Topics

1

General Software Discussion / Finally made it to Windows 7 -- looking for partitioning reccomendations

« on: October 20, 2011, 12:11 AM »

[Note: this thread has been inactive for over a year!  the (currently) last post describes the configuration that I ended up with! see « Reply #18 on: Today (2013-05-23)at 02:04:12 PM »  Regards, Chuck]

Hi,  I'm switching over from my long holdout xpsp3 to windows 7 home premium 64bit on a new machine with 1.5TB hard drive.  On XP, I've always added extra partitions for special purposes.  I.E. c=Windows, D= Data, M= music, P=Programs, etc.  Not too familiar with the nuances of Win7, I don't know what if any partitioning makes sense.  Any suggestions from your experiences??? My main purpose for partitioning was to make it possible to reinstall windows with a minimum loss of my data & programs.   Since I have no Win7 disc, only the "recovery/restore disks" windows7 allows you to make, I wonder what makes sense fore a backup recovery strategy along with whatever, if any, partitioning I might do.  Have y'all had good experiences with win7 backup and restore system??  Any helpfull advice appreciated


Thanks,
Chuck

2

Coding Snack Guidelines / idea: make scroll lock <say> remap arrow key functions to page,home, end etc.

« on: June 14, 2011, 11:13 PM »

'Situation:  I am able to type only using my right hand.  I recently "inherited" a very nice SONY viao laptop,  I love using it when I'm away from my desktop.

Problem: This laptop has separate (inverted T") cursor keys. Unfortunately it does not have separate keys for  numbers, page-up,down pg-dn home, and end.  To get those functions one must press a "Fn" key located between the left ctrl and windows keys. I cannot do this with one hand.  (If it were on the right side ofg the space bar it would be no problem!)... I  spoke with the Folks at Sony and the told me that the "Fn" key is intercepted before it gets to windows, so standard key remapping won't work.  I've had limited only success using AHK to remap alt or ctrl with the cursor keys to the required functions (it appears that odd thins happen where ctrl or alt lead to ctrl + alt being received. 

What might help??:  I'd like to be able to choose an otherwise unused key, like scroll lock, to act as a modal switch to turn on the alternate meanings for the cursor. It seems like AHK could allow me to do this, but I'm not sure exactly how to accomplish this. 

Any help in this regard will be appreciated.

Thanks,
Chuck

3

General Software Discussion / Outlook/firefox url problem

« on: July 05, 2009, 11:48 AM »

I recently made firefox (3) my default browser (I've virtually stopped using IE).  My problem occurswhen I click on a URL link in outlook.  I get a beep and a message from Outlook sayiing  "General Failure" [url goes here] "The System cannot find the specified file.  However if I switch over to firefox the page is there. Is there any way to eliminate the false/unnecessary warning/alert?

4

General Software Discussion / A Linux adventure: A Blog for linux newbees by a Linux Newbee...

« on: May 31, 2009, 04:58 PM »

Hey Y'all,

I've Just made the Leap to Linux [Ubunto 9.04]. I did this mostly to learn something new, to check out the Linux hype and to see whether Linux might be a suitable alternative to windows, for me. To further complicate Matters.  I decided to keep track of my progress by way of a Blog [my first].  I think this can serve as a journal for myself, and as a warning system, for others who may try to follow this path. I.e.  let others learn from my mistakes, so maybe they can avoid making them themselves.   I did this as a Dual boot with XP on my laptop (NOT my main machine!)  If anyone is interested in checking out and/or commenting on my blog and/or following my progress (or lack of progress) please,Come on over to http://chuckstartslinux.blogspot.com

5

Post New Requests Here / idea: find files not in both folders

« on: September 08, 2008, 02:23 PM »

Duplicate file finders are a dime-a-dozen: how about a "non duplicate" file finder?

The gist is:  Given two (or more???) folders. Scan the folders and identify those files that are in one folder or the other, but not both.  Generate a list.  Ideally some mechanism would then allow the selective transfer/copy of those files from the folder which contains them to the folder that doesn't or optionally to another specified folder. A file pattern mask might also be useful.  subdirectory recursion, too.

This is one of those program ideas for which the requiremets are obvious when I need to have it, but, I'm not reallly sure I can identify, at this moment,all the uses for this (beyond standard synchonization of folders that is) I'll post more when it comes to me...


Chuck

6

General Software Discussion / What Linux is xclosest to whats used in apples OSX?

« on: July 27, 2008, 09:36 PM »

Hey y'all,

My last experience with Miocrosquish (and Vista - which has since be "upgraded" back to XP on my PC) was bad. This  led me to the decision that my next "PC should be a Mac.  I'd like to do a little preperation for the change and get accustomed (as much as is possible) with OSX (if not that then at least the Linux underpinings for that system.  Does anyone know upon what Linux OSX was based???  Or which Linux is closest to Apples OS????

Thanks,

Chuck

7

Coding Snacks / idea: give easier access to photos in email attachments

« on: July 14, 2008, 05:13 PM »

I often receive emails in Outlook with multiple photos attached.  Viewing them requires multiple (seperate, Double-click) invocations and exits of my graphics program.  This is certainly not arduous, it is a bit clumsy.

I would like a program/helper/context menu add-on that would automagically downoad all the photo's to a (?temp?) folder and invoke my chosen (or default, for that matter) graphics browser on the first of them.  This would allow one to use the next function of the browser to scroll through all the pictures without having to exit the browser, return to the E-mail and double click on the next photo -- which kind of breaks "the flow".  if using a temp folder the downloaded pics would be deleted on exit.  Another (better, I think) alternative would be to have a master "saved attached pictures" folder with a subfolder saving the attachments for each processed email (use email title or a timestamp to name each subfolder.  Yeah, that's the ticket....

8

Post New Requests Here / IDEA: Insert date and time into internet explorer - or other text field

« on: June 13, 2008, 01:44 PM »

Hi From a first time requester...  ,

I need an easy-to-use function to insert the current date and time into a text field, specifically into IE7.  The format I'd like is
   [#- day-of-week  month date, year time - *] where the * and # represent  bits of arbitrary text, like my initials for example.

Control over the formatting would be nice but is not strictly necessary. Invocation should come from a  hot key or as right click context menu or a browser add-in or menu tool or the like. 

Kind of like Skrommel's  "now" script for AHK, but with classier formatting   

Anyone know of an existing tool like this???

Thanks,
Chuck

9

General Software Discussion / How to Slow down "notification area"?

« on: July 12, 2007, 02:50 PM »

If I have the right nomenclature, the "notification area", is that rightmost section of the taskbar, which holds the clock and displays Icons of running programs.  If you click on the left arrow "<" you can see all the Icons, including the ones which are normally hidden.  My problem:  The display switches back to display only the unhidden programs before I can scan, process,  select and click on an icon.  Does anyone know how to slow this transition down?  Though I'd prefer a programmed approach, I'm willing and able to tweak the registry if needed, I just don't know the appropriate keys or values to edit.


Thanks,
Chuck

10

Screenshot Captor / A noobee's questions

« on: June 28, 2006, 04:04 PM »

I've been playing with the latest Screenshot captor beta. Looks  very promising!  a few comments/questions though...

1) Is the text scraper supposed to be working yet?  I can't seem to figure it out.  I've tried on maxthon & IE6 with little success; it seems to only capture the window title... 

2) I tried it on a windows error message: again it scraped the dialog title, but not the error message text; It was captured, just not scraped.

3) Does the text box on the bottom of the capured object screen rerpresent the text which has been scraped?  In other words,  does copy text to clipboard do anything more than copy the text in this area?

4) I've tried the capture scroll function, with limited sucess. NOT a program bug; I'm just working with one hand and find it nearly impossible to hit ctrl-shift-click at the same time.  Could there be an alternate way to make your capture choice, after having selected the window object? (like maybe a button or two added to the red box description panel??? - Dont know if thats even possible.. if not, maybe a multruple choice singlecharacter entry? llike 'hit "a" to capture window'; "b" to scroll/capture the window, etc????

5) fom my point of view, the scroll capture is less important than being able to scrape text from window dialogs, error messages, etc.  Reason?: I dont really need a tool to copy/scrape  text from a browser window cut and paste works just fine for that.  For Y"'alls information, if capturing web pages or such is what you need to do there is an excellent program called evernote that does an excellent job of that. It's free and it allows you to capture an entiore page, or selected section with one mouse click.
However whjat I think is reaslly needfed is a way to error messages & dialogs, in text form so they can be included in error reports
without having to rersort to HTML or an attatcment, which many support groups disalow.


Well that's my five cents, for now at least, I'l report back when I have more. Keep up the great work 

Best Regards,
Chuck Brotman

11

Clipboard Help+Spell / Datasbase errors

« on: January 06, 2006, 02:34 PM »

First, Great Program!

Next a problem I've ruin into:

I keep seeing "Cant do this to a closed database error"

Also I can't get to any of my clips