Do you want to add the ability for people to donate money to your cause, your website, or you? Want to use PayPal to do it? Want to set it up so that the donors can donate via their credit or debit card without having to sign up for PayPal?

It’s easier than you might think.

Just do this:

1. Log into your PayPal account
2. Click on the “Merchant Services” tab
3. Click on the “Donate” link under the “Create Buttons” section
4. Choose button type
5. Enter “Organization name/service” (enter your name if it’s for you)
6. Click on the “Customize text or appearance” link if you want to change how your “Donate” button is going to look
7. Select currency (ex. USD = US Dollar)
8. Select whether you want your donors to enter their own contribution amount, or if you want them to contribute a fixed amount.
9. Select whether you want to use your secure merchant account ID (recommended) or your primary email address
10. Click the triangle to the left of Step 2 (another section of the form will drop down)
11. Check the box if you want to save your PayPal button for future use or to use as a template
12. Click on the triangle next to Step 3
13. Select whether or not you want the donor to have the ability to write a note to you that would be sent along with their donation
14. Select whether or not you need the donor’s shipping address
15. Check the box if you have a custom web page that you or your designer made that the donor would be sent to if they cancel their checkout (most likely you won’t have this, so skip it)
16. Check the box if you have a custom web page that the donors will be sent to when they finish checkout (again, you probably won’t have this)
17. Click the orange “Create Button” button
18. 18. Determine if you want to use the code for your website, or if you want a link that you can email (of course, you can use both, if you want).
19. Click on the corresponding tab of the one you want to use
20. Click the “Select Code” button beneath it (this will highlight the code)
21. RIGHT-click on the highlighted code (or, on your Mac, if you don’t have a mouse, hold down your CTRL key and click on it) and select COPY
22. Then either paste it in an email if you copied the email link, or paste it into a “Text” widget if you’re putting a “Donate” button on your WordPress blog. To “paste” the code, RIGHT-click (CTRL-click for Mac if no mouse) in the space where you want to paste it and select PASTE.

When the donor clicks on either the email link or the donate button, they will be taken to a PayPal page where they can enter the amount they’d like to donate (if you opted to allow them to choose the amount). Below that, it will ask them to sign in to PayPal.

However, to the left of where the would sign into PayPal, there is section entitled, “Don’t have a PayPal account?” They can click on the “Continue” link in that section, and it will open up a section where they can enter their info and credit/debit card info (see image below).

NOTE: It should NOT ask them to create a PayPal password at the bottom of the form. The form should only ask for their country, name, address, phone number, credit/debit card info, and email address (see above image).

After they enter their info, they can just click on the “Review Donation and Continue” button, review the info they entered, and then click the “Donate” button.

That should be it!

To check out what the page should look like after you create the button and/or email link, click on the link below:

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=8F4XP2Y5X7MBC

Feel free to test it by sending me a donation! ;)

Los Angeles Computer Repair | Los Angeles Computer Tech | Computer Repair Services

Ever have a need to know if a phone number is a land line or a cell phone number? Or maybe you want to know it’s location? Well, there’s an app for that. Kidding. I’m sure there is, but there’s a website for that as well.

Here it is:

www.reversenumberdatabase.com

Los Angeles Computer Repair | Los Angeles Computer Tech | Computer Repair Services

I just had a client who reformatted his drive and reinstalled Windows XP Pro on it. After he did that, when he reattached the 2 other SATA internal hard drives that he has for his data, one showed up fine, and the other showed up as a “Foreign Domestic Drive” and had a yellow question mark next to it in Disk Management (see image of similar situation below).

 
When I RIGHT-clicked on it in Disk Management, it gave the options to either “convert to basic disk” (which you do NOT want to do unless you want to lose all of your data), or to “Import Foreign Disk.” The answer was to Import Foreign Disk. It only took about 10 seconds.

So here’s how to get to Disk Management in Windows XP to do this:

1. Log on as administrator or as a member of the Administrators group (which basically means just log into your computer since a user is set up as an “Administrator” by default)
2. Click Start button in bottom left
3. Click Run (Windows 7 or Vista see below)
4. Type compmgmt.msc (Windows 7 or Vista see below)
5. Click OK (Windows 7 or Vista see below)
6. In the console tree, click Disk Management (Windows 7 or Vista see below)

NOTE 1: If you’re using Windows 7 or Vista, skip steps 3 – 6 above, and after you click the colored start ball in the bottom left of your screen, simply type Disk Management in the search field and hit your key to get to Disk Management.

7. Once in Disk Management, RIGHT-click on the section for the hard drive in question where the yellow exclamation mark is on the the icon for the hard drive (same section where it as “Dynamic Foreign”; see image above)
8. Select “Import Foreign Disk”
9. It will take about 10 seconds to do its thing
10. It will then ask, “Before using these disks, add them to your system configuration. Disk groups: ” Below that text will be a box with a check box already checked next to “Foreign disk group (1 of 1 disk).” Yes, you want to do that. Just click OK.
11. After this, you should be good to go and have all of your data back, so check it.

NOTE 2: During my research, one guy said after he clicked “Import Foreign Disk,” it hanged for about 10 hours, however everyone else said that it worked. And it worked for my client. So maybe that one guy was experiencing a user error or had a more serious problem. But I still feel compelled to say to do this at your own risk.

After you do this, the only thing that will be different is that the bar in Disk Management for that disk that was just imported will be green instead of blue. But other than that, things will be back to normal.

NOTE 3: If you your disk is being classified as “invalid” instead of “foreign,” then you might have it connected via USB, which Windows Vista & 7 do not like. If that’s the case, then find a way to connect it directly via SATA or IDE (depending on what kind of drive it is), and then it should show up as a foreign drive and you can follow the above instructions to import it.

Enjoy!

Los Angeles Computer Repair | Los Angeles Computer Tech | Computer Repair Services

If you have a jailbroken iPhone/iPod Touch and you bought some apps via Cydia that you forgot to backup before you upgraded to the latest version of iOS, then have no fear. Your Cydia purchases are intact! All you have to do after you jailbreak your iOS device again is log into Cydia, download and install the app that wasn’t backed up, and re-register it. It should remember your registration number. It did for my iPhone anyway. I just downloaded the Cydia app that I had bought before, opened it, clicked on “Register,” and on the page it brought up, my registration number was already filled in. I just had to click “Activate” and I was good to go! Pretty cool.

Even if you get another iPhone/iPad (upgrade to the latest version, for example), Cydia apparently transfers your purchase history to your new device. I haven’t tried that yet, but that’s what they said on HowardForums.com, one of the most well-known and respected cell phone forums on the net.

Just to be clear, though, unless you backed up your Cydia apps BEFORE you did the jailbreak (in which case you wouldn’t have a need to read this), then all of your inputted data in the app will be lost, as well as the settings. But that’s to be expected, right, since you’re downloading the latest version of the app directly from Cydia? But at least you didn’t have to buy it again!

If you want to backup your apps before you upgrade to the latest iOS, then you can do it with a free app called AptBackup that you can download from Cydia. But just know that it only backs up the LIST of apps that you downloaded, not the actual apps themselves or the app settings.

PLEASE NOTE that it does say in the instructions (see below) that you first have to “restore your iPhone and restore your backup in iTunes“, which I do NOT recommend doing. When I restored my iPhone from a backup, my battery drained crazy fast! I did a ton of research (which I will be posting soon), and found out that the reason why my battery was draining so fast was that I had restored it from a previous backup. You must set it up as a NEW PHONE if you don’t want that to happen, which means you will NOT be restoring from a backup. So this app would not work for how I suggest upgrading your iOS device based on my experience, unfortunately.

Los Angeles Computer Repair | Los Angeles Computer Tech | Computer Repair Services