Recent Posts

4076

General Software Discussion / Re: Software for planning wood bookcases/cabinets/tables etc?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 30, 2007, 05:32 AM »

An we all thought you were off programming for filthy lucre - now we know the truth ... you've hung up you keyboard for a hammer and chisel !

4077

Living Room / Re: Postcards from DC members

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 30, 2007, 05:25 AM »

How about printing the two on the same sheet so that you only need to do one cutout and fold it? You will need to print the photo upside down though.

4078

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

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 29, 2007, 05:42 PM »

I'm reluctant to try try the Trial version of 2.2 as an upgrade - last time I did that it trashed my registered version and I had to reinstall. Probably best to wait until the official updater is available.

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Living Room / Re: Postcards from DC members

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 29, 2007, 07:13 AM »

in the days before internet, i remember sending postcards to quite a few shareware authors who made their programs postcard-wares.. but nowadays since i tend to capture interesting landmarks and landscape around the area where i work digitally, maybe i'll just print them & write the address on the reverse-side and try posting them. would it work?

Titiwangsa Lake Garden, Kuala Lumpur (see attachment in previous post)

-lanux128 (October 28, 2007, 08:35 PM)

Nice piccy!

Here are a few on a similar theme I took in Mississagi Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada in 2005:







And here was my favourite photo of the trip (take at Pancake Bay on Lake Superior):



By the way back on topic there is the thread I started called Let's Get to Know Each Other which has lots of photos - and was my original idea for the thread (unfortunately the first few posts seem to have been lost from the thread but it is still going strong - though people don't seem to post as many photos of their location these days).

Don't know about other countries but in the UK you can buy blank postcards with the usual arrangement on the back for message, address, stamp etc. which you should be able to print directly onto.

One example is Avery. They aren't the cheapest but they do produce edge-to-edge compatible inkjet printable postcards.

This google search brought up a lot of potential products

4080

Living Room / Re: Whats on your desktop?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 28, 2007, 02:55 PM »

Now that isn't fair - can't you see me turning green !

4081

General Software Discussion / Re: New version of Process Explorer available (11.03)

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 27, 2007, 06:28 PM »

It seems to be available on the system display but not on properties for individual processes.

If you click on the system info button (CTRL+I) on the main page it is interesting that a tool tip has been added to the CPU graph which shows the top CPU user - and you can hover over individual CPUs to see what is happening.



The main page also shows a CPU history trace per CPU top right:

4082

General Software Discussion / New version of Process Explorer available (11.03)

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 27, 2007, 10:25 AM »

See http://www.microsoft...ProcessExplorer.mspx for details

What's new in Version 11.0:

• New treelist control for better UI responsiveness
• Asynchronous thread symbol resolution on threads tab of process properties
• More flags on groups in security tab and SID display
• Thread IDs on threads tab
• On-line search uses default web browser and search engine
• Vista ASLR column for processes and DLLs
• Vista Process and thread I/O and memory priorities in process and thread properties
• Vista Process and thread I/O and memory columns
• PROCESS_QUERY_LIMITED_INFORMATION support on process permissions on Vista
• Run as limited user runs with low IL on Vista
• Reports information for all object types on Vista
• Show details for all processes elevation menu item on Vista
• Supports replacement of task manager on Vista
• /e to launch elevated
• /s switch to select a process at startup
• Compiled w/ASLR, DEP
• Faster startup
• Miscellaneous bug fixes and minor improvements

4083

General Software Discussion / Re: Weird Issue with Roboform - Need Some Advice

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 26, 2007, 10:10 PM »

Can you not just update to the latest version and see if that cures the problem?

4084

Living Room / Re: Whats on your desktop?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 26, 2007, 07:11 PM »

Got the "winter blues"?

4085

Living Room / Re: Cool idea (does it exist?) - Find websites that sell your email address

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 26, 2007, 06:28 PM »

True - disposable addresses are only really an interim solution.

The other problem is not "who can I trust" but also "how long can I trust them"? Successful websites/web businesses seem to be sold on with increasing vigour these days. Not surprising really if you suddenly get offered a lot of money. Once it changes hands there is no way of know how the new owners are going to try and recoup their costs.

I trust Mouser implicitly with privacy on DC but if a big firm came and offered him $10m he might have pause for thought!

4086

Living Room / Re: HELP !!! Outlook corruption

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 25, 2007, 10:41 AM »

We live in hope - I have just applied SP2 and all the pre-SP3 updates.

So far I have set up about 10 rules, reorganised emails etc., compacted my main PST file without problem.

4087

Living Room / Re: HELP !!! Outlook corruption

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 25, 2007, 09:38 AM »

LOL ...

I am not smiling too broadly in case I invoke the wrath of the windows gods but I seem to have fixed it by reinstalling Office from scratch.

I rebooted and got offered SP3 by automatic update but declined and told it never to offer it again.

So far I haven't got SP3 reappearing and having just downloaded about 50 emails my PST file wasn't corrupted at all. Fingers crossed - I will keep an eye on it over the next couple of weeks.

It also feels much nippier!

4088

Living Room / Re: HELP !!! Outlook corruption

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 25, 2007, 08:04 AM »

What a complete PITA !!!

Why can't MS get its act together - apparently this applies to all Office 2003 service packs. They don't mind leaving useless shit scattered all over random partitions so why can't they leave the files required for a roll back!

For anyone interested here is the MS KB article relating to uninstalling Office 2003 service packs

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/873125

4089

Living Room / Re: HELP !!! Outlook corruption

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 25, 2007, 04:33 AM »

This is weird, Carol. I've never these kind of problems with Outlook (2003), even after BSODs, X1 crashes, and other similar disasters. Is your Hard Drive in perfect shape? Any special Outlook extensions?

-Armando (October 24, 2007, 10:26 PM)

I too had issues like this with X1 - I have been experimenting recently with various desktop searches but they have all been unistalled now and the problem persists. Hard disc seems fine. The only extension I have is Attachment Options, an Evernote button and a SnagIt toolbar - all of which have installed for ages (in some cases years) without problems.

Virus scanner?  Maybe it's not letting go when it should...

-Ralf Maximus (October 24, 2007, 11:00 PM)

NOD32 - I have tried disabling DMON and EMON which means it should not look at documents in Outlook at all - but it doesn't solve the problem. I have been using NOD32 for years without issues and there have been no recent updates to the program.

I've heard unkind things about Office 2003 service pack 3, which came out last month.  Its "enhanced security" prevents some ActiveX controls, macros and VBA from running, which may be timing out and leaving active handles.

What service packs have you applied?

I applied SP3 - perhaps I was too hasty - maybe I should uninstall it again and see what happens!

4090

Living Room / Re: HELP !!! Outlook corruption

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 24, 2007, 01:18 PM »

Follow up - I just set up Outlook with a brand new empty PST file.

I set it as my default PST file (where emails are received) and after downloading 2 emails only the new file has errors (not even minor inconsistencies).

I set my old file as an additional PST that opens with Outlook and there are no issues when I open and look at emails etc..

It seems to be related to being the main PST file in the profile!

Strangely the fixing process actually makes the file BIGGER  !! A chunk is added to the end of the file and just a few bites near the beginning are changed.

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Living Room / HELP !!! Outlook corruption

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 24, 2007, 01:09 PM »

I am really SOOOOOOOOOOO (!!) frustrated.

I have been checking my Outlook PST file recently regularly and have found that EVERY time I open Outlook and close it again my PST file has "Minor inconsistencies". I don't have to do anything in outlook, like check emails, open emails or anything else - just Open app, close app => corrupt PST!

Has anyone else experienced this?

I have WinXP SP2, Office 2003 Pro.

With Outlook I have NOD32 and AdMuncher running ( both of which at least read incoming stuff) and also POPfile.

I have tried the following:

Fix the file using SCANPST - it then scans clean until next time Outlook is run.
Run "Office Detect And Repair", Delete profile and create new profile. Import mail from old PST file.
Reduce the size of PST file (currently 27Mb), repeat 2.
Change file format (Outlook 2003 can use 2003 format or XP/2002 format), repeat 2
Disable AdMuncher/NOD32 OMON and EMON/Remove POPfile

Nothing I do makes any difference at all.

Has anyone got any ideas how to troubleshoot this? There are no error messages unless I manually run SCANPST on my PST file. The log produced during the fix process tells me nothing at all:

Microsoft (R) Inbox Repair Tool
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corp 1995-1996. All rights reserved.

**Beginning NDB recovery

  **Attempting to open database

  **Attempting to validate header

  **Attempting to validate AMap

  **Attempting to validate BBT

  **Attempting to validate NBT

  **Attempting to validate BBT refcounts

  **Attempting to validate header NID high-water marks

**Beginning PST/OST recovery

  **Attempting to recover all top-level objects

  **Attempting to walk all folders

  **Attempting to locate any orphaned folders/messages

  **Attempting to check top-level objects for consistency

  **Updating folder hierarchy

**Attempting to fix original file

  **Attempting to copy back BBT

  **Attempting to copy back NBT

There are absolutley no error message

4092

Living Room / Re: Multibooting and Partitioning Experiments

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 24, 2007, 09:53 AM »

LOL ... now stop apologising for being German ... I'm sure you can tell funny jokes - you just did!

4093

Living Room / Re: "HDD Not Included"

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 24, 2007, 07:01 AM »

If you use the Maplin navigation line at the top there are a lot of possibilities - including an IDE solution which uses a cartridge approach and you can buy extra cartridges. Looks like a good idea and they would protect drives while not in use too.

see http://www.maplin.co...=23364&doy=24m10

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Living Room / Re: Multibooting and Partitioning Experiments

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 24, 2007, 06:14 AM »

Ah - that explains ... but it isn't exactly a standard way to deal with the limitations. Good job though - it's impressive.

4095

Living Room / Re: "HDD Not Included"

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 24, 2007, 05:59 AM »

For the UK market this looks a neat solution - hot swappable SATA 2 drive bay - but it mounts neatly in a 5.25" bay

http://www.maplin.co...p;doy=24m10#overview

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Living Room / Re: "HDD Not Included"

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 23, 2007, 06:23 PM »

Be good for temp control ... just watch where you put your fingers when it is in action!

4097

Living Room / Re: Multibooting and Partitioning Experiments

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 23, 2007, 04:23 PM »

First block / first physical sector are the same.

Interesting because I'm sure Win98SE actually said it need to install below the 8Gb boundary. I am pretty sure it said it needed to install in a primary partition too. If you got it working good on you!

Having said that - something odd is going on on your hard disk ... you are only supposed to be able to have 4 primary partitions (and that includes the extended partition which holds the logical partition). according to your diagram above you have 6 primary partitions plus an extended partition! If that is the case it isn't normal and must have been set up in an unusual way ???

4098

Developer's Corner / Re: Strange customer...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 23, 2007, 11:03 AM »

Good news - don't break out the champagne though until you have the cash in your sweaty hand

4099

Living Room / Re: Multibooting and Partitioning Experiments

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 23, 2007, 08:52 AM »

I used to indulge in lots of multiboot options (don't at the moment though). At one time I have 5 versions of Windows on my system (Win 98, Win 2k and 3 x Win XP) plus SUSE Linux.

Best advise if you want multiple Windows installations, without resorting to proprietary boot managers, is install them in order of release so that each version is "aware" of the versions already on your system, they will then install an multiboot quite happily. Win 98 only works if it is installed within 8Gb of the start of the first block of a hard disk and on a primary partition (though some boot loaders can overcome these restrictions) but Win 2k onwards can be installed in any partition. Don't forget if you want to share data with Win 98 and older versions of Windows you will need to use FAT32 partitions as they can't read NTFS natively (though I think there were some drivers about - though whether they are still available and how well they work I don't know)

It's not quite true that you need to install on separate partitions - so long as you don't allow multiple versions of windows to use C:\Windows and C:\Program Files (you can select alternates during installation) there isn't any real reason why you can't install everything on the C: drive. Having said that why would you want to?

I found when I had Windows and Linux mixed it was best to install all the Windows stuff first and then install Linux with GRUB last. That way you could use GRUB to go to the normal Windows Boot screen if you wanted to select from multiple Windows installations.

Not sure how Vista has affected all this.

4100

Living Room / Re: Dell Outlet Store!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 21, 2007, 08:11 PM »

Here is the UK version - but I have to day the prices don't look that brilliant for a potentially refurbished or warranty repaired machine!

http://www1.euro.del...k&l=en&s=dfo

[Edit ... oops - sorry nudone I didn't see you already posted the link)