Recent Posts

1201

General Software Discussion / Re: Recommendations Destroying Storage Media??

« Last post by nosh on December 24, 2007, 02:05 AM »

Encrypt --> Erase --> Destroy/Donate.

Edit: Or did I just demonstrate my ignorance here?  That's what I do anyway 

1202

General Software Discussion / Re: Launchy 2.0... and something else

« Last post by nosh on December 24, 2007, 01:59 AM »

And its now much slower to start up when I press the hotkey.

-icekin (December 23, 2007, 05:32 AM)

It's instantaneous here. Maybe you have "fade in" enabled?

1203

General Software Discussion / Re: How many of you use encryption?

« Last post by nosh on December 22, 2007, 06:22 AM »

Several encryption apps running here. Cryptext being the most used coz it's so damn fast - perfect for "casual" use.
I've found CD Lock the most transparent method for encrypting removable media.

1204

General Software Discussion / Re: Fantastic: XsX Alphablended Cursors

« Last post by nosh on December 21, 2007, 05:18 AM »

Was pointed to this thread via Ghacks. Hey! DonationCoder! Nice site! 

M using MS's Aero set... Vista isn't all bad after all! 

1205

General Software Discussion / Re: Any web service for file storing?

« Last post by nosh on December 21, 2007, 03:47 AM »

Lashiec, do remember that you have to register first if you want to avail the permanent hosting benefit. You can upload and hotlink straight away without registering, but the files will be deleted after a few days.

1206

General Software Discussion / Re: Any web service for file storing?

« Last post by nosh on December 20, 2007, 11:36 AM »

Divshare.com

"Forever" storage, direct linking allowed.

1207

General Software Discussion / Re: Searching for the best read-aloud software

« Last post by nosh on December 20, 2007, 02:27 AM »

A free copy of TextAloud 2.266 is available on G.O.T.D.

For those of you interested but not familiar with G.O.T.D, the offers will last just a few hours, so act fast.

1208

General Software Discussion / Re: My Stupid Windows Question for the Day!

« Last post by nosh on December 19, 2007, 01:57 AM »

assuming I don't want to keep my documents on an external drive, does placing them under C:\Documents and Settings or C:\Program Files offer any extra protection from viruses, trojans or hackers than putting them in any random folder on my computer like just C:\My Docs ?

-vegas (December 18, 2007, 04:20 PM)

Vegas, my guess would be putting your docs in a random folder rather than the locations decided by Windows would make them slightly less vulnerable for the simple reason that if a trojan is out to seek and destroy your data that's probably the first place it'll look. I wouldn't get any sense of security from doing that coz sadly, malware writers do have the ability to scour the rest of your drives too. 

1209

Developer's Corner / Re: AHK: Checking if Firefox has open tabs

« Last post by nosh on December 18, 2007, 12:56 AM »

Lanux, nice! 

I didn't run the script as is but modded mine a bit and though I run FF with the title bar disabled, it works just fine. It's very rare that I would have blank tabs mixed with active ones so the caveat is quite acceptable. Thanks! 

1210

Developer's Corner / Re: AHK: Checking if Firefox has open tabs

« Last post by nosh on December 17, 2007, 11:55 PM »

Thanks Lanux, but I think you misunderstood me. I already have TMP installed and the "Do not close..." option is checked.
The script doesn't close Firefox in any case, but I want FF to minimize if there are no active tabs (i.e: just a blank tab: "Untitled").
 

1211

General Software Discussion / Re: Tongue in Cheek Review of Windows XP

« Last post by nosh on December 17, 2007, 07:46 AM »

I really hope they're reading this at MS.

1212

Developer's Corner / AHK: Checking if Firefox has open tabs

« Last post by nosh on December 17, 2007, 04:35 AM »

I'm a total AutoHotKey novice but hashed up the following script to close apps with "numpad enter".
There are a couple of exceptions though, the calculator (which I don't want to close with numpadenter, for obvious reasons) and Firefox where I close the active tab, rather than the app itself.


NumpadEnter::

; Firefox gets a close tab command
     IfWinActive ,ahk_class MozillaUIWindowClass
     {      send ^w
            return
     }
     else

; Calc gets normal behavior for a numpad enter
     IfWinActive ,ahk_class CALCVIEWCLASS
     {    send {Enter}
          return
     }

; Send Alt+F4 to everything else
 PostMessage, 0x112, 0xF060,,, A


I would additionally like to minimize Firefox if there is only a blank "Untitled" tab open, is there some hack to test for this?

1213

General Software Discussion / Re: My Stupid Windows Question for the Day!

« Last post by nosh on December 17, 2007, 03:47 AM »

I've had all my installed programs on D: (root drive) for years. I keep the data separately on E:
So when I backup my system I just make an image containing c: and d: - a different data backup cycle is used for e:

1214

General Software Discussion / Re: Choppy video playback in full screen

« Last post by nosh on December 16, 2007, 06:04 PM »

Nice coincidence. Just read about a new (final) KMPlayer release on 9down.
http://www.9down.com...-3-1428-Final-20348/

1215

General Software Discussion / Re: Choppy video playback in full screen

« Last post by nosh on December 16, 2007, 05:47 PM »

I've given up on breaking my head over common/external codecs. Try using something like KMPlayer with internal codecs only, I suppose the latter two you mentioned fall in that category...
Do the dxdiag.exe tests run smooth? I've also noticed that having certain apps running (non-minimized) behind the player can hit performance badly.

1216

General Software Discussion / Re: My Stupid Windows Question for the Day!

« Last post by nosh on December 16, 2007, 05:35 PM »

I just ignore the 'My' series and save all my personal data at another location. Lots of apps feel free to create their own subfolder within these anyway and I wouldn't want my personal data getting mixed with all that junk.
I have a feeling that if you rename these folders they will sooner or later be regenerated by some app or another and you'll just have dupes on your hands, leave them alone and make your own data folders hierarchy instead.

1217

General Software Discussion / Re: How do you 'capture' a BSOD?

« Last post by nosh on December 16, 2007, 04:38 PM »

It lets you quickly place windows where you want with a lot more precision than Windows 'tile' function. If you're running one app maximized per monitor at all times it won't be much use.

It uses very intuitive shortcut keys, Ctrl+Alt+Numpad 1-9. The numpad keys apply directionally, for example Ctrl+Alt+9 places the active app to the top right corner (quarter screen occupied), Ctrl+Alt+8 would make it occupy the top half of the screen. Kind of like a game's controls. You'll drag apps around and resize borders manually a lot less once you start using it.

1218

General Software Discussion / Re: How do you 'capture' a BSOD?

« Last post by nosh on December 16, 2007, 12:37 PM »

I'm running an nVidia card too [FX6200], the Desktop manager acted up very early on and I've had it disabled since.
Ultramon & WinSplit Revolution are more than capable of handling everything I need.

1219

General Software Discussion / Re: How do you 'capture' a BSOD?

« Last post by nosh on December 16, 2007, 07:47 AM »

D-oh! Thanks.

1220

General Software Discussion / Re: How do you 'capture' a BSOD?

« Last post by nosh on December 16, 2007, 07:42 AM »

Thanks f0dder & Tinjaw (f0dder mentioned the auto restart tip in his post too ) . It was probably a loose connection then - most likely to the gfx card. I thought of swapping the adapter ports coz Dxdiag (esp. directdraw test 2 - the block bouncing in 'normal' mode) was clearly more responsive for the non-DVI output, it started off a bit slow on the DVI port before picking up speed.

Though the PC didn't restart on its own during these freezes, I did have 'Automatically restart' enabled, it obviously makes sense to have that disabled. In my case the BSOD flickered for a split second before the display got garbled again - no restart though. I have been running with a paging file

Spoiler

read something on TweakGuides about Windows absolutely needing one, irrespective of mem size

but on another drive so it sucks to enable it on C: too, for the mem dump. I'll know what to do the next time something acts up tho.

PS: The freezes were sporadic but one particular OpenGL screensaver (Euphoria, from the ultramon people) jammed things up every single time. Just out of curiosity: We keep regular DirectX updates but what about OpenGL? How does one go about updating their libraries?

1221

Living Room / Re: Overheard on the Internets

« Last post by nosh on December 16, 2007, 04:08 AM »

<mouser> my hubby does a lot of bitching while in the car, does that count?

<tinjaw> but, check out my t & a !!

That's it! I'm never going on DC chat! 

1222

General Software Discussion / Re: How do you 'capture' a BSOD?

« Last post by nosh on December 16, 2007, 03:47 AM »

Duly noted. The crashes happened around two weeks back, I cleared out the previous logs between crashes and investigated every single entry in the event viewer thereafter. I'm pretty certain there weren't any 'BugCheck' entries there. Thanks again.

PS: I get the fact that I can't use the Debugging Tools if I don't actually have a bugcheck code to refer, sorry if I wasn't clear earlier.

1223

General Software Discussion / Re: How do you 'capture' a BSOD?

« Last post by nosh on December 16, 2007, 02:54 AM »

Thanks, Josh. I did look at the Event Viewer (thought I mentioned it in my post but apparently it got lost in an edit) and it didn't have any info relating to the crashes. Will look into Bluesave and the debugging tools.

1224

General Software Discussion / How do you 'capture' a BSOD?

« Last post by nosh on December 16, 2007, 02:17 AM »

I recently faced some hardware issues with my dual monitor setup. Anytime I ran a graphics intensive program the display would get garbled before completely freezing, forcing me to hit the power button. On one of these occasions when I waited a little longer to reset the PC, a BSOD flashed very briefly and the PC complete froze again with a garbled display. I tried to emulate this a few times with a camera in my hand (feeling like a complete idiot, as you may have guessed) and having absolutely no luck. The problem was finally sorted out

Spoiler

by pulling out & reconnecting the RAM and graphics card and also connecting my primary monitor to the non-DVI outlet without the VGA-DVI adapter, I still don't know what exactly was at fault but the PC is running glitchlessly for several days now

but maybe I could have solved the matter a lot earlier if I could have viewed the BSOD. Are these pretty babies recorded somewhere (I looked for error.log or similarly named files to no avail) or is there some other way of getting this info?

1225

Living Room / Re: PipeBytes: Simple Internet File Transfers

« Last post by nosh on December 15, 2007, 05:48 PM »

Here's an app that lets someone download/upload straight to your PC using just a web browser, no intermediate server involved. I haven't tried it though. I'm guessing it's secure enough but anything that opens up door to my PC frankly makes me paranoid. 

http://www.wfshome.com/