports 64-Bit. It’s a core 2 duo processor… and I already installed the operating system.

So I did a little digging, and ended up in “Drivers\Apple” looking at a file called BootCamp64.msi. I double clicked it, and was prompted that I needed elevated permissions to continue, and should run setup.exe. This is great advice had I not already tried that. I did find a solution to this problem.

1. Copy the “WindowsSupport” folder directly to the “c:\” drive.

2. Select Start and in the Run box type “cmd” on the “cmd.exe” icon that show up, right click and select “Run as Administrator”

3. In the run box type “cd C:\WindowsSupport\Drivers\Apple” and hit enter.

4. Type “BootCamp64.msi”

From here the installer will launch, and you MAC will now support 64-Bit drivers.

Follow the prompts and reboot as necessary.

TLDR:

Run command prompt as administrator. Browse to /Drivers/Apple folder. Run BootCamp.msi

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If you just want to check out whats listed use this link HERE

Feel free to leave comments about anything awesome that you may find!

GOAL:
To setup from beginning to end a personalized Pogoplug server.  Installation of Arch Linux, with addition of Apache, PHP, MySQL and whatever else we may decide upon.

THINGS YOU WILL NEED:

• Pogoplug v2 (Pink/Gray)
• 2gb+ Clean flashdrive or external hard drive
• Mac Terminal or Windows Terminal Program (I like PuTTY)
• Basic Linux knowledge and the ability to follow a manual
• Install time.  (This varies greatly, but figure about 45 min for a Linux veteran, maybe about 90+ for novices.  Depending on what it is you would like to do, configuring this beast could take hours or days..)

** NOTE **

Following this guide will void your manufacturer’s warranty, and will lead to very little official support in the event of imminent failure.  Do not blame me if you mess something up as I assume no responsibility for what you do with this guide.  With that being said.

Preface:
Intro to the Pogoplug

Recently I have taken a keen liking to a little pink web device, the Pogoplug.  When I first read about the Pogoplug, the concept sounded very intriguing.  The ability to run your own cloud server from the home seemed like an excellent idea.  Kick in the ability to hack and run Linux? That would be awesome! I was sold.  I had to have one.

I browsed around for a good deal, as I was on a limited budget.   I found a friend that was selling his device, he didn’t want it and parted with it cheap.  A Pogoplug Pink v2! Let the hacking begin!

Upon first boot, everything appeared to go well.  I plugged it in, and shortly after the device was fully illuminated and ready to go.  I attempted to access it with the Pogoplug software, but found that I could not.  There was a big problem.  These devices are tied to users Pogoplug accounts by the serial numbers, so if a user does not unregister the device, you cannot do much with it; however I did read that in some cases customer support can grant you access to a device.

In my case it was not that bad. I contacted my friend, he removed it from his account, and it was good to go.

** HINT **

It would be to write down your MAC address, which is located under the bar-code on the bottom of the device.  Next, log into your routers administrative page.  You should be able to find a section of your routers configuration services, that allow you to set static leases.  You would want to set a static lease on a headless setup like this, so that you always know at what address you can access your Pogoplug.

Have the USB device that you plan to install to handy.  I am using just some old drive that I had laying around.  2 GB PNY.  Nothing special.
Be aware that anything on the drive is going to be erased during the setup process, so make sure to back it up.

** NOTE **
This setup guide is only for (PogoPlug v2)

Similar setup guides for this and OTHER compatible devices can be found HERE.

Step 1:
Prepare your Pogoplug

First with the device on and online, remove all of the attached devices.  Attempt to SSH to the IP of the device set by the DHCP. If you are unable to SSH, register and enable SSH through my.pogoplug.com. The default login (unless changed through my.pogoplug.com) is root/ceadmin.

Once you are able to connect via SSH make sure you stop the Pogoplug software before continuing.

 killall hbwd

You will only need to do this once as the Pogoplug software will be disabled later in the install

While connected to your Pogoplug, run these commands to download the bootloader that enables booting from USB drives.

cd /tmp
wget http://joepetruska.com/pogoplug/install_uboot_mtd0.sh chmod +x install_uboot_mtd0.sh ./install_uboot_mtd0.sh
chmod +x install_uboot_mtd0.sh
./install_uboot_mtd0.sh

After the bootloader finishes downloading, insert the USB drive you intend to use EVERYTHING WILL BE ERASED.
Insert the drive into either the front, or the top back USB port.
You will now run fdisk to partition the drive.

Step 2:
Fdisk
Fdisk will partition your USB flash or hard drive for use by Arch

 /sbin/fdisk /dev/sda

fdisk will delete your old partitions

o ## this will remove all partitions
p ## lists any partitions

Now we will make the new partitions

n ##first
p ##second
1 ##third

Press ‘enter’ to continue with defaults.
Exit by pressing ‘w’

Here we create the ext2 filesystem

wget http://archlinuxarm.org/os/pogoplug/mke2fs
chmod 755 mke2fs
./mke2fs /dev/sda1
mkdir usb
mount /dev/sda1 usb

Step 3:
Installing Arch Linux
Now we will download and install Arch Linux

cd usb
wget http://archlinuxarm.org/os/ArchLinuxARM-armv5te-latest.tar.gz
tar -xzvf ArchLinuxARM-armv5te-*.tar.gz ## This will take some time
rm ArchLinuxARM-armv5te-*.tar.gz
sync ## Flash drives take longer

Now we will clean up and reboot.

cd ..
umount usb
/sbin/reboot

If you are running this process from a MAC or Linux machine, your SSH key will be different, and need to be cleared out, to do this run the following

ssh-keygen -R 192.168.1.123 ## Your Pogoplug IP

Log back in after your Pogoplug reboots using username:: root and password:: root.

Congratulations, you just installed ArchLinux onto your new Pogoplug.  Before we finish there are a few things we should do.

Step 4:
Change Your Root Password
This is something should be done ASAP.  It is very easy just run the following command and follow the prompts:

passwd root ## change user password

Make sure not to forget your root password, as you will use this to login from now on.

** Basic Commands **

reboot ## reboots Pogoplug
poweroff ## shuts down Pogoplug to be unplugged

These commands should be used for exactly what they imply.  Try not to unplug your Pogoplug while it is running, this could potentially damage your install.
A short repair guide is in the works, so if you have an issue with not booting post it in the comments.

Next time we will take a closer look at some applications to update and install, and start to lay the groundwork for your web-server!

Please let me know of any questions that you may have!

If I helped you out consider buying me a beer

[ PART 2 ] 

GOAL:
Install all system updates and a handful of useful tools as well as the Webmin utility.

THINGS YOU WILL NEED:

• Pogoplug that has been hacked from Part 1

LETS GET STARTED:

Fire up your terminal program.  We will do a little maintenance and install a few apps you may want/need down the line.  Copy and paste the following code boxes in order, one at a time.
Make sure to read the content as not all boxes are copy paste.

Step 1:
Updates and Tools:

Lets start by making sure the system is totally up to date with all installed packages

## Update Pacman Sources
pacman -Syy ## package sync
pacman -Syu ## system update

Next lets update the pacman installer.  This step may not be needed but it does not hurt.

## Update Pacman Installer
pacman -S pacman

Followed by some zip and archive tools

## update various apps
pacman -S ntp bzip2 zip p7zip gftp unzip libzip ##tools for later

And then two popular terminal based text editors

## Text Editors Installation
pacman -S vim nano  ## nano and vim text editors

Step 2:
Fixing the clock

From here we are going to edit a file to fix the system clock.  This pogoplug does not support the hwclock, so we will replace it with ntpd.

nano /etc/rc.conf

At the top find TIMEZONE

## REPLACE WITH YOUR TIMEZONE
TIMEZONE="America/Chicago"
## EXAMPLE
TIMEZONE="America/NewYork"

Scroll down to the bottom, and find DAEMONS

Find hwclock replace with ntpd

## BEFORE ##
DAEMONS=(hwclock syslog-ng network netfs crond sshd)
## AFTER ##
DAEMONS=(ntpd syslog-ng network netfs crond sshd)

Hit control+x, follow by “y”, follow by enter.

You have now successfully fixed your system time.

Reboot your Pogoplug.

Step 3:
Webmin Install

Start by downloading webmin

pacman -S webmin perl-net-ssleay ##webmin and perl modules

Once installed you can start the server with

rc.d start webmin

Once you have webmin installed, you can access the admin interface by pointing your browser to https://youriphere:10000

Upon first visit you will be presented with an access denied message, to allow access to more than just localhost we will need to do some slight modifications.

nano /etc/webmin/miniserv.conf

Scroll down to the very bottom and find that line that begins with ALLOW

## add an ALLOW line for whatever IP you plan on accessing the interface from or a range of IPs
ALLOW=127.0.0.1
## Example address configuration
ALLOW=127.0.0.1
ALLOW=192.168.1.0 ## allows all users in that IP range

Hit control+x, follow by “y”, follow by enter.
Return to the boot setup.

nano /etc/rc.conf

Scroll down to the bottom, and find DAEMONS
Add webmin to startup

## BEFORE ##
DAEMONS=(ntpd syslog-ng network netfs crond sshd)
## AFTER ##
DAEMONS=(ntpd syslog-ng network netfs crond sshd webmin)

Save the file.

Reboot your pogoplug.

Once it comes back online you can access many of the pogoplug servers through the webmin page.
Log in with your root username and passwords.

From here you have a fully functional Linux based headless server.  This is a great vanilla start to install anything you want, the possibilities are really unlimited.

** Basic Commands **

rc.d (start/restart/quit) webmin ## basic webmin controls
date - displays device date

In the next installment of “Hacking the POGOplug.  The definitive guide.” We will turn the light on, with a fully functional LAMP server!

Please let me know of any questions that you may have!

If I helped you out consider buying me a beer

[ Part 3 ]

GOAL:
Install the web control panel including Apache/PHP/MySQL and phpMyadmin.

THINGS YOU WILL NEED:

• Pogoplug that has been hacked from Part 2

LETS GET STARTED:

Fire up your terminal program.  Where we left off is perfect for setting up the webportal.
Make sure to read the content as not all boxes are copy/paste.

Step 1:
Apache / PHP / MySQL:

Lets start by installing apache, php and mysql.

pacman -S apache php php5 php-apache mysql</strong> ## web stuff

Start Apache by running the following

rc.d start httpd ## Starts Apache

Step 2:
Setting up PHP 

To setup PHP Add these lines in /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf:
Place this in the “LoadModule” list anywhere after LoadModule dir_module modules/mod_dir.so:

LoadModule php5_module modules/libphp5.so

Place this line at the end of the ‘include’ list:

Include conf/extra/php5_module.conf

Make sure that the following line is uncommented in httpd.conf in the section/(after the line)<IfModule mime_module>:

TypesConfig conf/mime.types

Add this line in /etc/httpd/conf/mime.types:

application/x-httpd-php		php php5

Restart Apache to save changes

rc.d restart httpd

Step 3:
Configuring MySQL

Now we will configure MySQL.
Edit /etc/php/php.ini (this is in /usr/etc on older systems) to uncomment the following lines (By removing ; ):

;extension=mysqli.so
;extension=mysql.so

Start MySQL

rc.d start mysqld

You may need to restart Apache

MySql should now be running,lets change the root password

mysqladmin -u root password 'password' ## replace 'password' with your password do not include (',') 

Step 4:
Autostart Apache and MySQL

Finally lets add apache and MySQL to the startup.

nano /etc/rc.conf

Scroll down to the bottom to find the following lines

## BEFORE ##
DAEMONS=(ntpd syslog-ng network netfs crond sshd webmin)
## AFTER ##
DAEMONS=(ntpd syslog-ng network netfs crond sshd webmin httpd mysqld)

Hit control+’x’, follow by ‘y’, follow by ‘enter’.

You have now successfully installed apache php mysql.

Reboot your Pogoplug. 

A longer, more in depth guide can be found HERE

** Basic Commands **

rc.d (start/restart/quit) httpd ## basic apache controls
rc.d (start/restart/quit) mysqld ## basic mysql controls</pre>

In the next installment of “Hacking the POGOplug.  The definitive guide. Part 4” We will look into additional web server software.

Please let me know of any questions that you may have!  Also, if there are any other features in which you would like to explore!

If I helped you out consider buying me a beer

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