Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.
I am a little confused about a couple of Group Policy items for Power Management:

Turn on the Ability for Applications to Prevent Sleep Transitions (Plugged In) posted:


Enables applications and services to prevent the system from sleeping.

If you enable this policy setting, an application or service may prevent the system from sleeping (Hybrid Sleep, Stand By, or Hibernate).

If you disable this policy setting or do not configure it, users can see and change this setting.

(requires at least Windows Vista)

Allow Applications to Prevent Automatic Sleep (Plugged In) posted:


Allow applications and services to prevent automatic sleep.

If you enable this policy setting, any application, service or device driver may prevent Windows from automatically transitioning to sleep after a period of user inactivity.

If you disable this policy setting, applications, services or drivers may not prevent Windows from automatically transitioning to sleep. Only user input will be used to determine if Windows should automatically sleep.

(at least Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2)

As far as I can see, they do exactly the same thing, just that one version is backwards compatible with Vista?

Am I missing something else (I am not very familar with Group Policy)

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.

kapinga posted:

Well, I'm not at all familiar with group policy, but the first one does not include the word "automatic". Reading the description literally would indicate that it outright prevents the user from initiating a sleep command without first terminating the offending process.

I guess that makes sense. So, (depending on this policy) you can have an app that prevents you from manually putting the system into standby.

Seems a bit odd.

spog fucked around with this message at 10:45 on Dec 11, 2010

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.

Zeta Taskforce posted:

Does this disable some annoying windows 7 feature? Other than this weird quirk, the computer seems very stable.

No.

What happens is that some application is trying to use the files that you want to delete. As they are marked as 'in use' by windows (and all versions of windows do this), you cannot delete them - as it would be a Bad Thing to delete them while they are in use.

Booting into Safe Mode prevents many apps/services from starting up - hopefully including the one that is locking the files you want to delete.

In fact, often, just rebooting normally is enough to unlock the files. Have you tried this yet?

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.

Zeta Taskforce posted:

I did try rebooting and that didn't do anything. I'm familiar with that feature in older versions of Windows, and with them it's pretty obvious what program is using them. Here not so much.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653

Use the search option, enter the name of your locked file and it will tell you what is locking it.

EDIT: Unlocker is probably easier and more useful..I didn't realise that they had updated it to run on Win7

spog fucked around with this message at 07:24 on Dec 16, 2010

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.

angrynaut posted:

I'm trying this next. I think the major problem might be in trying to install Win7 64 from XP 32, but that doesn't explain how I wasn't able to install from a freshly formatted drive. I guess it's a combination of 64/32bit compatibility and a lovely disc.

If yu are booting from the DVD, it doesn't matter what version is already installed - you are bypassing that original installation and running straight off the disc.

I'd agree with Factor Mystic, you've got a damaged DVD.

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.

Rekkit posted:

And to make things more incovenient, I have to disconnect the cable from the computer itself because the problem remains if I do it at the router.

That is definitely odd.

My guess is a fcuked cable or socket, since a software issue would not care which end of the cable you unplugged.

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.
How big is this 'itunes' file? Same size as your library, or just the 15-20mb of the itunes library file?

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.

Sir Lemming posted:

About 18 MB, which is what I expected. The library file itself is all I need, not the music files/folders, which are on a separate drive.

Okay, so I'm not crazy then. Is there any known way to "de-file" (heh) the copied folder? Hex editor or something? Google hasn't really turned up anything because I'm not sure exactly how to phrase the inquiry.

(Although my intent was to also copy the subfolders, they're probably not necessary. The library file would be in the root "iTunes" directory.)

Okay, maybe I am being a bit thick, but I don't see what the problem is here.

You wanted to copy your itunes library file and you have. What's not right?

mine looks like this:




Are you missing the '.xml' suffix?

If so, it is easy to solve, just go to the command prompt in the relevant folder and type 'ren itunes *.xml'

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.

Roving Reporter posted:

For some reason, MS Word decided to make itself the default program for opening HTML shortcuts and .URL links in my system directory. I managed to change the .HTML back to Firefox with the 'Open with always' setting.

However, .url extensions(like when I click 'Launch Dropbox website') still open with MS Word. Any idea on how to change that? Clicking properties on .URL files doesn't give me an option.

Control Panel -All Control Panel Items - Default Programs -Set Associations

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.

Sir Lemming posted:

So this wasn't quite it, but you did put an idea in my head. When I opened the "iTunes" file in Notepad++ I saw a big garbled header followed by what appeared to be two full XML documents. So I cut and paste the first XML document into its own file and renamed it as appropriate, and imported it into iTunes, and I believe I'm basically back to where I was! So thanks for the XML idea. I'm still not sure why there were two of them. (Also, the header somewhat resembled what an ITL file looks like when I open it, but I'm not sure.)

I am still a bit unsure how you managed to do this. If I understand, you've managed to copy two files into a single document. I believe you can do this from the command prompt, but it's not something you can do as a simple mistake.

Anyway, glad that it is all working again.

Roving Reporter posted:

Excellent! Worked great, thanks!

Happy to help.

Now, if anyone can help me sort out the right click menu for items, that would be great. I am fed up with 'Scan with Malwarebyte's Anti Malware' and 'Scan with Microsoft Security Essentials' on every bloody thing.

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.

Ur Getting Fatter posted:

I have pretty much 90% of my applications and files installed/stored in a different hard drive than my OS.

Do you guys have any recommendations on the fastest way to reformat my OS drive, reinstall Windows 7 and be up and running as fast as possible?

I'm switching W7 versions so just straight up imaging is not possible, unfortunately.

You don't need to reinstall to upgrade a Win7 installation. You can do any Anytime upgrade.

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.
I think the 'proper' way is to run Windows Easy Transfer to save your program settings, then perform a clean install of windows (with formatting) and then install all your apps again, before importing back your settings and data.

But I wonder what will happen if you try to run a Repair Install using the new DVD. Will it let you repair the current installation into a newer version?

EDIT:

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2009/11/03/hack-to-in-place-downgrade-from-windows-7-ultimate-or-professional-to-less-premium-editions/ seems to show a hack to make this possible.

That said, I think I'd prefer to do a complete flatten and reinstall - there is something wonderfully fresh about a clean install.

spog fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Jan 15, 2011

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.

Woozy posted:

This particular book has nearly a thousand entries, and I'd hate for her to have to do it manually. I figure there must be a way to do it automatically but maybe Excel isn't the right program to do it with. Any suggestions?

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/merge-or-split-cells-or-cell-contents-HP005251021.aspx

Merge the contents of multiple cells into one cell

You can use a formula with the ampersand (&) operator to combine text from multiple cells into one cell.

1. Select the cell in which you want to combine the contents of other cells.
2. To start the formula, type =(
3. Select the first cell that contains the text that you want to combine, type &" "& (with a space between the quotation marks), and then select the next cell that contains the text that you want to combine.

To combine the contents of more than two cells, continue selecting cells, making sure to type &" "& between selections. If you don't want to add a space between combined text, type & instead of &" "&. To insert a comma, type &", "& (with a comma followed by a space between the quotation marks).

4. To finalize the formula, type )
5. To see the results of the formula, press ENTER.

Tip You can also use the CONCATENATE function to combine text from multiple cells into one cell.

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.

revolther posted:

Here's a vaguely Windows related question.

When are we going to stop picking on Bill Gates? He put his foot in his mouth a few times, but he's much less of a douchebag than Steve Jobs. poo poo, he's promised to give away his billions to charity before he dies, and has always supported hardware independent computing, where Jobs has marked up everything 300% and if he had his way there would be one form factor for every PC until you had to buy a whole new PC as an "upgrade". Gates has also for the most part stepped out of the picture concerning Microsoft, so we never have to hear his nerdy speeches, while Jobs is still wearing blue jeans and black turtlenecks preaching about magic devices like it's 1999.

MS had a lot of hate back in the day and not entirely unjustified. A lot of Window's stuff was quite clunky and painful for the users. Plus, MS's dominance of the marketplace made people feel that they had to use MS products due to their business practices which unfairly prevented the competition from offering better products. I can't say that this was entirely justified.

What I do find odd is that the MS stuff that comes out now is pretty decent and they seem to care about the users a lot more. Things like free upgrades of Windows components (eg Media Player), easy roll back of updates and good support for older products. Compare and contrast to the Apple way of doing things (do it the way we want you to do it) and frankly, I have a lot more affection for MS than Apple now.

Win7 really seems to show that they now listen to the users and offer them as much help as they can. Things like free downloads of good tools, plentiful help resources, multiple, supported methods of completing a task all are to the credit of MS.

Plus, as you say, who can really hate a guy who decides to spend all his money helping sick children?

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.

fishmech posted:

Except the alternative was early Linux (a war crime) or OS 9 (awful) or perhaps OS X 10.0 (a disaster). You know, just for perspective here.

Oh yeah, sure. I should have made that clearer. A lot of MS stuff *was* horrible and clunky...but the alternatives were just as bad, or worse.

So, people were rightly bitching that they were using nasty software but incorrectly blaming MS for the piss-poor state of the competition, which was 'forcing' them to use the MS versions.

Sure, anti-competitive (or 'savvy', depending on your viewpoint) business practises made it harder for alternative companies to get their products off the ground, but just look at Mozilla to see that it is not a great excuse for lack of decent competition.

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.

Factory Factory posted:

You can set up the Windows backup to include a system image. You can restore that with a recovery DVD from an external drive, a spare drive, or a network share.

I'd like to warn that the Windows Backup turns to poo poo once you get over a certain size of backed-up files. I think it is something like 40GB and then the performance bombs.

So, I'd manually copy your video/ISO collection separately and exclude them from the built-in backup process

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.

XkyRauh posted:

I'm feeling a little conflicted. I've got a dinky little netbook that I purchased last summer which came with Win7 starter. It's only got 1GB of RAM, and for all intents and purposes, it does just fine for random forum browsing, word processing, and work-related garbage. But part of me sees the $30 Pro deal and wants to jump on it--even though there's no real "need" for it.
Is there some added benefit to upgrading that I'm not seeing? Instead, would it be worth upgrading the 1GB of RAM to 2GB (for about the same price--$30) and sticking with Starter edition? (The motherboard cannot handle a 4GB dimm.) Looking for advice.

Windows Media Center
Printing Via Internet
EFS
Presentation Mode
Backup and Restore to Network

any of these worth $30 to you?

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.

XkyRauh posted:

None of them immediately strike me as useful, no. :\ I'm definitely not an advanced user.

I'd probably spend the money on a decent external keyboard and mouse then. They are probably more useful in the real world for you.

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.

Space Gopher posted:

This is pretty much the default. You can't do a straight upgrade without Vista in the mix, but you don't have to wipe the drive, either.

Personally, I'd copy the whole of my HDD to an external HDD, then do a fresh install of Win 7, followed by dragging back selected files to the primary HDD.

After a couple of weeks, I wipe the external HDD (i.e. once I am 100% sure that I haven't missed any files)

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.

Krakkles posted:

I've got a desktop computer with Windows 7 Pro installed, and I want to install a new hard drive in it (the 500gb unit in it has been popping up a "hard disk failure" message occaisionally on bootup). I ordered the new drive, what's the best way to move everything over? Install Windows 7 again (can I do this?) and transfer settings/file wizard?

You could imagex it to an external HDD and then boot to a WinPE disc and then apply the image to the new HDD. However, it is a bit of a faff and personally, I like a fresh install of windows every now and then, so I would:

Windows Easy Transfer to copy your data to an external HDD/USB
Replace HDD, install Win7, WET back your files.

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.

lllllllllllllllllll posted:

I plan to use one of those stand-alone hard-drives as a back up for photos and texts mostly. My questions are:

Is there free software that would read every single file, every bit basically, and verify it is still readable and the HD is working correctly? If this is even what people do and there isn't some better way to do that.

Would I be correct in that the smaller (2.5") HD's are more sturdy than the bigger ones as they are designed for use in a laptop?

Thank you very much.

You could run the windows disk check to make sure that there's no corruption.

I use syncback to copy across the files to be backed up. If there's a difference between the local and the external copy, it should flag it up. However, I guess the MS Backup software might be better as it has the ability to keep multiple copies of the same files.

The laptop drives has the big advantage that you can run them through the USB power and you don;t need to fanny about with a power brick and 2 cables, instead of 1.

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.

Thoom posted:

or switching to an input method where I would type it as `e, but which also fucks up my ability to type a single `, ', etc.

Where is this option? I have had it appear at certain times and I have no idea why, or how to disable it.

(win7)

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.
Outlook 2010 Contacts question:

Because of the crappery of trying to sync some, but not all, contacts with my phone, I have had to create a second folder in My Contacts: so I have 'Contacts' (the default) and 'Contacts for Phone' (user-created)

When I create a new contact, it is saved in the default Contacts folder. If I want it to sync with my phone, I manually ctrl-drag it into the 'Contacts for phone' folder to create a duplicate copy for syncing.

Obviously, this is a non-optimal method - is there any way to create a link between the two, so that any changes in the contact card in the first folder is replicated to the second one (sort of make the second contact card a symbolic link to the first one)

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.

Thermopyle posted:

Looking for an image viewer that isn't ugly like IrfanView, but supports at least some basic image editing like cropping or whatever.

I found NexusImage, which looks nice, but doesn't do anything but viewing.

Honestly, I'm fine with IrfanView, but if there's something out there that looks better I'd rather use it.

Picasa is good.

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.

Ur Getting Fatter posted:

Is there any software that will allow me to do incremental backups (as in, it will only backup new files, or files that have been modified since the last backup) to a different drive?

I don't need to backup the whole OS, just the documents folder (1-2gb worth of Word, Excel, PDF, and image files).

Syncback
Synctoy

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.

Ur Getting Fatter posted:

Some of these are legal work documents that I'd rather did not leave the actual computer (not because I think someone is going to look at them, but I would technically be violating some confidentiality clauses), so DropBox isn't much of a possibility.

I'll look into SyncToy and SyncBack. Does anyone know if any of those are available for commercial use?

Synctoy: a windows download, so commercial use is okay
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=15155

Syncback: $35 for commercial use.
http://www.2brightsparks.com/syncback/compare.html


madmaan posted:

It would be my advice to not complicate it. A combination of an xcopy batch script and a configured scheduled task to run that batch script should be all that you will need.

A good idea: but hasn't xcopy been superceeded by robocopy?

spog fucked around with this message at 17:23 on Oct 19, 2012

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.

budgieinspector posted:

Is there something other than MS Project or Visio that can create the organizational charts? This is for a class assignment, so I can't really plunk down a grand-plus on a new software suite.

I've tried to do it with MS Word, but the amount of detail I need to include causes the boxes and text to shrink to microscopic size, and it doesn't seem able to enlarge past the dimensions of an 8"x10" sheet of paper. (Of course, if someone knows a way to get around this, that would also be greatly appreciated.)

EDIT: In case it isn't completely obvious, my level of computer savvy is slightly above "Dotty Grandma", but below "The Nine-Year-Old Next Door".

Powerpoint has a template for org charts.

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.

mik posted:

Can anyone decipher the Microsoft Office 2010 licensing scheme? I need to buy about 7 copies on the cheap. 4 copies will reside in the same physical location, whereas the other 3 copies will be at three different locations. I need at least 2 copies of 'Home and Business' for Outlook.



Home and Student: "1 Household / 3 PCs" - do they actually care if all activations are from the same IP?

Home and Business: "1 User / 2 PCs" - how do they know/enforce the 'same user' bit? I've seen them say for Home and Business has is ostensibly for 1 home PC and 1 portable PC, but surely they don't actually care if it's two regular PCs?

I was going to buy 1 copy of Home and Student (1x3 'installs'), and 2 copies for Home and Business (2x2 'installs'). But I don't want to be caught in some ridiculously constricting licensing scheme with them.

My purely uneducated gut feeling is that they simply let the key be valid for <100 ip address on the grounds that this be sufficient to stop a single key from being reused by hoardes of pirates and so is good enough for the home market

Anything for the business environment is going to be protected by audits, rather than really tight activation processes.

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.
I've been running a sloppy* machine for 18? months now and only bother to run CCleaners occasionally and all seems fine.



*"let's try this bit of software and see what it does. Maybe I'll uninstall it, maybe I will forget about it"

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.

Toast Museum posted:

What's the quickest way to take a large PDF and break it into multiple smaller files? Specifically, I'd like to be able to give a simple instruction like "new file after every other page," rather than having to manually specify page ranges.

Not quite what you want, but would 'split' help?

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.
Any recommendations for software to track the amount of data going through a dongle?

I have a usb dongle so I can use the mobile phone networks with my netbook, but the supplied software isn't good for tracking how much of my data plan I have used up.

Win 7

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.

Bieeardo posted:

If you don't mind screwing around with desktop gadgets, the Network Meter at http://addgadgets.com/ can track usage and quotas across specific interfaces. I've never tried it with a USB dongle though.

Ta, I might have a crack at that one. I wouldn't be surprised if it gets confused when the dongle is removed/reinserted though.

I have a personal dongle from Phone Company A. My company has just given my a dongle from Phone Company B. Annoyingly, they are the same Huawei dongle, but with different UIs. If I plug one in, it knackers the other's installation, before refusing to recognise its own existance. Bugger.

and of course, it would be too simple to expect either UI to let me play with the other's SIM.

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.

underlig posted:

Windows refuses to acknowledge the 3g connection unless it's done through the dongles software?
No built in card? Not possible to "unlock" one of the dongles?

*** edit
I use "networx" to keep track of traffic, though on regular tp connection..

Both dongles require drivers and appear to be different enough that windows recognises them as different devices (and hence requiring an install).

Both are similar enough that the installation of one will wipe out the installation of another.

It's not a biggie: I'm carrying my personal netbook for private browsing and the company doortep laptop for work stuff anyway. It just would have been nice to use their large data allowance dongle on my netbook.

It does seem a bit naughty of Huawei not to let their dongles work together, though.

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.

Flipperwaldt posted:

SyncToy would definitely do for simple syncing. But because it can't exclude specific files or subfolders from a folder (and because I really didn't like the multiple window interface) I had to look for something else.

Because of a recommendation in the SSD thread, I'm checking out Cobian Backup and I'm liking it. With the right settings it can mirror (sync) folders, but it has the additional benefit of a built in scheduler and a lot of configurable stuff that can make it a set-and-forget type of thing.

I personally prefer syncback. It's quite powerful when you get under the hood.

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.
Can anyone recommend a really, really lightweight contact manager?

We have a super-powerful CRM system at work, but a) it's a big clunky and slow and b) it's only designed to record 'significant' transactions and notes.

I want something that simply lets me record things like 1 sentence notes about phone calls for maybe 20 contacts with dates.

At the moment, I use excel with one line per transaction - it works well, but it's a bit messy to insert a new row for each transaction, then screw around with borders to separate customers. Plus, it rapidly get unwieldy.

Outlook's CRM add-on looks great, but MS has messed around with licensing and we don't have a license for it now.

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.
Small question:

Outlook 2010 has POP email set up for one address and also IMAP for Gmail.

I'd like to move all the inbox/sent items from Gmail into a local folder. I could set up POP for Gmail, but that will only retrieve the inbox - how do I retrieve the outbox too?

Is it something simple such s dragging from the IMAP outbox to the POP outbox for the gmail folders (or does that still refer to remote location - I can't tell with an individual message where it is located.

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.
Filerenamer is easy to use and pretty powerful:

http://www.sherrodcomputers.com/products_filerenamer.cfm

(the basic version is free).

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.

LeftistMuslimObama posted:

Truecrypt is open source, but if the NSA has developed ways to just straight up crack the encryption methods used, which some of the latest leaks suggest, then it doesn't matter if the source is backdoor-free.

The articles have been deliberately vague on details, but those reading between the lines suggest that the encryption itself has not been attacked - rather the implementation. So if you trust that trucrypt has been implemented properly (the size of that 'if' relates to your tinfoil hat size), there's not reason not to use it.

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.
But hasn't the previous version been shown to be okay? As I understand it, the independent audit by experts has so far been positive.

So, while it's prudent to not upgrade, there's no reason to dump the existing, stable build .

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.

Crescendo posted:

I recently went to download the latest version of TrueCrypt and was confronted with the following message on the sourceforge site:

:siren: "WARNING: Using TrueCrypt is not secure as it may contain unfixed security issues." :siren:

It seems that TC is no longer being updated for some bullshit reason that no one cares about.

My question: Is there an SA consensus on the best free encryption tool available? I poked around here and couldn't find a relevant thread.

Truecrypt 7.1a - as it has not been to shown to have any holes and prelim reports from an independant auditor shows no major problems with it.

http://truecrypt.ch/ - legit download site
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/04/truecrypt_ch/

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply