Messages

126

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Portable Registry Tool(s)

« on: January 25, 2008, 06:27 AM »

Afaik, sysprep is free, as long as you have a genuine & validated windows?

Sysinternals' NewSID could perhaps be of help?

-f0dder (January 24, 2008, 06:18 PM)

Good find f0dder!

I read through the product description and I am going to have a go with it to see how it performs in our environment.  However, based upon what I read, this probably isn't what I'm looking for.

NewSID is (of course) made to work in/for a Microsoft Networking environment, whereas, we use Novell as our network solution.  There is no requirement (that I know of - must investigate) to change the Security Identifier which would be the main reason to use this.  Changing the computer name seems to be an added side effect, "should you choose to use it".

Now, those are assumptions made on my part.  We've never discussed SID's before, and my ten year old Novell training never mentioned the use of SIDs either, but I will have to double check this.  If the SIDs are irrelevant in a Novell environment, then this could be auseful tool.

Thanks for the pointer!

127

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Portable Registry Tool(s)

« on: January 24, 2008, 02:16 PM »

Hm, doesn't Ghost come with a tool for setting unique Machine ID?

There's also the option of using Microsoft's sysprep before making the image, but I've never played with that...

-f0dder (January 23, 2008, 05:01 AM)

As reported by my fellow wage-slaves, there are insurmountable issues with both Ghost and SysPrep.  I'm looking for my own solution at this point.  Additionally, my employer is very tight on the purse strings and so paying for a new tool isn't an option.  Frankly, the problem isn't big enough to have to buy software. I just thought it might be something someone would to tackle, in return for my undying thanks

If I was any type of coder, I would do it myself.  In fact, I might just give it a crack with AutoIt, as I've already seen several miracles performed by AutoIt scripts already.

Thanks for the reps!

128

Post New Requests Here / IDEA: Portable Registry Tool(s)

« on: January 22, 2008, 09:15 AM »

I have for years been looking for a simple search and replace utility for the Windows Registry.  I want to be able to enter a simple alpha numeric string and then replace with one that is almost identical. Currently, I do the search and replace by hand, using the default regedit settings in XP.  No special "types" have to be searched.

Essentially, what I do at work is use Ghost to snap an image of a machine the way we set 'em up for campus here.  When the same model comes in, I can just drop the image on the new harddrive.  However, because these are networked machines, they have to be assigned a unique machine name.  This is the part I do by hand.

Granted the task takes all of 90-120 seconds, but sometimes I enter a typo which can cause all sorts of weird behaviour.

Another possible function to be included, or perhaps saved for a separate util, would be the ability to search for the same key, and bookmark it some how, so that I can return to the specific keys at will.

My final requirement would be for these to be so-called "portable" apps, in that they require no "installation" and can simply be copied to a USB key drive and run from there.  These would be dangerous tools to leave on a client's computer.

I have run across numerous utilities that do one or the other job, or both.  Invariably, such programs are also bloated with numerous features for which I have no use, they are time limited or usage and limited, and the author wants a payment which I consider to be out of line with what the program can do.

Also, I don't imagine for a minute that I've tracked down every instance of registry tool on the net, so if someone knows of such a util that's free, and portable, I'd sure appreciate some pointers!

Cheers!

129

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Quick Web Creations - Professional 2.0 Images

« on: January 21, 2008, 12:39 PM »

Daleus are you still stuck with "Generation X" images ????    Too bad. 

-luc (January 19, 2008, 09:12 PM)

luc,

It's even worse than that - I'm stuck with "Baby Boomer" era images!

130

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Quick Web Creations - Professional 2.0 Images

« on: January 18, 2008, 09:42 AM »

Gah, I hate this as I will reveal to all, my apparent ignorance.  None the less, I plunge forward with daring and courage.

Ahem, what exactly is a "Web 2.0" image?

Thanks for not throwing rotten tomatoes

131

General Software Discussion / Re: Software Ethics

« on: December 21, 2007, 09:39 AM »

Could it be, the reason that lawsuits aren't filed are the same reasons why the offenders in this thread are referred to as "the vendor" rather than actually identified? I assume the reason is because no one needs a libel lawsuit tacked to their ass I'm not trying to step on toes.

Regardless, this is why I have recommended this site to so very many people (I should follow up to see if any of them have actually come had a look) - I am no coder but a lot of you are, and I can see from the product available here, some damn good ones too!

For me, a positive comment at DC is pure gold.

Also, I'm slowly but surely replacing as much of my programs with open source stuff because frankly if it is crap, it's not at all painful to trash it.  After 20+ years in end user support, I have absolutely no faith in most commercial software producers - they *always* lie or mislead and many have followed MSloth's pattern of regular releases of old crap software with a new skin badly pasted over the top. Add onto that a big dose of feeping creaturism and some over pricing and you have the state of commecial software programming.

132

Seedling's Software / Re: Hi Everyone / Random MixTape Maker ideas

« on: December 14, 2007, 08:00 AM »

seedling,

Thanks for an excellent bit of software.  I have read through the other threads and also want to say thanks on everyone's behalf for being so responsive and helpful in implementing new ideas.

Would it be possible to implement dragging and dropping a playlist onto the blacklist window?

I have a large library of MP3's (don't we all) and I have been tasked to create a collection of compilations from the library.  The idea is to come up with a set of CDs.

In order to prevent songs from repeating across CDs in the collection, I have been creating a playlist to fill a CD by time, then moving the songs on the playlist to a seperate folder.  From there I drop that new folder onto the blacklist and then proceed to reload the library and make a new playlist - rinse and repeat.

Is there an easier way to do this, for instance, being able to drag and drop a playlist onto the blacklist?  Or is there another easier way for me to create a collection of CDs from my library, ensuring the songs are unique from disc to disc?

I realize this may be moving into an area beyond the scope you had planned.  If that is the case, no problem - this is still the best "mixing" app I have found and I will continue to use it in the way I outlined above.  I just wondered if I had missed a feature or if someone had come up with a clever procedure that might make the task a bit easier.

Thanks again!

133

General Software Discussion / Re: Do you use RSS feeds?

« on: December 12, 2007, 08:16 AM »

I didn't like the questions much either.

I chose the second option, although I *don't* use them just once in a while.  I have a collection of feeds I read everyday, but I could easily live without them because I already have for 20 years

As for what program, I read em all within Firefox using the "Live bookmarks" feature.  The last thing I want is yet another bloody program that I have to use.

Cheers!

134

General Review Discussion / Workflow/Project Management

« on: December 10, 2007, 12:48 PM »

I've just spent an hour winnowing through "work flow" and "project management" software, at the request of a client.

Any decent suggestions would be appreciated.  Ideally, I'd like to find several packages ranging from quick n dirty, intuitive and simple to use/learn, right up to full blown management-of-the universe type proggies.

I am not overly familiar with this type of software, not being a management type of person - when I need this type of organization, I can generally cobble together a chart of some sort in Open Office Draw. However, some types apparently need the extra structure that "workflow" software will provide for them.

Daleus

135

General Software Discussion / Re: Best password manager?

« on: December 07, 2007, 12:10 PM »

KeePass is my choice.

Simple, portable and free. Plus whatever else anyone else said here about KeePass that is good

136

Living Room / Re: What's Your Favorite Productivity or Programming Supplement?

« on: December 07, 2007, 08:14 AM »

Hehe, I wonder who voted "Illegal Substances"...

-Lashiec (November 28, 2007, 12:52 PM)

Not to detract from the intent of this thread, but hell, I'll fess up!  My little green friends in the basement have been riding shotgun on my adventures for decades.  They keep me calm, relax my dysfunctional back, and open my otherwise shuttered and shackled mind, to the possibilities.

137

Living Room / Re: About Rudeness in Forums

« on: December 07, 2007, 08:07 AM »

LOL,

When I saw the link to this thread in the newsletter, I followed it immediately wondering who I would have to blacklist for being rude!

That might be rudeness on it's own, but as many have said before, I've never seen a rude post.  Granted DC is huge and very busy and I am relatively new and have not yet plumbed all of the depths of DC, but one of the reasons I even decided to sign up was the consistently helpful attitude that pervades the whole place.

Funnily, I started using a product I first heard of here, but when I asked a question on that product's support board, I got beat with the "condescending and rude" stick by the first responder.  I still will use the product, but I'll never go back to their support boards again.  I get better answers to my questions here at DC anyway!

Keep up the swell work folks!

138

Living Room / Re: Any old Amiga users among us?

« on: December 03, 2007, 02:16 PM »

Oh yeah baby!  Those were the days!

I had an Amiga 500 with an external HD that slapped onto the left side via the expansion port and a snazzy wedge shaped box!  I paid 400+ for a HD I swear was 20 MBs!

In those days I was running a BBS on my C64.  I was so thrilled to *now* be able to run the BBS in the background while I continued to play video games.  It was like being alive, but still going to heaven...roflmao!

My favourite recollection was a PC friend asking why in the world I needed thousands of colours on screen and digital stereo sound.  Like someone up top said, all I could do was shake my head and smile knowingly.

I was in my late 20's/early thirties at the time and I remember that hearing comments like that one made me feel as though I was a tenager - you know, on cloud nine, totally empowered and ready to take over the world and solve all it's problems.

Now that I'm in the PC world, I despair...... Okay maybe it's not that bad

The Amiga is dead! Long live the Amiga!

139

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Auto Focus for Windows

« on: November 28, 2007, 07:05 AM »

Certainly does exist... try Skrommel's Mouse Activate

-Ampa (November 26, 2007, 10:56 AM)

Ampa, thanks a bunch! This does *exactly* what I want!  Indeed, that page has a slew of useful little goodies.  I haven't been around DC for long, but I'm surprised I missed that nifty little repository.  Is it flagged in some way or in some place that I have also missed?  Makes me wonder what other buried gems there are around here!

I was particularly surprised to see it was an AutoHotKey script. Definitely one I will be having a closer look at as I am just getting started with AutoIt and wasn't aware this kind of thing could be done!

Cheers and thnks again!

140

Post New Requests Here / IDEA: Auto Focus for Windows

« on: November 26, 2007, 10:47 AM »

I used to have an "add-on" for my Amiga (yes, I am *that* old) that was very handy.  As you passed your mouse over a window, the window would pop to the front and would automatically focus.

With multiple windows over two monitors, am I increasingly wishing I had that functionality in Windows.

Does anyone know of such a proggie for windows?  If not, would anyone else but me find this useful - I'd hate to suck up someone's time for somethin that no one but me would use.

Cheers!

141

General Software Discussion / Re: Move Drive Letter to Beginning of Drive Names in Windows Explorer

« on: November 05, 2007, 08:04 AM »

"ShowDriveLettersFirst"=dword:00000001

-Daleus (October 30, 2007, 06:49 AM)

umm, not quite. That will only do it for remote drives. See my first post in this thread.

-tinjaw (October 30, 2007, 07:46 AM)

I'm not sure what you mean by "remote" drives, but it does the same thing in "My Computer" that PhilB66 shows in Tweak UI, earlier in the thread.  I have been using it with success for several years now where I work.

This will *not* affect how drive letters appear in the Windows Explorer *application*, if that is what you were looking for.

Note also that the MS article you point to, earlier in the thread, points to 2 reg keys (policies) different than the one which I suggest, so perhaps they both work.

142

General Software Discussion / Re: Move Drive Letter to Beginning of Drive Names in Windows Explorer

« on: October 30, 2007, 06:49 AM »

For XP/2k, put this in a reg file:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer]
"ShowDriveLettersFirst"=dword:00000001


Save with the *.reg extension, dble click to run, answer yes to prompts, reboot to take effect.

143

Living Room / Re: do you have a monitor screen size - 1440 x 900 OR 1440 x 960 pixels

« on: October 18, 2007, 11:55 AM »

I have a Viewsonic that is 1440 x 900.

144

Living Room / Re: Requesting new organization ideas for fresh windows installation

« on: October 16, 2007, 10:32 AM »

I just did this last week, and I'm trying a system of partitions that I hope will help to minimize future problems.  Of course, with three parts on the same drive, if the drive goes I'm screwed....

First Part is ~50gb.  This is where I install windows and programs and nothing else!
Second Part ~100gb. This is where Data that *I* create goes.  docs, sheets images etc. etc. in a custom My Documents folder.

Third Part ~100gb.  This is mass storage.  Downloads, music archive, like it says bulk storage stuff or stuff that will get served to the media player, junk waiting to be burned.

The first partition could conceivably be smaller or larger, depending on how much crap you install.  I tend to install a lot of stuff, but then rip out most of it afterwards as programs are big on promise and mostly short on delivery.  In my case, this could probably be smaller, even though I have some big pigs installed.  Smaller means the image you take for backup is a manageable size. It's also good to segregate windows from anything valuable like data, so that when it finally implodes it doesn't take anything of actual value with it.

The second and third partitions are highly variable and I expect to alter the sizes of these two partitions as time goes on.  As the most valuable thing on the hard drive, I want to segregate my data from the OS, and also from the parition in which I hold downloads or junk ready to be burned. It also leaves partition sizes that are easierto backup via imaging.

If you have a Big Assed Music Collection (tm) you will probably want that on a completely different drive rather than just a different partition. I am working on getting it off the main machine altogether and onto a dedicated box.  In the menatime, a partition works for me.

Last thing, I want to go back to the custom Documents folder.  I *always* move this to a short name folder somewhere, because the length of the path to the doc folder inside your windows profile is stupidly long - you'd be surprised how many zip programs will choke on the length of this dog pathname, and as many backup programs use zip, I see alot of failure in that areas as well.  To boot, a lot of the failures occur when you attempt to restore rather there when attempting to do a backup, so be aware.

For me the folder is MyDocs and is in the root of the document partition.

Good luck in wrangling your Windows. Lord knows anyone of us could do a better job than the way the thing comes packaged

145

General Software Discussion / Re: Know what else I hate about Groupwise?

« on: October 05, 2007, 08:23 AM »

Right, so, what alternatives would you offer?

The shop at which I work is moving to Groupwise as we speak.  So I have an interest in what alternatives are out there.

Some of the things we are looking forward to are shared calendars, group file sharing, and no additional financial expenditure to get there (we are already licensed for Novell networking software and our license includes the use of GW).

BTW, I agree totally that formatted email is a function of Satan's left hand, but it's not like Groupwise invented it.  In fact, I would like to bludgeon anyone who sends HTML email, also a function of Satan's left hand, and you can do that with pretty much any email client these days.

Another thing I'd like to launch into the Sun, never to *ever* be seen again, is the row of dumb ass smilies available to me in this message editor.  Let's also add the huge fricking signature pictures people insist on adding to their one line emails.

There is so much about email that should be beat to death with a pointed stick, and frankly it's hard to criticize *just* Groupwise for practises that are abominable in *every* email vehicle.

146

General Software Discussion / Re: Any MWSnap users out there?

« on: September 24, 2007, 07:09 AM »

Yep, I have been using it for almost 2 years now.

I work in an IT department and often have a use to make screenshots when building tutorial websites for our users.

I had downloaded two programs - MWSnap and another - I believe it was called FS Capture.  I tried MWSnap first and it did everything I needed at the time so I never got to FS Capture (if indeed I'm remembering the name correctly).

I'm not certain what a previous respondant means by scrolling windows, but I do ocassionally have a need to capture the Windows start menu and MWSnap is not able to do so.  I have not found such a program that does, although frankly I haven't gone looking very hard.  I seldom make static tutorials these days since I discovered Wink.

Wink from debugmode.com is a video capture program, but unlike a lot of the really expensive "video format" capture programs, instead captures series of screenshots. Now, if I need to get a screenshot of something moving, like that damned windows start menu, I fire up Wink. It's not perfect, but the few idiosyncratic features are easy to deal with and the program is so easy to use....

I really like the "stream of screen captures" approach and find it easier to manipulate than a normal video stream.

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Wink, I only think think it's the best damned free video tutorial making software ever invented.

147

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your music player of choice?

« on: August 08, 2007, 01:47 PM »

XMPlayer of course.  Works wonderfully with FoxyTunes!