Messages

126

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone know an Antivirus Bootable CD or Floppy with NTFS support

« on: July 02, 2008, 05:41 PM »

I think this one might be what you're looking for. Also, just about any "system rescue" disk running a up-to-date Linux system will have read/write support for NTFS (using NTFS-3G).

127

Living Room / Re: Opera 9.5

« on: June 13, 2008, 06:33 PM »

Lashiec is sheek!

Do you have a weblog with software reviews?

-dantheman (June 13, 2008, 05:30 PM)

Hehehe, thanks! Nope, I don't even have a weblog , and I wouldn't consider that a review, just a test of what to expect of the new version, and if it was a good idea to wait for an update or not. I had more crashes in one day than in an entire year, but I think it's really worth it.

Opera sure is fast! In between Firefox3RC3 i'm having a tough time seeing which one is faster.
Is it possible to tweak a notebook hooked up to a network which has a determined speed?

I think it's possible, but frankly, it's difficult to measure a real difference between both, apart from looking at numbers obtained by running synthetic benchmarks, in real scenarios there are tons of variables at play. I think that Firefox might have an upper hand with heavy AJAX sites, though (mostly because not all of them are supported in Opera ). We'll know in a few days.

-Lashiec (June 13, 2008, 05:54 PM)

My personal experience with the two browsers (O9.5/FF3) have left me with the impression that Firefox is a bit faster with many "heavy" javascripts, but Opera is a lot faster at handling CSS & HTML.

128

General Software Discussion / Re: File Managers! Windows Explorer replacement! Come one, come all...

« on: June 05, 2008, 01:04 PM »

Ah... thanks for clarifying that, Dirhael. Lovely file manager, nonethelss though 

-Darwin (June 05, 2008, 12:50 PM)

It is, for the most part at least, but I don't use it much even though I did purchase a license not to long ago. If I wasn't so used to the enormous feature set and power of Dopus or the fantastic "portability features" of Xyplorer (SpeedCommander is slow beyond comprehension when running of a USB stick compared to most other file managers I've tried) I might have found more use for it though. That, and alternative keyboard layouts. It just doesn't help that they are using their own ideas for keyboard shortcuts for just about every single command (they're using Shift+DEL = Cut instead of Delete, CTRL+M to close tabs instead of CTRL+F4/W, F9 = Rename instead of F2...and the list goes on). What I would love to see is some alternative predefined layouts that uses something similar to what just about every single other Windows application use for common commands, because changing them individually one by one takes forever.

Still, they do make improvements with each release so perhaps someday it will become my weapon of choice

129

General Software Discussion / Re: File Managers! Windows Explorer replacement! Come one, come all...

« on: June 05, 2008, 12:48 PM »

Heh, heh, busted! Thanks rjbull for pointing out that TotalCommander DOES do this right out of the box... I just haven't used the application enough to have known where to look for it 

Tom, another one you might look at is SpeedCommander. I loved it when I trialed it but forced myself to uninstall it and move on. Don't recall off-hand if it does do file comparisons or not, but I would be surprised if it did not. At 38 euros to buy in, with 19 euro upgrades it's very pricey. Of course, this coming from a DOpus user 

-Darwin (June 05, 2008, 12:06 PM)

SpeedCommander does folder comparison, but not single files.

130

General Software Discussion / Re: Nero Vision replacement

« on: June 01, 2008, 06:48 AM »

I'd recommend checking out ConvertXtoDVD. While not free, it does the job and does it well. Converts any format you can throw at it to DVD, creates menus and burns the result. It's also very easy to use, so it should be able to replace Nero Vision without problems.

Personally I don't do much converting that way (I mostly rips the DVD's to MPEG-4 AVC, not the other way around) but those times I've had to do so it has served me well.

131

Living Room / Re: does anyone know of this winamp plugin?

« on: May 27, 2008, 05:29 PM »

You wouldn't really need a plugin to do something that simple, it should be a matter of minutes to do the same with AutoHotKey or something similar (the WA executable takes command-line parameters so you wouldn't need to do anything advanced to make it work).

That said, is there are reason why you just don't use the built-in global hotkeys instead? Because doing so would involve a whole lot less typing that the plugin you're referring to in your post.

132

Living Room / Re: The last time your AntiVirus saved you!

« on: May 23, 2008, 06:18 PM »

It's ironic that whenever I've been infected by a virus, it's not the antivirus that's rescued me, it's some small utility designed specifically to remove the virus in question. Instead of removing viruses with your antivirus software, remove them with standalone tools made by the people behind your antivirus!

-tuntis (May 23, 2008, 03:32 PM)

Hmm...well the thing is, the whole point should be not to get infected in the first place. Your approach really only works if you know that you have a virus (and which one), and I would say that the most dangerous ones are the ones you don't notice but just quietly keeps sending out data from your system without destroying or slowing things down...like account information/credit card info.

133

Living Room / Re: Whats on your desktop?

« on: May 23, 2008, 12:45 PM »

Oh, I thought your theme was HmmXP, the window icon in the Start Menu is similar.

-Lashiec (May 23, 2008, 10:52 AM)

The start button is just something I quickly made in Photoshop a while back and reshacked into a modified Vista visual style. The default Vista VS doesn't look all that bad, but everything takes up to much valuable space IMHO. It's like Microsoft GUI designers wants to pad our monitors back to the dark ages of 1024x768, and I hate it. Thankfully you can improve the situation a bit with a HEX editor and Photoshop

134

Living Room / Re: Whats on your desktop?

« on: May 23, 2008, 07:01 AM »

So, HmmXP also works under Vista?

-Lashiec (May 23, 2008, 06:37 AM)

No, as far as I know there isn't any ports of it to Vista.

135

Living Room / Re: Whats on your desktop?

« on: May 22, 2008, 09:31 PM »

Haven't posted in this thread for months, so I figured it was time for an update This time, it's my Vista setup:

136

General Software Discussion / Re: Have the option of getting Zone Alarm full suite. what should i do?

« on: April 28, 2008, 10:05 PM »

If you care about your computer, do not install the ZA suite. It's like playing Russian roulette with your operating system...

Yes, I've had bad experiences with it in the past and even when it worked, it was invasive to the point where it felt almost as bad as the things it's supposed to protect against.

137

General Software Discussion / Re: Uninstallers - do any of them work?

« on: April 25, 2008, 12:18 PM »

Heh, I will just say any developer that makes an uninstaller that cleans out *anything* from AppData without asking (or having a checkbox to do so marked by default) should be shot on sight. The rest of the argument I agree with, but personal data should never be cleared automatically.

To argue my POV I'm taking WinAMP as an example. When I was still using it from time to time I liked to check out different plugins, and a selected few of these plugins could mess up my WinAMP installation. No problem right? Just uninstall WinAMP and make sure that the program folder was cleared, then reinstall would surely get me right back up and running again. Not really because what now happens is that the WA developers in their infinite wisdom has decided that uninstalling also means that they should delete my music database from AppData, including MusicIP/Gracenote generated information for all my mp3's (and this means for the thousands of files that it took hours to generate said information for). Good idea? I think not...

138

General Software Discussion / Re: Vista Aero vs. Linux Compiz

« on: April 25, 2008, 12:03 PM »

Edvard: try maintaining an Arch linux setup for a while - eventually, the speed of "pacman" (lovely name for a package manager ) slows to a crawl... because of fragmentation.

-f0dder (April 25, 2008, 11:25 AM)

pacman -Sc; pacman-optimize; sync

-Dirhael (April 25, 2008, 11:44 AM)

...which wouldn't be necessary if the claims about "fragmentation isn't an issue" were true.

-f0dder (April 25, 2008, 11:59 AM)

I'm not going to argue that, I was merely pointing out how to resolve the issue you referred to in your previous post.

139

General Software Discussion / Re: Vista Aero vs. Linux Compiz

« on: April 25, 2008, 11:44 AM »

Edvard: try maintaining an Arch linux setup for a while - eventually, the speed of "pacman" (lovely name for a package manager ) slows to a crawl... because of fragmentation.

-f0dder (April 25, 2008, 11:25 AM)

pacman -Sc; pacman-optimize; sync

140

General Software Discussion / Re: What’s this "Linux" thing and why should i try it?

« on: March 27, 2008, 09:20 AM »

dirhael: iirc Wubi uses NTFS root FS.

-f0dder (March 27, 2008, 09:03 AM)

Indeed it does, but the problem still remains that some programs and utilities will still probably not work as intended due to file permissions and other things that are handled different by the various file systems. Also, I don't really understand why anyone would want to take the performance hit.

In any case, if you're just playing around and testing linux I think you would be better off just running it in a virtual machine seeing as there are several completely free alternatives out there today

141

General Software Discussion / Re: What’s this "Linux" thing and why should i try it?

« on: March 27, 2008, 07:11 AM »

Hi , I recently put Freespire on my second hard drive now windows doesn't recognize it . It shows up under disk management as a unnamed drive and "healthy and active "  any ideas on what is wrong ?   Thanks

-whippy (March 26, 2008, 03:36 AM)

Windows can't read ext*/reiserfs/whatever other file system your Linux installation is using. Windows will only recognize NTFS and FAT file systems, nothing else. There's not really anything you can do about it. I know there is a driver out there somewhere that lets Windows read Ext2/3 but it was so unreliable and caused so many BSOD's for me that I wouldn't bother looking it up. On the positive side though, *nix can both read and write NTFS using NTFS-3g (now used by default in most distros).

EDIT: I almost forgot, if you are using Total Commander on Windows, you can use this FS plugin to gain read access to Ext*/ReiserFS partitions. It's not 100% perfect, but it will let you read almost anything on said file systems.

-Dirhael (March 26, 2008, 08:24 AM)

Ok so how should I have done it ? Do I have to reformat the linux hard drive ?

-whippy (March 27, 2008, 02:51 AM)

You haven't done anything wrong, it's just the way it works. Microsoft have their own file systems and Apple & *nix have others. Sure you can reformat your HDD if you want to access it from Windows again, but that means removing Linux. Technically it is possible to install Linux on an NTFS drive using the NTFS-3g driver but performance will suffer, you'll lose some rather important features that is very likely to stop your Linux installation from working as intended and I don't think you will find many (any?) distros that will set that up for you automatically in any case.

142

General Software Discussion / Re: What’s this "Linux" thing and why should i try it?

« on: March 26, 2008, 10:16 AM »

Thing is, if ntfs-3g doesn't have journal playback, it's dangerous to mount a NTFS partition that hasn't been cleanly unmounted (BSOD, whatever). And if ntfs-3g doesn't do journalling itself, power-loss or kernel crash is dangerous... I couldn't find mention of journalling on the ntfs-3g site, but their FAQ section does make me go ho-humm. At least it sounds like all the serious bugs are weeded out nowadays, even if the driver still isn't optimal

-f0dder (March 26, 2008, 09:42 AM)

Ah, that. Well, I have crashed both XP and Linux in the middle of write operations with the result that fsutil reported the file system as dirty. I have then tried booting into Linux and NTFS-3g would not mount the drive but instead told me to start Windows and scan the disk for errors. You can force it to mount anyway, but you will never accidentally do so...thankfully

143

General Software Discussion / Re: What’s this "Linux" thing and why should i try it?

« on: March 26, 2008, 08:55 AM »

From benchmarks, NTFS-3g performance seems abysmal, though... and how full is it's support? Does it support $BadClus, for instance? Does it journal it's operations, and does it support journal playback?

Too bad that nobody wrote proper ext*, xfs and reiserfs drivers for windows, it would be interesting to compare those filesystems against native NTFS performance.

-f0dder (March 26, 2008, 08:33 AM)

I don't know how "full" the support is, but from my experience in just using it I have yet to encounter a single problem with corrupted files etc. Performance have also generally been quite good (certainly not abysmal) and have improved a lot since I first tested it back when it was brand new, even if it's not *as* fast as ext3 and friends. I wouldn't use it as my root filesystem (you can do so but...why?), but it's perfect for sharing files between the OS's when dual booting

144

General Software Discussion / Re: What’s this "Linux" thing and why should i try it?

« on: March 26, 2008, 08:24 AM »

Hi , I recently put Freespire on my second hard drive now windows doesn't recognize it . It shows up under disk management as a unnamed drive and "healthy and active "  any ideas on what is wrong ?   Thanks

-whippy (March 26, 2008, 03:36 AM)

Windows can't read ext*/reiserfs/whatever other file system your Linux installation is using. Windows will only recognize NTFS and FAT file systems, nothing else. There's not really anything you can do about it. I know there is a driver out there somewhere that lets Windows read Ext2/3 but it was so unreliable and caused so many BSOD's for me that I wouldn't bother looking it up. On the positive side though, *nix can both read and write NTFS using NTFS-3g (now used by default in most distros).

EDIT: I almost forgot, if you are using Total Commander on Windows, you can use this FS plugin to gain read access to Ext*/ReiserFS partitions. It's not 100% perfect, but it will let you read almost anything on said file systems.

145

General Software Discussion / Re: XPPro SP3

« on: March 07, 2008, 12:44 PM »

Ahh, so you need a key to the code? As I posted previously, I have SP3 v.3311 and that's the code for RC2. How will I know when I get RC3?
I was expecting a notation in the properties sheet that SP3, RC2, v.3311, or something similar, had been installed. Not being privy to the coding system used I had hoped that SP3 was installed and I was done with it. Too much to hope for I guess!

 

-Cuffy (March 07, 2008, 12:13 PM)

That I can understand, but the thing is that the service pack did not show up on Windows Update by itself. You had to actively seek it out and when doing so, it would have been a good idea to read what the website you (should) have gotten it from said. I mean, the download page on Microsoft's site repeatedly refers to it as "Windows XP SP3 RC2." Even the file you downloaded has "Release Candidate 2" in the filename (the standalone installers does not, but even so the page is still plastered with information on what it is you are about to download)

In any case, I don't think there will be any more release candidates of SP3. Should there be one however you would know that you got it because just like in the past, you would have to actively seek it out.

146

General Software Discussion / Re: XPPro SP3

« on: March 07, 2008, 11:52 AM »

You could not possibly just have gotten the Service Pack from Windows Update without knowing what you installed, seeing as the only way to get it is to either run the executable file from Microsoft manually that allows access to it from Windows Update, or by manually changing your registry to do the same thing. Nobody "just got it from WU" without having specifically requested it. Because of this, I'm having a really hard time understanding what the problem here is...?

That said, I've been using the SP3 RC for a few weeks now and I haven't had any problems with it.

-Dirhael (March 07, 2008, 09:14 AM)

Where would I look to determine if I have that update installed?
I would think that if SP3 RC is installed on a machine there would be an indication of it posted somewhere where one could determine that fact?
I cannot find any proof that SP3 RC has been installed on my machine.

-Cuffy (March 07, 2008, 11:11 AM)

If you look at any of the places where it shows the Windows version installed you will see what version is installed. For instance, where's a screenshot from start->run->winver:

If yours say v.3300 or v.3311, it is the second release candidate (RC2).

147

General Software Discussion / Re: XPPro SP3

« on: March 07, 2008, 09:14 AM »

This RC thingee is still bugging me. I've been through that machine and looked everywhere I can think of............. no indication that update was an RC version.
If a strange user sat down at that machine you'd see SP3 with a build number. Is the build number supposed to be proof positive that it's an RC or would you be lead to believe that SP3 has been installed? I'm getting too old for this!

------------

-Cuffy (February 27, 2008, 11:21 AM)

You could not possibly just have gotten the Service Pack from Windows Update without knowing what you installed, seeing as the only way to get it is to either run the executable file from Microsoft manually that allows access to it from Windows Update, or by manually changing your registry to do the same thing. Nobody "just got it from WU" without having specifically requested it. Because of this, I'm having a really hard time understanding what the problem here is...?

That said, I've been using the SP3 RC for a few weeks now and I haven't had any problems with it.

148

Official Announcements / Re: The site is now back online (March 6th, 2008)

« on: March 06, 2008, 08:20 PM »

Welcome back, great to see the site up and running again!

149

Living Room / Re: Internet Explorer doesn't report it is running on Windows ???

« on: February 14, 2008, 05:25 AM »

It's strange though, because the post platform string only gets appended to your UA string and does not replace anything. Because of this you should still have been able to access those websites. Also, it doesn't (or at least shouldn't) matter what that string is set to if using the Ad Muncher workaround I posted previously, as AM would have overridden anything sent by your browser(s).

Anyway, good to hear you were able to solve the problem! I'll make a mental note of what solved it for you, in case I encounter a similar problem in the future

150

Living Room / Re: Internet Explorer doesn't report it is running on Windows ???

« on: February 13, 2008, 08:34 PM »

I think it must be to do with one of the updates MS pushed out that I installed today (since other BBC users are experiencing similar). Trouble is I have tried removing the patches installed today but most of them don't have an uninstall option and having removed all those I can it makes no difference.

What is worrying is that I can't get to Windows Update any more so I can't even manually check for new updates.

-Carol Haynes (February 13, 2008, 08:12 PM)

I realize that this is just a workaround and not a fix, but what you could do is this:

* Install Ad Muncher. This program is primarily for filtering ads in any program that connects to the web, but it has a couple of other features as well and one of them is what we're after. See, the same way that this program lets you filter ads in *any* program that connects to the internet, it also lets you change the user agent for any program. It's not freeware, but you can trial it without nags or anything for 30 days, and I'm sure either MS or BBC will fix it within that time-frame.

* After installing Ad Muncher, open the settings dialogue and go to the "Options" tab, and in the second tab level select "Advanced" and fill it out like this:

This should allow you to access Windows Update without problems again