The Windows and Windows Software Megathread - The Something Awful Forums

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dhrusis: Jan 19, 2004; searching...

stedd posted:

SSDP seems to be a service to discover UPnP devices, and it's failing with an AV. If you're not using UPnP for anything, you can try disabling the service in Computer Management. The full service name seems to be "SSDP Discovery"

Appreciate the help. I disabled it and will see how it goes. I have a Dlink NAS on the network, its the only Upnp device (maybe an xbox 360 as well, not sure)

# ? Nov 12, 2009 04:16

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# ? May 25, 2013 17:11

Aeka 2.0: Nov 16, 2000; Have you seen my apex seals? I seem to have lost them.

My PS3 is no longer seen by WMP.

When I had Vista and WMP11 I was able to stream media with no problems.
I've since upgraded to 7 with WMP12.
After turning on streaming and sharing, the PS3 is not listed in devices to share nor is it listed as an "unknown device." It just isn't there anymore. The ps3 also can't see any media sharing service. I've uninstalled my virus program and also turned off the windows firewall. I've made no changes to the network. The only thing that changed was an upgrade to windows 7. What gives, ive spent hours and hours trying to get this to work again but they just won't see eachother. I'm going mad.

# ? Nov 12, 2009 08:36

Essobie: Jan 31, 2003; WHAT? THIS IS MY REGULAR SPEAKING VOICE.
Is this better?

A couple of quick questions/gripes that hopefully one of you many helpful folks can hook me up with some solutions:

1) When I open Computer it automatically expands all the little shortcuts and bullshit under my User account name... more than half of which will bark at you that access is denied if you try to click on them. The main problem I have with this is that when I open an Explorer window what I want to see on the left side is a bunch of things I can single click on that take me to where I want to go--things like my C: Drive. Or my D: Drive. Or any other drive.

But because of this gargantuan list of things I can't even click on, the things I WANT to click on are pushed all the way to the bottom of the view. I find myself collapsing my User links every time I open Explorer and it's an extra click I can do without. It doesn't expand if you collapse it and then open a new Explorer, but the second you look in Documents or Pictures or anything that there is a shortcut on my User list to, it will expand that list (and then keep expanding until I collapse it again later).

I tried highlighting my User Name in the Explorer window and hitting Delete. It asks if I'm sure I want to delete "Essobie" from my Desktop, and that if I do and want to get it back simply re-enable it in Personalization under Control Panel. I think, cool... I'll just remove it totally. Hit Delete and... nothing happens. I guess that sort of makes sense since technically there isn't an icon on my actual Desktop named "Essobie" anywhere. From within Personalization under Control Panel there's nothing I can do to the user icon there either.

How do I not look at that stupid, useless list for good?

2) The whole Shortcut Keys thing I mentioned a number of pages back that someone helped me out with is rearing its ugly head again. Apparently if I reboot, or even just log off and log back on, my Shortcut Keys no longer function. I even just tried to leave the shortcuts straight on my desktop... not only to folder shortcuts but also directly to applications. After re-logging in, all those shortcut keys are completely ignored.

I don't see how something so useful simply no longer works. Any ideas?

# ? Nov 12, 2009 13:53

MutantBlue: Jun 8, 2001

Essobie posted:

A couple of quick questions/gripes that hopefully one of you many helpful folks can hook me up with some solutions:

1) When I open Computer it automatically expands all the little shortcuts and bullshit under my User account name... more than half of which will bark at you that access is denied if you try to click on them. The main problem I have with this is that when I open an Explorer window what I want to see on the left side is a bunch of things I can single click on that take me to where I want to go--things like my C: Drive. Or my D: Drive. Or any other drive.

But because of this gargantuan list of things I can't even click on, the things I WANT to click on are pushed all the way to the bottom of the view. I find myself collapsing my User links every time I open Explorer and it's an extra click I can do without. It doesn't expand if you collapse it and then open a new Explorer, but the second you look in Documents or Pictures or anything that there is a shortcut on my User list to, it will expand that list (and then keep expanding until I collapse it again later).

I tried highlighting my User Name in the Explorer window and hitting Delete. It asks if I'm sure I want to delete "Essobie" from my Desktop, and that if I do and want to get it back simply re-enable it in Personalization under Control Panel. I think, cool... I'll just remove it totally. Hit Delete and... nothing happens. I guess that sort of makes sense since technically there isn't an icon on my actual Desktop named "Essobie" anywhere. From within Personalization under Control Panel there's nothing I can do to the user icon there either.

How do I not look at that stupid, useless list for good?

You are seeing that long list because of two things you've done.

1) You've turned off the "Don't show hidden files, folder, and drives" and "Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)" settings.
2) You've selected "Show all folders" in the left panel.

Set those back to their original values and you won't see that stupid, useless list.

# ? Nov 12, 2009 15:46

Essobie: Jan 31, 2003; WHAT? THIS IS MY REGULAR SPEAKING VOICE.
Is this better?

You are entirely correct. Thanks! I've been trained by many XP installs that the first thing you should do is tweak out Explorer to show you stuff that Grandma shouldn't ever see.

I'll certainly turn off show all folders... I know I can live without that. The hiding hidden crap I'm not sure I'm cool with. Hopefully having it collapsed by default will be good enough.

# ? Nov 12, 2009 16:22

Kilometers Davis: Jul 9, 2007; They begin again

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/hiner/?p=3120 posted:

1. Software that turns normal displays into touchscreens

I don�t know how Microsoft did this. It seems like they would have needed cooperation from the hardware manufacturers. Nevertheless, it appears that the company has developed its own highly-secret software that can turn any standard LCD screen into a touchscreen. Now users will no longer have to a do a simple click-and-drag to resize photos. Instead they�ll be able to reach up to their screens with both hands and use a set of complicated multi-touch gestures to do the same thing, and it will only take 5-10 seconds longer. Upon further digging, I also discovered that all mouse and keyboard drivers appear to be in a time-bombed phase-out cycle.

Is that true?

# ? Nov 12, 2009 16:56

Stew Man Chew: Sep 14, 2008; Permission to treat the witness as hostile?

LCD screens have no input sensors of any sort so no. Did you read the whole article?

I think this gave it away:

The same article posted:

Since this mysterious alternate Registry does not have an official name, let�s call it �Registry: The Starter Edition� because it is a greatly simplified and dumbed-down version. In fact, instead of five hives like the standard Registry, this one only has two: HKEY_CLUELESS_USER and HKEY_CRAPPY_MACHINE.

IE it's satire.

# ? Nov 12, 2009 17:10

Sir Unimaginative: May 2, 2007; I'm interplanetary, bitch
Let's go to Mars

IntoTheNihil posted:

Is that true?

that same article posted:

Since this mysterious alternate Registry does not have an official name, let�s call it �Registry: The Starter Edition� because it is a greatly simplified and dumbed-down version. In fact, instead of five hives like the standard Registry, this one only has two: HKEY_CLUELESS_USER and HKEY_CRAPPY_MACHINE.

Does this sound like something that would be released in a general-purpose product to you?

Do you really think they could release this and not get crucified in the media for any number of things, ranging from abandoning their security initiatives to offending users?

How could you possibly believe this is a factual article?

Edit: Dang.

# ? Nov 12, 2009 17:11

Stew Man Chew: Sep 14, 2008; Permission to treat the witness as hostile?

Same wavelength-five.

Thank you Mutantblue for that quick fix to get rid of the Enormo-list of folders when I pop open My Computer.

# ? Nov 12, 2009 17:15

Kilometers Davis: Jul 9, 2007; They begin again

Hahaha, all I did was scan that article really quickly so I didn't even notice it was a joke. Well done.

# ? Nov 12, 2009 17:18

PBCrunch: Jun 17, 2002; Lawrence Phillips Always #1 to Me

I bought a laptop for my sister and my brother in law as a Christmas gift. It has an Athlon II 64-bit CPU and comes with Windows 7 32-bit. Can I clean install Win7 64-bit?

The license code sticker on the bottom of the machine says "Windows 7 Home Prem OA". It doesn't say anything about 32-bit vs. 64-bit.

# ? Nov 12, 2009 19:48

DaNzA: Sep 11, 2001; :D

GreatGreen posted:

Touche.

But seriously, has this been fixed yet? Anybody with Windows 7 and a CRT in the house?

I had to do some fuckery to get the the login screen properly detected on the crt instead of the LCD. Even though I still can't make my CRT monitor monitor-1. The steps I went through was reinstalling graphic driver and unplug the LCD during the first reboot.

# ? Nov 12, 2009 20:45

Aphrodite: Jun 27, 2006; MUNCH
MUNCH
MUNCH
MUNCH
MUNCH

Aeka 2.0 posted:

My PS3 is no longer seen by WMP.

When I had Vista and WMP11 I was able to stream media with no problems.
I've since upgraded to 7 with WMP12.
After turning on streaming and sharing, the PS3 is not listed in devices to share nor is it listed as an "unknown device." It just isn't there anymore. The ps3 also can't see any media sharing service. I've uninstalled my virus program and also turned off the windows firewall. I've made no changes to the network. The only thing that changed was an upgrade to windows 7. What gives, ive spent hours and hours trying to get this to work again but they just won't see eachother. I'm going mad.

Does it have to be done with WMP? PS3 Media Server works on Windows 7 and it's hassle free.

# ? Nov 12, 2009 21:05

spincube: Jan 31, 2006

Aeka 2.0 posted:

My PS3 is no longer seen by WMP.

When I had Vista and WMP11 I was able to stream media with no problems.
I've since upgraded to 7 with WMP12.
After turning on streaming and sharing, the PS3 is not listed in devices to share nor is it listed as an "unknown device." It just isn't there anymore. The ps3 also can't see any media sharing service. I've uninstalled my virus program and also turned off the windows firewall. I've made no changes to the network. The only thing that changed was an upgrade to windows 7. What gives, ive spent hours and hours trying to get this to work again but they just won't see eachother. I'm going mad.

I had to turn on Homegroup sharing in Windows 7 before my 360 would see my stuff - it's different to Vista's way of showing stuff. Try turning on Homegroup sharing, then open up WMP and tell it to stream your media.

# ? Nov 12, 2009 21:41

Aeka 2.0: Nov 16, 2000; Have you seen my apex seals? I seem to have lost them.

Yeah I turned all that crap on. Nothing. I went ahead with the ps3 media sharing route and it found my ps3 instantly. Why has windows network sharing always been poo poo since XP?

I'm not a fan of transcoding on the fly, I see that if you put a file extension on the exclude field it won't transcode those files, but how do I know if it is working?

# ? Nov 12, 2009 23:06

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be." Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy your beliefs. The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud.

Aeka 2.0 posted:

I'm not a fan of transcoding on the fly, I see that if you put a file extension on the exclude field it won't transcode those files, but how do I know if it is working?

If you can't tell it's working, then it doesn't matter, does it?

# ? Nov 12, 2009 23:11

madprocess: Sep 23, 2004; by Ozmaugh

Aeka 2.0 posted:

Yeah I turned all that crap on. Nothing. I went ahead with the ps3 media sharing route and it found my ps3 instantly. Why has windows network sharing always been poo poo since XP?

Are you saying it was better in 3.x fW/95/98/ME/NT/2000?

# ? Nov 12, 2009 23:13

nrr: Jan 2, 2007

I'm on 64bit Home Premium and I just noticed there's regular IE and 64bit IE. All the quick shortcuts and pinned icons seem to be pointing to regular IE, so I switched them with 64bit, but when IE opens via anything else, it seems to default back to non 64 bit. Anyone know how to change this, or have any idea why they would add a 64bit version of their browswer and not make it the default on a 64bit OS?

# ? Nov 12, 2009 23:51

m2pt5: May 18, 2005; THAT GOD DAMN MOSQUITO JUST KEEPS COMING BACK

nrr posted:

any idea why they would add a 64bit version of their browswer and not make it the default on a 64bit OS?

Because there are almost no 64-bit plugins, like Flash for instance.

# ? Nov 12, 2009 23:54

Not Memorable: Jul 25, 2004; You are the single most important person in the universe.

Aeka 2.0 posted:

Yeah I turned all that crap on. Nothing. I went ahead with the ps3 media sharing route and it found my ps3 instantly. Why has windows network sharing always been poo poo since XP?

I'm not a fan of transcoding on the fly, I see that if you put a file extension on the exclude field it won't transcode those files, but how do I know if it is working?

?? It only transcodes on the fly if you go to the "Transcoding" folder on the XMB and select one of the transcoded options. If you just navigate to the file normally and hit play and the PS3 doesn't pitch a fit than it is not being transcoded.

# ? Nov 13, 2009 00:11

nrr: Jan 2, 2007

m2pt5 posted:

Because there are almost no 64-bit plugins, like Flash for instance.

ok cheers. I looked in the options and it specifically says that 64bit cannot even be the default.

# ? Nov 13, 2009 00:40

Plorkyeran: Mar 21, 2007; Plorky Pig, let's get that Maria+Holic typesetting done yeah? You're starting to develop the requtation of lazy and slow, so ammend that for your own sake

m2pt5 posted:

Because there are almost no 64-bit plugins, like Flash for instance.

And unless you consider not having flash a good thing, there aren't really any benefits to a 64-bit browser.

# ? Nov 13, 2009 00:48

madprocess: Sep 23, 2004; by Ozmaugh

Plorkyeran posted:

And unless you consider not having flash a good thing, there aren't really any benefits to a 64-bit browser.

Stuff like encryption gets handled faster, it's more stable and secure (even compared to 32 bit without the add-ins that only work on 32 bit), and you get to use more than 2 or 4 gigabytes of RAM for the process.

# ? Nov 13, 2009 00:56

Hipster_Doofus: Dec 20, 2003; Lovin' every minute of it.

MutantBlue posted:

You are seeing that long list because of two things you've done.

1) You've turned off the "Don't show hidden files, folder, and drives" and "Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)" settings.
2) You've selected "Show all folders" in the left panel.

Set those back to their original values and you won't see that stupid, useless list.

There is an alternative if you want to keep your poo poo unhidden. Make a shortcut to explorer, then go to the shortcut's properties. In the Target box, put "%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /n,/e,/select, c:\" (w/o quotes).

There are other variations of this to get it to do specific things, but I don't know all the parameters off the top of my head.

# ? Nov 13, 2009 00:58

Plorkyeran: Mar 21, 2007; Plorky Pig, let's get that Maria+Holic typesetting done yeah? You're starting to develop the requtation of lazy and slow, so ammend that for your own sake

madprocess posted:

Stuff like encryption gets handled faster, it's more stable and secure (even compared to 32 bit without the add-ins that only work on 32 bit), and you get to use more than 2 or 4 gigabytes of RAM for the process.

The cpu overload of https is so utterly trivial compared to everything else a web browser has to do that you'd never notice if it went away completely, I'm horrified by the idea of a web browser needing more than 2 gigs of ram, and moving to 64 bit does not magically improve stability.

# ? Nov 13, 2009 01:07

Stew Man Chew: Sep 14, 2008; Permission to treat the witness as hostile?

I'm having problems with my wireless USB adapter, I specifically picked up a D-Link one that the windows 7 compatibility website lists as working with 64bit. It plugs and plays just fine, however, it will sporadically lose all connectivity, and not only that, make the shutdown screen take forever, and cause a BSOD on finally shutting down. It reads something about Drive State Power that blinks too rapidly to really comprehend.

Any ideas what is going wrong, is it a driver issue?

I can't install a PCI card for wireless because my video card obscures both slots

# ? Nov 13, 2009 01:09

madprocess: Sep 23, 2004; by Ozmaugh

Plorkyeran posted:

The cpu overload of https is so utterly trivial compared to everything else a web browser has to do that you'd never notice if it went away completely, I'm horrified by the idea of a web browser needing more than 2 gigs of ram, and moving to 64 bit does not magically improve stability.

HTTPS isn't the only encryption, 2 gigs can be confining when working with a lot of data, and all 64 bit browser builds I know of are indeed more stable than 32 bit counterparts.

# ? Nov 13, 2009 01:22

hieronymus: Sep 14, 2004; i keep my word and i will kill you like i said
killing me? thats impossible for anyone

madprocess posted:

HTTPS isn't the only encryption, 2 gigs can be confining when working with a lot of data, and all 64 bit browser builds I know of are indeed more stable than 32 bit counterparts.

Nothing loving drives me up the wall more than someone who describes software as "stable" or "unstable." Those are normative terms, describe situations where 64-bit won't crash where 32-bit will or you've just speaking of wisps and shadows, particularly if you're not identifying the browsers on which you're observing the behavior.

hieronymus fucked around with this message at Nov 13, 2009 around 01:41

# ? Nov 13, 2009 01:35

Xenomorph: Jun 13, 2001

madprocess posted:

HTTPS isn't the only encryption, 2 gigs can be confining when working with a lot of data, and all 64 bit browser builds I know of are indeed more stable than 32 bit counterparts.

My dad's browser is more stable than your dad's browser.

# ? Nov 13, 2009 01:45

DEUCE SLUICE: Feb 6, 2004; I dreamt I was an old dog, stuck in a honeypot. It was horrifying.

My wife's Vista install is in pretty bad shape. Is the Vista > 7 upgrade process anything like the OSX upgrade process, where it moves the existing system into a 'previous systems' folder and makes a brand new system folder? Or is it like previous upgrade processes and I should wipe & reinstall?

# ? Nov 13, 2009 02:17

Super Dude: Jan 23, 2005; Do the Jew

warwick5s posted:

My wife's Vista install is in pretty bad shape. Is the Vista > 7 upgrade process anything like the OSX upgrade process, where it moves the existing system into a 'previous systems' folder and makes a brand new system folder? Or is it like previous upgrade processes and I should wipe & reinstall?

It depends. If the Vista install is the same architecture as the 7 install (ie 32 bit to 32 bit), then you can do an upgrade from Vista to 7 which keeps all programs installed and files intact. There is also the option of having having a clean 7 installation which keeps your old windows installation in a folder called windows.old. The third option is to wipe and reinstall.

I can't comment on the OSX process since I've used a mac maybe 10 times in my life.

# ? Nov 13, 2009 02:30

EVGA Longoria: Dec 25, 2005; Let's go exploring!

Does anyone know of an application I can use to create a Bluetooth "drop" folder? I made one in OSX, hoping to replicate it in Windows.

Ideally it can be made device specific, so when I drop a file on it, it initiates an OBEX push. If that's not possible, it'd be nice to have one I can drop onto and have it pop up a list of in range Bluetooth devices?

# ? Nov 13, 2009 03:54

Grawl: Aug 28, 2008; Do the D.A.N.C.E
1234, fight!
Stick to the B.E.A.T
Get ready to ignite
You were such a P.Y.T
Catching all the lights
Just easy as A.B.C
That's how we make it right

Before 7

C: Vista (50GB)
D: XP (25GB)
E: Data (the rest)

While installing 7

I formatted both C: and D:, left E: alone (since that holds quite a lot of data). Couldn't create a new partition on the free space of C:, so I had to install 7 on D:. When trying to install on C:, the setup would just reboot the computer.

After installing 7

It works fine, and the old D: is now the new C:. However, that's just 25GB, and no matter what I do, I can't get rid or do anything with the old Vista partition.

Here's a screenshot - http://www.somesingawful.com/grawl/...ionunwanted.png

Any ideas?

Grawl fucked around with this message at Nov 13, 2009 around 04:27

# ? Nov 13, 2009 04:05

Sully: Feb 5, 2009

Having major issues with audio crackling since upgrading my old Toshiba Satellite M45-S269 (Realtek AC97 drivers), anyone experience these issues and have any fixes? I've tried the most recent drivers posted on the Realtek website and went to Vista drivers, all to no avail. This problem didn't exist in XP and only popped up when I upgraded.

# ? Nov 13, 2009 04:40

Super Dude: Jan 23, 2005; Do the Jew

Grawl posted:

Before 7

C: Vista (50GB)
D: XP (25GB)
E: Data (the rest)

While installing 7

I formatted both C: and D:, left E: alone (since that holds quite a lot of data). Couldn't create a new partition on the free space of C:, so I had to install 7 on D:. When trying to install on C:, the setup would just reboot the computer.

After installing 7

It works fine, and the old D: is now the new C:. However, that's just 25GB, and no matter what I do, I can't get rid or do anything with the old Vista partition.

Here's a screenshot - http://www.somesingawful.com/grawl/...ionunwanted.png

Any ideas?

Try using Gparted and report back.

# ? Nov 13, 2009 06:10

Grawl: Aug 28, 2008; Do the D.A.N.C.E
1234, fight!
Stick to the B.E.A.T
Get ready to ignite
You were such a P.Y.T
Catching all the lights
Just easy as A.B.C
That's how we make it right

In the end I just formatted the complete hard drive, and made that a new partition (300GB for Windows 7, it must be happy).

e: now, my videos are all very pixelated. I have the latest video drivers, latest ffdshow, latest classic player and the latest codecs (using the shark007 codecs)

Grawl fucked around with this message at Nov 13, 2009 around 06:18

# ? Nov 13, 2009 06:14

Not Memorable: Jul 25, 2004; You are the single most important person in the universe.

Grawl posted:

In the end I just formatted the complete hard drive, and made that a new partition (300GB for Windows 7, it must be happy).

e: now, my videos are all very pixelated. I have the latest video drivers, latest ffdshow, latest classic player and the latest codecs (using the shark007 codecs)

I'm having that issue too, I don't know what's up. My MKV's aren't A/V synced very well, and XVID's are blocky as all get out in VLC, but not Windows Media Player or Media Center.

# ? Nov 13, 2009 07:05

4 Day Weekend: Jan 16, 2009

To everyone buying Crysis:

http://www.incrysis.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=23117

It's a mod that makes the game look better AND less taxing on resources. For comparisons sake, I was running on high (level 4) on a C2D, 9800GT(8800GT) and 2GB of RAM, 1440x900, but no AA and I was getting 40fps average. Not bad for 3 year old system that was midrange when I bought it.

# ? Nov 13, 2009 08:40

megalodong: Mar 11, 2008; u are just sooo special 2 me i feel like this cat everytime i look into ur eyez
SIMPLY MESMERIZED

Speaking of crysis since it was the first game I tried out with my new radeon 5850, is there any way yet to force directx 10 games to run at anything above 60hz refresh rate?

# ? Nov 13, 2009 08:45

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# ? May 25, 2013 17:11

Lakitu7: Jul 10, 2001; Watch for spinys

4 Day Weekend posted:

To everyone buying Crysis:

http://www.incrysis.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=23117

It's a mod that makes the game look better AND less taxing on resources. For comparisons sake, I was running on high (level 4) on a C2D, 9800GT(8800GT) and 2GB of RAM, 1440x900, but no AA and I was getting 40fps average. Not bad for 3 year old system that was midrange when I bought it.

Yeah, I'll second this. It's not so much a "mod" as a frontend to create an autoexec.cfg file that sets some of the million rendering cvars to combinations that work pretty well together. If you have a low-end system, then it will give you much better FPS at similar visuals, or the same FPS with better visuals. If you have a high-end system, it will let you turn it up beyond the maximum settings. This will also enable maximum settings (or give you something comparable if not better) on dx9 with no issue.

# ? Nov 13, 2009 10:06

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