topbanner_forum
  *

avatar image

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?

Login with username, password and session length
  • Monday June 23, 2025, 1:30 pm
  • Proudly celebrating 15+ years online.
  • Donate now to become a lifetime supporting member of the site and get a non-expiring license key for all of our programs.
  • donate

Recent Posts

Pages: prev1 ... 62 63 64 65 66 [67] 68 69 70 71 72 ... 118next
1651
Living Room / Re: Movies or films you've seen lately
« Last post by Shades on May 07, 2013, 06:14 PM »
I regretted spending money on the second GI-Joe (3D) installment. Admittedly, I am not that familiar with the background story, for me it was too much of jumble.
1652
Why would I pay for subscription if no new features were to be added? That would diminish my incentive to get a subscription.

Don't get me wrong, for a lot of (types of) software a subscription model would be beneficial for both user and company. Custom made software would be a good example.

For my intents, purposes and interests the Adobe products do not.

Not that long ago they did a nice thing with their CS2 (or was it 3?) product give-away and now they do this. Ah well, lets hope this move will make them see how the bottom of their "war chest" looks like.
1653
Living Room / Re: What to do with an SSD after it fails
« Last post by Shades on April 25, 2013, 04:45 PM »
Not to be bad or anything, but replace the resistor with what? You know which kind and capacity of resistor needed for replacement? I assume that Intel is not happily spreading that kind of info to everyone. Of course, if Intel does share, hats off to them.

Too bad that SMD soldering tools are expensive (and very hard to come by in this part of the world, I might add!). With parts so small it is not advisable to fill yourself up with lots of coffee / mountain dew before going to work  :P

On instructional videos that were shown on the school I went to, they showed that components are mechanically glued to the PCB and that the PCB then (very briefly!) dumped in a soldering bath. Worked way faster and less error prone.
1654
Living Room / Re: What to do with an SSD after it fails
« Last post by Shades on April 24, 2013, 07:09 PM »
Just a few minutes, let me open up my failed Intel X25-E and grab a couple of snaps for y'all.

It is the first time I see a SSD from the bottom. Normal hard disks have a relatively small PCB which connects to the insides of the hard disk. The connection point contains only a few (8 or so) contacts. If you unscrew the PCB, you'll see that the PCB comes off without any problems. No glue or whatsoever.

At least, this is the case with all the Seagate HD's I have lying around here. Hence the suggestion of a controller swap.

But you are right, your Intel SSD controller looks kinda scary  ;)
1655
Living Room / Re: What to do with an SSD after it fails
« Last post by Shades on April 23, 2013, 05:56 PM »
For the tinkerer (and possibly destroying your PC)...you could swap out controllers from a similar (same batch if possible) SSD and retrieve your data.

Last ditch solutions are always risky  :P
1656
I took offence to something? News to me...When the hell do I take offence to ANYTHING  ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

Tinman, I know you didn't aim it specifically at me :)

-Stephen66515 (April 11, 2013, 09:50 PM)
Another bad joke:
Do you really have to aim specifically with a 12-gauge?  :P
1657
Living Room / Re: Movies or films you've seen lately
« Last post by Shades on April 09, 2013, 08:21 PM »
Two days ago I saw The Fairy. Normally I'm not into French art house movies, but as this one is from the French speaking part of Belgium so I could resist the urge to turn it off immediately. And I am glad I did.

The actors in the movie will not win any beauty prize (no, not even a '...., and all I got was this lousy t-shirt' constellation prize)...and there is not too much dialog, so most of the movie is just visual interpretation. But they were able to keep you positively engaged with the story. And it is actually funny in a lot of places.

It is definitely entertaining enough to recommend to the DC connoisseur.
1658
Having lived for quite a while here in Paraguay, I can attest to the words of Tinman57, British humor is hardly appreciated here. Dutch humor is received even worse.

And for a lot of what goes for funny here, I can't even see or understand...luckily there is always 'schadenfreude' to fall back upon. That goes great all around the globe.  :P
1659
General Software Discussion / Re: Registry cleaning software debunked...
« Last post by Shades on April 03, 2013, 10:17 AM »
I really had to wait that amount of hours, the system was also very slow when doing this...hence my comment about the state of the hardware, which in my case is a 4 year old heavily used common standard (not server grade) Seagate sata 2 disk.

There is also my suspicion that Seagate doesn't ship their best performing commercial grade drives to the South American markets (where I live). Unfortunately, it is also the only brand on sale here in Paraguay. You want a different brand, order it through internet in Brazil or North America (to keep shipping costs a little bit in check), which means I have to wait quite some time for arrival, which also means that I have to travel to the only postal office here in the capital several times to see if it arrived/passed through customs.

Oh, before I forget, I should also mention that Paraguay does not use any form of postal code, so it is not possible to have direct delivery at your house without a local courier service (again adding to costs). Computing hardware is also very expensive here in the capital. When I need to build a system for someone, it is actually cheaper to travel 600 km (1-way!) to a city bordering with Brazil and buy the hardware there.

Yeah, welcome to different world...

Ah well, luckily this country is stacked with beautiful women, parading around during the months that the sun shines (9 months) and beer is sold in 1-liter bottles.  ;)
1660
General Software Discussion / Re: Registry cleaning software debunked...
« Last post by Shades on April 03, 2013, 08:26 AM »
Yes, you can align when a partition has content already, though it would be advisable to make a backup first (especially of the partition your computer boots from).

It takes a long time though. My 400GByte partition (with over 200GByte of free space) on a SATA2 drive took about 8,5 hours to complete (with Minitool partition wizard).

When you have storage space to spare, you could move data temporarily from partition 1 to partition 2, align partition 1 and move the data again to partition 1. Which method would be fastest, is a good guess and very much depending on (the state of) the hardware in your computer.
1661
Although I do not like to associate (any kind of) religion with my person, I do have to admit that Kabbalah has one thing right. 80% of all the problems you encounter in life are your own fault.

Not wanting to sound too much as a self-help guru, but fixing your own flaws either dissolve these problems or make them much more manageable. Besides, if you cannot take a look in a mirror and have a good laugh about that meets you...you are taking things way too seriously.
1662
General Software Discussion / Re: thunderbird alternative
« Last post by Shades on April 02, 2013, 08:54 AM »
Foxmail, originates from China, but don't hold that against it. It is definitely a decent piece of software. I myself used version 5 of it for quite some time with 7 mail accounts that each received a relative big amount of messages (50+) daily and that version at least didn't choke on that.

I don't know if that is sufficient for your needs. Ah well, it's free and there is even a portable version you can download. I see also that it even can hook up with an Exchange server as well. Might be interesting to try it again, as I am not satisfied with the search capabilities from Thunderbird lately.
1663
General Software Discussion / Re: Registry cleaning software debunked...
« Last post by Shades on April 01, 2013, 05:27 PM »
ERUNT for registry backup is an excellent suggestion. More people should take that to heart. If you really want to speed up your XP/2003 PC, check for partition alignment. Chances are that the partitions on your hard disk aren't. I did do this alignment on my XP PC and it does make a noticeable difference.

Reading and (mainly) writing to an aligned partition can increase the speed of your PC 5-10%. When checking numbers in Process Explorer you do notice that I/O drops (duh!) but also that you lose a lot less of resources on interrupts. Because of the drop in I/O you will also expand the longevity of your (SATA) hard disk as a bonus.

Best of all, with a free tool like 'Minitool partition wizard' you can do the alignment. There are a lot more Partition managers who offer the similar functionality. 'Minitool partition wizard' is just the software that I used for this.

Of course, when compared with an SSD it hardly makes a difference, but for the ones without the funds, alignment does make working just a bit longer with the 'old clunker' more bearable...and will leave more time to save for the real speed upgrade  ;)
1664
Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?
« Last post by Shades on March 28, 2013, 05:26 PM »
Thanks kyrathaba  :up:
1665
Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?
« Last post by Shades on March 28, 2013, 03:46 PM »
I am always interested in adding free ebooks to my collection. Should help battling boredom when waiting for the (second) bus that takes me home.

1666
^ I cant stop laughing out loud ;D

Yeah, his knife block should be interesting, though  :D :P
1667
Living Room / Re: Google data centers
« Last post by Shades on March 25, 2013, 05:16 PM »
Content appears to be blocked from Paraguay. Crap. :(
1668
Living Room / Re: unmountable_boot_volume error = is there a fix?
« Last post by Shades on March 22, 2013, 04:52 PM »
You could also dismount the hard disk from the laptop and hook it up to a normal PC. If the hard disk is SATA, there is no problem with cabling. If it is still IDE/PATA, there are cables that convert between the 3.5" IDE connector on the motherboard to the 2.5" IDE connector on the hard disk.

You can even make these conversion cables yourself if you have the inclination to do so. All it takes is a standard 40 pins IDE cable and a female 2,5" connector that you either connect directly onto the cable (I connected my Amiga (A1200) hard disks always in this way and that worked beautifully) or spend some time soldering the cables from the 3.5" cable to the 2.5" connector.

Here is the pin-out you will need.

Hard disk to hard disk copy goes faster and has more chance of success. If you have the room on the hard disk in the PC that you use in this way, it is also a good idea to create an image from each partition on the laptop hard disk. Will save a lot of wear and tear on the laptop drive.
1669
Living Room / Re: Newly coined term, "internet fury"? A sad article...
« Last post by Shades on March 22, 2013, 04:16 PM »
@40hz:
About equality and privilege...you should read Nietschze. Already dead for so many years, but still manages to put the finger on the (politically incorrect) sore spot in society regarding equality and privilege. He also puts the blame for that where it belongs, if you would ask me.

As I have come to know you as a well-read person through this forum, I suspect you have read him already.
1670
Living Room / Re: unmountable_boot_volume error = is there a fix?
« Last post by Shades on March 20, 2013, 07:55 AM »
There is also: BartPE

Similar method of data retrieval as suggested by 40hz, but BartPE is Windows based, so it is definitely able to read files from the laptop.

The disadvantage is that you have to create the disk (or USB) yourself, while the distro's do not.
1671
Developer's Corner / Re: SourceTree for Windows in Beta
« Last post by Shades on March 19, 2013, 03:28 PM »
My emailbox is always filled to the brim in the morning...and there was a newsletter saying that the Windows version is now also available (out of beta).

Link in original post will lead you to the download.
1672
Living Room / Re: What are your favorite movies?
« Last post by Shades on March 12, 2013, 07:44 AM »
Movies with Sean Connery are practically all in the same league as the Clint Eastwood movies. 'In the Name Of The Rose' is a great movie from S.C.

1673
Living Room / Re: Recommendations for a Host OS?
« Last post by Shades on March 07, 2013, 08:38 AM »
VMWare carries a product called ESXi, which sounds (very) similar to ProxMox. If memory serves me right there was a free version of that software. Don't know if there are limitations to be able to use it.

Sorry don't have time right now to put links in this post... :-[
1674
Fun thing with symbolic linked stuff...I use them under Linux (Ubuntu 10.04 Server edition) and my file-manager of choice 'Midnight commander', but it is always tricky when you want to remove them. it is very easy to not only remove the link, but the file/folder as well.

However, I do like to use them for making stuff available (within limits) in a 'walled-off' folder structure. I don't lose any sleep over the access to or the loss of content on that PC at all at any given time.

NTFS has proven to be more problematic to me. Specifically the NTFS version in Windows 2008 R2. When accessing it a lot through network for an hour or so (SOAP calls to Oracle database server), NTFS just told me that it was not able to access the hard disk anymore. And with a lot, I really mean a lot, as I was trying to mimic the traffic a computer with 64 Itanium processors needs to process (on a quad-core i7).

I lost two 350 GByte databases that day, as Oracle couldn't make heads or tales anymore from the mess NTFS had created. Even the archive logs from Oracle were damaged. And the funny thing was that I had an older version of one of these databases running on a (AMD single core) 2003 Server and that one was able to complete my test without any problem for any amount of time while not really being slower at all.

Because of this incident I do not have the same confidence in the latest version(s) of NTFS as in the older NTFS version(s)  from 2003/XP.

Back to the topic again. Directory opus ( and higher has functionality comparable with the Libraries in Windows and I already dislike it in DOpus, so don't expect me to use it in Windows 7/2008. Never worked with folder junctions, so no (good/bad) comment from me on that matter.

An intelligent (to me at least :)) folder structure with symbolic links always made more sense to me. More fine-grained control, (likely) more speed gaining access to the accumulated data and (likely) faster updates from file changes. But that could all be just me.
1675
Conner had the same problem

I still have a working 420 MB Conner hard drive on my workbench.   :)

And you used it for hammering the nails in your workbench, right?   :P
Pages: prev1 ... 62 63 64 65 66 [67] 68 69 70 71 72 ... 118next