Recent Posts

3051

General Software Discussion / Re: FinePrint vs. priPrinter

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 29, 2008, 04:18 PM »

Looks like a really nice program. The interface seems less clunky and more responsive than FinePrint 5, and I can't see the point of upgrading to FP 6.

How to set up booklet printing, multiple pages to a single sheet and landscape orientation took a bit of finding but only because they are so obvious!!

I have been using FP 5 for a long time now and been happy with it but I am tempted to buy a license for priPrinter - anyone fancy chasing a discount?

3052

General Software Discussion / Re: Conflicting results from Chkdsk -- Why?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 28, 2008, 11:50 AM »

This happens all the time on my system - I think it is to do with open files.

If you want to really cheack the file system open a DOS windows and run CHKDSK C: /R /V it will then say you need to dot his a boot time so say yes and reboot.

3053

General Software Discussion / Re: image problem

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 28, 2008, 06:39 AM »

Does your OCR have a scanner optimization wizard - many do.

If your scanner is not easy to adjust and giving poor quality output can you afford to change it? Many of the Canon Scanners are pretty cheap and give very good quality scans with easy to use software with up to full screen previews and a zoom feature to check regions of an image and accurately select the region you want to scan. I have a CanoScan 3200F which is pretty long in the tooth now but it still works brilliantly. The 3200F will even scan photo negatives and slides and does a reasonable job of that.

3054

General Software Discussion / Re: image problem

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 28, 2008, 06:13 AM »

Why not scan in B&W and if the OCR program needs to use greyscale convert the image to greyscale.

Failing that tell use what kind of scanner you use. If you can alter brightness and contrast does increasing contrast and lowering brightness help?

Also check the instructions for your OCR app - 600dpi scanning should not be necessary for OCR.

3055

General Software Discussion / Re: Is there a way to move Microsoft Office 2007 to another hardisk for XP Downgrade

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 28, 2008, 05:55 AM »

After a lot of fiddling around a lot, I discovered the problem is that you have to get into the Bios setting to set the compatibility mode. I forget the name of the particular field. Once that is done, the T61 recognized the Windows XP Pro disc and the installation went along fine except you have to go around hunting for the drivers.

-patteo (September 28, 2008, 02:25 AM)

That's assuming the BIOS has any worthwhile settings. I am a bit frustrated that my notepad has a BIOS with virtually nothing user definable.

3056

General Software Discussion / Re: Is there a way to move Microsoft Office 2007 to another hardisk for XP Downgrade

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 27, 2008, 12:32 PM »

I wouldn't consider installing XP over Vista. It is possible the other way round because Vista 'knows' how to deal with upgrading XP but XP is not even aware of the existence of Vista. Chances are you will end up with a mishmash system that causes problems down the line.

What would be worth doing now though is to try installing XP from your disc (but don't actually go as far as the installation step). You may find it says "can't find a hard disc installed'. Lots of new SATA hard discs are not supported by the XP installer and are simply not recognised. If you laptop has a floppy you can add the drivers by pressing F6 during the startup of Setup and inserting afloppy with the correct drivers. If you haven't got a floppy disc you will have to use nLite and build a new XP installation disc that includes the drivers for the hard disk in your laptop.

Exactly this happened to me - I asked the manufacturer of my Notebook could they let me have an XP disc and they said yes as compensation as they supplied the wrong wireless adapter. When I tried to install the manufacturer's OEM own branded XP disc it would not install on their own notepads!!.

3057

Living Room / Re: Drive by malware ... ouch

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 27, 2008, 11:25 AM »

Yep - I was running AdMuncher.

I may have just had an odd experience with it but years ago I tried using BISS Host file (and still get update emails from them) but I ended up uninstalling it as was just too aggressive and there were many benign websites (at least to my mind) that just didn't work properly with it installed.

3058

General Software Discussion / Re: Is there a way to move Microsoft Office 2007 to another hardisk for XP Downgrade

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 27, 2008, 11:20 AM »

Check your hard disk for folders with MSO in the name (or possibly even the complete name). That is usually where MS keeps Office installers.

Did you have to enter the key and activate the software on Vista? If it is locked to the computer you may find you can install it in XP without activating because it is locked to the BIOS which isn't changing. (That's how OEM supplied Windows disks install without activation).

Failing that when you activate just tell them you had to downgrade to windows XP and reinstall because you have too many software titles that are not Vista compatible. OEM licenses are linked to a computer - not to an OS.

You could try contacting MS before you do this and see if they will send you an Office Small Business CD. They have unlicensed CDs which they sell to people who have trial Office preinstalled on new computers.

3059

Living Room / Re: Drive by malware ... ouch

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 26, 2008, 08:42 PM »

My system seems clean now (I have done multiple scans with umpteen scanners).

I have changed all my domain passwords 'cos I spent the day getting frustrated trying to FTP stuff.

I will try to remember what I actually accessed today and change my passwords! Not easy and part of the cleanup removed all cached data/history and cookies so there is no easy way to make sure I know where I have visited!

Why can't someone castrate the b******s - preferably with a blunt stick slowly.

3060

Living Room / Drive by malware ... ouch

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 26, 2008, 06:20 PM »

I have just spent a day and a half trying to figure out why one machine on my network couldn't access websites that were accessible to other machines on the same network.

The main symptom was that since late yesterday evening every time I tried to log onto this forum I got an error saying that www.donationcoder.com doesn't exist. I panicked and in the end emailed Mouser to ask if there was anything I could do to help since the server seemed to be broken (memories of last years website hack sprang to mind). Having established that it was at my end and that my other computers actually did access donationcoder.com I set about searching for an answer. Now that I think of it i it does seem obvious to use another computer to check but given that my house is currently strewn with the remains of dead computers I had to cobble one together again to check the connection.

Having looked at the TCP/IP settings I noticed the DNS server had shifted from the automatic settings to fixed values (one of which was 85.255.115.51)

Everytime I tried to reset my DNS values or enter an IP for my Router it seemed to work except when Ioned the settings again they had been reset back to the bogus values.

I did a search on the IP causing the issue and found the following article:

http://forums.spybot...hlight=85.255.115.51

This seems to be what happened to my system and having gone through the steps outlined my system is running normally again.

I really don't know how I managed to acquire this annoyance. I didn't download anything and run it yesterday evening so I can only assume it must have been a drive by problem on a site. If my experience can help anyone else it will have been a useful experience.

As it happens I haven't been spending money online today (so that is a relief) but do I now assume that all my passwords are compromised for sites that I visited - even though most of those sites are accessed via cookies?

3061

General Software Discussion / ASUS mobo dead

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 26, 2008, 06:09 PM »

Actually I went to the ASUS website and they said go to your supplier. The supplier website we only provide RMA support for 12 months, and then only for manufacturers that don't handle RMAs directly.

I decided to ask for an RMA anyway at the supplier (Overclockers UK) and they said OK. So  now I have to box it up and send it back for testing. Last time I did that they couldn't find anything wrong with it. How do you ensure a motherboard doesn't work without any obvious physical damage?

3062

General Software Discussion / ASUS mobo dead

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 25, 2008, 09:45 AM »

In the UK the supplier handles the RMA process normally for a period of time. ASUS boards are guaranteed for 3 years but few shops/retailers are going to provide RMA support for 3 years.

I can't get the board to post any more at all - I have stripped it to only CPU, 1 memory stick (which is fine because it works faultlessly in my other system) and a graphics card - there is nothing else attached and I have tried 2 different PSUs. It doesn't even get as far as  a beep code.

3063

General Software Discussion / Re: Dilemma - Free AVG8 - Buggy; Updates for Free AVG 7.5 ending May 08

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 24, 2008, 06:27 PM »

Very - it is very light on resources and seems to do the job well enough. Occasionally it takes a while to check a ZIP file when you download one from the internet but it isn't really a problem.

3064

General Software Discussion / ASUS mobo dead

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 24, 2008, 06:25 PM »

Oh bum - failing IDE interface on my mobo as far as I can tell.

The mobo no longer POSTS (drive LED comes on and then waits for ever for the check to complete).

Luckily I have another identical mobo so I have swapped them and now everything seems to be working fine (fingers crossed).

The knackered mobo is still under guarantee so now I have to do battle with ASUS tech support - not a happy prospect!

3065

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 7 -- ribbons for everyone!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 24, 2008, 05:51 PM »

Yep - and I still think so - whenever I can't find something I use it and it finds it quickly and reminds me where to find it next time and the shortcut.

3066

General Software Discussion / Re: Do you keep two computers synchronized? i.e. work + home. If so, how?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 23, 2008, 09:30 AM »

Why is it so freaking difficult/risky to sync two pst files?

-Darwin (September 17, 2008, 12:07 PM)

Primarily because a pst file is a database rather than a simple collection of individual message files. Your Outlook e-mail application enforces its own internal integrity and structure checks on the database. Hard to tell exactly how Outlook tracks things, but I would assume it hashes the pst file periodically and stores the result internally. It then checks the latest hashkey when it opens the pst file. If there's a mismatch, it knows some other app has changed the pst file. Outlook tends to view any changes made to pst by outside programs as file corruption.  So to do it correctly, Microsoft would need to provide some sort of "smart merge" feature for pst files. And  I doubt MS will be in any rush to provide that feature since it would remove some of the rationale for needing to buy MS Exchange.

-40hz (September 17, 2008, 01:11 PM)

Strikes me it would be simplicity for MS to ensure data inegrity. Do an MD5 check on the PST file (or similar) and store its hash value as the last few bytes of the file. When Outlook opens the file it can read the has value and recalculate the has with the rest of the file and compare them. That way PST files would be portable instead of a PITA !

One way you can keep Outlook up to date across different systems is to import the PST file across the network without allowing duplicates to be copied. Not convenient (reasonably fast if you have a Gigabit network) but could be automated I suppose. The advantages of this to open and copy to folder are firstly the import without duplicates is automated and secondly you are not 'opening' the PST files on the other system so Outlook on eacy system is unaware that the file has been used by another version of Outlook. Also if the PST files are in Outlook 2000-2003 format it should work across and between all Outlook 2000-2007 versions.

My preferred method is to keep the PST file as small as possible and hive off all my email into MailStore Home (allowing MailStore to delete all emails in Outlook older than a certain number of days so that the PST file doesn't grow too big). You can then sync those MailStore database files without any problem across systems. If you get Mailstore Home Plus you can even automate the archiving of all your email to MailStore and the auto-deletion of email from Outlook. Since Mailstore only deals with email, I also use Outlook's Archive to move dead tasks, calendar entries, Notes etc. into an Archive PST file, that would need to be imported on each system o keep things up to date but since it only contains older tasks etc. it doesn't need to be synced that often.

Another approach with outlook would be to use a search app (such as X1 Pro) that can sync PST file content across a network so that the data is searchable without actually being moved. You could then index all of your PST files on each computer.

3067

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 7 -- ribbons for everyone!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 22, 2008, 11:49 AM »

And why not - of course it would only have one tab with two settings On and Off - but wouldn't it look pretty

3068

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 7 -- ribbons for everyone!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 22, 2008, 04:14 AM »

The main reasons people buy third party firewalls are:

• market inertia - Windows firewall was new so people stuck to names they had trusted before
• marketing - all the main manufacturers said Windows Firewall was crap and people believed them
• ignorance - if you can't cope with Windows Firewall HTF are you going to deal with ZoneAlarm ?
• Windows XP SP2 Firewall doesn't protect outgoing connections (leaktests). True but then most of the 3rd party apps don't out of the box (and most don't really even after extensive tweaking - they only appear to with smoke and mirrors). Those that do are usually complex to set up and even more complex to manage in use.

If you live behind a Router firewall Windows Firewall is perfectly adequate for most people and doesn't screw up your system like many of the 3rd party apps.

3069

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 7 -- ribbons for everyone!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 21, 2008, 04:36 AM »

WordPad serves the purpose that someone who doesn't want to install a full word processor can type the odd note or letter with some formatting. It does that pretty well.

Assuming of course the user even know it exists.

3070

General Software Discussion / ASUS mobo dead

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 20, 2008, 01:44 PM »

I think with the old ATA66 cables that was the case but with the introduction of ATA100 I think that was less of a problem.

Having said that I prefer to keep hard discs and optical discs separate.

3071

General Software Discussion / ASUS mobo dead

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 20, 2008, 08:33 AM »

Oddly there is nothing in System or Application Event logs at all.

I'll try removing ImgBurn and installing the latest build from scratch and see if something somewhere has got corrupted?

As for burning stuff - I have two Pioneer DVR-111 drives on IDE-1 (both master and slave) and they have both worked fine for well over a year now.

I use Verbatim DVD-R x 16 discs and Verbatim DVD-R DL x8 discs - both of which seem to give reasonably consistent results on my system. I never burn them at full speed (even though my drives support those speeds). I usually use 50% of rated speed for the discs.

As far as I know I haven't got any software that adds an ASPI layer.

If reinstalling ImgBurn doesn't solve the problem I will try a cable swap.

Actually I have ordered a replacement mobo just in case. I have 3 desktop systems all based on 939 technology so getting a mobo while I still can means I have some reserve plan if something goes pear shaped!

Anyone got any experience with the ASRock 939N68PV-GLAN mobo - it seems to be one of the few 939 boards that is still available. Amazon UK still had a few in stock at ~£40 - which didn't seem a bad price. Main criticisms I read were the ATX connector is poorly sites, SLI graphics cards are  tight fit w.r.t. memory cards and there is no Firewire.

I can't see any of these are huge negatives (I have a number of Firewire cards sitting doing nothing so that isn't an issue), the card has integrated nVidia 7 Series graphics (with both D-Sub and DVI inputs which can run dual monitors). I don't play games so that wouldn't be an issue (and I have an SLI graphics card if needed anyway). Connectors only really have to be connected once so they are't really a huge issue AFAICS.

My current ASUS board only seems to be available second hand at ridiculous prices (i.e. higher than the price I paid when new - which was expensive).

3072

General Software Discussion / ASUS mobo dead

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 20, 2008, 04:42 AM »

[Note I have gone through and changed the title of this thread. It was originally called "Strange problem with ImgBurn (I think)" but ultimately turned out to be a motherboard problem]

Just curious if anyone else has come across behaviour like this?

Over the last few days I have had a number of occasions where ImgBurn has failed to burn an ISO image to a DVD5 disc. In each case it has siad the device was not ready halfway through the burn. The operation cancelled but the drive kept spinning and nothing would eject the disc except for a system restart. Upon restarting the BIOS cannot detect my DVD drives !! If Windows starts there are all sorts of problems not least of which is that the system is unusable because there is obviously an interrupt hogging a large proportion of the CPU time - eg. the mouse moves only in fits and bursts. The drives don't appear in the devices list (but the IDE interface does and it says it is working normally!).

The only way to recover the system is to turn off the computer, remove power completely and leave it long enough for all capacitors in the system to discharge. When it starts up again everything is fine.

At first I thought it was a hardware problem but I can burn the same image on the same drive using Nero. On one occasion a DMA/CRC error was reported by Nero but it was handled properly and the device unlocked.

Is it possible for an instruction to a controller to block access to drives in this way until capacitors are discharged?

I don't think it can be a dying IDE controller because I have my hard discs on the same controller and have had no issues at all with them. Granted they are on channel 0 and the two DVD-R DL are both on channel 1 so maybe it is a problem with one channel. However, it is strange that I only seem to have this problem with ImgBurn. Could it just be a bug in the handling of one unusual error type? I have noticed in the past the ImgBurn doesn't handle errors totally gracefully and often takes a long time to release a disc - even just for a simple bad block error.

Any ideas?

3073

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 7 -- ribbons for everyone!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 19, 2008, 03:40 PM »

I disagree - you could have 'stubs' of apps installed with windows but the apps don't get installed until you actually use them. Then they could install silently so no one would be any the wiser.

Most people wouldn't shift to Apple because it is too expensive and they wouldn't know where to buy one. Plus they'd wonder where the 'start' button has gone!

3074

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 7 -- ribbons for everyone!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 19, 2008, 02:28 PM »

So get an applications development team to designe them and make them freely downloadable from their website. That way they would stop having all the srupid arguments with the competition regulators.

More than anything else windows 7 needs a complete strip down.

I would say be bold - drop all compatibility with non NT systems for a start. There are no preNT operating systems still supported by OS so why saddle everyone with compatibility layers etc.. If they want compatibility with earlier Windows why not redesign VirtualPC to run apps transparently on the desktop in the correct virtual OS?

Next, get rid of ALL the eyecandy nonsense. Have themes like in Windows 98 if you must but get rid of all the stuff that demands a specific graphics card type or capacity - windows should be able to run on a system with built in graphics with minimal use of memory.

Make all the current core apps are separate apps as above (so Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, Notepad, WordPad and all the the dross have to be downloaded if you actually want them). A minimal uninstallable browser could be added to allow you to choose what you want to download - or better supply them on a separate CDROM with the windows installer - or even in a separate folder on the OS disc.

For me one crucial idea would be don't install any services unless you actually need/use them. The first time you use an app that needs service X just install it at that point - they can easily sit in a folder inside the Windows folder to make this simple - and make it so that when you exit an app any services that you only use for that app are automatically stopped and unloaded. That way no one would need apps like nLite to strip out all the unnecessary CPU hogging processes that serve no purpose for 99% of users.

The emphasis should be on lean and light operating system that is easily and transparently extendible as required in use. That way it would be MUCH smaller (back to a CD ROM rather than half a DVD full of nonsense).

Anyone think this has any chance of happening?

3075

Living Room / Re: You might want to skip the whole Blu-Ray generation

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 18, 2008, 05:39 AM »

I would think that a few VMWare/VirtualPC/VirtualBox OS images on a HDD would be a more space efficient method rather than cluttering up your place with lot's of archaic hardware, (what am I saying ).

-4wd (September 17, 2008, 07:18 PM)

Assuming that Virtual Disc formats don't change and the software indefinitely supports old operating systems! What is going to happen when new versions of Windows/Linux etc. drop support for PATA and ATAPI devices - will VMWare etc. keep supporting them forever? Doubt it very much!

-Carol Haynes (September 17, 2008, 07:45 PM)

I just said on a HDD, not that it was PATA/SATA/SCSI/Fibre Channel/etc but personally I would use SCSI if it's that much of an issue, (AFAIK, all recent invocations of SCSI are still backward compatible with the original SCSI spec requiring only an adapter to connect to a current host - the drives are also more robust than normal HDDs).

And logically, if you are going to keep a HDD with Virtual systems you would install a base OS on it along with the Virtual Host software.  eg. Ubuntu with VirtualBox plus your virtual systems.
So it doesn't matter if later versions of [insert virtual host here] don't understand earlier virtual drive formats.

For that matter, just partition the HDD, install a boot manager and as many OS's as you want.  Then you can just image it from one HDD to the next when keeping up with interfaces becomes too much.

-4wd (September 18, 2008, 03:13 AM)

What I meant was that as hardware develops old versions of VMware (say) may not be usable on new operating system (it doesn't matter if it is Windows or Linux hosting - as hardware develops host OSes will develop to match the hardware - for example, it is already getting more convoluted to install Windows XP on some SATA drives). If newer OSes and hardware don't support early HDD images in VMWare and VMWare moves on to be largely compatible with the new hardware environment too then you images (even if they have a guest OS installed) may not be usable unless you have an old system to run the whole virtual show on ??

I am not talking short term here - but look at how much has changed in the last 15 years ... could you really hope to install Windows 95 on cutting edge hardware now? Already in Vista manufacturers are dropping support for hardware that was designed for XP - by the time Windows 2015 is released (probably in about 2021) none of today's hardware or operating systems will run - and most won't support the current version of VM software.