Recent Posts

1451

General Software Discussion / Re: Tiny apps

« Last post by mwb1100 on September 04, 2007, 10:26 PM »

Thanks for the Cybernetnews pointer - there were a couple interesting-looking utilities I had never even heard of before.  Off to check them out...

1452

Living Room / Re: $7.5 to optimize XP NTFS Drive access : rip-off or not ?

« Last post by mwb1100 on September 03, 2007, 01:53 PM »

Now, how do we "out" these turds without getting slapped silly by a copyright lawyer?

-Darwin (September 03, 2007, 01:37 PM)

I think that's been done - there's no copyright violation by mentioning that the secret Disktrix (the publishers of Ultimate Defrag) is selling in their PDF, Windows_Secrets_1_NTFS_Intro.pdf, is:

NTFS Compression

If the actual PDF or any significant portion of it are posted, then that would be a violation, but that's not the case.

1453

Living Room / Re: $7.5 to optimize XP NTFS Drive access : rip-off or not ?

« Last post by mwb1100 on September 03, 2007, 12:33 PM »

Wouldn't NTFS have to check before each file read whether the file is compressed or not - OK not a big deal for a single MP3 file - but suppose you want to copy (or process) 5000 MP3 files - that will be a big extra hit.

-Carol Haynes (September 03, 2007, 11:23 AM)

It compresses/decompresses on a cluster basis.  When it reads a cluster in a compressed file, there's a bit that indicates if the cluster is compressed or not.  The overhead on uncompressed clusters is essentially zero.  And even for compressed clusters, as the disktrix teaser indicates, with today's processors the decompression is quite efficient.  It's probably a significant hit only rarely

I think that for files that are read more often than written, NTFS compression is a win (or draw) in pretty much any scenario.  For files that get written a lot, I'm not sure where the break-even point in performance would be.

1454

Living Room / Re: $7.5 to optimize XP NTFS Drive access : rip-off or not ?

« Last post by mwb1100 on September 02, 2007, 05:55 PM »

EDIT: oh wait, processor speed. NTFS compression? It does reduce the amount of I/O done, and is pretty cheap processor-wise these days.

-f0dder (September 02, 2007, 03:13 PM)

I think you've probably hit on it.  I'm half tempted to pay them the $7.50 just to be able to 'out' the big secret.

1455

General Software Discussion / Re: Data recovery software suggestions?

« Last post by mwb1100 on September 01, 2007, 01:06 PM »

Could you elaborate on the imaging facilities of Restorer?
Can it do reverse cloning? Skip over defective areas? Long reads? Clone the physical drive even when the MBR is corrupted? 

-brahman (September 01, 2007, 03:41 AM)

Ummm...  mostly I don't know.  It skips defective areas, but it takes a long time doing so as it appears to attempt to read the defective sector multiple times, and there are usually many defective sectors in a particular bad area.  I'm really not knowledgeable about the internal workings of the software.

I don't even know what a reverse clone or long read is.

It does require that the drive be recognized by windows, at least to the point where it will give it a drive letter (I think), but certainly Windows does not need to be able to recognize a file system on the device.

What I did was remove the failed drive and plug it into an IDE to USE adapter.  I plugged the USB adapter into another machine and started up Restorer.  It showed the failed drive in its list of devices, and I told it to create an image to a location that had plenty of space (this was done with Restorer v2).

A day and a half later (because attempting to read the defective areas takes a long time), the image was complete, and I told Restorer v2 to analyze the image.  It didn't come up with anything that looked useful, so I tried the v3 trial, and it was able to successfully analyze the image (the trial limitation is that it will only let you copy off files smaller than 64K).  So I upgraded to v3 and was able to recover what I wanted.

1456

General Software Discussion / Re: Why choose XP PRO (NT 5.1) over XP Home?

« Last post by mwb1100 on September 01, 2007, 12:48 PM »

Most of the additional things in Pro are really only necessary in a business environment, as they are mostly networking related.

The one thing I think I would miss in XP Home is Remote Desktop (but I think most users never would miss it).

Here's a pretty detailed list of differences:  http://www.winsupers...ndowsxp_home_pro.asp

I thought that another difference was that XP Home had no native support for multiple monitors (but that 3rd party drivers could still add that support).  I'm not sure if that's correct or not.

I think one of the reasons MS have so many different variants of Vista is that people will be scared into getting Premium (or Ultimate) because they'll feel uneasy that any of the other variants will be missing some bit of functionality that they'll want.

1457

General Software Discussion / Re: Data recovery software suggestions?

« Last post by mwb1100 on August 31, 2007, 06:32 PM »

I have heard very good things about Restorer v3.

-brahman (August 31, 2007, 05:57 PM)

I recently had another opportunity to attempt recovery from a drive with a head crash using Restorer 2000 v2.  The bad news is that v2 could not recover the data; the good news is that after an inexpensive upgrade to v3, all the files that were important were successfully pulled out of the image file that v2 had made (imaging the drive took about 30 hrs due to the number of defective areas).

I gotta back up that machine more often than once a week...

1458

Living Room / Re: Batch file - start service, run program, stop service ?

« Last post by mwb1100 on August 31, 2007, 06:24 PM »

You should be able to replace the lines between the "net start" and "net stop" lines with something like:

[Select]

start /wait "c:\path\to\the\OandO.lnk"

Do a "help start" at a command prompt to get more information on the options for the start command.

If you create a shortcut to the batchfile, you can set it to run minimized - you'll get something on the taskbar for it, but that may not be too much clutter for you.

1459

General Software Discussion / Re: File Managers! Windows Explorer replacement! Come one, come all...

« Last post by mwb1100 on August 30, 2007, 04:08 PM »

Is UltraExplorer worthy of consideration (http://www.mustangpe...xplorer/index.html)?

1460

General Software Discussion / Re: Good (free) encryption... without any trouble ?

« Last post by mwb1100 on August 30, 2007, 03:59 PM »

Due to hardware or software errors/malfunctions, files stored on a TrueCrypt volume may become corrupted. Therefore, we strongly recommend that you backup all your important files regularly (this, of course, applies to any important data, not just to encrypted data stored on TrueCrypt volumes).

-Armando (August 30, 2007, 12:07 PM)

Note what it says about "applies to any important data".  One could just as easily say "Due to hardware or software errors/malfunctions, files stored on a disc drive may become corrupted".  In other words, you must have a backup for any important data, whether encrypted or not.  The key issue that encryption adds is that it may make trying to recover non-backed up data more difficult (or impossible). With corruption on non-encrypted data, you often have a good chance of recovering at least some of your document (or whatever) by simply copying out whatever bits might not be corrupted.  This is often impossible with encrypted data.

Also, with encrypted data, you have to have a good system for backing up keys.  On forums for software with encryption support there are always posts of the nature, "how do I get my data back if I've lost my key?".   If the software is any good, the answer will be, "no dice; the data's gone".

As far as TrueCrypt increasing the probability of corruption, that's certainly a possibility, but I must say that my experience has been pretty good.  However, I tend to work in a manner where I copy the files from the TC volume, work on them, then copy back, so I may not be exercising TrueCrypt as much as someone else might.

1461

General Software Discussion / Re: File vault for web site

« Last post by mwb1100 on August 28, 2007, 01:49 PM »

I haven't actually use the JUpload applet, so I'm ont sure how much help I'll be.  You need to have some server script (JSP or PHP for example) that puts the applet in the webbpage's HTML with the proper parameters, and the server script that gets the post with the files being uploaded needs to handle the upload process.

It looks like it'll need a fair amount of customization by someone who knows PHP (or some server-side scripting) much better than I do.  It looks like JUpload is not a turnkey solution - it needs to be integrated into the website by someone who knows at least a bit about PHP/JSP or such.

The .jar file you download is really just a .zip file that any Zip manager can open - you should open it and read the wwwroot/readme.txt file which has essential information.

There's an example PHP page on JUpload's wiki:  http://jupload.wiki....orge.net/PHP+Example

And an additional PHP script here:  http://sourceforge.n...&forum_id=199107

1462

General Software Discussion / Re: File vault for web site

« Last post by mwb1100 on August 28, 2007, 08:43 AM »

It doesn't really fulfill your drag-n-drop requirement, but I've used phpXplorer (http://www.phpexplor....org/phpXplorer/www/) and found it to be pretty useful.

I'd be interested if anyone can find a free PHP, Perl, or Python based web app that does.  I don't think my provider supports Java on the server, but a client side Java applet to handle the drag-n-drop would be fine.

I came across JUpload (http://jupload.sourceforge.net) which looks interesting from the screen shot and the description, but I was unable to get the demo applet to work here.  It didn't start at all in Firefox (which may be a Firefox/Java configuration issue) and in IE6 the applet started, but file uploads failed (but that may be because the demo server may not really be capable of accepting files).

If you try it let us know how it works out for you.

1463

General Software Discussion / Re: best text editor WITH ftpability???

« Last post by mwb1100 on August 25, 2007, 05:21 PM »

UltraEdit has FTP/SFTP and code-folding.

1464

General Software Discussion / Re: Guess what, you do have certain downgrade rights from Vista to Windows XP

« Last post by mwb1100 on August 19, 2007, 08:30 PM »

If you have the media and the key why do you need to ask permission to use it?

-Carol Haynes (August 19, 2007, 12:21 PM)

Some OEM versions of XP do not need a key or activation.  For example, Dell machines can have the Dell OEM version of WinXP installed without activation (I'm not sure if this is true 100% of the time, but it's been true for my experience so far).  So if you bought a Dell with Vista Business or Ultimate on it and decide you'd rather have WinXP, it's perfectly legal to use a Dell OEM WinXP installation CD if you happen to have one laying around from a previous purchase.

I wish I had known about the downgrade option before - I bought a Dell a couple months ago and opted for WinXP - if I had known about the downgrade option, I might have gone for Vista to give it a whirl.

1465

General Software Discussion / Re: Hard Disk Partition turns from NTFS to RAW !!!

« Last post by mwb1100 on August 14, 2007, 10:32 AM »

Search for Hard disc recovery threads - I think that most of those utilities should have a good chance of recovering files from the partition:

https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=7495.0
https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=5242.0

The one I've used twice to recover files from crashed drives is Restorer 2000 (http://www.restorer2000.com).  I haven't had need to try it on a 'lost' partition like you have, but I've been impressed with how it could pull off files from a drive that Windows would have nothing to do with.

1466

Developer's Corner / Re: C++ Development: win32 or .NET?

« Last post by mwb1100 on August 06, 2007, 10:49 PM »

As Mouser said, if you're programming against .NET then go with C#.  Also, if you're doing this for personal enjoyment, then I'd suggest also going the C#/.NET route.

If you're looking for something that'll provide an income, then I'd suggest learning both C++ and C#, probably with a leaning toward C++.  I think that in most markets you'd do well to be conversant in both.  If you're looking for a web-based career direction, then I might switch that to learning both C# and Java.  As languages C# and Java are quite similar, what you'd be mostly learning is the frameworks they work in.

1467

Developer's Corner / Re: Recommended/Best/Most Useful IDEs for Language *insert language*?

« Last post by mwb1100 on August 03, 2007, 09:10 AM »

Of course, "best" is in the eye of the beholder, but here are some that top my list:

For Perl & Python, nothing I tried came even close to Komodo IDE (http://www.activestate.com).  It's the only IDE for these languages that I tried that had any semblance of a modern debugger (ie., one like Visual Studio for C/++).  It was able to debug my Perl scripts running in IIS with essentially no configuration on my part.  Any other tool basically didn't aupport IIS debugging or required configuring the security/account that IIS ran under or other such headaches.  Also it integrates very nicely into FireFox for debugging client-side Javascript.  The big drawback to it is that it costs $300.  I've heard good things about Eclipse for Perl, python (and pretty much any language out there), but I've never even tried it, so I can''t say.  There's a free variant of Komodo (called Komodo Edit), but it doesn't have the debugger, which is what the main attraction of Komodo IDE was for me.

For C/C++ and C#, I give the nod to Visual Studio (2003 or 2005) with the Visual Assist X add-on ($150 from http://www.wholetomato.com).  This thing just knows how to navigate C++ code smooth as silk, and it's probably impossible to beat the debugging (at least for Windows programming).  Visual Studio costs anywhere from nothing (for the Express version) to many hundreds of dollars.

Again, I've heard good things about Eclipse, which has the very attractive price of nothing.  But I've never tried it for more than a few minutes, so I can't say whether I should have saved my money on all those expensive tools (which I'm quite happy with).

So here's the list you asked for:

Perl & Python:  Komodo IDE, licensed per user (multiple machine installs allowed), closed source, $300 for commercial use, $50 for a non-commercial student license.
C/C++:  Visual Studio with Visual Assist X, licensed per user (multiple machine installs allowed), closed source, price varies.

1468

Best Dialog Extender / Re: Consistent favourite folder access- wow- that was hard! Office->Directory Op

« Last post by mwb1100 on August 01, 2007, 04:18 PM »

Minor correction:  The correct link for Chameleon Folder is http://www.neosoft-tools.com/

1469

General Software Discussion / Re: Is this the holy grail to solving windows-out-of-resources bugs?

« Last post by mwb1100 on July 26, 2007, 09:48 PM »

Thanks for posting this - this happens to me every couple of weeks at work.  My fix so far has been to shutdown applications until things start working again.  Better than in the old Win9x days when this problem would likely render the machine unusable until you rebooted.

1470

Official Announcements / Re: How to punish DonationCoder if you are angry at being nagged to donate

« Last post by mwb1100 on July 24, 2007, 01:46 PM »

I must say, I find it surprising how much anger can be generated by someone who finds out that they need to get a key (at no cost) to supress nags in free software.

I can understand that someone might decide they don't want to bother, but to actually get angry over it simply amazes me.

1471

Developer's Corner / Re: Where is the Visual Basic Express Compiler located?

« Last post by mwb1100 on July 19, 2007, 12:59 AM »

For me it's in:

C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\vbc.exe

But this is from an install of VS 2005 Pro, which installs the .NET Framework SDK before installing the IDE.  The vbc and csc compilers come from the SDK installs.  I'm not sure if the Express versions do the same or not (but I suspect they do). 

If it's really not on your machine, you can get it for sure by downloading the .NET Framework SDK from:

http://www.microsoft...c&displaylang=en

Actually, I think vbc.exe and csc.exe are installed with the .NET Framework Runtime - you probably don't need the full SDK.  If that's correct, then vbc.exe must certainly be on your machine somewhere.

1472

General Software Discussion / Re: Encrypt single file?

« Last post by mwb1100 on July 18, 2007, 06:17 PM »

You might want to look at GnuPG.   It's been a while since I've used it, but you could encrypt using a passphrase with the command:

[Select]

echo testing123|gpg --symmetric --passphrase-fd 0 --output EncryptedFilename FilenameToEncrypt

If you want the encrypted file to be email-safe you can also have it ASCII-encoded:

[Select]

echo testing123|gpg --symmetric --passphrase-fd 0 --output EncryptedFilename --armour FilenameToEncrypt

Decrypt like so:

[Select]

echo testing123|gpg -d --passphrase-fd 0 --output UnEncryptedFilename EncryptedFilename

The echo command pipes the passphrase into stdin for the gpg command.  The "--passphrase-fd 0" option tells gpg to grab the passphrase from stdin.  They used to have a plain old "--passphrase" option that let you give it on the gpg command itself, but they considered that too insecure (what a pain).

If you leave off the "--passphrase-fd 0" option (leave off the echo command as well), gpg will prompt you for a passphrase.

1473

General Software Discussion / Re: Multisession burning

« Last post by mwb1100 on July 17, 2007, 10:04 PM »

You may want to see if disabling WinXP's built-in CD writing might help out:

http://www.microsoft...t_03september16.mspx

1474

General Software Discussion / Re: Any "search this folder only" engines?

« Last post by mwb1100 on July 17, 2007, 05:59 PM »

Just as another bit of info:  XYplorer was able to do a case-insensitive search on that data for "Volmouse" in about 8 minutes on my machine (I got hits for 10 documents - is that the right answer?) .   A case-sensitive search took about 3.5 minutes (but only found 6 documents).  That's certainly not the instantaneous result that you'll get from an indexer, but if you're only doing occasional searches of content it might be acceptable (especially if you're running into trouble with you indexed searcher or don't trust it's results.)

Update:  BareGrep, a free GUI-based Windows grep utility (http://www.baremetal...m/baregrep/index.php), did the case-insensitive "Volumouse" search in less than 2 minutes.

For non-content searches (ie., searching on filename only), which is what I find myself usually doing, I use FindOnClick (http://www.2brightsp...com/onclick/foc.html) which searches the whole drive in 6 seconds - without having to maintain an index (it uses the NTFS directory structure as it's index).

1475

General Software Discussion / Re: imaging & partitioning queries

« Last post by mwb1100 on July 17, 2007, 04:32 PM »

FYI - some Acronis TrueImage deals:

A Free version of Acronis TrueImage 10 is available for machines that have a Seagate or Maxtor drive installed:

https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=8639.0

It worked for me from Windows, but would not recognize that I had a valid drive when run from a BartPE boot.


An OEM version of Acronis TrueImage 9 is available from "NothingButSoftware" for $10 + $5 shipping:

http://www.nothingbu...tCode=36864&ai=0

Note that TI 9 is not supported for Vista.