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General Software Discussion / Trouble upgrading Acer Aspire One netbook from Win7 Starter to Win10 Home
« on: July 24, 2016, 06:36 PM »
I was hoping to upgrade an old (2011 make) Acer Aspire One netbook from Windows 7 Starter edition to Windows 10 Home, to take advantage of the free offer.

I did a clean install from a USB stick, in the process wiping everything from the netbook.

Win10 Home managed to install, but it would not allow me to activate my product key, giving me the error code: 0xc004f210

I looked for a solution and one thing that seems to have worked for some people was to upgrade to Win 10 Pro version and then try the activation again. Unfortunately it didn't work in my case, I keep getting the same 0xc004f210 error code.

Would any of you know a way out of this situation? What are my options?

It seems that I can no longer downgrade back to Windows 7 Starter, as I wiped that from the system. I'd prefer not to reinstall it (unless that's my only option), as Win7 Starter was never that great.

I don't want to invest more money into this machine either, so buying a Win10 product key is not an option (the whole point was to try to take advantage of the free offer).

I suppose I could try to install Chromium or Linux on it, as last resort?

This was my first ever try to install Windows 10, and this experience is not encouraging me to upgrade my other devices at this point.

Any idea why MS doesn't want to recognise my legit product key with a legit upgrade path?

Any thoughts, suggestions would be appreciated, especially as there are only a few days left before this free offer disappears.

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General Software Discussion / How to encrypt external hard drives using USB in Windows 7 Pro and Home?
« on: April 03, 2016, 03:58 PM »
I would like to encrypt a few of my external hard drives (from 400GB to 1TB) that I connect to my machines via USB. I have never done this before, so I'd like to ask for advice on how to go about this.

These hard drives have family photos on them (no state secrets or anything illegal), and my main motivation is to protect my privacy, should I ever be burgled. So the encryption doesn't necessarily have to be industrial strength, just something for reasonable personal security.

I have searched around to see what kind of free solutions are out there. My PCs are running Win7 (Home and Pro). The online advice I came across so far I found somewhat confusing. E.g. some people said to use BitLocker, but for some reason my Windows 7 installations don't have BitLocker. The only thing I can find in my Win 7 Pro machine is called "Encrypting File System (EFS)." But it looks like it doesn't work on Win7 Home, so it would be a hassle to try to use an encrypted drive on both Pro and Home.

Any suggestions for a relatively hassle-free encryption solution for external hard drives for personal use that would work with both Win7 Home and Pro? Or does it mean that an external hard drive would only work with the machine that encrypted it? Sorry, I'm really clueless about how this is supposed to work. Ideally I'd like to be able to use such an encrypted hard drive across several machines using Win7 Home and Pro.

P.S. I'm also a bit worried about encrypting my drives and then losing the encryption keys or messing things up some other ways. It would be just as much of a disaster if I permanently lost access to our family photos by making the drives inaccessible. So what I'm saying is I need an idiot-proof solution.  ;)

P.P.S. It seems that since the Snowden revelations there are not many solutions out there that are generally trusted.

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PBOL / PBOL gauge text too big on hi res monitors
« on: December 09, 2015, 08:32 AM »
On my 14" monitor with 1920 x 1080 resolution, the guage text (such as "remaining" and "end date") stays too big (while the progress bar item name is displayed in much smaller font, which is fine).

The problem is that I'd like to have one single row with 5 bars (docked at the bottom of the screen, stretching across the whole screen), and while the bars with their item names fit in there fine, the start and end of each guage text gets cut off because the font is too big (not the same size as bar item name).

It's kind of nice to have the gauge text a bit bigger than the bar item name (as there is normally more room within a bar), but at the moment the font is a bit too big.

Mouser - any chance for an option to adjust the font size on the gauge text? (And a bit more love for this awsome tool!)  :-*

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PBOL / Request: 3rd option for dock mode - always visible but not reserve screen space
« on: October 06, 2015, 09:50 AM »
Would it be possible to add a third option for "dock mode," where it is always visible but it does not reserve screen space? This would also require that it does not remain on the top, when other windows are open (but could be brought forward e.g. by ALT+TAB or by clicking on the icon in the system tray). It would be nice if it could remember where it was left on the screen the last time.

The problem I have with the "slide dock out of the way" option is that if I have it docked to the bottom, it hides behind my Windows toolbar and I can't get it to unslide (or maybe it does unslide, but it's obscured by the toolbar).

Even if I dock it to other edges, it will only show if I do a mouse-over; however, this defeats to purpose of it being a reminder, as I have to remember first that it's there and that I need to check it.

The other option of course docks it permanently visibly, which is OK, but on some screens I'd prefer to use the real estate instead. This 3rd option would be a compromise between the other two.

Thanks for considering.

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General Software Discussion / Any tips for setting up a new Win7 laptop and installing lots of software fast?
« on: September 23, 2015, 06:01 PM »
My shiny new laptop has arrived (a Win7 Pro machine), and I will need to spend the weekend installing lots of my favourite software and scripts and data on it.

Would you have any tips on how to go about it? Is there some best practice on installing lots of software fast? Are there any things advisable to do on a new machine before the installation?

E.g. should I restart my system after a certain amount of installs?

It has a 1TB HDD, and 8GB RAM for now (both expandable, but no money left to do that right now). I'll need to install about 50 different software initially to set up my workspace (together it should come to between 200-300 GB of data).

The laptop came with an HP branded recovery DVD, it says

Application and Driver Recovery DVD
Contains software and drivers already installed. For software reinstallation and repair only. This disc contains software for MS Windows 7. For use with a licensed HP or Compaq PC.

Should I still make a recovery image of my own? Is that better to do before or after I install all my stuff?

My current strategy so far is:
  • let all the Windows updates download and install over the next couple of days;
  • install drivers for my various peripherals first (monitors, printer, scanner, camera, mouse etc.);
  • install Firefox, so I can download software to install;
  • install Dopus, so I can work more easily with files;
  • install MS Office 365;
  • and then install everything else (some other bigger software, like Dragon NaturallySpeaking, SmartDraw, but then mostly just dozens of little utilities and scripts I can't live without).

I haven't installed anything on it yet, other than the automatic Windows updates.

Any advice or tips would be very welcome.

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