Topics

376

General Software Discussion / DriveAlive 1.2

« on: April 09, 2010, 02:42 PM »

I recently got a couple of USB 3.0 docking stations.  They work well but they have an idle time-out to spin the drives down that's not adjustable afaict.

I wrote a small AutoIt3 program to sit in the tray to keep the drives alive.  It's useful in situations when you know there may be a lag before some program you are using outputs to the drive and you want to avoid the drive spinning down, only to spin back up again a minute or so later.

The way it works is simple.  Through the shortcut Target line or via the command line, you specify drive letters, with colon, for the drives to keep alive(e.g. DriveAlive x: y: z: etc..)  It does this by creating an empty file named drive_alive_dummy.txt in the root of each drive, and overwriting it every 5 minutes.

The Tray Icon Tooltip shows the drives currently being kept alive.
Select Exit from the Tray Icon Menu to kill the program.

Running DriveAlive with no params shows a usage dialog.

Note that DriveAlive does not support UNC pathnames.
To use it with a mapped network drive, make sure you
have file creation/modification privileges on the share.

The dummy file on each drive is deleted on program exit.
DriveAlive does not create any Registry settings or .ini files.

The latest version is currently available for download:
http://www.favessoft.com/downloads.html

377

General Software Discussion / HCenc beta

« on: April 07, 2010, 09:01 PM »

New HCenc beta

http://www.videohelp.com/tools/HC

378

Found Deals and Discounts / Sharkoon USB 3.0 QuickPort Dock

« on: April 01, 2010, 10:43 AM »

I took the USB 3.0 plunge.  This can be a good solution for those with off the shelf PCs where adding an internal HD is not so easy. Or you may just want to have USB 3.0 for the future. If you have a PCIx1 Express slot free and can deal with opening the side panel and inserting a card, this is probably the way to go.

I added an SIIG USB 3.0 card.  This is the model:

http://www.newegg.co...5150161&Tpk=siig usb 3.0 card

Note: At the time I bought it, it was a better deal at $39.99 with free shipping.

The Sharkoon USB 3.0 docking station is the current deal.  $52.99 with free shipping:

http://www.buy.com/p...c/101/214876940.html

A couple of notes.  After I installed the SIIG card I had to wait for the Sharkoon so I hooked up a Seagate USB 2.0 external.  Even with the USB 2.0 I got a throughput improvement of about 15 to 20%. I use WD Caviar Black 3 Gb/sec in my docks.  With the Sharkoon USB 3.0 dock I was able to read a 6 GB Macrium Reflect image from the dock to my HD at 90 MB/sec.  Explorer can be optimistic with speed assessment in the copy dialog info, so I used Clementime stopwatch and PCalc to compute the rough transfer speed.  It really got the 90 MB/sec.  CrystalDiskMark was giving sequential read/write speeds of about 86 MB/sec before I defragged the WD.  Since the drives are plugged into a UPS I enabled the "Performance" setting for the USB 3.0 card in Device Manager to turn on write caching.

I was hoping for large file copy at around 80 MB/sec having looked at some online benchmarks before buying.  So far I'm very happy with the results.

The Sharkoon comes with a 6' USB 3.0 cable and a power pack.  Also has an On/Off push button.  I think the Sharkoon is made in Germany.  The power pack plug has a slot in it so you can slide in one of 3 provided adapters for electric outlet types.

The only mystery so far with the Sharkoon is if there is or isn't a way to toggle the inactivity spin down.  It seems to have some intelligence built in about when to spin down the drive.  But after a day of use I did not get any "drive not ready" errors.  If I tried to play a movie on the drive that was spun down, the player just waited for the drive to spin up, and continued. I'd prefer to keep the drives spinning all the time, but these Caviar Black run a bit hot.  They way Sharkoon does it may be a good thing in the long run.

If any of you have the Thermaltake BlacX USB 2.0 docks, the Sharkoon looks nearly identical.  The only difference I found other than speed is the BlacX doesn't spin down my drives when inactive.

379

General Software Discussion / AVStoDVD 2.3.0 Alpha

« on: March 24, 2010, 05:08 PM »

http://www.videohelp.com/tools/AVStoDVD

He's calling it Alpha, but I did some runs with it on both my PCs and didn't have an issue.

The best new feature is drop down boxes for Upsize Filter and Downsize Filter replacing a single drop down for sizer filter.  No need to keep changing depending on the source resolution.  Put in your favorite upsize filter and downsize filter and set them as default.

Also the HCenc is updated to the latest 0.24 beta.
Well, see the link for all the changes.

380

Found Deals and Discounts / MakeMKV beta 1.6.15

« on: March 21, 2010, 09:58 PM »

MakeMKV released another beta today.  Should be good for 60 days iirc.

This program is nice if you have a set top player like WD HDTV for USB or similar that plays .mkv.

The nice feature over utilities that just sit in the tray and open the disc in the BDROM is this sifts through the files and presents a list of titles, filtering out stuff too short to be of interest.  It also has a mechanism to get forced subtitles.

It is a beta but the pricing has been set at $50, no subscription or renewal fees.. just a flat $50.
Here's the link to it on videohelp:

http://www.videohelp.com/tools/MakeMKV

381

General Software Discussion / Macrium Image Virtualization Tool Beta

« on: March 18, 2010, 01:31 PM »

For those interested in virtualization tools, this beta creates a VHD from a Macrium Reflect backup image:

http://www.macrium.c...riumImageBackup.aspx

It's a beta so proceed with caution.   Er, you might want to have an image backup of your system heh heh heh

382

Found Deals and Discounts / Verbatim DVD+R 16x a quarter apiece

« on: March 09, 2010, 06:25 PM »

I've had good luck with these blanks:

http://www.newegg.co...17-507-003-_-Product

Verbatim DVD+R 16x metallic finish
A quarter apiece delivered.

383

Post New Requests Here / Something like 7Stacks, without the lag

« on: March 08, 2010, 12:52 PM »

I was using 7Stacks to reduce the clutter on my Vista QuickLaunch Bar. I already have RocketDock.  But it was neat to have icons for categories like Internet or whatnot and a glass panel slides up with several program icons.

Only thing is, now even if my HD is not busy and even freshly defragged, 7Stacks takes like 10 or 12 seconds to slide up the panel.  Click and I get the twirling mouse cursor for 12 seconds. Totally useless.
(I tried  uninstalling and reinstalling.. no difference.)

I'm wondering if anyone knows of a free alternative that has similar action.  Maybe not Glass but a slide-up panel like how WinAmp opens the equalizer, with a set of icons may be useful.  Right now I'm using a shortcut to a folder but it's not the same.

384

Found Deals and Discounts / DVDFab Passkey

« on: March 07, 2010, 10:37 PM »

If you call 2 months free usage a deal, then I guess it's a "deal."

http://www.videohelp...tools/DVDFab_Passkey

Works just like AnyDVD.  They say it's free as long as it's in beta.  I don't know what they plan on charging when it's out of beta, but the About box says it's good to May 7 and I installed it today.

I tried it on one BluRay.  About 19 GB of stuff on the disk. I just did an explorer drag & drop copy.  It copied the entire contents to my HD in about 28 minutes.

Seems comparable or maybe a bit faster than MakeMKV.  MakeMKV when it goes out of beta is going to be $50 one shot "lifetime" license.  It may be a better deal in the long run.  Every other BluRay solution I've seen they want another $$ fix every so often.

385

General Software Discussion / Toggle2 v. 1.9

« on: February 23, 2010, 07:35 PM »

I released Toggle2 v. 1.0.  You may download from this page:

http://www.favessoft.com/hotkeys.html

It is a simplified version of Toggle dedicated to toggling the active window only.

The position and size information is not persistent.  As soon as Toggle2 exits or the particular window is closed, the information is discarded.  For permanent desktop window setups there are plenty of window sizer utilities already.

Toggle just allows you to set 2 non-maximized positions and sizes for the active window, for that session.

Usage is extremely simple.  Let it sit in the tray.  Hit the hotkey with an ordinary explorer or application window active. If no position info has been stored yet, you'll be prompted to move and size the window.

The default hotkey is Alt-F10.  You can change it using the Tray Icon Menu.  The About Dialog shows the current hotkey.  Also if Glass is enabled you can customize the About Dialog background color and it will use Glass.

Position info is just stored in an array indexed by window handle.
There's a "Clear Position Settings" command in the Tray Icon Menu.
It has a confirmation dialog to give you a chance to back out.

The program creates an .ini file in the same folder as the .exe.  There's no install or uninstall.
The only info stored in the .ini is the Hotkey and background color(called Vista Color.)

The program saves the .ini file on exit so there's no point editing the .ini while the thing is running. It will be overwritten.

Toggle2 is free for you to use at your own risk.

(I guess I must hate the Maximize Button)

edit: Added short delay after double-clicking Tray Icon to show About Dialog.  This avoids accidentally clicking another icon while the Tray Icon is temporarily hidden during About Dialog display.

386

General Software Discussion / ResizeExplorer 1.1.0.3

« on: February 19, 2010, 08:17 PM »

ResizeExplorer v. 1.0 is available on my downloads page:

http://milesaheadsoftware.tk/

It just sits in the tray and the first Explorer window it sees, it
sizes and positions it.  Before it is initialized, it will move Explorer
to x,y 0,0 width 600 height 600 just to show it's working. Size
and position Explorer then use the Save Explorer Position and Size
command in the Tray Icon Menu to save the setting to the .ini
file that is written in the same folder as the .exe when the program
closes.

This is just for those situations where you can't get Windows to
remember where you want the Explorer to open and the window
size.

It only messes with Explorer the first time an Explorer window opens
while it is running.  Close all Explorer windows and it is "armed" again.

edit: changed default sleep time to 1/10th second.  Seems much more
responsive without hogging CPU.  If it runs up CPU on your system
you can bump it up a bit using the .ini file setting.

387

General Software Discussion / FF 3.6 portable is pretty cool

« on: February 18, 2010, 01:10 AM »

I ran across an article on the web how to run Firefox from a ramdisk.  I messed around with it for awhile and decided I really didn't want the ramdisk.  But it got me to try Firefox 3.6 portable. I ended up running it from an external USB drive I always have on.  The reason I did it is sometimes I start some disk intensive job, like a video mux, then remember I want to get or read something from the web.  Well, forget about waiting for FF to load off the same HD that's doing a video mux.  But in those situations I can just launch the portable Firefox.

Using syncplaces it was easy to just download all my bookmarks. I installed a couple of essential AddOns.  Once I killed the splash screen it loaded up nice and spiffy from the USB.

388

General Software Discussion / Toggle 1.5

« on: February 13, 2010, 01:24 PM »

Toggle may be found on this page: http://www.favessoft.com/hotkeys.html

I have changed the design of Toggle to simply alternate between a "green" and "red" toggle state.  It no longer centers windows. It simply saves the current position and size of the associated window, and moves the window to the other saved position and size.  If the other state has not been initialized, a message dialog pops up to advise you to size and move the window as you like.

It's really for myself to have a hotkey to alternate 2 non-maximized Firefox window sizes.  But especially for browsers you may find it useful.

If you are using a window sizer utility then this is likely way too simple for your taste.

I coded it to just return from the hotkey or mouse double click on the tray icon and do nothing, if the window is in maximized state.  It doesn't try to intercept any windows sizing or movement messages.  It simply uses AutoIt3 functions to remember window size and position and move the window to a saved size/position.

Likely there are still some bugs but I think it's usable as it is at least for a single window browser or editor. If you notice the icon state gets confused or other inconsistency the likely fix is to close it down and delete the Toggle.ini file.  Toggle will create it again on the next run.

Now it enforces single instance and also saves state to an .ini file between runs.
See the included Readme.txt for more info.

389

General Software Discussion / Nice write-up for my HalfShell

« on: January 28, 2010, 01:05 PM »

I got a nice write-up for my HalfShell ahk hack.  It's just a hotkey handler for Shift-Enter on 64 bit Vista and Windows Seven that opens selected folders in the 32 bit shell allowing some 32 bit shell extensions to work.

I recently updated it to empty its working set after each use to reduce the memory usage just sitting in the task tray.  I also added a test that the selection is a folder before opening. Latest version is 1.7.1.0 and can be downloaded from my site using this link(scroll about half way down the page and you'll find HalfShell.)

http://www.favessoft.com/hotkeys.html

The download on my site has the latest version.  Softpedia will likely update overnight.



edit: this is interesting.  All of a sudden google pops this up everywhere.  It's on boards saying it's "time limited shareware price $0" other boards saying it's Removed(as close as I can figure they were pissed because a hotkey tray app has no screen shot when I never submitted my program to them in the first place.)  Man the web is wild!!!

390

Found Deals and Discounts / Verbatim DVD+R 16x blanks $30 per hundred including shipping

« on: January 11, 2010, 04:19 PM »

I just checked NewEgg.com as now and then they have 100 Pack cake boxes of Verbatim DVD+R 16x for righteous money.  Sure enough I got an order in for $23.99 standard shipping free.  For a quarter I can risk a coaster now and then.

I don't know how long it's on.  I just went to the product as that's the DVD+R I always use.  The cheap price is not for the Hub Printable with the white latex.  Only the gold brush metal color jobs. These are the same ones you frequently see on sale in OfficeMax for around the same money.  I've had very good luck with them.  Here's the link:

http://www.newegg.co...17-507-003-_-Product

391

General Software Discussion / Firefox 3.6 final, which is the same as RC 2 Jan 15 build .. is out

« on: January 06, 2010, 11:56 AM »

They officially released FF 3.6.  This is the same code as FF RC2 Jan. 15 Build 1 release. I've been using it since then.  Seems stable.

Just for grins I downloaded the 3.6 final English 32 bit installer and the md5 sum is the same as the Jan. 15 RC2.

If you're running that version no need to download.

392

General Software Discussion / Sandboxie goes 64 bit

« on: January 05, 2010, 12:52 PM »

Sandboxie goes 64 bit

http://www.sandboxie...viewtopic.php?t=7014

Supports Vista64 SP1 or later and 64 bit W7.

393

General Software Discussion / Fave Folder hotkey utility

« on: December 27, 2009, 09:48 PM »

I found that very often I was opening the same target folder for drag & drop operations. I wrote a small hotkey utility in AutoHotKey so that I can move folders to this target folder directly from the source without drag & drop. Also as a convenience you may hotkey on the desktop to just open the Fave Folder. By default the target is Documents but you may change this using the Tray Icon Menu.

The idea is to move folders with large files on the same partition via a Windows directory entry reassignment. Moving to a different partition is not prevented but unless the files are small I'd use Windows Drag & Drop or some command line copy function instead.

Also the selections for hotkey move must be folders only. Otherwise an error will be generated. For moving a mix of multiple files and folders use drag & drop. If there is an error during the move, a dialog pops up telling you which folder had the problem, then the loop continues if more than one folder was selected.

Here's the page for download:

Hotkeys

394

Post New Requests Here / Idea: Focus Theft Delayer

« on: December 19, 2009, 01:34 PM »

I read the thread about stealing focus. The focus queue idea seems the best.  But I would suggest avoiding any kind of notification be it audio or visual.  The monitor should be a Tray app with an adjustable activity delay.  When you are typing, requests for focus are queued.  Once the inactivity hits the time-out, then the next focus request in the queue should be processed.  Perhaps there should be another adjustable pause to allow you to decide if you will provide any input to the new item that has the focus(e.g. click in a dialog box or whatever) and if that times out, go to the next in queue.

The monitor should only take the focus when responding to the Tray Icon Context Menu to set the time-out values, other options(start when Windows starts) or exit etc..

How to respond to dialogs with System Modal stay on top I'm not sure.  But perhaps someone who has written similar monitor type utilities would know how to deal with window activation requests in such circumstances.

395

General Software Discussion / EnableSuperfetch and EnablePrefetcher settings Vista/W7 ??

« on: December 05, 2009, 04:21 PM »

Has anyone a definitive source on the meanings for EnableSuperfetch and EnablePrefetcher values in the Prefetch Parameters?


[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters]

I see all kinds of conflicting statements on web sites.  Most say that EnablePrefetcher value means: 0 no caching, 1 cache applications, 2 cache boot files, 3 cache both

and those sites usually say nothing about the EnableSuperfetch value.

Some sites have it the opposite where the values 0 to 3 are for EnableSuperfetch.

I've even seen some that suggest you set EnablePrefetcher to 5.  The only thing that looked like it mentioned both keys on Microsoft site was in a foreign language(couldn't figure out which language it was to paste it into a translator.)

Anyone have the definitive source on these settings?

396

Site/Forum Features / Feature Req: quote only selected text?

« on: December 01, 2009, 11:49 PM »

On a lot of boards if you select a portion of the text in a post you are replying to, only the selected text is included when you hit the Quote button to reply.  Would be a nice convenience if it's doable.

397

General Software Discussion / Tray 2.5.0.3

« on: November 20, 2009, 04:24 PM »

Tray 2.5.0.3 may be downloaded here:

http://www.favessoft.com/downloads.html

edit: (was test request but I have more info - see last post)

398

General Software Discussion / Firefox 3.5.5/3.6 Beta 2 - Netflix and Silverlight - watch online

« on: November 08, 2009, 11:04 PM »

Not that I want to sit and watch movies over broadband in a browser from Netflix, but since I have an account and they claimed they wouldn't bill me later(as in no extra charge) I was curious.

I downloaded the Silverlight plugin.  I could only get audio with Firefox 3.6 latest beta, but the new Firefox 3.5.5 seems to work fine.

For those flicks that have the play online option, it can be a good way to sample before renting the DVD.  I've only tried it on Windows Seven 32 bit at this point. If you have a Netflix account it may be worth checking out.  If you google you should hit an MS page with a grid of supported OS and browser combinations.

399

General Software Discussion / Some FavesSoft Hotkey programs updated for Windows 7

« on: October 30, 2009, 05:54 PM »

FavesSoft Hotkey programs listed below were updated for Windows 7

FolderCache
HomeFolder
Pasty
ReOpen
Selector

It's just a minor update for Windows version number detection.  In Windows 7 a memory optimization may not be called since the version of AutoIt3 used did not have an enumeration for Windows Seven OS.  It's just a reduction of memory working set and a minor optimization at that.  Latest corrected programs can be downloaded from this link:

http://www.favessoft.com/hotkeys.html

400

General Software Discussion / Minefield(Firefox) 3.7Pre seems to work

« on: October 25, 2009, 06:34 PM »

Hmmmmmmm I'm trying the Oct. 25 Minefield 3.7Pre I downloaded from nightly builds:
http://ftp.mozilla.o...ightly/latest-trunk/

and it seems to work with my AddOns(with version checking disabled of course.)

So far the only thing I see new is Windows 7 Jump List support.  The browser itself doesn't seem any faster than 3.6 beta.

I haven't seen anything flaky yet so I'll leave it on W7 for a bit.
Maybe I'll even use one of those Jump List thingies if I remember they are there.