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3651

General Software Discussion / Re: EverNote beta 2.2.0.372 has some nice new features

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 21, 2008, 11:35 AM »

I had exactly the same reaction Dormouse ... SQLNotes simply baffles me and I have tried it 3 or 4 times and ended up deleting it again. I also suspect it is going to cost big time when completed!

3652

General Software Discussion / Re: EverNote beta 2.2.0.372 has some nice new features

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 21, 2008, 08:30 AM »

I think that is the point - the give away of the day (mentioned in another thread) is pretty disingenuous because I bet Evernote version 3 will be free anyway but you need a paid subscription to use it - and to get people to bite they are giving away a free trial until it moves out of beta. Doubtless you will continue using the same account - but only in a paid version.

It also explains why they aren't responding to beta tester concerns about the online experience!!! People are forgetting - beta testing is making sure the software does what is required by the developer - not about providing what the beta testers want.

I am sure there will be people who will like the new model - but I'd guess there will be a lot of current customers who will simply dump Evernote as it is not what they bought into. Evernote probably don't care because they have a reputation now that means they can attract new customers to the service model.

We have to face it Evernote 2.2 is the end of the line unless you want a paid never ending subscription to a service that is at best unnecessary and at worst potentially worrying. Grab it while you can or forget Evernote. I have OneNote 2007 so I guess I will do the latter.

If you actually want all the sharing features etc. suggested then personally I think a website based on something like Drupal or Wordpress where you can set up access by group membership would be a free and better approach. If you just want note taking software what is the point?

3653

General Software Discussion / Re: EverNote beta 2.2.0.372 has some nice new features

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 20, 2008, 03:43 AM »

I have been reading this somewhat nonplussed too! Like other commentators here 2.2 will be the last version for me if that is what they are thinking. Oh well it is still in beta - hopefully they will get the message before version 3 is released.

If they are arguing they want portability why don't they simply make Evernote Portable better.

If they want to allow notes to be shared with friends and colleagues why not just set up a way to post your shared message on a simple forum with access controls (like this one!) or link it with a collaboration tool like Live Messenger so that you can have a shared folder for friends to access.

For me the whole point of Evernote is that it is a simple and low resouce method of making notes and grabbing bits of info. I realise they see the need to 'innovate' but following the herd into Facebook is not innovation!

3654

Living Room / Re: Mobo Mystery

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 18, 2008, 08:29 PM »

Interesting thread - and a simple solution lets hope it helps

If you don't want to read pages of stuff just check all the connections on the system panel connector - make sure all the leads jump the correct pins and that they are all the right way round.

3655

Living Room / Re: Mobo Mystery

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 18, 2008, 10:12 AM »

Could it be a damaged fan connector on the mobo forcing the BIOS to think there is a fan problem?

3656

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone else having random reboots with Firefox 2.0.0.11

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 17, 2008, 07:24 AM »

Thanks - much appreciated.

Actually I found http://www.runscanner.net/ (mentioned previously in these boards but I hadn't noticed it  ) which lets you put the md5 value and search for the file - all the files are legitimate - one is from SP2 RC 1, one is from SP2 RTM and the other three are the current version!

At least I know I haven't got a rootkit or something lurking in those files!

I think the next step is to remove all my sound card drivers and try reinstalling them again from scratch!

3657

General Software Discussion / Re: Random Reboots saga - continues ......

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 17, 2008, 04:22 AM »

OK phase two of sorting out random reboots (I should change the title of this thread!):

Had my system running for nearly 3 days continuously (day and night) without any problem and was very relieved - but now I am confused as I got up this morning to find it had rebooted during the night.

The good part is that I now have a minidump and a STOP code from the event logs.

Event Type:   Information
Event Source:   Save Dump
Event Category:   None
Event ID:   1001
Date:      17/03/2008
Time:      05:37:03
User:      N/A
Computer:   LAIRDSWOOD
Description:
The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck.  The bugcheck was: 0x1000007e (0xc0000005, 0xb890aa1a, 0xbad07528, 0xbad07224). A dump was saved in: C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini031708-01.dmp.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://support.micro....com/kb/315263/en-us.

Loading dump file C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini031708-01.dmp
----- 32 bit Kernel Mini Dump Analysis

DUMP_HEADER32:
MajorVersion        0000000f
MinorVersion        00000a28
DirectoryTableBase  0b0d8020
PfnDataBase         81e00000
PsLoadedModuleList  8055c700
PsActiveProcessHead 80562818
MachineImageType    0000014c
NumberProcessors    00000002
BugCheckCode        1000007e
BugCheckParameter1  c0000005
BugCheckParameter2  b890aa1a
BugCheckParameter3  bad07528
BugCheckParameter4  bad07224
PaeEnabled          00000001
KdDebuggerDataBlock 8054c2e0
MiniDumpFields      00000dff

TRIAGE_DUMP32:
ServicePackBuild      00000200
SizeOfDump            00010000
ValidOffset           0000fffc
ContextOffset         00000320
ExceptionOffset       000007d0
MmOffset              00001068
UnloadedDriversOffset 000010a0
PrcbOffset            00001878
ProcessOffset         000024c8
ThreadOffset          00002728
CallStackOffset       00002980
SizeOfCallStack       00000a74
DriverListOffset      00003688
DriverCount           000000b8
StringPoolOffset      00006d28
StringPoolSize        000019f0
BrokenDriverOffset    00000000
TriageOptions         00000141
TopOfStack            bad0758c
DebuggerDataOffset    000033f8
DebuggerDataSize      00000290
DataBlocksOffset      00008718
DataBlocksCount       00000006


Windows XP Kernel Version 2600 (Service Pack 2) MP (2 procs) Free x86 compatible

Kernel base = 0x804d7000 PsLoadedModuleList = 0x8055c700
Debug session time: Mon Mar 17 05:35:20 2008
System Uptime: 0 days 11:36:11
start    end        module name
804d7000 806e2000   nt             Checksum: 001FB950  Timestamp: Wed Feb 28 09:15:54 2007 (45E5484A)

Unloaded modules:
a2818000 a2843000   kmixer.sys    Timestamp: unavailable (00000000)
a2818000 a2843000   kmixer.sys    Timestamp: unavailable (00000000)
a2818000 a2843000   kmixer.sys    Timestamp: unavailable (00000000)
a2818000 a2843000   kmixer.sys    Timestamp: unavailable (00000000)
a2818000 a2843000   kmixer.sys    Timestamp: unavailable (00000000)
a2818000 a2843000   kmixer.sys    Timestamp: unavailable (00000000)
aede9000 aee14000   kmixer.sys    Timestamp: unavailable (00000000)
bae62000 bae64000   MSPCLOCK.sys    Timestamp: unavailable (00000000)
bade8000 badea000   MSPQM.sys    Timestamp: unavailable (00000000)
aede9000 aee14000   kmixer.sys    Timestamp: unavailable (00000000)
aeeb4000 aeedf000   kmixer.sys    Timestamp: unavailable (00000000)
b0481000 b04ac000   kmixer.sys    Timestamp: unavailable (00000000)
baeea000 baeeb000   drmkaud.sys    Timestamp: unavailable (00000000)
b1e67000 b1e92000   kmixer.sys    Timestamp: unavailable (00000000)
b2062000 b206f000   DMusic.sys    Timestamp: unavailable (00000000)
b1e92000 b1eb5000   aec.sys     Timestamp: unavailable (00000000)
b2072000 b2080000   swmidi.sys    Timestamp: unavailable (00000000)
badea000 badec000   splitter.sys    Timestamp: unavailable (00000000)
ba978000 ba981000   processr.sys    Timestamp: unavailable (00000000)
b88a5000 b88a9000   kbdhid.sys    Timestamp: unavailable (00000000)
babc0000 babc5000   Cdaudio.SYS    Timestamp: unavailable (00000000)
b88a9000 b88ac000   Sfloppy.SYS    Timestamp: unavailable (00000000)

Finished dump check

The strange thing is I seem to have conflicting issues described by the STOP code and the minidump !!!

The STOP code is 0x1000007e which points to an

issue with machines with 2Gb+ of memory

-http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925528/en-us

and seems most likely to relate to a 'USB Racing" issue to do with devices trying to go in and out of their power saving suspend state. This would make some sense as I have an external USB hard disc connected that does that all the time (and it drives me nuts as there doesn't seem to be a way to stop it doing it). It would also explain why the system is so much more stable without the USB WiFi adapter. It is somewhat odd though that the only reference I can find to that stop code relates to usbhub.sys but that driver isn't even mentioned in the minidump.

However the MINIDUMP (above) seem to suggest it is related to KMIXER.SYS. Strangely there is a KB article related to a random reboot issue and KMIXER with a hotfix that replaces 3 driver files. On of those files doesn't match the byte count suggested by the MS article, even after replacing it with the hotfix - having said that the version number is identical.

Could some kind person running Windows XP Pro SP2 check their file size for the following file:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\splitter.sys

mine says 6400 bytes whereas MS suggest that it should be 6272 bytes.

I have five different copies of SPLITTER.SYS on my system:



They are all apparently the same version but the first one is 6272 bytes and all the others are 6400 bytes - can I just replace the one in drivers with the 6272 byte version and reboot? [Edit: Just calculated the MD5 checksums on the files - interesting that there seem to be 3 versions]

3658

General Software Discussion / Re: MailStore Home 2.5.1 released with lots of improvements

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 16, 2008, 09:12 PM »

Why? It says users can access everything except MailStore Server settings. Why would you want everybody to have access to those settings? As a normal user you can archive your mail and access the archive.

Without installing it I don't think it is clear what they mean by 'user' and 'administrator'. Given that it doesn't need to run on a server (it is its own server) presumably you would assign user credentials for the MailStore Server service and then install clients to access that service. It isn't clear if this uses its own user database or whether it uses Windows user ids. I'd guess that it must look after its own user database as in a Workgroup network the Windows ids are not held centrally in any form.


Having said all that with no knowledge of how it actually works .... I think you need to download it and have a play or read the manual carefully You can download the manual from http://www.mailstore...cMailStoreServer.pdf (I just found it in the support section of the website)

3659

Living Room / Re: Who else is sick of difficult word verifications on the web?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 16, 2008, 09:01 PM »

Two other criticisms I have:

• They are always western alphabet/number biased
• They often have mixtures of numbers, upper and lower case characters. When you see, for example, 'l' is it the number one, the lower case L or the upper case i ??? Same goes for 'o' ?

3660

General Software Discussion / Re: MailStore Home 2.5.1 released with lots of improvements

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 16, 2008, 08:50 PM »

Sorry I don't but their corporate version may be suitable. It doesn't appear to have to be installed on a server.

The full description is here: http://www.mailstore...cMailStoreServer.pdf

Depending on the size of your company it isn't necessarily cheap! See http://www.mailstore.com/en/shop.aspx

The main page for the product is http://www.mailstore...ailstore-server.aspx and there is a 30 day free trial so you could try it out on a couple of machines (or in a Virtual network using VMWare or similar) to see how it performs. (Check out the How It Works link ... it seems to do what you want).

3661

Living Room / Re: Who else is sick of difficult word verifications on the web?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 16, 2008, 08:46 PM »

Absolutely.

They also discriminate against people with impaired sight and with the increasing use of colour they affect the colour-blind - which is about 7% of men.

OK, some sites that use them have alternatives for accessibility but most don't and it is getting more common to have unintelligible daubs. It is particularly annoying that they are creeping into generic forums that are widely used - surely developers of popular products should be aware of accessibility issues!

3662

General Software Discussion / Re: MailStore Home 2.5.1 released with lots of improvements

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 16, 2008, 05:50 PM »

It's offline - it build an email archive which is updated whenever you tell it to sync with your mail store(s).

I really like it a lot and they are responsive to new ideas and reply to support requests.

My only wish list would include allowing the free version to have more than 3 profiles (the current limit) ... but having said that since I use Outlook and they now support IMAP as part of your Outlook Profile that is effectively solved for me.

For me the big advantage is the speed of searching your archive - plus you have a separate copy of all important emails incase of file corruption in you normal client.

thanks for the hint I Will have a look at it
...
too bad, that The Bat! is not supported.

-masu (March 16, 2008, 03:52 PM)

By the way masu I think there is a simple solution to lack of The Bat support (at least for incloming mail from now) ... just set up a POP profile and download mail to MailStore direct from the server. If you set up The Bat to not delete emails from the POP server for 30 days you would only need to sync once a month. This should work for any POP based account whatever client you are using.

It doesn't solve the problem of your existing email store - can you export everything to Outlook Express and then import from there as a one off exercise? Sorry it is a long time since I tried the Bat but I seem to remember the thing I liked least was the proprietary format and lack of import/export options.

Edit ...
Just looked at MailStore FAQs and this might help:

TheBat! wird nicht direkt von MailStore unterstützt. Sie können jedoch grundsätzlich immer versuchen, die E-Mails im .eml- oder MBOX-Format zu exportieren und mit MailStore über den Importweg "Dateisystem" zu archivieren.

Which roughly translates as "The Bat! isn't supported directly but you can export emails to .EML or MBOX format and then import them into MailStore."

3663

General Software Discussion / MailStore Home 2.5.1 released with lots of improvements

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 16, 2008, 03:46 PM »

Those clever people at MailStore have released an update. See http://www.mailstore.../mailstore-home.aspx for download details and changelog.

Some of the nice things they have added are:

• Support for Outlook MAPI accounts (so now you can archive your GoogleMail)
• The ability to exclude folders from archiving
• Email viewing is now rendered via Windows Live - which means you can see properly formatted HTML without resorting to another app (there is an option in each view window to show graphics so they display as text until you say otherwise).

Good stuff - and it is free! Don't forget it works with lots of mail clients (not just Outlook).

3664

General Software Discussion / Re: What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 16, 2008, 02:13 PM »

You would have thought that AutoSave (which is a file versioning utility) would at least need tweaking!

3665

General Software Discussion / Re: What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 16, 2008, 01:56 PM »

I bought AutoSave 2 from Avanquest years ago and it was updated a couple of time in quick succession but hasn't seen any further development for a very long time. They seem to specialise in good ideas that then die a quiet death which continuing to sell the products.

To be fair when they had updated versions it was just a case of downloading the trial version from the site and installing it over the registered copy.

The other thing I have noticed is that lots of their titles say they are Vista compat and yet haven't seen a version change since Vista was released.

I think they are basically acting as a reseller these days as i notice they now sell NitroPDF and that wasn't one of their products previously.

3666

General Software Discussion / Re: a software that would let me assign lan or wireless connection per application?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 15, 2008, 02:56 PM »

Not sure which would be the best for that.

Basically you need something that allows you to allow and block individual applications from sending data out of your computer.

I don't know enough about configuring firewalls - maybe someone else could chip in with some ideas. Alternatively there are other threads about firewalls where you might get some answers.

Here is one long running firewall thread https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=6059.0

but there are lots of others too - just do a search on 'firewall'

3667

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone else having random reboots with Firefox 2.0.0.11

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 15, 2008, 11:04 AM »

Right - I bought a 25m (yes 25m !) CAT6 cable and I know have my PCs Gigabit networked and the dodgy Wifi adapter is gone.

All running nicely (at the moment) ... I have lots of crossed fingers, toes, eyes, legs etc.

Hopefully I will be able to get on with something useful - rather than feeding a PC CDs for days on end!

3668

General Software Discussion / Re: a software that would let me assign lan or wireless connection per application?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 15, 2008, 07:16 AM »

What happens if you block access to everything on Wifi via your firewall - do requestes automatically get rerouted via the alternative network or do you simply get blocked?

3669

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone else having random reboots with Firefox 2.0.0.11

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 15, 2008, 07:14 AM »

I have just stripped out all of the drivers from my system and a load of applications that never get used and then reinstalled the drivers associated with WiFi and also Network shared drives and left the machine chuntering all night doing lots of intensive stuff (with the WiFi attached and logged in) and (fingers crossed) it is still doing what it should this morning.

I also moved my paging files (64Mb on my Windows drive, the rest on the first partition of another drive), did and offline defrag to make sure they were fixed size and suitably placed on the drive and guess what - not one single event logged (good or bad) in the event logs all night. Well thats a first!

3670

General Software Discussion / Re: a software that would let me assign lan or wireless connection per application?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 14, 2008, 10:26 PM »

Not sure but presumably you could use a firewall to configure allowed traffic on the wired and wireless connections separately - though if you are connected to the same network with two connections on each computer I am not sure how you specify that a particular app has to access the network over one connection rather than the other ?

3671

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone else having random reboots with Firefox 2.0.0.11

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 14, 2008, 10:06 PM »

Thanks I'll take a look.

It looks like it is related to a USB device - and maybe one of the built in mobo hubs because after running the battery of stress tests on the system with no problem I plugged in the WiFi adapter again and within an hour or so started to see reboots again.

3672

General Software Discussion / Re: Microsoft Office 2007 users, your opinions are wanted

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 14, 2008, 10:02 PM »

I just bought a laptop which came with 1Gb of RAM and running on Vista Home Premium. I have also bought a cheap copy of MS Office 2007 Ultimate Ed (they were practically giving away student copies of this - and it can be installed on a desktop machine and a laptop).

First thing to say is that 1Gb is not enough - the memory usage was horrendous - Vista was using 78% of memory without loading any other apps, and already the hard disc was thrashing almost constantly - not good.

I splashed out on another Gb of Crucial RAM and now it seems to be working MUCH smoother - and startup time has reduced about 4 or 5 fold.

I haven't played with Office much yet but I was prepared to hate it - but I don't!

Given that you can set all of the apps to use backwards compatible formats by default that is less of an issue than I first thought. I was under the impression that Outlook upgrade was one way because the file format changes - well it is easy enough to create an old format file and copy your emails to that. I haven't used it enough yet to hate it!

I have played a bit with Word and PowerPoint and was fully prepared to hate the 'ribbon' but actually I don't. Once you get over the fact that the usual menus and dialogues have all changed I think the interface is actually cleaner and clearer. OK there is a bit of relearning to do and initially I thought that a lot of things had disappeared but nope they all seem to be there (at least what I use). A lot of people complained about the ribbon taking up too much space but actually the quick access bar is very handy and setting the ribbon to auto hide means you can actually get away with rather less real estate lost.

In Word it is useful for me that other OLE apps now work quite seamlessly - so eg. I use MathType quite a bit and it now just appears as another tab on the ribbon and you create the equations directly in the word page rather than the 2003 and earlier clunk window interface that opened up.

Too early to say what I'd like to see in 2009, but if I can't get another cheapo student copy I will probably stick and jump a version.

I still have 2003 installed on my desktop machine - but that is mainly because I am having so many hassles at the moment.

3673

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone else having random reboots with Firefox 2.0.0.11

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 14, 2008, 01:31 PM »

Update: OK how does this sound ...

I used Ultimate Boot CD to run various stress tests outside windows (CPU, a variety of memory tests, hard disk diagnostic test). The only problem I encountered was that a number of these tools don't like USB keyboards!

Then I restored the backup I made of my 'faulty' system and pulled the wireless USB adapter and started running stress tests in Windows. I had the following running simultaneously for an hour and didn't get a single error or problem of any kind:

• NVidia's nTune stability test (includes CPU, Graphics, Memory stressing)
• MagicISO hosting a DVD image - played through a desktop app (so video and hard disc IO)
• Windows Media Player playing a U2 album
• Creative MediaPlayer playing another album
• iTunes playing video through QuickTime (a resource hog even under normal circumstances)
• Two different monitoring tools for CPU/Memory loads and temperatures.

Has my system got a problem if it can take that lot hammering away for an hour ?

I have plugged my USB wifi adapter in again but this time via a front access USB socket (rather than a back panel socket) - seems fine now.

Out of curiosity ... the USB adapter has a very short chord (it is really designed as a laptop adapter) and when plugged into the back of my tower has to sit on the floor or on top of the case (right above the PSU). I don't think there should be any radio interference between the PSU and adapter (as the PSU should be well shielded) but could this be an issue that could cause a malfunction that may hard reset my system ?? Anyone got any opinion??

3674

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone else having random reboots with Firefox 2.0.0.11

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 14, 2008, 07:42 AM »

Argh ... it looks like it must be hardware!!

I left the machine running last night when I went to bed - all it was doing was a 5 part CHKDSK on two large external USB drives and when I came down this morning the damn thing had rebooted.

I could really do without the lets test it for a week with only one extra bit of kit approach. The trouble is that the random reboots are just that - I can have 10 in one day and then none for a week so it is really difficult to pin down what exactly is going on.

Anyone any suggestions for a quicker way to identify the source of the problem?

• I have done complete disc scans to check they are not the problem and they seem fine. Given that the SATA and ATA drives in my system work properly it is unlikely to be the disk controller.
  
• I have run extended MEMTEST+ sessions on the RAM without any problems showing up.
  
• There are no graphics glitches that I am aware of (running 2 x NVidia 7300 cards at standard clock rates in SLi mode).
  
• There are no sound or video glitches so I'd guess the Audigy2 car I have installed is OK (the onboard sound is disabled).
  
• I have been having glitches with my USB Wifi adapter dropping connection or disabling itself so that is one suspect - or maybe the USB interface on the mobo - but I have other devices plugged into the same onboard 'hub' without problems occurring.
  
• I have an external 400Gb Seagate USB2 drive which I have been using heavily for creating DVD ISO files, storing and manipulating video files with no problems but running CHKDSK seems to be causing an issue (each time I run it the computer reboots at the moment - about the only consistent effect). Howevere if I run the usual 3 part CHDKSK no error show up and running CHKDSK from a boot CD doesn't seem to cause an issue ???
  
• I have a good quality power supply with plenty of power - but when it does reboot it is like pressing the reset button on the case - could it be a PSU glitch? How can I tell.
  
• There are various other USB addons that seem to work without problems.
  
• For me the prime suspect is the USB Wifi adapter that keeps playing sill buggers. The router is rock solid, bever disconnects and has no problems with two other computers in the house (one using a Wifi PCI card, the other an ethernet cable to the router). Unfortunately the location of the computer couldn't be worse located for trying out a wired connect and pulling the USB adapter plug and anyway I haven't got enough ethernet cable to reach. To move the computer is like death by a thousand cables!
  

3675

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone else having random reboots with Firefox 2.0.0.11

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 13, 2008, 09:36 PM »

That'll teach me to archive backups properly. The trouble is I have so much stuff on my discs that there is little space to do backups and I end up with so many programs installed (many with huge amounts of data) that it is impractical to do backups with anything less than a large hard drive!

(I should add that one of the reasons I have so much crap on my hard discs is that I never delete anything - my house is like that too with every inch of floor space covered in piles of books, CD, DVDs and all sorts of other junk ...)

It shouldn't be too bad - when I set up the system from scratch as new I did a backup once I had most drivers installed and after installing and activating Windows and MS Office. So at least I don't have to go through the hassle of reactivating those.

I also have Adobe Premium CS 2 installed and I managed to deactivate the previous install so I can easily reactivate this version.

There are a load of things to reinstall (not least huge numbers of Windows/Office updates - roll on XP SP3!) and update quite a few drivers that are no out of date but at least it isn't a totally from scratch install.