Recent Posts

1

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by widgewunner on December 20, 2018, 09:13 PM »

Thank you - that is exactly what I was looking for!

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General Software Discussion / Win 10 setup to look like XP?

« Last post by widgewunner on December 19, 2018, 01:09 PM »

Background:  I'm running a 2012 gaming desktop and an HP laptop both running Win 7 (which I like).  My old XP box finally died and I am intimately familiar with Win versions 3.0 up through 7.

But, I've postponed my update beyond Win 7 as long as possible (and managed to avoid 8 altogether).  The Dell laptop I setup for my brother 10 years ago (running XP) is on its last legs and he asked me to set him up with a new box (he is non-tech).  I just bought him a new laptop, an ASUS ROG GL703GE gaming laptop (from Costco) which came with Win 10 Home - I think - I have not even dared to boot it up yet before doing my homework.  In the past, I have had good luck following the "Windows Annoyances" books and the tweak guides from tweakguides.com.  But when I just went to the tweakguides site, Koroush Ghazi (the author, a Windows expert I trust), says that Windows 10 is so bad that he was unable and unwilling to write a guide for Win 10.  I am not looking forward to the "learning experience" trying to get his new laptop to look and behave as his old trusty XP box.

Question: I have zero experience with 8, 8.1 or 10 and am looking for a "Old School Survivors Guide to Windows 10" or "How to make Win-10 look and feel like Win-XP".

Any suggestions?

He is not so concerned about the privacy issues (from what I've read so far, Win 10 is unavoidably spyware), I'm more concerned about getting a desktop that looks and feels like Win XP. (Same start menu and explorer look and feel).  I could return this if need be and pick out some other model (I'm guessing that Win 7 boxes are no longer available?)

Am I dreaming?

Thanks in advance - any help would be appreciated,
Jeff Roberson

3

General Software Discussion / Re: SQLite, SQL, SQLite Expert

« Last post by widgewunner on May 01, 2017, 11:14 AM »

Thanks for the public service announcement! - I am new to SQL and am using sqlite2 in a couple small projects and this info is indeed useful/helpful to me.

Thanks again!

4

General Software Discussion / Re: Batch Convert Outlook Express dbx files & folders to simple text

« Last post by widgewunner on May 31, 2016, 09:42 AM »

Well, I finally found my solution: OE Classic

This windows app is a free replacement for Outlook Express. It allows importing an entire OE folder/message tree and exporting it back out into plain text.eml files.

This (simple, clean and non-obtrusive) app has saved my butt!

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General Software Discussion / Batch Convert Outlook Express dbx files & folders to simple text

« Last post by widgewunner on November 27, 2015, 07:06 AM »

My main box is still happily running Windows XP (SP2) and my main email client is still Outlook Express (OE version 6.00.2900.2180).

I have thousands of emails stored in dozens of OE folders in an OE folder tree that goes about four levels deep. The single real file directory which contains all of these emails and OE folders consists of 571 dbx files and 832MB. I would like to convert all of the emails to simple text files and have them located in real file directories that correspond to the folder structure within OE.

Is there a simple way to accomplish this? My first thought was installing something like Thunderbird or other email client that is able to import OE dbx files, but if there's a better tool for the job, I'm all ears.

I am running Windows XP on my main box and Windows 7 on my newer rig (both are desktops). I have no other smart devices. I don't care about any of the attachments in any of the emails - just want to get the main body text into simple text files.

Thanks in advance for any help!
Jeff Roberson

6

General Software Discussion / Would TREE.com be useful?

« Last post by widgewunner on March 18, 2015, 08:55 AM »

The native TREE.com command line utility may be useful. It generates a text version of a directory tree structure.

[Select]

>tree /?
Graphically displays the folder structure of a drive or path.

TREE [drive:][path] [/F] [/A]

   /F   Display the names of the files in each folder.
   /A   Use ASCII instead of extended characters.

7

General Software Discussion / Re: Text editor with filtering of lines

« Last post by widgewunner on November 05, 2014, 11:33 AM »

EditPad Pro.  There's a "Fold" option in the search panel that does exactly this.

-mwb1100 (November 26, 2009, 02:59 AM)

+1 EPP rocks regex!

At $50 its a bargain (if you're into regex). I'm so hooked on its power now that I'd crawl a mile through a sewer and pay 10 times that much for it - and would *still* feel as though I got a good deal!

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General Software Discussion / Re: Need help confirming IE bug

« Last post by widgewunner on June 16, 2014, 05:02 PM »

I've added two more test pages in HTML5 with spellcheck=true and spellcheck=false:

Test IE10 paste bug (HTML5) 20140616_1400
Test IE10 paste bug (XHTML 1.0 Strict) 20140616_1400
Test IE10 paste bug (HTML5 - spellcheck="false") 20140616_1400
Test IE10 paste bug (HTML5 - spellcheck="true") 20140616_1400

It appears that the problem occurs when the "spellcheck=true" property on the TEXTAREA is set (or not present as this is the default), and compatibility mode is on. It does not occur if compatibility mode is off or if spellcheck=false.

However, the auto-spell correction occurs with the XHTML 1.0 Strict page when compatibility mode is on and this cannot be turned off by the page markup because spellcheck is not a valid XHTML TEXTAREA property.

I'd call that a bug.

And could someone else please verify this? - I'm at my wits end right now (other stressful things going on in real life at the moment...)

Additional: The auto-spellchecking/correction feature can be disabled entirely. Under Win7, uncheck the following checkbox:
IE Menu -> Tools -> Manage add-ons -> Spelling correction -> Enable spelling correction.

9

General Software Discussion / Re: Need help confirming IE bug

« Last post by widgewunner on June 16, 2014, 04:14 PM »

I've added a new test page that is valid XHTML 1.0 Strict and updated the other page to be valid HTML5 (it was missing a DOCTYPE and char encoding META tag). Here they are:

Test IE10 paste bug (HTML5) 20140616_1400
Test IE10 paste bug (XHTML 1.0 Strict) 20140616_1400

Both exhibit the same pasty-i2I behavior on my Win7Pro64 IE10 box.

10

General Software Discussion / Re: Need help confirming IE bug

« Last post by widgewunner on June 16, 2014, 03:06 PM »

... However the fact that it doesn't happen with other lowercase letters i tested, only "i" makes that explanation harder to swallow...

-mouser (June 16, 2014, 02:54 PM)

But "I" is a whole word in itself and is always capitalized in a sentence (unlike other single letters). I'm thinking some sort of spell checker thingy is goin' on here...

Edit: thanks for the spell check link. However, the original page where I found the error was XHTML 1.0 Strict - not HTML5. My app will remain XHTML which does not (I believe) include any sort of spell check property for the TEXTAREA element. I'm going to put together another minimal test page that is XHTML 1.0 Strict and run it up the flagpole. Standby...

11

General Software Discussion / Re: Need help confirming IE bug

« Last post by widgewunner on June 16, 2014, 01:44 PM »

Thanks for the feedback guys. I am thinking that maybe this is some sort of I-know-how-to-spell-this-word-better-than-you-and-here-let-me-fix-it-for-you-automatically-and-without-telling-you Windows under-the-covers thing. I tried playing with the various auto-complete features but that didn't help. I know next to zero about all the features of the recent IE versions so this was mystifying to me when I uncovered it last night. I'm still running XP32Pro on my main box and have a lot of catching up to do getting used to the new "streamlined" look and feel of the recent MS products.

When my little app ran fine under IE6 and FF2 I just naturally assumed (whistling in the dark), that it would work ok in the faster, more modern browsers. NOT! (But luckily, this was not the fault of my app, but that of IE - not sure how to deal with a workaround).

Good to know that it happens with IE11 as well - thanks mouser!

BTW - This problem is critical for my app because it takes in a (very precise) regex string such as: "var myre = /regex/i;" and attempts to decode it - and this doesn't work too well when that (very important) lowercase "i" gets changed to uppercase!

Edit 2014-06-16 12pm MDT Turns out I'm running IE 10.0.9200.16921 and not 10.0.17 as originally reported (have corrected the original post, too).

12

General Software Discussion / Need help confirming IE bug

« Last post by widgewunner on June 16, 2014, 12:23 PM »

I'm developing a new javascript web application (RegexTidy) and I've run into some strange behavior on IE10. When certain text is pasted into an HTML TEXTAREA textbox, IE (when running in compatibility mode) mysteriously and randomly - (about half the time) changes the text by making a lowercase "i" to be uppercase. I've boiled the problem down to a simple test case which reproduces the problem. Here's the simple code:

[Select]

<html>
<head><title>Test IE10 paste bug 20140616</title></head>
<body><h1>Test IE10 paste bug 20140616</h1>
<h2>How to reproduce the bug:</h2>
<ol> <li>Turn on compatibility mode.</li>
<li>Select the full contents of the textbox below (two lines).</li>
<li>Copy the contents of the textbox below into the Windows clipboard.</li>
<li>Delete the contents of the textbox.</li>
<li>Paste the clipboard contents back into the textbox.</li>
<li>The lowercase "i" at the end will mysteriously (and randomly) be
capitalized to "I" (about half the time).</li>
</ol>
<p><textarea>/*#!!#*/
i;</textarea></p>
</body></html>

I've posted this page to my personal website here: Test IE10 paste bug 20140616.

Can any of you guys reproduce this bug?

Note that I'm running Win7Pro and get this under IE 10.0.17 IE 10.0.9200.16921. Note also that I rarely run IE, (I'm mostly an Opera man) - but my new app must work well in all browsers, thus I must walk bravely through the valley of EYE-EEE.  

Would you guys be so kind as to report your results (along with your specific Windows and IE version)?

I'm curious if this happens in IE7, 8 or 11 as well (I currently only have access to IE5.5, 6, 9 and 10).

Thanks for any help with this!

p.s. I've opened a new question on MS's website - See: IE10 BUG: clipboard data modified when pasted into TEXTAREA but don't hold out much hope of getting a good answer there.

Edit: 2014-06-16 12pm MDT Corrected the IE version number - (upon closer inspection, IE's About page shows the Update Versions to be 10.0.17).

13

General Software Discussion / Re: Finding Outlook Express password

« Last post by widgewunner on March 01, 2014, 06:12 PM »

SIW will do it. Quick, easy and free!

Look under: SIW -> Software -> Passwords

(Edit: I see now that the info is not on your boot drive - may not work as expected...)

14

General Software Discussion / Re: Software longevity

« Last post by widgewunner on March 01, 2014, 06:06 PM »

ZTree for Windows (reborn from XTree (for DOS)) .

Cannot. Live. Without.

15

General Software Discussion / Re: Best method for a dead simple web site?

« Last post by widgewunner on December 14, 2013, 12:34 PM »

Drupal!

er... no, I meant to say WordPress!

16

General Software Discussion / Re: Does anyone know of a software that can record file modification times?

« Last post by widgewunner on December 04, 2013, 10:40 PM »

Wouldn't SysInternals Process Monitor do the trick? (It now includes the functionality of the legacy FILEMON and REGMON utilities.) It has extensive logging powers but possibly a steep learning curve.

17

General Software Discussion / Re: The Non-Notepad(MS) Thread!

« Last post by widgewunner on July 27, 2013, 09:11 AM »

I'm slightly surprised not to see any love for EditPad Lite here, given how popular EditPad Pro has historically been.  Maybe "Free for Personal Use" is too much limitation?

-rjbull (July 15, 2013, 02:25 PM)

+1 Yes, EditPad Lite is a superb tabbed text editor.

-IainB (July 22, 2013, 11:44 PM)

+1
And EditPadLite now features the same JGSoft regex engine as its big brother. Note also that as of v6, Notepad++ now incorporates the very powerful PCRE regex engine so that is worth a look-see (if regex search/replace is important to you).

Get 10 people in a room and you'll have a dozen different opinions on the best text editor.

18

General Software Discussion / Re: Video rant against Windows 8

« Last post by widgewunner on December 22, 2012, 01:23 PM »

Thanks for the link to the very well done video. If true, the (un)usability points made (e.g. mystery-meat navigation, empty settings page, etc.) are unforgivable. I am still running XP on my main box but it looks like I'll be migrating to Linux sooner rather than later. In the meantime its probably time to pick up a retail version of Win7Pro while its still available.

I blame Apple (where design, look and feel trump power and functionality - Who needs a right mouse button when having just one is so... elegant?). Microsoft has drunk (drank? drunken? dranken?) their cool aid. Funny, I feel the same way as the video author (unbelievably frustrated) whenever I have to sit down and get something done on a Mac. Where is the right click context menu anyway?

Mouse? We don't need no stinking mouse! (or keyboard.)

No Win8/Metro in my near future. But then again, I'm not the guy in their marketing targets. I'd rather have a VT-100 connected to a 64KB PDP-11 with 8" floppies and a 10MB Winchester hard disk running RT-11 or RSX! (Well, not really, but just about!) Yeah, I know - I need to join the 21st century. Although I do feel like Abe Simpson sometimes, it appears that the lowest common denominator truly is getting lower and lower.

19

General Software Discussion / Re: which is the proven fastest way to search for and find a file ?

« Last post by widgewunner on October 01, 2012, 10:43 PM »

Remembering where you put it in the first place.

20

General Software Discussion / Re: yet another file manager thread...

« Last post by widgewunner on September 23, 2012, 10:52 AM »

I can't imagine working without my beloved ZTreeWin. If you're keyboard freak like me, I bet nothing can beat it regarding the speed and effectiveness of work. I'm bringing it everywhere with me on a flash disk.

The new upcoming version (at the moment in beta), includes mode for bulk managing directories. Definitely worth trying!

-yksyks (April 09, 2012, 12:29 PM)

ZTreeWin +1

21

General Software Discussion / Re: Simplifying Your Computer

« Last post by widgewunner on August 23, 2012, 09:20 AM »

i think when you get to wanting to uninstall 100 programs, that's when you are probably better off formatting the hard drisk, and installing a clean coy of windows, and just reinstalling the programs you use on the new clean pc.

-mouser (August 23, 2012, 05:20 AM)

+1 just what I would suggest.

Just last week I hauled off 3 old boxes to the dump. They have a section there which recycles electrical waste (hopefully in a better manner than the Colorado outfit highlighted on "60 Minutes"). Its really hard to throw away perfectly operational devices, but doing so is quite liberating. Now its onto the still-usable pile destined for goodwill...

22

General Software Discussion / Re: How to win friends. Microsoft to CIOs: Adopt Windows 8 - or else.

« Last post by widgewunner on March 09, 2012, 11:52 AM »

Great thread. Thanks 40Hz for the excellent advice and (obviously) well thought out predictions for the future. (Kinda scary, but your logic seems sound to me.)

You can pull my not-required-to-be-connected-to-the-internet Win32XPproSP2 box with MSVC6, Python, PHP and Perl from my cold dead fingers!

With all the disks from my old MSDN subscription, I have everything I need to stay happy, windows-wise for the foreseeable future (as long as my old hardware hangs in there - maybe its time to stock up on some spares...)

23

General Software Discussion / JavaScript or Python

« Last post by widgewunner on October 10, 2011, 10:16 PM »

I would second the motion recommending JavaScript (which is and will remain _everywhere_). To learn it proper-like, get and study Flanagan's The Definitive Guide. The recently released 6th edition covers the most recent JavaScript version (ECMAScript5) and all the cool new HTML5 stuff that will soon be running the net. One great thing about JavaScript is that to get started, all you need is a browser and a text editor.

That said, there's also lots of really smart folks who like Python.

24

General Software Discussion / Re: recommend a flexible *command line capable* MP3 tag and rename program?

« Last post by widgewunner on September 04, 2011, 09:21 AM »

Although a GUI, MP3Tag does everything you need. Takes a while to come up to speed, but the effort spent is worth it. It has very powerful renaming and tag data manipulation features (including regex) that can be applied to individual files, directories and entire branches.

Highly recommended.

25

General Software Discussion / Re: Software Hall of Fame

« Last post by widgewunner on August 07, 2011, 10:33 AM »

... only retards and kids did 100%-assembly applications even back then ...

-f0dder (August 05, 2011, 05:42 PM)

I find this statement to be more than just a little bit offensive.