The Windows and Windows Software Megathread

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Windows and Windows Software Megathread

minidracula: Dec 22, 2007; boo woo boo

Karthe posted:

Thanks for the suggestions, I ended up going with a scheduled task that launches ShadowSpawn for a shadow copy of his Documents folder, then RoboCopy to mirror everything to the external.

Seems like you've already got what you need, but in the realm of simple no-muss no-fuss backup software tools, let me throw Bvckup 2 in the ring just in case anyone else is looking.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2014 01:16

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# ¿ Apr 23, 2024 18:12

minidracula: Dec 22, 2007; boo woo boo

kri kri posted:

Looking for a new replacement file manager, what are people using at the moment?

Far Manager in ConEmu, and occasionally still NexusFile. But I use those in conjunction with regular Windows Explorer windows.

# ¿ Aug 23, 2014 00:19

minidracula: Dec 22, 2007; boo woo boo

hooah posted:

On a different note, I'm trying to mess around with Prolog via XSB, and I'm having trouble getting Windows 8.1 to recognize XSB. I added ...\XSB\bin to the PATH variable, but I still have the command prompt telling me it can't find xsb. Any clues?

What's in "%XSB%\bin" (where %XSB% is just my notation for the top-level directory all of XSB is installed in; e.g. admin, bin, build, etc. directories and so on) is a batch file, "xsb.bat", that runs an actual XSB binary. Those actual binaries are in subdirectories of "%XSB%\config", organized by architecture and platform, e.g. x64-pc-windows, i686-pc-cygwin, i686-pc-cygwin-mt, et al. Actually the binaries are specifically in "bin" subdirectories of those arch-platform directories.

Edit xsb.bat in "%XSB%\bin" to make sure it points to the right one(s) you want to run, or test by trying out running an xsb.exe executable directly from say, "%XSB%\config\x64-pc-windows\bin" (which I have on my system for at least XSB 3.3.6, 3.4, and 3.5).

You may also want to make sure the environment variable XSB_DIR is set; XSB installers will set it for you on install, but you can overwrite it, or delete it and set it manually in "xsb.bat" if you want. It should point to the directory I was calling "%XSB%" above; whatever your top-level XSB directory is.

Hope that helps.

# ¿ Oct 2, 2014 00:36

minidracula: Dec 22, 2007; boo woo boo

hooah posted:

Well, I didn't know I had an XSB_DIR variable set. It already pointed to the right directory, though. I have an xsb.bat and an xsb64.bat. Both have the same contents:
code:
@echo off
REM Script for running XSB when built natively on Windows x64

set BINDIR=%0\..\..

%BINDIR%\config\x64-pc-windows\bin\xsb %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7
Still not getting the command-prompt to be able to call xsb from anywhere, though. Any other advice?

xsb.bat will only work from "%XSB%\bin" as written, (EDIT: because the BINDIR envvar that gets set is relative to where the batch file is executed from, so the next line that actually invokes the xsb binary won't point to the right place if you're somewhere else -- why they wrote it this way I don't know; I chalk it up to a lack of knowing how Windows works in detail, since this is cross-platform open source code, and they probably don't have a ton of Windows users, but that's just speculation), so you'll either need to open the command prompt, "cd" to that directory, and then run it from there (even if you have "%XSB%\bin" in your PATH envvar), or create a shortcut to xsb.bat and ensure the "Start in:" field of the shortcut (seen from right-clicking on the shortcut and selecting "Properties" in the contextual menu) is the full path to the "%XSB%\bin" directory (e.g., for XSB 3.5 on my system, this is "E:\Dev\XSB 3.5\bin", with the quote marks). You can then move that shortcut wherever you want; double clicking it should open a command prompt window with XSB already running, you should be at the listener/REPL.

If you've used an XSB installer (since you have XSB_DIR set, it sounds like you did), it should have installed shortcuts to your Start menu that directly point to the actual xsb.exe binaries (rather than the batch files) and have the "Start in:" field set to the full path of (likely) your "My Documents"/"Documents" directory (in my case, "E:\Documents"). I have four such shortcuts for XSB 3.5, each for different binaries, named "XSB-Cygwin.lnk", "XSB-Cygwin-MT.lnk", "XSB-Win32.lnk", and "XSB-Win64.lnk".

When I run xsb.bat from "%XSB%\bin" (for XSB 3.5), this is what I get as output:

code:

E:\Dev\XSB 3.5\bin>xsb.bat
[xsb_configuration loaded]
[sysinitrc loaded]
[xsbbrat loaded]

XSB Version 3.5.0 (Maotai) of July 6, 2013
[x86-pc-windows; mode: optimal; engine: slg-wam; scheduling: local]
[Patch date: 2014-07-03 17:24:44 -0400 (Thu, 03 Jul 2014)]

| ?-

When I instead run xsb.exe from "%XSB%\config\x64-pc-windows\bin" for e.g. the Windows 64-bit binary, I get this as output:

code:

E:\Dev\XSB 3.5\config\x64-pc-windows\bin>xsb.exe
[xsb_configuration loaded]
[sysinitrc loaded]
[xsbbrat loaded]

XSB Version 3.5.0 (Maotai) of July 6, 2013
[x64-pc-windows; mode: optimal; engine: slg-wam; scheduling: local]
[Patch date: 2014-07-03 17:24:44 -0400 (Thu, 03 Jul 2014)]

| ?-

which is also the same if I run it using the "XSB-Win64" Start menu shortcut ("XSB-Win64.lnk" on the file system).

EDIT: edited inline above to explain why the batch file they package with XSB doesn't work unless you're in the actual "%XSB%\bin" directory...

minidracula fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Oct 3, 2014

# ¿ Oct 3, 2014 01:18

minidracula: Dec 22, 2007; boo woo boo

hooah posted:

Bah, I hate shortcuts; I use Launchy so I don't have any. I was hoping I'd be able to open a command prompt in the directory where I put my Prolog files and run XSB from there. It sounds like that's not possible?

Sure, you should be able to do this. Edit the xsb.bat file to read something like this, assuming you have your Prolog files in a folder I'll call "E:\Hack\Prolog" (adjust to suit your environment), and XSB_DIR is already correctly set for you (or you could just set it again in this file).

code:

@echo off
REM Script for running XSB when built natively on Windows x86

cd "E:\Hack\Prolog"

set BINDIR=%XSB_DIR%

%BINDIR%\config\x86-pc-windows\bin\xsb %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7

You could also just move xsb.bat to "E:\Hack\Prolog" instead (and remove it from where it is now) and not need that "cd" line above, and have Launchy index that location, but if it's already picking up xsb.bat, I guess you have Launchy looking where that is, or reading your PATH envvar for batch files?

# ¿ Oct 3, 2014 01:33

minidracula: Dec 22, 2007; boo woo boo

WhiskeyJuvenile posted:

Is there a non-terrible torrent client for Windows?

I use Transmission-Qt Win and qBittorent, happy with both.

# ¿ Oct 7, 2014 11:03

minidracula: Dec 22, 2007; boo woo boo

asvodel posted:

Can anyone recommend a good program for recording desktop audio? Preferably free or cheap

I used to use Freecorder, but I switched machines since using it, don't have a copy anymore and apparently it is now an ad riddled piece of garbage.

A lot of places I found while searching recommend using a normal sound editor program like Audacity, but this is not an option since my current machine does not have desktop audio as a selectable recording source from the sound card, only Microphone. Do I still have any options?

I thought of using a screen video capturing program, if there is one that has an audio-only recording option, but if not it seems like it would be too much hard drive space/work to use.

I'm a long-time user of High Criteria's Total Recorder, so I recommend that. Not free, but they have a few different pricing options; see if any of them look suitable to you for the price.

# ¿ Jan 2, 2015 10:02

minidracula: Dec 22, 2007; boo woo boo

BonoMan posted:

Is there a small piece of software that can analyze a folder and show all the duplicate files? I'm terribly when it comes to organizing my DSLR photos. I often just dump them in a huge folder and then forget to format my cards so that when I dump it to PC again a week later there are duplicates.

Just to add another option to the ones other posters have already mentioned, I've used CloneSpy for this purpose, based on a recommendation from a friend several years ago.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2015 20:20

minidracula: Dec 22, 2007; boo woo boo

The Biggest Jerk posted:

Anyone recommend a PDF annotator (preferably free)? I've been using Goodreader on the ipad for making notes in my textbook but I can't really find a good equivalent on windows (or don't know where to look/what to trust). Anything like it that's not adobe acrobat?

It's not free, but I recently bought PDF Annotator (based on a recommendation) and have been pretty happy with it so far.

# ¿ Mar 9, 2015 10:42

minidracula: Dec 22, 2007; boo woo boo

bhlaab posted:

Part of my job is using sound effects, and sometimes this involves going through like hundreds of beep01.wav, beep02.wav beep03.wav etc to find exactly the right one. I'm looking for a player that can support the usual suspects (wav, aiff, etc) and also not be bloated or stupid. Winamp, for example, really hates files that are shorter than 1 second and sometimes just won't play them.

-Won't break on super short files
-Doesn't open a new instance every time I click on a new file and clutter all my poo poo up
-Preferably some sort of shell integration so I can just play files straight from explorer without having to open a program at all.

Can anyone help?

edit: Windows 7, fyi

I haven't explicitly tested it with very short files, but maybe try foobar2000?

# ¿ Mar 25, 2015 02:26

minidracula: Dec 22, 2007; boo woo boo

Fame Douglas posted:

From expensive to cheap:
Abby FineReader PDF
Foxit Phantom PDF
Master PDF Editor
PixelPlanet PdfEditor
PDF-XChange Editor

If you want something cheap, PDF-XChange is pretty good.

Honorable free mentions: NAPS2 (for reordering/adding pages) and LibreOffice Draw (for editing)

I'll toss in a recommendation for PDF Annotator, which I bought some years back and have upgraded a few times since; been pretty happy with it for my editing needs. But like someone else mentioned, depends on what you want to do.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2021 09:52

minidracula: Dec 22, 2007; boo woo boo

Robo Reagan posted:

What's a decent file explorer replacement for Win10? I'm tired of having five explorer pages floating around and digging around each of them to find what I need. I looked in to dopus but 80 dollars for a single computer is a bit steep.

So I use a number of 'em (including stock Windows Explorer/File Explorer) for different things/use cases, but since you mention DOpus, I can recommend NexusFile. It's donation-requested freeware and I've used it for years:

https://www.xiles.app/ (previously http://xiles.net/, which seems like it still works too?)

I just went to find the website again to get you the link and I see it's been updated in 2021, which is wild to me; I need to check it out. I've been using a version from 2012 (5.3.3.5532) or earlier for what seems like forever.

(I also use the "new" winfile/File Manager for certain things as well, but that's probably not what you're looking for: https://github.com/Microsoft/winfile)

# ¿ Sep 10, 2021 12:26

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# ¿ Apr 23, 2024 18:12

minidracula: Dec 22, 2007; boo woo boo

Fruits of the sea posted:

Any good recommendations for an alternative to Sticky Notes? Preferably something lightweight that doesn�t sync to the cloud or other accounts like gmail. All I need is a scratchpad for notes/to-do lists on the desktop that doesn�t lose functionality when I lose internet connection.

Was pretty happy with sticky notes but apparently it has some issues with One Note and some notes just disappear into the ether.

Most recently I've used KNot, though you might try e.g., Classic Sticky Notes and see if it works for you? On a recent attempt, it didn't for me (on Windows 10), but I didn't try too hard or spend any time debugging/troubleshooting. I've tried doing a similar thing manually in the past before too, copying over the old Windows 7 StikyNot.exe and support files from a working Win7 box to Windows 10. I can't recall why I didn't do it yet (or try) on this machine...

KNot has the advantage over old/Windows 7/"Classic" Sticky Notes that the notes are just plain text files that you can easily export/read outside the app, etc., etc.

# ¿ Sep 22, 2021 09:53

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Windows and Windows Software Megathread