Recent Posts

1401

General Software Discussion / Re: Overclock help required !

« Last post by Shades on April 20, 2014, 04:10 PM »

From memory, the E5700 CPU was never intended to be used for games. And that area is where overclocking is mostly used. Get more RAM and the fastest RAM your motherboard supports, besides the SSD of course.

My Asus motherboard is an inbetween one, hence it supports DDR2 RAM modules but at DDR3 speeds. So I bought 2 of those RAM modules which are almost twice as fast as the normal ones. And with my E8200 CPU (also dual core, but intended for games) + ATi Radeon 4670 I still play games such as Skyrim at 1920x1080 resolution without a hitch. The only thing I regret is having the budget to only buy 2 GByte of those RAM modules.

Lack of RAM is the only reason for me to think about buying a new personal system. For all my other intends and purposes this PC is more than adequate. When creating 7zip archives in ultra mode this system is barely slower than an i5 from a Dell laptop I fixed a month or so ago.

Spend money on getting good hardware parts that work nicely together. That way you don't need to spent so much on hardware every 3 to 4 years or so. If you do your homework with this, the PC you'll end up with will last significantly longer.

My only problem now is that I cannot buy those fast DDR2 modules anymore, only the standard ones that are clocked at 800MHz. And I don't want those modules as these will slow done my faster RAM modules. A sacrifice I don't want to make, hence my regret regarding budget.

Maybe it is a better idea to spent money on a better videocard than your current one if the purpose of overclocking is gaming.

1402

Living Room / Re: Once again, magically expensive items are only different in your mind

« Last post by Shades on April 20, 2014, 10:38 AM »

When I lived in the Netherlands most electronics stores had a listening room where you could hear the audio equipment you had an interest in play with different speakers as well. And my budget allowed for a Sony 5.1 amp and Wharfedale speakers in 1996. Somehow, I like an amp best when it plays 'Twist in my sobriety' from T. Tikaram well.

And I used it with gusto till 2005 when I went to Paraguay. After my father passed away a few years back I wanted to ship that equipment over to Paraguay. However, I learned that all my stuff I had stored there for shipment was sold by either my brother or my father. Crap happens.

But here in Paraguay there are hardly any stores that do have listening rooms. There isn't even a lot of choice in brands and each brand only carries a very limited set of models.

With katschaka (or how else you write it) and raggeaton music over here it only needs to be loud and have a big bass speaker. After listening 30 minutes to that crap (the first is way worse than the latter) I need to listen to rock/metal for a month just to get my sanity back. To my mind that music is the reason why beer is sold in liter bottles down here.
[/rant]

Anyway, my point is that I always have bought my audio equipment only after actually hearing it play my favorite kind of music. I didn't even care to buy the showroom model if that sounded  better than the one in the box.

1403

General Software Discussion / Re: In search of ... functional software kvm

« Last post by Shades on April 20, 2014, 09:10 AM »

List of open-source/free solutions:
Synergy - this one I have used on and off over the years and works for me (even the configuration made sense, but I know that people were put off by that).
Okvm - this seems to be fork of Synergy.
Microsoft Garage: Mouse without borders - this one sounds somewhat familiar, but never tried it because of my success with Synergy.
Input director - tried this one when XP and 2003 machines were king of the hill, never liked it as much as Synergy.

List of commercial priced solutions:
KaVoom - I don't know this one at all.
MultiPlicity - I don't know this one at all, but it looks like it is for 32-bit Windows only.
ShareMouse - seems interesting but never tried it.
MaxiVista - this one I did try and it was better than Synergy, but cost was a huge influence in my decision at the time.

What I did notice is that you have to take a good look at the versions of Windows you are using and the ones supported by the software solution of your choice, because each solutions has it's own limitations. Ones that may be the cause of your problems.

Besides this, when you are using encrypted connections between PC's, make very sure that you are using (self-signed) certificates that do not have anything related to MD5 anymore. If you do very strange behavior is introduced after MS patch Tuesday in August 2013. That happened to me (made self-signed certificates for my own stuff a year or two ago) and I needed to roll out new certificates to be able to communicate with anything server related.

1404

Screenshot Captor / Re: Correcting a mispelling in a captured image?

« Last post by Shades on April 19, 2014, 12:46 AM »

For this type of image 'doctoring' a tool such as the Gimp, PhotoShop, PaintShop, RWPaint, Krita or Paint.net would be a better choice. To do this properly (meaning: without people noticing) requires more skill than most think and you don't want to be too limited by the restrictions of the software you are using for editing.

Capturing screens is where the true strength of ScreenshotCaptor lies. And in my opinion it is wiser to use specific software for its specific purpose.

1405

Living Room / Re: video hosting performance: local vs youtube/vimeo/etc.

« Last post by Shades on April 19, 2014, 12:28 AM »

Sounds like bandwidth issues to me. Usually the bandwidth from a residential internet connection is geared towards downloading of data. For uploading only a fraction of that is available to you.

Furthermore, video requires very consistent upload capabilities and residential connections aren't usually not optimized for that. That is where very different priced business connections come in.

Also, making sacrifices in video resolution will improve playback speeds. Downgrading resolution will show you the capabilities of your connection.

Getting a business connection is not a guarantee either. You can optimize all you can on your end, but if your ISP doesn't (too much overbooking, software settings and/or hardware) it is still in vain. Besides that, your telecom provider might also throttle bandwidth if you are in a place where the ratio of phones and antenna's isn't optimal. And with big businesses paying your (telecom) provider to get priority on bandwidth... 

There are so many points of failure in getting local hosted, high quality video to work, especially on phones. The only place where watching a locally hosted video through a browser on a phone is on your own local WiFi network...but then you might as well watch it on a monitor.

1406

General Software Discussion / Re: Scary Driveby Attack / Mysterious failure / Other

« Last post by Shades on April 18, 2014, 10:29 AM »

Checkdisk does its best work when it runs before Windows is fully started, but apparently it is logged. This is what I found on the internet:

Open the Event Viewer...

Start | Run | Type: eventvwr | OK
Look in Application | Listed as Information |
Event ID: 1001
Source: Winlogon
[[Description: This includes file system type; drive letter or GUID, and
volume name or serial number to help determine what volume Chkdsk ran
against. Also included is whether Chkdsk ran because a user scheduled it or
because the dirty bit was set.]]

[[When Autochk runs against a volume at boot time it records its output to a
file called Bootex.log in the root of the volume being checked. The Winlogon
service then moves the contents of each Bootex.log file to the Application
Event log.]]

[[This file states whether Chkdsk encountered any errors and, if so,
whether they were fixed.]]

1407

General Software Discussion / Re: Scary Driveby Attack / Mysterious failure / Other

« Last post by Shades on April 17, 2014, 12:16 PM »

As far as I know, a defrag will not do much for you with regards to bad blocks. Checkdisk does move blocks of data around after it cannot repair bad blocks on your disk and marks these so the filesystem will not use them anymore.

That is at least the concept behind it. But often the capabilities of the software falls short and you have to resort to 3rd party software. HDSentinel, HDDscan (and for real pro's: MHDD) come to mind.

1408

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by Shades on April 15, 2014, 10:30 PM »

Clearly the one responsible for the cover didn't eat enough gifted children....

Or in case of Photoshop, should that not .giffed children?

1409

Living Room / Re: Movies or films you've seen lately

« Last post by Shades on April 15, 2014, 12:54 AM »

The Best Offer - Avery intriguing story about an older auctioneer that is selling the inventory of a younger woman who inherited all her antiques after her parents died... This is a movie that you should see without any knowledge beforehand. But very good acting from Geoffrey Rush. Not a boring minute in this 2 hour movie.

1410

General Software Discussion / Re: Need a way to modify a Subject Line in Outlook Email using Scripts or Rules

« Last post by Shades on April 14, 2014, 10:22 PM »

Most mail server software already have a spam-filter build in. For postfix (linux) that would be spam-assassin, if memory serves me right. And you can configure there if mails marked as spam automatically get *** SPAM *** added to the subject line. With the default configuration of Exchange 2010 I know that there are limits in how much messages can be sent per minute, just so you don't trigger anti-spam measures that are in place either internally or externally. Most professional email solutions will have something similar I'm sure.

Depending on your geographic location different organizations patrol the web marking you as a spammer when they see that is needed and then you'll have to prove to that organization that you aren't before they remove the block on all your (outgoing) mail. Had that happen twice to me, because some kid had installed a cheat or something for an online game he was playing. 

You should be able to access the logging. From there it shouldn't be that difficult to see who is the responsible user. If there is no such option, it sounds like you are at the mercy of either IPSWITCH or those "guardians".

Ah well, this is another example (for me) that shows you shouldn't depend too much on 3rd parties that over-promise and under-deliver, which is the bulk of cloud service providers (to me).

1411

General Software Discussion / Re: The right organization (WE views and a particular need)

« Last post by Shades on April 13, 2014, 03:28 PM »

Tomos is right. Windows Explorer Although its library functionality is a big improvement, it is not extensive enough for your needs. And with that we enter into the realm of alternative file managers,

Directory Opus is the only one I am really familiar with, so I'll focus on that one. Within Opus you can create your own layouts that you can apply on any set of folders and files. Sorting, different types of columns etc. you'll find it. Together with the manual and an adventurous spirit, you'll find out how. Besides that you will likely discover many more ways to alter your way of working with folders/files once you the the hang of it.

Maybe its pre-configured views already do what you want.

The filesystem of Windows quite powerful. However, support for displaying two files with the same name in the same folder, but a different date is not possible (if I understood your description correctly that is).

  

1412

General Software Discussion / Re: Create Local & Cloud copy of the same files on multiple computers & stay synced

« Last post by Shades on April 11, 2014, 08:45 AM »

Port forwarding could be an option. Version control software (Mercurial, Git, SVN or even the venerable CVS) works fine whenmultiple people work on the same set of files. This type of software keeps track of who changed what and when, contains a server (using default ports that might or might not be blocked by the ISP) and are open source.

Once you get used to it (which doesn't take that long) and your users provide each commit with a meaningful description, you'll have no problem going back to a version of a file that works and there is no need to play the blame game anymore. You'll wonder how you or your organization could have ever worked without it.

The users do not need access to shared folders on the server this way and each user will have only one (1) copy of the files locally. Each committed change is stored in a folder on the server and the files from that folder can be used as you see fit.

I seriously advise you to get all the necessary heads around the concept behind these systems. 

1413

Living Room / Re: WinXP is officially dead!

« Last post by Shades on April 08, 2014, 08:05 PM »

Lately a thought entered my head.

Now that Windows is much more restrictive and uses more and more the policy 'our way or the highway' regarding the installation and managing of software, it appears to me that there is now more or less one way to do things on your system.

This makes computing more stable and at first view, safe.

Until that way is breached, that is. And I have been long enough around MS software that I dare to say that this not an 'if' but a 'when'.

True, Windows XP is tricky to secure because of all the (well documented) holes, but the one way fits all method of doing things has it's drawbacks as well. In both cases the (not so savvy) end user will be damned.

So, I don't have much to say against (savvy) people that can't or won't upgrade. And I'll continue to pretend all is well in lala-land, also known as Windows Server 2012 for the time being. 

1414

Living Room / Re: Off topic but does anhyone know wherei can get a Guaranted real JAVA installer

« Last post by Shades on April 06, 2014, 04:56 PM »

When using anything from Oracle, you'll not escape Java. :-(

However, there is where you need to go to get the original installers/patches/upgrades for anything Java-related, I'm afraid.

www.oracle.com will get you there.

1415

Living Room / Re: are wireless projectors just a bandwidth hog?

« Last post by Shades on April 06, 2014, 08:15 AM »

Video-streams with mostly static images shouldn't consume that much bandwidth. Most PP presentations use those, so that wouldn't be my biggest concern regarding bandwidth consumption.

Youtube video's are a different matter and depend on selected resolution and the school's bandwidth. Especially when each class room needs to have their own YT feed and the school itself needs the bandwidth to communicate with the main administration servers on geological different locations.  Prepare to be in shouting matches between all school departments suddenly vying for bandwidth.

That is of course when the school has no fiber connection(s) to the internet.

1416

Living Room / Re: are wireless projectors just a bandwidth hog?

« Last post by Shades on April 06, 2014, 07:59 AM »

So....you want to use these beamers as torture devices on your students?

As you might have guessed...not a big fan of PP presentations, especially by people who think they have a clue about presentation or "readers".

1417

ProcessTamer / Re: Process Tamer - LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - v2.11.01 - Apr 23, 2009

« Last post by Shades on April 06, 2014, 06:52 AM »

If the machine is older, the thermal paste between the CPU and the metallic structure (heat sink) on which the CPU fan is mounted might be too old.

A fresh layer of such paste (after thoroughly cleaning off the old paste on both the CPU and the heat sink first!) would help bring it down a few degrees more. An after-market air-cooler for your CPU would bring the temperature even more. Check the big tech sites for reviews and "shootouts" of such models in (very) different price ranges.

Of course, there is water cooling and much more extreme full immersion solutions...in case you have money to burn and want to "play" with hardware.

[bad joke]
And if the machine still lives after that, you could try Linux on it.
[/bad joke]

1418

Living Room / Re: are wireless projectors just a bandwidth hog?

« Last post by Shades on April 06, 2014, 06:35 AM »

Well, no. But any videostream is bound to gobble up bandwidth, no matter where it goes. A videostream you would like to show on a beamer has a big resolution and (too much) compression is likely not desired if picture quality is of concern. If the stream contains a text-based powerpoint presentation with voice over, less bandwidth is consumed.

Besides, what kind of WiFi is in the classroom? Has each room an allotted amount of bandwidth or do you apply a fair-use-policy?

1419

Living Room / Re: Movies or films you've seen lately

« Last post by Shades on April 03, 2014, 06:37 PM »

Renoir - Story-wise, it is an interesting movie. The beautiful locations where this is filmed, won me over though. There is a lot of functional nudity in this movie, as naked 20-somethings were the favorite subject of the painter.

Filth - Inept detectives/hint-of-evil detective movie. You follow the trail of a Scottish detective, ruthless on his way to the top. Good movie, good cast and funny if you like the 'schadenfreude' he's dealing out to everyone. And the end I didn't expect, but in hindsight, inevitable.

1420

General Software Discussion / Re: Repairing Windows 7 from the recovery console

« Last post by Shades on March 29, 2014, 08:30 PM »

Which is it? XP or Vista?   

1421

General Software Discussion / Re: Help please! - Unable to install MS SQL Express 2012 on laptop.

« Last post by Shades on March 29, 2014, 08:29 PM »

Although Windows 7 comes standard with PowerShell, it still can be that the version on your system does not meet the demands of the SQL Server 2012 installer. It doesn't hurt to check and update if need be.

Providing Express as an afterthought I don't know. For years MS gives you Express versions of their development software and that has helped them a lot with snaring/trapping developers. A tactic the Oracle database guys took over and it worked for them too. So Microsoft can't and doesn't stay behind in this field of software.

However, they should have taken a better look at how Oracle did it. Their installer works with a lot less hassle, all dependencies are already integrated and when it is finished you have a nice web-interface to manage the test DB that has been setup for you.

On my system SQL Server 2012 Express installed only after missing dependencies were downloaded and installed. I found the management interface a lot less newbie friendly when comparing to the Oracle XE product. It's not difficult, especially for those who work with MMC consoles regularly.

1422

General Software Discussion / Re: Repairing Windows 7 from the recovery console

« Last post by Shades on March 28, 2014, 09:16 PM »

Changes in the chipset will indeed trigger the Windows activation system. And it sounds like the HP is too different from the Dell. Luck of the draw there.

What is the problem of the HD in the HP? Does the hard disk not spin up or it does but isn't recognized?
If so you might want to take it out and check if the HD has standard SATA connectors. If that is also true, then I would carefully check the connectors on the HD itself.

At one point in time I could fix a HD with physically broken, but not completely snapped off SATA connector (the data part) by placing the drive in a an upright position and carefully reconnecting the data cable on the connector and gluing the cable to the drive. Gravity and glue keep the drive running till this day.

You said that the HP drive experienced physical stress from being hit, so there could be an off chance that only one or maybe both connectors are broken.

1423

General Software Discussion / Re: Help please! - Unable to install MS SQL Express 2012 on laptop.

« Last post by Shades on March 28, 2014, 07:44 PM »

This is the info from the installer with which I successfully installed SQL Server 2012 Express with all standard options on Windows 7 which does have .NET 4 already installed.


On a side note: Oracle states that the Oracle XE 10 version does not work on Windows 7 anymore. And the installer that I downloaded at that time indeed doesn't. However, I received through other ways a similar installer with the same name and all, but it is 5 bytes(!) bigger...and guess what, works like clockwork on Windows 7.

I learned thus, that it is unwise to think installers to be the same, even if they share the same name and apparently the same version, just because the vendor says so. For years now I make sure that I see the exact number of bytes from any file I encounter within my file manager. You'll spot differences far more quickly that way.

1424

General Software Discussion / Re: Help please! - Unable to install MS SQL Express 2012 on laptop.

« Last post by Shades on March 28, 2014, 05:51 AM »

I will take a look t the size of the installer I used for SQL Express. As I am testing the full product now,I don't recall the exact version number anymore from the installer. What I do remember though is that it was not much more than 1 GByte and I'm quite sure it didn't include SP1.

But if that installer does work, upgrading later to SP1 is likely less problematic than your current situation.

1425

General Software Discussion / Re: Help please! - Unable to install MS SQL Express 2012 on laptop.

« Last post by Shades on March 27, 2014, 08:33 PM »

There is no way you can provide us with the actual error message? To see where in the installation routine it fails?

According to this MSDN page .NET 3.5 is one of the requirements. Now I don't know which version you run, but it might be possible that you encounter problems because of incorrect versions or a mix-and-match that bums out the SQL 2012 Express installer.

If that is the case, there is a trick that might help:

• Download the full installer for the .NET you require, not the web installer!
• Stop the Windows Update service
• Use Explorer (in Admin mode) to go to 'C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET'
• Rename the folder 'Assembly'
• Start the Windows Update service
• Install .NET
• Retry installing SQL Server 2012 Express