The Windows and Windows Software Megathread

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Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Skilleddk posted:

Stupid question, but I'm planning on formating my hard drive. I currently got Windows 7 and I've heard from people that the way of doing it has changed since Vista. What's the best way to do it? Load up from a boot disc and go from there as usual, or is there something new I should be aware of?

Not different. Disk in drive, boot from it, Windows setup, bam. You could transfer the disc image to a USB drive if you want.

# ¿ Jun 4, 2011 21:56

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 17:23

Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Thermopyle posted:

ETA: In related news...who are these people who get infected with viruses? I've been using Microsoft-powered PC's since the mid-80s and haven't ever been infected and I don't recall ever even getting a warning from AV software about a site or file. I wouldn't even know how to try and get infected.

Easiest way is to browse the web with not-updated versions of Flash and Java that auto-execute. The second easiest way (but more reliable) is to pirate stuff, especially software, indiscriminately. Third easiest way is to not have a good spam filter and click on e-mail attachments like "SO FUNNY MUST WATCH HOT BLONDE ON BLONDE ACTION.AVI.scr".

So, you know, be stupid and gullible.

# ¿ Jun 6, 2011 22:59

Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Sir Unimaginative posted:

It's probably in the thread, but it's not readily apparent, so:

I'm switching out an AMD/nForce motherboard for a Sandy Bridge motherboard later today. What do I have to do (besides the obvious reactivation) if I want to keep my existing instance of Windows 7?

Install the SATA drivers from the Intel board before you make the switch, make sure the SATA controller on the new board is set to AHCI (same, presumably, as on the old one), and be prepared to reinstall anyway because it'd be faster than fixing it if it mucks up.

# ¿ Jun 7, 2011 10:29

Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

If it had any problem with 1080p web video, that might get faster. Otherwise, nope!

# ¿ Jun 9, 2011 01:23

Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

couldcareless posted:

Here's one that's baffling me. Running server 2008 R2, I have several scheduled tasks set up, most of which are access macros and some launch into some exes that run an application with saved keystrokes. These always worked on XP machines without a hitch and still seem to do their job fine on server 2008, but the problem I'm running into is launched applications are not coming to the front. This is posing a major problem with the exes with saved keystrokes and ends up having the keystrokes entered in on the wrong things. It seems like anything launched via scheduled tasks is putting itself in reverse order on the screen (newest at the very back).

Is there a way to change this?

Dumb workaround: pin app to taskbar and launch/switch to it with WinKey + # or saved mouse clicks?

# ¿ Jun 9, 2011 22:06

Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

couldcareless posted:

Unfortunately the app isn't pinnable for whatever reason, nor do I want to go through the tons of programmed exes we have and edit their hotkeys. I was hoping there would be a simple solution to just turn off the stealth mode on scheduled tasks in server 2008. Still digging and still hoping for a solution.

There's an "Always on top" option (somewhere, Googling is not super helpful here), but it doesn't give focus.

This looks promising: shell.appactivate("[window title]") in VBScript. Found it here.

# ¿ Jun 9, 2011 22:31

Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Mak0rz posted:

Is ReadyBoost worth it? If so, under what circumstances is it the most useful and what sort of media (capacity/type) is best for it? I'm planning on using an SD card, mostly because I don't have to worry about it getting in the way when I pack up my laptop.

EDIT: Also, am I able to swap out my ReadyBoost media for another drive if I need to transfer some data without Windows kicking up a fuss?

It is worthwhile if you have an OS/programs disk with poor random read performance (i.e. a hard drive) and flash media with better random read performance. It does help quite a bit. If you have an SSD, it's irrelevant. It's less important in Windows 7, which has improved prefetching and launch defragmenting compared to Vista, but may still help.

You can plug/unplug ReadyBoost and the PC won't really say a thing.

# ¿ Jun 10, 2011 00:02

Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Mak0rz posted:

Neat, thanks! SD cards are pretty affordable nowadays so I should probably pick one up. I assume "bigger is better," but what is the lowest effective capacity? Would 2GB be enough? How about 4GB?

I vaguely recall an amount equal to RAM size, but 2 GB should be enough. Most 2 GB cards might be too slow, however, since they're pretty cheap things.

# ¿ Jun 10, 2011 00:24

Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Mak0rz posted:

Wish I knew that before I went out and bought the drat thing . Oh well, only out and worst-case scenario I now have a 4GB SD card vv

It'll help if you regularly fill up your RAM, as that will displace the RAM cache that Windows does. If the card is fast enough, ReadyBoost will also copy part of virtual memory to the card. But yeah, sorry for not mentioning this earlier, you probably need a Class 6 SD card or faster to get a decent benefit, besides running out of RAM.

# ¿ Jun 10, 2011 02:28

Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Part virtual memory mirror, part program loading optimizer. The latter is partly redundant in Windows 7 because the Superfetch service will, after a while, defragment your programs in access order for loading, so that when you start them loading is significantly more sequential and thus faster on mechanical drives.

v :geno:

# ¿ Jun 10, 2011 02:46

Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Anjow posted:

I did think of this, but it would be a huge amount of work to create them all so I'd like to avoid that if possible.

I do use RDP a lot too. I'm gonna give mRemoteNG a go today, thanks.

Also consider Remote Desktop Manager. It's an alternative to mRemoteNG if you don't like it for any reason.

# ¿ Jun 13, 2011 06:09

Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Run this command from your user folder in an elevated command prompt: robocopy <source> <destination> /MIR /ZB /R:0 /V /LOG:copylog.txt

Source is path of the dying drive (like D:\) and destination is the path to a place on the new drive (like the drive root F:\ or a folder "F:\Old Drive Backup").

This command will do a number of things. First, it will do its damndest to make an exact copy of everything on the drive. Second, if it fails on a file, it will not retry a million times; instead, it will move on to the next file. Third, it will show you a running report of what it's trying to copy and whether it succeeds or not. Fourth, it will log every success and failure to the file C:\Users\<your user name>\copylog.txt, so that you can see which files to try copying again (with a command like robocopy <failed file> <destination> /R:5 /W:5 /V, which will retry up to five times in case the drive miraculously recovers for a moment).

Hip Hoptimus Prime posted:

I just bought a laptop that runs Windows 7, and my other computer is a MacBook. Is there an easy way to network the two together since I will be continuing to use the Mac? I couldn't seem to find much after googling.

I didn't buy a second Mac due to budget constraints, but so far I am loving Windows 7. It's a huge step up from XP, which we have to use at work.

OSX can mount Windows shares through Finder. I don't have a Mac in front of me, but the basic idea is to add a server with the address smb://<hostname or IP address of PC hosting the share>.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2011 21:58

Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Anyone have a recommendation for a DLNA server? I was recommended serviio in the NAS thread, but it relies on Java and I'd prefer not to install Java if I can avoid it for security reasons.

# ¿ Jun 22, 2011 21:32

Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Excel may not be perfect, but it works for this kind of thing. Here's a quickie on how:

If you start a field with "=", then that field is a formula, and you can specify a row/column to reference. So if you want to, for example, multiply an hourly rate in column B row 2 by hours worked in column C row 2, the field's input should be:

=B2*C2

And that will automatically update when B2 and C2 are updated. Those are also relative references. Say you have that total in D2, then if you copy D2 to D3, it will automatically update to "=B3*C3". If you copy D2 to E2, the formula will update to "=C2*D2". If you need a fixed reference, follow either the letter, the number, or both with a pound sign, such as B$2$. Then you can move the cell around and not lose the reference the B2. This is useful in case you specify hourly rates somewhere specifically on the sheet.

Summing up is balls simple: it's the function =sum([range]), where the range is either a list of cells like (A1, A2, A3, A4) or an explicit range like A1:A4.

=sum(A1:A4) will automatically sum the values in A1, A2, A3, and A4. =sum(A1:D1) will automatically sum the values in A1, B1, C1, and D1. And so on and so forth.

Here, have a tutorial.

Once they've digested this, it's jut a matter of deciding what your inputs are and putting them in. Set them up with a good template that shows everything they need and highlights what they fill in with conditional formatting (e.g. "blank" fields are highlighted in yellow or something). If you're setting it up, you can create a drop-down list of clients, for whom you maintain a list of rates, then use an =if() formula or something more sophisticated to auto-fill the proper rate. And then...

Or hell, I don't know. Honestly, I can't comprehend anything simpler. I don't get how you can manually sum a column, but you can't wrap your head around "=sum(A1:A4)".

Factory Factory fucked around with this message at 22:35 on Jun 22, 2011

# ¿ Jun 22, 2011 22:29

Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

I dunno, how about different sub-sheets by worker, with one copy of the whole XLSX file per week? Handy archiving, could probably work up a "Weekly report" page that you can pull info from for a monthly programmatically using macros.

What about Quickbooks? I just did a LiveChat with one of their dudes, and while I was a really short on info to give them, and he recommended QuickBooks Premier - which does indeed look like it can do a lot of the managing, including the specific uses you outlined. It may be a bit overkill, but it lets you manage rates per-job and per-client, a feature which seems to be lacking from Pro. I wouldn't call it dead simple, but it might help that it's a purpose-driven program rather than forcing a structure on a general piece of software like Excel.

Factory Factory fucked around with this message at 23:08 on Jun 22, 2011

# ¿ Jun 22, 2011 23:05

Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Pinnacle Studio HD? Adobe Premiere Elements? You can do a trial of Elements, not sure about PSHD.

# ¿ Jun 25, 2011 00:53

Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Start -> Run -> type "Resource Monitor" and run it, then go to the Disk tab.

It may be indexing, or it may be an antivirus scan. Most A/V will auto-scan once a week, and will immediately update themselves and rescan if they notice they've missed the time.

# ¿ Jun 26, 2011 12:15

Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

agentq posted:

I tried downloading the win7 iso from the digitalriver site even though it's been more than 30 days and it worked.

Can I just put the iso file on a thumbdrive and boot from that? Or do I need to do some special prep...

You need to use this, as you can't "burn" an ISO to a USB stick in any useful way. N.B. that image doesn't have Service Pack 1.

# ¿ Jun 27, 2011 02:45

Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Better/cheaper/more profitable things to do than update a retail CD image when Windows Update will take care of it anyway? OEMs customize their own builds and install images.

# ¿ Jun 27, 2011 02:56

Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Not in Windows. While it's a multi-user OS, the interface only handles on person at a time. If you use Remote Desktop Protocol to poke into an account over LAN, it will lock the PC to anybody at the keyboard.

# ¿ Jun 28, 2011 10:01

Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Role Play McMurphy posted:

Back it up and RMA it, that thing's lookin' peaky.

# ¿ Jul 11, 2011 02:58

Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

UncleGuito posted:

So if I have a 600W power supply, it's not always using 600W, correct?

It looks like I have my screen set to shut off after 5m and go to sleep after 30m. I suppose I'll just keep it on that for now.

Right, 600W is simply the maximum power it will provide.

Also, hard disk drives' longevity is entirely unaffected by use patterns. Use the hell out of it or idle it, statistically that has no effect on whether or when it will die.

# ¿ Jul 11, 2011 19:08

Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

WorkingStiff posted:

Doesn't the Nvidia control panel do this?

nVidia cards are incapable of driving three monitors at once off a single card. You need two cards or an AMD card with a DisplayPort connector.

E: oh oops, didn't read right. Never mind, this is for running all three at once.

# ¿ Jul 12, 2011 18:41

Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Rent posted:

So for laptops, sleep vs hibernate? I just got my first laptop, and I'm confused as to how to treat it when it comes to "shutting it down" and carrying it around.

Sleep saves the current states of the machine in RAM but powers down everything else. When you resume from sleep, it comes back to everything running exactly as you left it. Do this for quick hops or turn-off of less than, say, 20 minutes.

Hibernate saves this same state to the hard drive, then powers down the RAM as well. It uses no more power than being fully off. Use it for longer shut-offs or when your battery is getting low.

Hybrid sleep sleeps the PC but also writes the memory to disk like a hibernate, so if you run out of battery or accidentally pull it while sleeping, you don't lose your state and have the PC complain at you next time you power on. It's an option in the power management controls, and it either activates when you do a regular sleep or it's turned off. It's more for desktops, but can be useful for laptops, too.

# ¿ Jul 14, 2011 19:22

Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

bazaar apparatus posted:

Sorry if this question has been asked a bunch already, but this thread is enormous. Is there a way I could share a single mouse and keyboard with two computers over the internet as opposed to LAN? I know it sounds stupid, but here's why:

At work, I have two PCs at my desk: an IT box with 1 monitor (left) on the company's network, and a "test" box with 2 monitors (center & right) on our department's own network. This means I have 3 monitors sitting side-by-side but I have to use 2 sets of mice/keyboards.

I would like to be able to just move my mouse cursor from the middle monitor to the left monitor just like I would from the right to the center. I could just use a KVM switch like one of the other guys here is, but that's annoying and I'm lazy.

I've tried a lot of Googling but I'm thinking at this point that nobody has made such an app, which I could understand. It seems like it should be as easy as installing the client on both machines, authenticating them in some way (simple username/password in both clients maybe), and then telling the clients which machine(s) belong to which monitor(s).

Absolutely, you're looking for IP KVM software. Look into Synergy and InputDirector.

# ¿ Jul 18, 2011 22:31

Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

marmot25 posted:

This is probably a very basic question, but I didn't see anything in the OP and a google search leads me to some contradictory info.

I did a clean install of win7 professional (64-bit) within a VMWare virtual machine, and thought I would be set by giving it just 15 GB of space. I'll only be running one small program within Windows, and I can just mount folders from OS X that contain all of the files I'll be using with this program. I had previously read that a clean install of Windows would be something like 6-8 GB, so I thought I would have more than enough extra space on the volume, but now I see that there's a winsxs folder that has ballooned to over 8 GB in size within the first few days of my using this fresh (and fully updated) install. Is this normal, or did something go horribly wrong (and is there anything I can do about it)?

This is normal, and it's not actually using all that space on disk. Rather, it's using a complex series of filesystem pointers to show programs it can support every version of .NET and similar runtimes under the sun, but it's actually only keeping the smallest subset which will actually run all those legacy programs. The ballooning is a side-effect of doing the .NET security updates.

Whether the OS can actually use more space just because the actual filesystem isn't that cluttered, I'm not sure.

# ¿ Jul 20, 2011 18:00

Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

lomitalord posted:

does anyone know how to get office download free (no trial)

http://www.openoffice.org/

# ¿ Jul 26, 2011 19:43

Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Pepper Potts posted:

It's pretty loud.

I don't think it's from someone else--because this happens to me when I boot it up at home, at two different coffee shops, at my friends' house, etc. It's always the same 2-3 songs, none of which are in my iTunes library.

but I really want to get to the bottom of it, because the whole song plays through, and I have no way of stopping it.

1) Rule out something silly like when you start your browser, a tab with a YouTube video opens.

2) Run HijackThis! and post a log for us. There might be some less-obvious startup item to blame.

# ¿ Aug 2, 2011 04:02

Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Anybody have a recommendation for a free or open source e-mail server for Windows? Calendar and tasks would also be swell.

# ¿ Jul 6, 2012 04:45

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 17:23

Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Abel Wingnut posted:

You guys probably get this every few months but I didn't see anything in the last few pages. Forgive me for the annoyance.

I've run OS X for the last seven years. I enjoyed the first few versions of OS X, but nowadays I find it bloated, slow, clunky, etc. I'd like to give Windows another shot via Bootcamp. Which version should I install? I've used 7, and it seemed like a more solid, robust step up from XP. 8, I'm not sure about. I've heard horror stories about it, but maybe 8.1's better?

Thanks for your help.

If you're buying a license, 8.1. If you don't like the new start menu, use e.g. the ClassicShell freeware to restore the 7-like start menu.

If you already have a 7 license, keep using that. 8.1 is nice, but it's not compelling over 7 for the price.

If you are just looking to experiment and aren't making this your daily driver, try the Windows 10 preview. I really like a lot of what they're doing with it. But again: not suitable for being your main system.

# ¿ Dec 31, 2014 03:13

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