Tech Help Site

Search For The Manual You Need With Manuals Online: “

I used to keep all my owner manuals for everything. Starting with my original Nintendo Entertainment System way back when. Now I just mail in my warranty card and chuck the manual.

No I am not a mad man or a lunatic – it is simply a different time we live in than back then. Now almost anything can be found on the internet – and Manuals Online has you covered when it comes to owner manuals and user guides.

When you arrive at the site you will see something that looks like this:

To search for a product enter its name or model number into the search field. A generic search will give you LOTS of results and a model number will usually result in one or two items. I decided to search for a DustBuster. I typed in Dustbuster and hit Search.

I got back 4 items for four different models. You can download the manual as a PDF, save it to your folder on their website (requires registration), you can also view forum discussions about your item as well.

I got a little more specific and typed in Sony Play Station 2. I got a few results and chose the model I was looking for. I was then able to preview the owner manual and eventually downloaded it. I could also ask members for help or share information about the product.

You can see below the item’s additional product literature. In this case it looks like the quick start guide but it can vary from product to product.

Upon opening the document it will display the PDF in your browser. You can also save the file by right clicking on the link and choosing “save target as”.

Alright so who’s ready to go clean out their attic/filing cabinet? Do you have another slick trick when it comes to dealing with owners manuals? If so we would love to hear about it in the comments! Now I have to get back to some old school gaming

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Phil writes:

I am having a problem when I open AVI files that I create from the video camera. When I select them I get a message that reads ‘ Dr Watson Postmorten Debugger ‘ you have a problem’. When I click the box to close it, it locks up the computer and I have to do a soft boot.
Sometimes it brings up the Microsoft error reporting message that you have a problem and closing you down. I click on don’t send message and I go back to the desk top.
I opened [Windows file folder for error message debugging]. There is a lot of files in the folder telling me what has been done.

I also am getting the Window Explorer message, when I click on a AVI file and when I click don’t send message it closes me back to the desk top.

Do you know what might be happening.

I know Phil does a lot of video editing and makes some great photo and video keepsakes for his family. Like most of us he has tried a few different programs and Windows being the complicated software that it is he has in the past had some trouble with file formats and such. So I was thinking that this might be another recurrence of your old problems.

But a little bit of research reveals some more info. Once again the sheer volume of help available from Google is mindboggling – you just have to know how to search.

I found this discussion thread at a forum called MovieCodec.com. The details here are exactly the problem Phil is having.

Windows has a default habit of offering you a preview of multimedia files when you are searching through Windows Explorer. You know how when you open My Videos or whatever and select a video and Windows wants to show you a little preview copy – that’s what I mean. Ok so what happens is Windows (well Windows Explorer actually) takes control of the file and then when you try to access it the file is ‘in use’ and Explorer locks up and requires a restart which a lot of the times will mean restarting your whole system. This lock up triggers the Windows error reporting messages and Dr Watson which is Windows debugging program.

What the linked info suggests doing is to de-register the Windows settings, specifically a DLL file, that do the preview function. By so doing it can avoid this lock up problem altogether

The easiest way is to run a command through the ‘Run’ setting or to save the settings as a Batch file. A batch file is just a plain text file but with the extension changed from txt to bat. Running a batch file is like double-clicking a program file – the simple code written in the file will run. For that reason some antivirus programs will rightly try to block batch files. More Info on Batch files  is available here at Wikipedia

To help out I have made the batch text files for you and you can download them below. There are 2 files – one turns the setting off as described and the other turns it back on.So if changing it didn’t help or you wanted to go back to having the preview you just run the On file.

WinShellMediaOff – turns OFF the Windows Shell Media Handling

WinShellMediaOn– turns ON the Windows Shell Media Handling

Click and save the file somewhere like your Desktop. Once saved right click and choose Rename and change the extension (the bit after the dot) from name.txt to name.bat. Then double click the bat file to run it. If you want to see the contents of these files just open the Text file and read before you change the names to bat or read the website.

So give this a go Phil – I reckon it will work and shouldn’t do any harm if not. Other people on the site say that downloading the newest DivX codec solved their problem.So if this fix doesn’t work that would be my next suggestion. The latest version is always available at DivX.com

Let us know how you go