The Windows and Windows Software Megathread

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

«‹›4 »

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

Ur Getting Fatter posted:

Is there any software that will help me parse a PDF file with text in it (text is all selectable, it's not a scanned image) and extract specific information out of it. Bonus points it will export to Excel.

Acrobat X+ natively supports saving PDFs as Excel files.

# ¿ Oct 7, 2014 03:05

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 09:47

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

Maybe you are overreacting to someone being mildly confused/amused as to why those particular keybinds would be turned off when it's not like they're coding the entire operating system from scratch or the feature those keys bind to isn't fully functional otherwise.

# ¿ Oct 22, 2014 23:38

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

Someone posting 'Yeah, it's weird that this pre-existing keyboard shortcut for a still-existing feature was specifically disabled for no apparent reason until now' isn't even close to people posting all over the internet that Microsoft is keylogging every password ever. It doesn't even imply they're actively using the build, as all it requires is having two screens and some basic testing of the kind that an alpha build is for. I noticed it on the first boot while exploring the new features because that's how much I use that shortcut just with Windows Explorer.

Like I'm not disagreeing with anything they're saying, I just think they've put a disproportionate amount of effort into berating someone over how maybe alpha testing isn't for them if they're going to go on a forum and agree with other people's posts about a feature .

# ¿ Oct 23, 2014 04:15

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

Cyra posted:

A friend of mine is saying that at work she and her coworker are using the same version of Outlook 2010, yet when they mark colored flags for emails, it does not show up in the other person's. Any ideas?

They don't show up if the other person is just sending/receiving email with a category flag, but if you're viewing a shared folder or you are a delegate to another's email where the categories have been assigned then you can view them there. The colour is entirely client-side though, so unless you're using the default categories they'll show up as grey if you haven't set the category up on your own Outlook, or in whatever colour you've set it up to be.

# ¿ Oct 31, 2014 00:59

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

Lync is a good alternative but it comes with the caveats that it's not free and it's also being folded into the Skype brand next year.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2014 00:21

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

I meant it's a good alternative in terms of you can just add Skype contacts to it and call them and they think they're having a Skype call, so you don't have to convince them of anything while you enjoy a much cleaner interface.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2014 00:36

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

I've been - possibly dangerously? - sitting on uTorrent 2.2 for years. It does everything I need and has no ads.

# ¿ Nov 27, 2014 20:10

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

Thermopyle posted:

Is the Windows 10 preview at a state where I could use it day to day? I keep running backups via Crashplan, so I'm not terribly concerned about losing data, but I don't want to spend a bunch of time dealing with poo poo breaking left and right either.

I just like trying new stuff and I can't really get myself to use Win 10 in a VM for any significant period of time since none of my work or anything is in it.

It's quite stable. The only issues that might come up is when they break UX features with a build. I was inordinately happy to get back hover-scroll in the latest one.

# ¿ Jan 28, 2015 22:47

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

Yes, it will be keyloggering until it's out of Beta because that information is part of the UX testing they're doing.

hooah posted:

Does this mean you can scroll things that aren't in focus? If so, that'd be great, as it would allow me to no longer need to run KatMouse.

Yes.

# ¿ Jan 29, 2015 01:36

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

Steam patched a while ago to support multiple game installation locations, so you can just set up a new Steam library on your SSD. After doing that just copy your game folders to that location and run the games - it'll detect it doesn't have the files and try to 'install', and should prompt you what library to install to. Select your SSD library and it'll verify the files that you've copied there (it appears as downloading because Steam) and you're done. Going forward you can just choose to install games directly to that library rather than go through moving and symlinking things after the fact.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2015 22:38

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

I'm using it but Cortana isn't available in my country so gently caress you.

It's been really stable though, barring a few quirks with Office and the admin tools.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2015 02:26

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

Nintendo Kid posted:

A keyboard with media control keys can usually do that.

You can also try using Ctrl+Alt+Home for play/pause toggle, though you'll need to test that with your particular game and media player. You may need plugins to add that global hotkey support to it.

Unfortunately it depends on what you're using to play videos - my media keys will control Windows Media Player inside a game but the vastly superior VLC doesn't give a poo poo about them unless it has focus.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2015 22:48

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

It's a torrent client, not a new car.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2015 02:00

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

We've had the same issue at work for years and never been able to get a solution to it other than never use DPI scaling to accomplish what changing the resolution or browser zoom would. There's just too many programs that rely on it to do mouse calculations and I don't know why when it's changeable or why Windows doesn't allow you to change it but hold the 'true' one in the variable that every other program is looking at to get that information.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2015 23:14

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

kalstrams posted:

Also it's really bad and shouldn't be used by anyone for anything.

This is the first time I've ever heard anybody express a bad word about VLC.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2015 14:06

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

Since KeePass is portable I just keep the whole thing in the cloud.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2015 21:56

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

Does anybody have any idea on how to make Sharepoint Online not a piece of poo poo?

I've been asked to pull/embed headlines from our internal Sharepoint blog on to our non-Sharepoint intranet, and oh my god it's so painful. Like, Sharepoint will happily give me an RSS feed but no way of authenticating with it, and it appears that they've helpfully shuttered every single option to open up an RSS feed to anonymous access, leaving me to wonder why not just shutter RSS itself if it's impossible to use it in any scenario except one where you could just as easily load the Sharepoint site itself. Trying to find solutions to anything Sharepoint is finding glass in an ocean because all the different versions have different capabilities and even Sharepoint 2013 (onsite) has different capabilities to Sharepoint 2013 (online), and even if you find the right instructions for your version Microsoft has since pushed an update that renames or outright removes the menu structures or capabilities that the instructions refer to.

I just don't understand how there isn't just a thing to go "yeah, gimme an RSS feed with this information - tick box saying not to require authentication to the RSS feed itself because I've pre-approved its contents as safe for dissemination".

# ¿ May 18, 2015 03:55

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

Busy Bee posted:

Is there a software or something on the web I can use to backup all my photos on my computer to a cloud? I have thousands of photos that I would like to backup in addition to the external HD that I am using. Will I be able to use Google Photos and not use the limited amount of space I have left since its under a certain size or is that only for photos taken on my Nexus?

The size amnesty on Google Photos applies regardless of the source of the photos. So if all your photos to be backed up are under 2048, or your Photos settings are set to High Quality, you should be fine to just throw them up on there.

# ¿ Jun 4, 2015 06:13

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

Weird - I double-checked and mine said it was anything under 2048x2048 that won't take up space, which is only just over 4 megapixels.

# ¿ Jun 4, 2015 13:01

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

Yaos posted:

You may be looking at a page for one of Google's other photo sites or Google Drive.

https://support.google.com/photos/answer/6220791?hl=en

I was looking at https://www.google.com/settings/storage?hl=en_GB because that's where it takes you when you click 'Buy more storage' on the Google Photos settings page - which, at least for me, says

quote:

Google Photos
Photos bigger than 2048x2048 pixels use your storage. Everything smaller than that is free.

# ¿ Jun 5, 2015 03:37

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

uhhhhahhhhohahhh posted:

I wish the KeePass browser plugin wasn't such poo poo. It doesn't work on half the pages no matter what I put in URL field but the KeePass autotype does, sometimes it doesn't save passwords properly or even give a prompt to save it so I have to put them in manually and then it just automatically saves them in the KeePass Http category without giving an option. The Google Drive plugin just seems hacky, doesn't sync until the computer is turning off so the prompt gets missed half the time and I never turn my PC off anymore and sleep instead and the fact you have to press Yes on a prompt is annoying too, it should just autosync

I use Keepass without any of the plugins. I just have the standalone executable and database in my Google drive folder and use autotype and it works fine.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2015 01:31

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

Read posted:

It's critically important I split this 20 MB file into 82 different RARs for people to download.

The best part about 7zip is that not only does it support doing this, but it goes whole hog by providing a preset Zip To Floppy Disks setting for it.

# ¿ Jul 14, 2015 05:03

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

HalloKitty posted:

Most environments could do from good patch management before a heavyweight AV, though, that much is true. Way too many vulnerable copies of Java and Flash and so on hanging around.

Good patch management is definitely effective, but Java and Flash are permanent vulnerabilities regardless of how well you manage their patches.

# ¿ Jul 16, 2015 22:32

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

Start archiving them to another PST(s).

# ¿ Jul 20, 2015 08:28

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

EoRaptor posted:

This is both completely true and 100% what Microsoft has said from day one. I have no idea how anybody could be confused by Microsoft's statements on how the upgrade worked.
...
The 'device' in question is most likely the combination of motherboard and cpu. You can probably change your video card all you want, and hard drives as well.

The tech explicitly confirms that changing the device hardware in any manner would invalidate the install in response to the guy asking if that extended to video card or ram sticks.

Like, that tech is almost 100% mistaken like all Microsoft techs, but at least read it before deciding it's not confusing for anyone.

# ¿ Aug 5, 2015 01:30

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

cat doter posted:

Does that just install it over your current windows install though? Because I wanna throw it on a USB and install it on a different hard drive.

You need to run it as an upgrade on the machine at least once before doing a clean install or it won't authenticate.

# ¿ Aug 11, 2015 06:52

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

It's because the offer is for a free upgrade, not a free copy.

It's pretty good about saving stuff during the upgrade, but if you want to install it on a second hard drive while retaining your original Windows install then probably the best thing to do is download the Media Creation tool - http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10 - throw that on a USB then plug in your second hard drive, install 7/8 to that (make sure it authenticates!), then use the USB to initiate an upgrade on it.

# ¿ Aug 11, 2015 07:40

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

I've been sitting on uTorrent 2.2 for like a decade now.

# ¿ Aug 15, 2015 03:28

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

thebigcow posted:

Does the blank screen saver still exist?

Yes it does.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2015 10:16

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

I'm pretty sure the intention was not to mock the November update name, but to point out that the question contains the answer.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2015 08:34

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

I can't remember if Windows Photo Viewer stopped being hidden by the system in one of the updates - if it's not in your applications list fart this into notepad, save it as a reg file then run it.

code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\photoviewer.dll]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\photoviewer.dll\shell]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\photoviewer.dll\shell\open]
"MuiVerb"="@photoviewer.dll,-3043"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\photoviewer.dll\shell\open\command]
@=hex(2):25,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,52,00,6f,00,6f,00,74,00,25,\
00,5c,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,00,5c,00,72,00,75,00,\
6e,00,64,00,6c,00,6c,00,33,00,32,00,2e,00,65,00,78,00,65,00,20,00,22,00,25,\
00,50,00,72,00,6f,00,67,00,72,00,61,00,6d,00,46,00,69,00,6c,00,65,00,73,00,\
25,00,5c,00,57,00,69,00,6e,00,64,00,6f,00,77,00,73,00,20,00,50,00,68,00,6f,\
00,74,00,6f,00,20,00,56,00,69,00,65,00,77,00,65,00,72,00,5c,00,50,00,68,00,\
6f,00,74,00,6f,00,56,00,69,00,65,00,77,00,65,00,72,00,2e,00,64,00,6c,00,6c,\
00,22,00,2c,00,20,00,49,00,6d,00,61,00,67,00,65,00,56,00,69,00,65,00,77,00,\
5f,00,46,00,75,00,6c,00,6c,00,73,00,63,00,72,00,65,00,65,00,6e,00,20,00,25,\
00,31,00,00,00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\photoviewer.dll\shell\open\DropTarget]
"Clsid"="{FFE2A43C-56B9-4bf5-9A79-CC6D4285608A}"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\photoviewer.dll\shell\print]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\photoviewer.dll\shell\print\command]
@=hex(2):25,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,52,00,6f,00,6f,00,74,00,25,\
00,5c,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,00,5c,00,72,00,75,00,\
6e,00,64,00,6c,00,6c,00,33,00,32,00,2e,00,65,00,78,00,65,00,20,00,22,00,25,\
00,50,00,72,00,6f,00,67,00,72,00,61,00,6d,00,46,00,69,00,6c,00,65,00,73,00,\
25,00,5c,00,57,00,69,00,6e,00,64,00,6f,00,77,00,73,00,20,00,50,00,68,00,6f,\
00,74,00,6f,00,20,00,56,00,69,00,65,00,77,00,65,00,72,00,5c,00,50,00,68,00,\
6f,00,74,00,6f,00,56,00,69,00,65,00,77,00,65,00,72,00,2e,00,64,00,6c,00,6c,\
00,22,00,2c,00,20,00,49,00,6d,00,61,00,67,00,65,00,56,00,69,00,65,00,77,00,\
5f,00,46,00,75,00,6c,00,6c,00,73,00,63,00,72,00,65,00,65,00,6e,00,20,00,25,\
00,31,00,00,00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\photoviewer.dll\shell\print\DropTarget]
"Clsid"="{60fd46de-f830-4894-a628-6fa81bc0190d}"

# ¿ Dec 21, 2015 08:27

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

Ugato posted:

I both like and hate this because now dumb people are even less able to differentiate between outlook (software) and their email address when asking for help.

Ask me about providing IT support for Skype, Skype for Business, OneDrive, OneDrive for Business and OneNote and OneNote 2013 :suicide:

# ¿ Feb 4, 2016 12:19

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

Neddy Seagoon posted:

Can anyone tell me how to stop Windows 7 asking to downgrade my settings any time I run a high-spec game?

Disable Aero.

Other than that the only solution I found was to upgrade to Windows 10, which doesn't have Aero on by default.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2016 12:08

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

fishmech posted:

Windows 10 does have Aero, it just doesn't display the "glass" effect by default on anything but the taskbar.

That's what I said?

# ¿ Feb 10, 2016 21:41

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

I have the standalone Keepass client/database in my Google Drive - it syncs between my home and work, and is easily accessible from other computers if I need it to be - with Keepass2Android on my phone and the Drive database set to offline sync. Granted this increases the number of passwords to actually remember to 2 (Google+Database) rather than 1 (Database), but it's worked flawlessly for me and 'reinstalling' it when I flatten my work machine is just a case of putting Drive back on and starting the client up again.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2016 23:52

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

hooah posted:

Oh wow, I didn't know that. Is that relatively new? I don't remember KeePass's app having autotyping or an autotype hotkey when I used it before, but then, there was a lot about that app I didn't dig into because it's kind of intimidating.

I think it's not turned on by default, but it's there.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2016 21:10

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

hooah posted:

Turns out there's something even better: ctrl-alt-a will auto-fill without bringing up the KeePass window. Most of the time, anyway; it doesn't seem to work with my school's login page, but that's the only one I've found so far. L

The key Title field needs to be plain-text matchable to the web page title (or application), so based on experience you would've named it something helpful like School Account and they would've named the login page something like Login.asp

# ¿ Feb 25, 2016 04:00

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

There's a lot of opinions because it depends on what features you want, but utorrent is still good as a basic torrent program as long as you literally use the utorrent from 6 years ago (2.2) because it RealPlayered heavily after then.

# ¿ Feb 29, 2016 07:24

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

Bremen posted:

This may or may not be the right thread, but I have a Windows question.

I used to do a clean install of Windows every few years, for performance reasons. However, I had some people tell me this was no longer necessary with Windows 10, is that true? It is a bit of a bother to do it, what with the need to reinstall everything and reload my preferences, but on the other hand it's been awhile since I did a clean install on this computer. Any advice?

Putting aside how necessary it is for performance reasons (I've had to do it twice with Windows 10 due to Insider rot) Windows 10 alongside the standard System Restore also offers Refresh and Reset under Update & Recovery - Reset will wipe everything and reinstall Windows 10, while Refresh will reinstall Windows while retaining your files and personalisations, and it will even give you a list of all the programs it uninstalled as part of the procedure (it won't uninstall apps). You should be totally fine just using Refresh to clear out the clutter and get your Candy Crush back.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2016 22:57

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 09:47

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

Evilreaver posted:

Two quick questions:
1) When gaming, windows likes to pop up a "Your computer is going slow, turn off desktop effects?" No matter how often (or angrily) I hit "No And gently caress Off", it comes back next time I launch. Is there a way to kill this feature for good? I am willing to delete/modify system files for this

Trick question: are you willing to turn off desktop effects? :v:

# ¿ Apr 17, 2016 01:43

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

«‹›4 »