How to install the Canon MX395 printer on Windows 11??

 You just made a fresh install of Windows 11, and you can't get your old and loyal Canon printer to work? No problem, you've come to the right place!

You may not have noticed it, but even if the CD Setup Routine seems to hang, it actually DID install the driver, just could not register it with the actual printer.

In order to do so, just select Start  > Settings > Bluetooth & devices  > Printers & scanners. Next to Add a printer or scanner, select Add device: 

and then after a while, you will be able to select "Add manually".

There, select the last option "Local Printer", and on the next screen, select the right USB port. Next, you will be able to choose the Canon Printer Driver. When prompted, ask for an install of this "new" driver instead of keeping the present one, and see there, the setup is successful, and you can print your test page ;-)

If you wish to have the IJ Scan Utility, you will need to install it separately from the CD though. Its SETUP program should be in the folder "win\Driver\SCNUTIL\ScanUtility".

Now, after restarting Windows, to get the scanner working, you will need to re-run the SETUP program from the CD again. This time, make it run in compatibility mode with Windows 7, and choose the re-configuration option when prompted. Voilà! IJ Scan Utility should work now :-)

Best Computer Retail Store in Tunisia

For all our readers in Tunisia, I would like to recommend SWS INFORMATIQUE, a webshop for computer hardware, located in Mourouj City:

It has an excellent service and good prices, and delivers everywhere in Tunisia.

Please make sure to take a look at their website, or pay them a visit in their physical store!

Download YouTube Videos the easy way

 If you're looking for the best tool to download YouTube videos, look no more, you came to the right place: 4K Video Downloader

You can download almost any YouTube video, as well as many facebook videos, completely for free! You don't even need to install the program. Just decompress the archive somewhere and start the program. It's that simple!

Simply copy the link of the video and you will immediately notice that the tool detected the link and shows a youtube icon on the "Paste Link" button:

Once you click the button, you will be shown options to choose the resolution as well as the format. Here for example you can choose between MP4 and MKV, and up to 4K!

And once downloaded, you just need to double-click on the title to start playback on your default media player.

I usually take the MP4 format as it is the most compatible, especially with the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4.

Only downside is that some YouTube videos, that require authentication to be played, may not be downloadable at the moment.

But as the tool is being updated regularly, we may see a fix for this in the near future. Fingers crossed! :D

Show YouTube videos in the correct aspect ratio

 Ever came across a YouTube video where heads look like potatoes?

Then here comes your savior: www.stretch.site

Just paste the youtube link, and choose the correct switcher. You will usually want to use the 16:9 → 4:3 preset, as it is the most common mistake of greenhoppers that think it is "cool" to stretch a classic 4:3 video to 16:9 :-3

Enjoy!

Keyboard shortcuts for Volume Control

 You may by wondering how to control the volume level with your standard keyboard that does not have smart volume keys?

Easy, just get 3RVX.

In this tiny program, you can assign keys to increase and decrease the volume, as well as many other small windows features.

It even has an OSD when you play with the volume, and it can be set up to start automatically with Windows. So give it a try!

How to judge the quality of a sound card or integrated motherboard audio

 It can be confusing when buying a new motherboard or sound card to know what is good or just plain average, with all the marketing slogans being thrown at you here and there.

Basically, the No.1 feature you have to look for is the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR).

Anything beyond 120dB is high-end, anything below 100dB is entry-level.

And if you're into recording audio, be it streamed music or from the line-in, you should not only look at the SNR of the DAC, but also the SNR of the ADC. Here you don't want anything below 96dB if you don't want muffled sound, as CDs boast a 96dB SNR.

If the ADC SNR is not mentionned, substract 10dB from the DAC SNR as a rule of thumb.

Usually, you can find the SNR by googling the soundchip name.

Many motherboards use the ALC887 audiochip, which has a 97dB SNR for the DAC and 90dB SNR for the ADC, so not recommended if you care even a bit about high audio quality.

Better options are for example the ALC1200 (SNR~110dB) or the ALC1220 (SNR~120dB)

Improve YouTube playback on older video cards

If you have an older graphics card (like the GeForce GTX 750 or the Radeon RX 460 for example), you may not be able to decode VP9 video from YouTube in hardware. This is the case if the "Video Decode" section of the GPU performance tab in Task Manager is showing 0% during playback:

I

In order to change that, you have to enforce the H.264 format, which is natively supported even in very old cards like the GTX 260 or the Radeon HD 3000 series.

In Firefox, this is done by calling about:config and changing the setting "media.webm.enabled" to false.

If done correctly, you will see the "Video Decode" section showing some activity during playback:

 

NB: with older nvidia cards, there may be a problem with newer drivers getting the DXVA hardware acceleration feature working. It is advisable in this case to go back to an earlier driver, like version 353.62
In case you don't get the GPU tab in the Task Manager with older drivers, you can still see this information by checking the "Video Engine Load" in GPU-Z.