Messages

476

General Software Discussion / Re: Just discovered a HUGE annoyance in Windows 7

« on: January 17, 2010, 05:38 PM »

Is this a clean install of Windows 7 or an upgrade from Vista? I must say I have not noticed any of these remembering settings problems or file writing problem in Win 7 Pro on my laptop and I use it all the time.

-Carol Haynes (January 17, 2010, 05:15 PM)

Clean install, yes. There is no upgrade path from XP anyway. The system C drive was wiped clean by the installer. The only "holdover" is my secondary drive where data lives (the drive where Windows thinks the files are not "mine").

Now I'm going to see how well ShadowProtect does its job! I'll see you on the other side, hopefully safe back in XP

I've only seen one impressive thing about 7: the bootup speed and how soon the system becomes responsive after logging in. It seems to apply to starting applications as well I had never seen Firefox start so fast, weighed down as it is by tons of extensions, thousands of bookmarks, and months of browsing history. Sometimes, right after a reboot, Firefox would come up within a second or two, max. OTOH, that was only after I uninstalled Kaspersky (a problem I have omitted from this thread, because this is about Windows, not 3rd party apps, it was slowing things down a lot.)

However, one thing to have been impressed about isn't a whole lot, and I am downright scared by the "memory loss" in some apps. That it is completely random makes it worse yet, pretty much impossible to investigate, unless I want to spend a day rebooting.

477

General Software Discussion / Re: Just discovered a HUGE annoyance in Windows 7

« on: January 17, 2010, 04:35 PM »

And now for the final nail in the coffin...

What I described above as FARR sometimes losing its launch history after a reboot turns out to be an indicator of a much worse issue. It's not just FARR. I'm seeing other applications that randomly forget all their configuration after the system restarts. It's as if they were freshly installed, though I haven't yet bothered to go and look for the missing config data. In FARR the configuration is in disk files, but two other apps this has happened to use registry. All are fairly new, certainly aware of userdata space; I'm not talking about apps that try to write under Program Files.

My own KeyNote does of course just that (write under Program Files) since I wrote it on Win95 and wasn't exactly aware of what I was doing at the time. So I keep KeyNote installed in c:\MyOwnDamnFolder. If I start KeyNote, move it around the screen (or to the secondary monitor) and close it, it restores its position correctly when restarted. If, however, KeyNote shuts down with the system, then after reboot it opens in the "factory default" position, on the primary screen.

I think both scenarios point to the same issue somewhere. I'll give myself an hour to figure out what's going on, and after that I'll have just enough time to ShadowProtect myself back to XP, where things like these just did not happen, ever.

I shudder to think what other data I might be losing to Windows 7, and also, what's going to happen when I install some really old, and really crucial software, like Delphi 3 or 6. I should have known to wait for SP1 at least.

478

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR v2 - Official Bug Tracking and Feature Request Thread

« on: January 17, 2010, 04:18 PM »

lets try to see if #1 and #2 can both be solved by editing your configdir.ini file in the FARR program files directory and setting it to store the data file where you want it to.

#3 someone reported, i have to look into it.

#4 i suspect is a windows7 "feature" that may not be possible to fix.

-mouser (January 17, 2010, 12:40 PM)

Mouser, I think #3 is the only candidate for an actual bug in FARR. The others are just "stuff that happens to me when running FARR on 7". Points #1 and #2 indicate an awesome potential for problems and data loss; I'm seeing other apps that completely forget their settings, whether stored in userdata folders or in the registry. Suddenly after reboot I start an app and all the settings are gone.

This, just like FARR's forgetting its history, happens entirely randomly, once every few reboots, but it's of course terribly annoying, and I shudder to think what else it might lead to. For just this reason I'll be reverting to XP right away.

479

General Software Discussion / Re: Just discovered a HUGE annoyance in Windows 7

« on: January 17, 2010, 04:13 PM »

Maybe this will help, I haven't tried it though.

http://www.nirmaltv....-files-in-windows-7/

-cmpm (January 17, 2010, 04:07 PM)

Thanks! I actually saw that blog post in Google Reader when it was written. At the time I was collecting interesting Win7 posts and threads for later reference, but I thought nah, why would I need to "take ownership" of my own old data? What problem could I have with ownership? I really thought just that, and decided not to bookmark that post...

480

General Software Discussion / Re: Just discovered a HUGE annoyance in Windows 7

« on: January 17, 2010, 04:11 PM »

Some more...

Win+Up to maximize a window; Win+Down to minimize it. Great idea - so great in fact, that it had been implemented left and right by tweaking apps (Actual Window Manager or your favorite AutoHotkey script) before Microsoft came up with it. No problem.

Except that MS have managed to dumb down even this little thing and make it unusable. I knew 7 had this feature, so I disabled these shortcuts in AWM. Turns out, the way Win+Down works in Win7 is that if the window is maximized, Win+Down "restores" it first, and only minimizes on the second press. When you then restore the application, you restore it to the "restored" state, not the maximized state.

No matter how large the screen, I maximize most applications that I tend to spend a lot of time in; otherwise there's too much graphical distraction: Word, Firefox, etc. So the behavior of Win+Down is really inconvenient for me: first I have to press it twice to get the desired effect (minimize app), and then I have to manually maximize the window when restoring it. And of course there doesn't seem to be a way to configure the Win shortcuts in Windows.

It didn't seem a big issue, since Actual Window Manager should be able to override the Win+Up/Down features with its own shortcuts. Autohotkey can override anything Windows assigns to the Win key combos, so AWM should as well. Alas, I'm finding that Windows won't let go of those shortcuts, so I'm stuck with the unwanted, un-useful behavior.

Won't be stuck much longer though. Before the dawn breaks I'm going back to XP. It's going to be a big day!

481

General Software Discussion / Re: Just discovered a HUGE annoyance in Windows 7

« on: January 17, 2010, 03:59 PM »

Worse, apps are often unable to write to my own folders on the secondary, non-system hdd, where I keep all my data: access denied. These are folders where I do my work.

-tranglos (January 17, 2010, 09:31 AM)

That's just a permissions issue, make sure the Users group has write access through the Security tab in the harddisk properties.

-Eóin (January 17, 2010, 03:47 PM)

It does not seem to be "just" a permissions issue, Eóin, or permissions in 7 are seriously screwed up. There should be no issue to begin with. We are talking about a drive full of data that was present when 7 was installed. Surely the user account which installed the system should have full access to local drives present at the time of installation? Yet folders on that drive are now owned by some invalid, nonexistent account, designated only as a GUID number, which cannot be managed or deleted - it's just a ghost on the security tab in folder properties.

For some folders I have been able to fix it the way you describe. In some cases however, the operation is halted half-way through due to some other "insufficient permissions" error and there is no way to continue then. I have found out that what works is copying (not moving) the files from my old folders to new ones on the same drive. These newly created folders are now "owned" by me; then I can delete the originals.

482

General Software Discussion / Re: Just discovered a HUGE annoyance in Windows 7

« on: January 17, 2010, 03:51 PM »

Haven't missed the UAC one bit since disabling it.

-nite_monkey (January 17, 2010, 03:00 PM)

When you do miss it it'll be too late.

-Eóin (January 17, 2010, 03:22 PM)

You know, I've never missed it on XP, either.

I have decided to disable UAC after finding the problem with FARR and other system-wide hotkeys. This was just the little straw that broke this camel's back. It's utterly brain-deadly stupid to halt or cripple regular, non-threatening, configured system features simply because a UAC-flagged window has focus.

483

General Software Discussion / Re: Just discovered a HUGE annoyance in Windows 7

« on: January 17, 2010, 03:46 PM »

swap cables?

-mouser (January 17, 2010, 01:27 PM)

When dual monitor setups start getting cagey, that is (in my experience) the simplest option.

-Stoic Joker (January 17, 2010, 02:45 PM)

If I did that, then the video card would be showing startup messages on the portrait screen, since the card threats its port as secondary. Tweaking BIOS setup would probably be fun on the rotated screen, but I think I'll pass

The only solution I can imagine would be to wipe 7 and reinstall it, disconnecting the secondary monitor during the installation.

484

General Software Discussion / Re: Just discovered a HUGE annoyance in Windows 7

« on: January 17, 2010, 12:59 PM »

Some more...

I have two monitors. The graphics card considers one of them as primary - this is the one were boot-up messages are displayed, while the other monitor gets no signal until the system is up. My primary monitor is bigger, while the secondary is rotated to portrait orientation.

At some point during installation Windows 7 decided that the smaller, rotated monitor is really the primary one. The first install screens were shown on the correct screen, but half-way through, not even across a reboot, the installer switched to the second monitor. Since the monitor is rotated, and I can't easily restore it to landscape due to how my desk is configured , I had to go through the remainder of the installation, entering the product key, choosing language etc., with my head at a 90° angle... Okay.

Well, with the system fully installed, it still insists my secondary monitor is really primary (numbered 1), and my primary monitor gets number 2. There seems to be no way to change this. I can mark the monitor I want to be "main", and did so, but the wrong numbering remains. This gets annoying with applications coded to open on monitor 1 (which is secondary in my case) and it may be affecting the trouble many apps seem to have with restoring their position when restarted.

Sigh.

485

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR v2 - Official Bug Tracking and Feature Request Thread

« on: January 17, 2010, 12:36 PM »

A few small things I've experienced on Win7, FARR 2.80.02:

1. Launch history sometimes disappears after reboot. Lame, I know, but I'm not seeing any regularity. I installed 7 just a day before, so have been rebooting plenty of times in the last 48 hours while installing updates etc. In this time I have seen FARR history going completely blank right after reboot maybe three or four times, but not always.

2a. Even though I have remapped "My documents" to a folder on secondary hard drive (where I keep all my data), FARR still keeps its settings under c:\Users\user\Documents\DonationCoder\ folder. This may or may not have anything to do with the memory loss above.

2b. Perhaps My Documents is not the best place to store configuration data? Config files are not really "documents" that most users edit. Why not save FARR config under c:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\DonationCoder\, where DcUpdater data lives?

3. When a list of results is displayed, right-click an item and click Properties. Result: nothing happens. No error, no message, just nothing The Shell Context Menu command works, though.

4. FARR does not show up on Pause key press when the focused window belongs to an "elevated" process, i.e. one that required a UAC confirmation. (Many other system-wide hotkeys do not work then either, so it's not really a FARR-specific issue.) This particular problem seems to have gone away after completely disabling UAC and rebooting.

486

General Software Discussion / Just discovered a HUGE annoyance in Windows 7

« on: January 17, 2010, 09:31 AM »

Since installing Win 7 on Friday I've found a number of serious aggravations. Applications are often unable to store (or restore) their settings in userdata folders - this includes FARR losing its launch history every few reboots, for example. Worse, apps are often unable to write to my own folders on the secondary, non-system hdd, where I keep all my data: access denied. These are folders where I do my work. Crazy stuff, and some of it potentially dangerous, as in data loss.

But the annoyance I have come across just now really makes me want to go back to XP while I still can (before Monday morning, that is!): when an elevated application window (one that required a UAC confirmation) has focus, some system-wide hotkeys no longer work. When working in Regedit, TuneUp Utilities or Shadow Protect, for example, pressing Pause does not bring up FARR. Pressing Win+Space reverts to its useless built-in function (temporarily unhide desktop) instead of what I have configured it to do in AutoHotkey. Switch to another window and it works again. And the UAC-crippled windows are somehow exempt from Actual Window Manager, so its features are not available there, either.  WTF?  Even completely disabling UAC does not help. Completely disabling UAC and rebooting seems to have fixed the problem. If I needed one more reason to kill UAC, this is certainly it.

I feel like I don't control the system at all, and never know when something I rely on will not work. Not a happy user here.

487

Living Room / Re: Show us the View Outside Your Window

« on: January 12, 2010, 03:33 PM »

That second picture is pretty cool. Do you have it in a higher resolution?

-p3lb0x (January 12, 2010, 02:58 PM)

Yep, but they're hugemongous:





I like this one, too, but it's photography sprinkling fairy dust over teh ugly

488

Living Room / Re: Show us the View Outside Your Window

« on: January 12, 2010, 02:40 PM »

So that all can understand why we Poles are a grumpy folk...



Window on the opposite side, different date:

489

General Software Discussion / Re: ShadowProtect Desktop or Macrium Reflect?

« on: December 29, 2009, 03:02 PM »

I have noticed something about shadow protect : you can desactivate the license on a given computer.  It would be nice to know if you can then activate it on another one without limits, so you might protect several machines one at a time (according to what the license permits). 

-MerleOne (December 29, 2009, 02:39 PM)

You can probably do it, but wouldn't it become tiresome rather quickly? With having to remember which computer the license is activated for at the moment. Also, I vaguely recall reading in their forum that there is a limit to how many times you can reactivate the license.

With ShadowProtect at least you can ask; the Macrium authors limit support to registered users only (but you can probably write to their sales address).

490

General Software Discussion / Re: Must-have Windows Programs

« on: December 29, 2009, 01:47 PM »

The time I appreciate my desktop-folder solution the most is, when I have installed a new program and it creates a shortcut (on the desktop) with a name beginning different from the program's name. As an example, the common but stupid habit (original from Microsoft?): "Launch Babylon". Now who the f#©◊ is going to look under "L" to find a name beginning with "B"???

-Curt (December 29, 2009, 01:23 PM)

This is so true! Of course all Office apps are listed as "Microsoft Word", "Microsoft Excel", etc., immediately preempting any attempt at incremental search. This is one of the many reasons FARR is so immensely good.

491

General Software Discussion / Re: ShadowProtect Desktop or Macrium Reflect?

« on: December 29, 2009, 12:39 PM »

Now that the discount for ShadowProtect is active (thanks, Mouser!   ) the choice hasn't become any easier

I have a slight preference for the UI in Macrium Reflect. It is more compact and requires fewer clicks to perform common operations. In ShadowProtect, for example, it takes way too many clicks through a wizard interface to mount a drive image. On the other hand, Macrium performs its tasks in modal dialog boxes, while ShadowProtect UI remains available while it is creating an image (a minor thing, until you want to move the window out of the way while the program works: with Macrium you can't, with ShadowProtect you can.)

ShadowProtect starts up immediately, while Macrium takes a long time to start, as it analyzes all disks and partitions. (Why not do it in a thread once the main window is already available?).

Both apps create a base image of almost exactly the same size: 24 GB for some 39 GB of data on my system disk, using the default medium compression level. Both take about 9 minutes to create the base image - no perceptible difference there.

However, one point against Macrium seems to be the size of an incremental image. I created a base image first (24 GB), then created an incremental two hours later. During this time hardly anything changed, except a few more messages received in TheBat, and a few more files in Firefox cache. I wasn't even using the computer for one and a half of those two hours. Yet the resulting incremental image is 242 MB in size, roughly 10% of the base image size. That's huge, given how little has changed on the drive. At this rate it could quickly become impossible to keep the daily incrementals.

I'll now replace Macrium with ShadowProtect to see if its incrementals are smaller (since I didn't think about it before!)

On edit: The ShadowProtect incremental, also done after about 2 hours of moderate computer use, is much smaller, only 74 megs. This is still surprisingly large though! (well, it's surprising *to me* ) A notable difference seems to be that SP created the incremental in bare seconds, while Macrium took a minute or so. Of course the difference in sizes and times may be due to whatever inscrutable changes Windows may or may not have written to disk during the mostly idle two hours, as MerleOne noticed below

One other minor point in favor of ShadowProtect: Macrium popped up a focus-stealing modal dialog box as it was writing the incremental image (the main UI was not running at the ttme). The dialog allows you to cancel the operation within a brief timeout, but it would be better done as a tray notification. By contrast, the ShadowProtect service performed the incremental task completely in the background, without putting up any UI at all.

492

General Software Discussion / Re: Must-have Windows Programs

« on: December 23, 2009, 08:51 AM »

TotalCommander (or, I guess, Directory Opus) - the first thing I install on a new system

FARR, obviously! - comes second after TC, only then can I actually run software comfortably.

TrueLaunchBar (can't live without it. I hope it runs under Win7!)

Actual Window Manager (a must for me, but it does so much more than manage windows on multiple monitors)

A text editor is a draw between EmEditor, EditPad Pro or HippoEdit.

Startup Monitor - there are plenty more advanced tools to manage startup items, but this one takes a minuscule amount or memory and prompts you immediately when something gets added to a startup location. Another must early install on a new system, before I start installing much else. For heavy-duty maintenance, Anvir Task Manager.

Firefox. Chrome is just too emo!

Obviously a media player, but I don't have a favorite (they all suck in various ways). The minimum today would be Media Player Classic - Homecinema, I guess. Zoom Player is top of the line, but shamelessly expensive, and not very functional for audio. J-River Media Center is a fantastic organizer and great audio player, but has a sucky UI for playing video (stay with their freeware MediaJukebox, which only does audio). Winamp is great but s-lo-o-w, and AIMP is great but buggy, so...

Um, KeyNote

Calendarscope - my preferred calendar; wish it had better handling of to-do tasks

Autohotkey, it speeds up my real-life work like no contest.

TheBat! for email. Even with the editor annoynances, it's always been 100% reliable for me, it would take a lot of convincing for me to even try anything else.

Ditto (another work booster), USB Safely Remove and definitely KatMouse (lets you scroll a window without clicking/focusing it first. Another invisible app I can't live without.)

Backup4All, consistently the best, and I've tried a lot of alternatives. The day it starts supporting real-time backup it will be perfect.

493

General Software Discussion / Re: Has anyone tried Perfect Utilities ?

« on: December 22, 2009, 08:12 AM »

I think TuneUp 2009 is still OK.

-MerleOne (December 22, 2009, 07:30 AM)

It's fine, but it refuses to install on Windows 7. Only 2010 will install.

494

General Software Discussion / Re: Has anyone tried Perfect Utilities ?

« on: December 22, 2009, 06:53 AM »

I think there is something close, GlaryUtilities, still free (checked a few weeks ago) and seems quite similar.  Or you may try to get the Xmas Giveaway for TuneUp2009 floating here and there.

-MerleOne (December 22, 2009, 06:43 AM)

Thanks, Merle. I actually have used TuneUp for a long time, but since my somewhat disappointing experience with TunerUp 2010 I've been looking at alternatives.

495

General Software Discussion / Re: Alternatives to Daemon Tools?

« on: December 21, 2009, 04:26 PM »

Check out MagicDisc or Virtual CloneDrive instead

-f0dder (December 21, 2009, 04:20 PM)

Oh wow, I already have Virtual CloneDrive! It was a freebie when I registered CloneCD/DVD, but I never used it and totally forgot about it I. Am. Getting. Old.

Thanks!

496

General Software Discussion / Re: Alternatives to Daemon Tools?

« on: December 21, 2009, 04:25 PM »

Daemon Tools has a Lite version that's free: http://www.daemon-to.../eng/products/dtLite

-Number99 (December 21, 2009, 04:14 PM)

Indeed, thanks! I was only looking at the Store page, where the Lite version is listed at 14,90 Euro. That page does not mention it's free for personal use - only the one at your links does.

497

General Software Discussion / Re: Has anyone tried Perfect Utilities ?

« on: December 21, 2009, 04:04 PM »

I've revisited the thread on the PU forum today to see if there was a response from the vendor - but is seems that instead of replying, they deleted the thread.

On second look, the whole site has changed. The app is now called WinUtilities and sells for $39,99. Well, that's much better than distributing a trojan-infested so-called freeware, but I don't think I'd buy software from them...

498

General Software Discussion / Alternatives to Daemon Tools?

« on: December 21, 2009, 03:56 PM »

Are there any alternatives to Daemon Tools for mounting CD and DVD images as virtual drives? Preferably free or inexpensive. Daemon Tools is quite pricey, and I don't know what else is there, or what will run under Windows 7.

499

General Software Discussion / ShadowProtect Desktop or Macrium Reflect?

« on: December 21, 2009, 03:48 PM »

I have a registered but old and never-upgraded copy of Acronis TrueImage Home. Version 2010 is coming up on Bits du Jour tomorrow (Tuesday) at $24.99, but I think I'll pass. It's getting bloated with lots of features I won't need, and then there are many stories, here and elsewhere, about restoration problems.

So my choice now boils down to waiting for the discount on ShadowProtect Desktop to materialize or buying Macrium Reflect. With the discount, the prices for each will probably not be too far apart. (Sans the discount, there is no contest; ShadowProtect is way too expensive.)

ShadowProtect has one distinct advantage of HAL-independent restoration, but this isn't a critical feature. Macrium should be perfectly able to restore to a disk with a different geometry, which is the most I'm asking for. I've been running the free version of Macrium, and its service seems to be less resource-hogging than Acronis, which is good.

On the other hand, when booting from the Macrium rescue disc, the bootstrap system not only does not see my NAS drive, but it won't recognize the external MyBook drive, connected via Firewire, either. That last thing is a big letdown, since in a real emergency I may not be able to restore at all. (For a planned restoration I can put the system drive image on the second internal drive.)

On the third hand, the Pro version of Macrium Reflect comes with a WinPE disc, so hopefully it should see the external drive. Or maybe connecting the drive via USB instead would help. I cannot ask (on the fourth hand now!) since "Support forum registration is now only open to customers who have purchased Macrium Reflect" (http://www.macrium.com/support.asp) - sigh! I'll try emailing support, but officially that too is for registered users only.

I want to make the decision soon. My wife is getting me Windows 7 Pro for Christmas (yay!) and I want to image my XP system just in case before I move on to 7, and once running 7, I want to be making images regularly.

What to do, what to do?

500

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Free 1 year license of Returnil Virtual System 2010 Home Lux

« on: December 18, 2009, 03:55 PM »

It's bad manners to look a gift horse in the mouth, but when it comes to software I'm probably the resident Bad Manners Person round here, so let me just say Returnil has one of the least attractive licensing schemes ever.

The phrase "1 year free license" means exactly that: after 1 year the program will revert to limited functionality, same as the free "Home" version. This is not specific to this giveaway though - it's how their licensing works in general. You don't pay annually to get upgrades: you pay to continue using the program with the original set of features you paid for when you first registered it. From their FAQ page:

What happens after the subscription expires (one year normally)?
"Returnil Virtual System 2010 will simply revert to the unregistered version of Home Free called Free. The System Safe and Virtual Disk features will continue to work but the Virus Guard, File manager, and Real System Access features will be inactive. "

and

Why are lifetime licenses not available?
We do not offer lifetime licensing as it is self defeating and leads inevitably to poor customer service and slower product development. The reason for this is that as the pool of available customers shrinks with time and competition, companies who allow lifetime licensing are eventually forced to focus myopically on revenue generation at the expense of customer service. As we are in this for the long haul, subscriptions and renewals allow us to focus on product development and support having sufficient resources to service all customers quickly and efficiently.

So right now everyone can get the full version free for one year, which is certainly a great "try before you buy" deal, but if you learn to rely on it, it's going to take an annual fee for as long as you continue using Returnil.