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4376

Living Room / Re: For Discussion: Search engine query repository and bookmarking service

« Last post by app103 on September 01, 2007, 02:57 PM »

tuned via the feedback of users looking for and finding similar results

this is the part that kind of appealed to me -- the idea that it might have a way to look at what you are searching for and suggest new community-built searches which could get you closer to what you were really looking for.

most of us have developed a kind of searching "skill" where we know lots of little tricks to get a search engine to return what we want and bypass many irrelevant results.  but there are always cases where you can't find what you want and you could benefit from some domain expert knowledge about how to refine your search to get what you want.

-mouser (September 01, 2007, 05:01 AM)

This is why I used to love AOL's search. It had a feature like that, where it gave a list in a sidebar of similar and related searches that you could click if you didn't easily find what you were looking for.

AOL's results were all from Google, but it had a few extra features that really enhanced the standard way of searching.

In addition to that one, they had a 'clipper' that allowed you to mark particular results as you went looking down the page and when you moved to the next page, the clipped results would follow you, being placed in a top section of the page, above the 2nd page's results. (you could also 'unclip' them if you later changed your mind)

You could do this for page after page till you had one giant page of what you found to be the most relevant links for what you were looking for.

Then you could just save the page to your hard drive and/or send the page to someone else that might have needed it. It made sharing and saving large batches of good results a snap.

Then they changed it all and became almost identical to Google in every way they could, doing away with all the great power search features that made it unique and I haven't had a use for the regular AOL search, since. (I am pretty much a Google user 100% now)

If there was a way to add some sort of feature like this to searching, in addition to the saved and refined searches, I'd jump all over it.

4377

General Software Discussion / Settings backup software?

« Last post by app103 on September 01, 2007, 02:20 PM »

Is there an application that will work for Win98/ME/2K/XP that will back up a bunch of various Windows settings that will allow you to check off what settings you want and make it easy to back up and restore them all and/or just the specific ones you want?

And if so, are there any FREE ones that will do this?*

Bonus points if it also lets you back up settings for a bunch of popular applications too. (MS Office, Photoshop, Paintshop Pro, etc)



^{*If it doesn't exist, please don't offer to make it. If this turns out to be the case, this may be my next project.}

4378

General Software Discussion / Re: Stay Away From Microsoft VISTA

« Last post by app103 on September 01, 2007, 12:06 PM »

Vista scares me for a lot of reasons, but this is the primary one:

I have always been about a step or 2 behind in either OS, hardware, or both. This is because of economic reasons. I just can't afford to buy computers or OS's. Every computer I have owned has been a gift and the OS's I have run came along with them.

My father purchased a P1 in 1997 that ran Win95. Back then, hardware capabilities were changing so rapidly that within 2 years it was, for all sakes & purposes, obsolete. Somewhere during those 2 years he upgraded it to Win98SE. He gave me that PC in 1999. Had he not done that I wouldn't have had a computer. It was my first PC.

Less than 1 year later (2000) he bought me a P3 with WinME. That was the OS that was obsolete before it was released. But had he not given me that as a gift, I would still have been using the P1 with 98SE. He took back the P1 at that time, so I still only had 1 PC. (later he decided to toss it in the trash and I rescued it before it hit the curb)

That P3 was dead by 2002 and I was back to using the P1, only I decided to install the WinME from the dead P3 on that, replacing the Win98SE. (best move I ever made).

So at a time that most people were running 2k or XP on a P4, I was running WinME on a P1. Not long after was when I began programming.

It wasn't that hard to develop applications that would run the same on 2k or XP as they would on my old piece of junk with crappy 9x. I didn't need to have a better system or OS to do it. I didn't need much extra knowledge of an OS that I had never used, either. Chances are if it worked on my pc, it would work on 2k or XP and additionally, the GUI wouldn't look funny or out of place.

By the time I got a P4 running XP, people were/are getting ready to move on to Vista. This PC was also a gift. Had I not received it, I would still be on the P1 running WinME right now.

I am afraid and Vista scares me because I know my situation isn't likely to improve at any point within the near future and I will have this pc till it dies (hopefully not any time soon) and it will not run a newer OS than the XP it came with.

My skills as a developer aren't that great. I am lucky if the things I make work on my own PC with XP, nevermind on Vista. They look funny and out of place on Vista, too. Fixing just the GUI problems is beyond my skills & understanding, nevermind all the really crazy crap that is driving experienced Windows programmers nuts (like the things mouser is complaining about now).

I do not and can not officially support Vista in any of my applications.

What kind of future can I possibly have as a Windows developer? A few more years and I will be about the same as a Win3.1 or Cobol developer...just about completely useless.

Yeah, sure, I could go with .NET and use the free VS2005 I have, but I can't stand VS and it doesn't support the only language I feel comfortable with (Delphi). I feel like I am lost in a foreign country...no, make that lost on another planet, with both the IDE and any of the languages it supports. I was lucky I was even able to install it properly.

And any Delphi developer will tell you that Delphi.net is a joke...don't go there and don't do that unless you really want to create crapware not worthy of anyone using, even if you paid them to use it.

There is a good reason why I program in Delphi: It's the only language I have come across that makes enough sense to me that I could get beyond 'Hello World' without problems and actually make something useful.

So where does that leave me?

I feel like when Microsoft released Vista, they crushed all my plans, hopes, and dreams.

Maybe this is why I haven't done much programming lately and haven't felt like making any improvements in any of my existing projects. There just doesn't seem to be a point in doing it any more.

4379

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2006 / Re: Getting Organized in 2007

« Last post by app103 on September 01, 2007, 08:23 AM »

I am going to pass on this year's experiment.

I never realized just how productive I really was till my personal failure with last year's experiment. I thought I needed help in the area of productivity...thought I could be doing much more with my time than I was.

What ended up happening was the opposite.

Before last year I had a system that worked for me, even if it left areas of my life quite neglected for awhile. I just never realized how well it worked.

It allowed me to hyperfocus on a major task a day and stick to it till it was done, and actually enjoy the time I spent on them.

I seem to have lost the ability to do that by trying to cover all my bases in all areas of my life at the same time. It forced me to think about too many things at once and distracted me, leaving me unable to focus on one single thing and get it done. Instead of 30 projects finished in 30 days, one at a time, I ended up with the same 30 projects never completed and hating any of the time spent on them.

It's a damn shame when things you once enjoyed, that felt like play, become work that you get no pleasure from. I nearly gave up programming, web design, digital art, and most of the things I used to love to do. It all stopped being fun.

It also forced me to think about things I never thought about before...or didn't want to think about, just adding more on my plate when I already felt full. My life works better when I am focusing up close and in detail, taking it one day at a time, rather than stepping back to look at the big picture and thinking about 6 months, a year, 5-10 years from now. It's how I keep my sanity...just get through today and don't worry about tomorrow.

All of this GTD stuff tends to focus on a longer time span than 1 day, making you plan ahead, set weekly, monthly, yearly, lifetime goals. I can't do that. It interferes with me getting through today.

The more I tried to do, the less I was able to do and it was quite depressing. I feel like I have damaged my attention span somehow and taken all the fun out of my life.

I am still recovering from last year's experiment...trying to get the old me back. This past year has been the least productive in my whole life. It hasn't been easy to reverse and go back to the way I used to do things.

No, I won't be trying this again. I have things really want to get done some time soon...or at least get started with before the end of this year. And I want the fun back in my life so that I can enjoy the things I used to love.

4380

General Review Discussion / Re: Educational Software reviews?

« Last post by app103 on September 01, 2007, 07:42 AM »

Giveawayoftheday has Equation Wizard 1.2 available for free today only.

Maybe someone with better math abilities than me might like to grab it and take it for a spin and write a mini review for it. 

4381

General Software Discussion / Re: The software awards scam

« Last post by app103 on August 31, 2007, 05:03 PM »

I think rather than an award with some kind of point value, just a nice Cody graphic with "Read the Review" on it.

4382

Living Room / Re: Acceptable expletives

« Last post by app103 on August 31, 2007, 09:58 AM »

The first time my daughter ever used an expletive, I asked her what it meant and she didn't know. So I told her not to use words that she didn't know the meaning. That took care of things for awhile.

Fast forward to a few years later at about the age of 7 or 8 when she used another...and did know the meaning.

I handed her a thesaurus and told her to show her intelligence and choose more creative language, before someone makes a mistake and thinks she is either stupid or lazy.

She came up with a rather catchy amusing substitute. (I'll let you know what it was later in the story) 

A few weeks later, my husband was rather angry at a friend of his about something and called him the original expletive my daughter had used earlier. (he has a pretty hot temper and can cuss up a storm)

My daughter ran into the house and grabbed the thesaurus, came back out, handed it to her dad and told him the same thing I had told her.

He wasn't in the mood for it, threw the thesaurus across the courtyard and gave her a look like he was going to bite her head off.

She then said to him "Ok, ok, you can use mine if you want. You can call him a 'fanny cranny'." (I love this expletive substitute of hers!) 

He replied with "How about I just call him a 'meatball'?"

"But Daddy...that doesn't mean the same thing." (brave girl, arguing with her dad while he is already angry)

He yelled out "I don't care...he has a meatball for a brain!"

Everyone else in the courtyard heard this and ever since that day, everyone has been calling my husband's friend by the nickname of "Meatball"...with most of them not knowing why.

This nickname has stuck with the poor guy for close to 14 years.

Even his bowling team called him that, and on occasion had even put that as his name on the scorecard.

Not long after that, I was having troubles with Windows Vista and it made me so very mad that for the first time in my life I really felt like saying some terrible things. Now App101 has a "welcome back" quote in the DC IRC channel of me saying the smurf word a lot.

-Deozaan (August 26, 2007, 04:22 PM)

<Deozaan> I have never purposely said a cuss word in my life and I'm ready to cuss big time!
<Deozaan> This is smurfing me off! I'm so smurfing smurfed by vista that I feel like smurfing the smurfing smurf out of the smurfing smurfer!

^{All that smurfing 'smurf' smurf really irritated the smurf out of my spellcheck!}

4383

Living Room / Re: How do you organise your 'My Documents' folder

« Last post by app103 on August 30, 2007, 11:45 AM »

I could write volumes on file organizing, but here is the basics (and yes, it is just the basics, sorry it's so long):

It seems to me that the way that Microsoft thinks with the My Documents folder, they expect you to only have 1 hard drive and one huge partition on it and keep all your stuff in that single folder.

I don't use the default folder provided by Windows for anything I care about...and that would be everything that's mine. (I hate putting anything on the OS drive that isn't part of the OS)

And I don't install programs to the default folder on the system drive. And if I can move a default folder off the system drive without encountering any problems, I do it.

Almost every category of file has it's own partition and I have more than 1 hard drive, including an external drive for backups.

extended system & software
--bookmarks
----daughter's
----mine
--cursors
----type
--drivers (specific to this pc)
----device
------version
--email
--icons
----subject
--programs installed
----program name
--taskbar shortcuts (these are the folders of shortcuts that are the bars on my taskbar instead of the default quicklaunch)
----mine (I have 2 of these, unlike normal people)
------taskbar1
--------Drives
--------P1 & P3 drive folders
--------system tools
--------misc tools
--------office tools
--------web
--------p2p & chat
--------audio & video
--------programming & web design
--------art
--------misc personal stuff
------taskbar2
--------games
--------important bookmarks
--------misc programming references
--------C books I am currently reading
--------most used delphi reference books
--------desktop customization
--------misc file utilities
----daughter's (she only has 1)
------type (purpose) of application or file


media
--midi
--mp3
----artist
------year-album name
--------disk # (audio files go here)
--------art (cover scans go here)
--------lyrics (text files go here)
--phone calls (voicemail)
----sender's name
--sounds
----category
--swf
--video
----movie
----music
----shorts
--wav
--wma
--playlists
----daughter's
----mine

images
--clip art
----disk name
--collected images
----subject, type, or purpose (cats, wallpaper, siggy tags, etc)
--personal photos
----camera name
------date-subject (originals here)
--------edited (edited versions here)
--personal art
----mine
------application name (bryce, psp, axialis screensavers, etc)
--------project name
----my daughter's
------(she does her own thing in here and I do not interfere)
--received photos
----source (name of person that gave them to me)
------date-subject


projects
--programming
----ideas
----language (delphi, C, AHK, etc)
------code snips
------project name
--------version #
----------previous builds (contains zipped sources)
--screenshots (this is sort of a Snagit dump that I clean out periodically)
--web
----site name
------version #

Books
--fiction
----author
--magazines
--new (dumping ground for new unsorted books)
--nonfiction
----subject
------(I break this down much further)

Personal
--daughter
----(she does her own thing in here)
--me
----bills
------account name
--------year
----chatlogs
------application
--------year
----------month
----friends (this is a collection of misc stuff from or related to specific people)
------name of person
----poetry
----private musings (& things that may become blog posts)
----receipts
----surfulator knowledgebases
----etc (lots more folders to sort stuff only of interest to me)
--hubby (this is pretty much empty)

backups
--laptop
----(my daughter determines how this is arranged)
--P1 (entire contents of my other pc)
----drive letter
------(entire contents of that drive)
--P3 (a pc that is long dead & buried)
----drive letter
------(entire contents of that drive)
--P4 (this pc)
----system
----application settings
----registry
----etc (important files & folders)
----email
----bookmarks
--pocket pc
----cf card
----system backups

downloads (some folders get cleaned out and sorted to other locations)
--AIM
--Ares
--Email attachments
--FlashGet
--Fonts (I have over 12,000)
----A
----B
----C
--MSN
--program setup files
----9x only (things for my other pc that can't/shouldn't run on this one)
------application name
--------version
----------documentation
----clueless (setup files for applications I don't know what they are)
------application name
----installed (currently installed on this pc)
------application name
--------version installed
----------documentation
--------older versions
----------documentation
----linux (things meant to run on linux)
------application name
--------version
----------documentation
----not installed (tried, but not installed on this pc)
------application name
--------version
----------documentation
----obsolete (old DOS stuff & things that are so old they won't work)
------application name
----Pocket PC (things meant to run on WinCE)
------application name
--------version
----------documentation
----untried (downloaded but never installed on any pc)
------application name
--------version
----------documentation
--psp
----tubes
------categories
----frames
------categories
----brushes
------categories
----textures
------categories
--Safe 2 Share (items I copied here specifically for sharing over p2p)
--torrents
--WinMX
--xchat
--Yahoo


As you can see I am pretty much an organizing freak when it comes to my files. I think my PC is the only thing in my life that is well organized.

It's not that complicated for me, because it's done to the way I think and I have been doing things this way for years. I can find everything rather quickly, and in the cases of folders I access often, there are shortcuts to them on one of my taskbars, often times right next to the shortcut of the application associated with those files (ex: xchat downloads folder next to xchat application shortcut).

I can find my files in my sleep and do not usually need to use a search utility or even the search built into windows for most things.

4384

Screenshot Captor / Re: Why I gave up on it

« Last post by app103 on August 29, 2007, 10:06 PM »

I was quite enchanted by the idea, but...

1. I really never used it much because it had too many bells and whistles and options and I found that I didn't want to take the time to deal with it all when I already had MWsnap and IrfanView and... When I want a screenshot, I want a screenshot. Now. I can do lots of things with it after.

-ravenlaughs (August 29, 2007, 07:44 PM)

I have felt the same way about it. To be perfectly honest, the amount of features in it is pretty scary to me. I suppose it's like driving a car for the very first time, after years of riding a bicycle.

Screenshot Captor is impressive, but it's not for everyone.

Currently my needs aren't to the point where I would need something like Screenshot Captor. But it's nice to know that if/when I outgrow my old version of Snagit, that there is something with much more options & features & power, at a great price that I can afford. 

4385

Living Room / Deja Vu: More Sony Rootkits (They just don't learn)

« Last post by app103 on August 28, 2007, 01:03 PM »

Biometrics – yes. BioShock – no.

Hypothetical: Imagine that you visit your local mall and browse around for stuff to buy. And you decide to buy a new CD from your favorite artist and you also buy a brand new cool USB stick thingy on an impulse. You go home and stick the CD into your laptop's CD drive. It prompts you to install some software. You do so and while you are listening to the music, you open the USB stick package and start experimenting with your new toy. It has a fingerprint reader so you install the software for that as well. Guess what… you might have just installed, not one, but two different rootkit-like software on your laptop.

http://www.f-secure....082007.html#00001263

4386

Coding Snacks / Re: taskbar at top annoyance - autohotkey to the rescue?

« Last post by app103 on August 28, 2007, 05:53 AM »

Couldn't GridMove be used for something like this, to resize and position windows to fit without being under the taskbar?

4387

General Software Discussion / Re: IBM Lenovo T61 Thinkpad - a standard SATA harddisk cannot be used ? Is this true

« Last post by app103 on August 24, 2007, 06:05 AM »

I don't know about ThinkPads, but I know that HP's come with a utility to burn the restore partition to cd's or dvd's as a bootable set of restore disks. They allow you to do this once, and only once.

4388

Living Room / Re: a wet tv remote control problem

« Last post by app103 on August 22, 2007, 05:56 AM »

Personally speaking, I'd open the case very carefully, writing down the exact steps I take to take it apart so I can follow it in reverse to put it back together.

Then I would carefully and gently clean the entire circuitboard and battery compartment with cotton swabs dipped in rubbing alcohol.

Then I would take the front & back panels and wash & dry them.

I would let it sit and air for a bit to make sure there was no moisture on any of the parts.

Then I would put it all back together again.

Then to ensure nothing like this ever happens again, I'd seal it into a clear plastic ziplock bag and use the remote through the bag, replacing the bag as it wears out.

Something to think about here:

You don't just have plain water inside it...you most likely have soup in there as well. As that dries, there will be a residue of grease, salt, and other particles left behind unless it is opened up and cleaned. And depending on the type of soup, it could also be acidic. This isn't good for the electronics inside.

Taking a hair dryer to it without opening it is likely to just create steam inside which will condense as it cools and put you right back to where you are now with it being wet inside. Not only that, but the heat could damage it, causing the remote to never work again. It also leaves all the crap from the soup in there to eat away at the circuitboard and possibly corroding it and your battery compartment.

4389

Living Room / Re: a wet tv remote control problem

« Last post by app103 on August 22, 2007, 05:33 AM »

There isn't a way to dry out the inside without getting to the inside. In other words, if you are unwilling to open the case, you can't do it.

4390

General Software Discussion / Re: Avoid: Jriver Media Center, if you believe in your right of free speech

« Last post by app103 on August 22, 2007, 02:49 AM »

I am not going to comment on the whole free speech/censorship concepts because my views & feelings on that subject do not belong on this forum.

But the complaint you have made about their forum has left some questions unanswered in my mind:

1. Do they ban polite constructive criticism? or all criticism?

Polite: I really love your product and recommend it to all my friends. But there is one feature I think could be improved a little...

Not polite: I think your product sucks because.....

2. About the mention of other products...
Do they ban anything mentioning another product? or only comments that compare their product and rate the other product as better? or comments that just praise the other product and don't even mention a comparison? or only posts with links to their competitor's sites?

3. Are they banning bug reports and posts by confused users looking for help using their product?

4391

Living Room / See Who's Editing & Manipulating Wikipedia

« Last post by app103 on August 21, 2007, 08:04 AM »

On November 17th, 2005, an anonymous Wikipedia user deleted 15 paragraphs from an article on e-voting machine-vendor Diebold, excising an entire section critical of the company's machines. While anonymous, such changes typically leave behind digital fingerprints offering hints about the contributor, such as the location of the computer used to make the edits.

In this case, the changes came from an IP address reserved for the corporate offices of Diebold itself. And it is far from an isolated case. A new data-mining service launched Monday traces millions of Wikipedia entries to their corporate sources, and for the first time puts comprehensive data behind longstanding suspicions of manipulation, which until now have surfaced only piecemeal in investigations of specific allegations.

Wikipedia Scanner -- the brainchild of Cal Tech computation and neural-systems graduate student Virgil Griffith -- offers users a searchable database that ties millions of anonymous Wikipedia edits to organizations where those edits apparently originated, by cross-referencing the edits with data on who owns the associated block of internet IP addresses.

Inspired by news last year that Congress members' offices had been editing their own entries, Griffith says he got curious, and wanted to know whether big companies and other organizations were doing things in a similarly self-interested vein.

http://www.wired.com...cker?currentPage=all

4392

General Software Discussion / Re: Skype trouble

« Last post by app103 on August 21, 2007, 01:07 AM »

The Skype outage is being blamed on Windows Update and a previously unknown bug within their network resource allocation algorithm.

Too many people installed updates from Microsoft at the same time and then rebooted. That resulted in them all trying to sign back into Skype at the same time. It put a huge strain on the network and it couldn't handle it.

http://www.infoworld...indows-update_1.html

4393

Living Room / Re: SMIRF Chess Game. User won and bounced?

« Last post by app103 on August 21, 2007, 12:31 AM »

The version for Windows is a dead project. He is in the process of making a Mac version, though.

But the last Windows version is still available if you email this guy and ask him for it.

As far as keeping all their stuff and forcing it to remain available, the rights to the projects are owned by their creators. At no point did any of the developers transfer those rights to DonationCoder. They can do what they want with those projects, including kill them and make them unavailable....it is their right.

I think it is unfortunate when it happens, but we don't have the right to force anybody to keep their work available if they don't want to.

Maybe you can send Smirf a private message expressing your interests in his application and ask him to please consider attaching the last version of it to its associated post on this forum. He seemed like a nice guy and I don't think it would be unreasonable to ask him this.

You might also be able to get in touch with him through his blog. (German language only) Or by leaving a comment on this post in particular.

4394

General Software Discussion / Re: Mouse software

« Last post by app103 on August 20, 2007, 08:04 AM »

The problem is that it registers too many hotkeys, it's a problem i still haven't been able to fix.
The same thing happens with GridMove. If some other program registers the middle mouse button, GridMove won't work with that key anymore.

-jgpaiva (August 20, 2007, 07:54 AM)

When I needed a huge amount of hotkeys, I chose to use the right ctrl + letters (needed to be able to use everything from A-Z...all 26)

This allowed users to still be able to use whatever else other applications already needed with the left ctrl key, and it still work. So far the only drawback is that it won't work on 9x.

I haven't come across a clash yet, personally, and so far none have been reported by anybody else.

4395

Living Room / Re: KenR's health and situation

« Last post by app103 on August 18, 2007, 09:39 AM »

but...but...but...

I already promised to buy him his freeware application of choice. 

4396

General Software Discussion / Re: Kinship diagrams (and genealogy)

« Last post by app103 on August 18, 2007, 09:32 AM »

The Master Genealogist is supposed to be one of the best, most powerful, feature rich ones available.

It is intended for professionals and those that are obsessed with recording every last detail, right down to DNA logs for DNA test results.

Supports GEDCOM and importing from over 20+ other applications.

It is even capable of publishing a book complete with contents, footnotes, multiple indexes and bibliography.

There are also a number of companion products, in case the ton of features they give you isn't enough.

They have a downloadable guided tour that will take you through the basics.

Cons: It has a higher price tag ($59.00 download/$79.95 on disk - gold version) and because it is so feature loaded, it has a steeper learning curve.

4397

General Software Discussion / Re: The software awards scam

« Last post by app103 on August 18, 2007, 02:59 AM »

I posted my thoughts on this at JoS. It's dangerous... I think a can of worms has been opened and there're going to be some real problems.

-Renegade (August 18, 2007, 01:04 AM)

If the crappy sites that never check anything and hand out bogus awards get hit with PAD spamming, then let it happen. It will make those sites easy for the consumer to spot and they won't bother with them any more.

That will leave only the quality sites left, that actually check what stuff they are posting on their pages.

Rather than being just a bad thing, I think it will be nothing but good.

4398

General Software Discussion / Re: Skype trouble

« Last post by app103 on August 17, 2007, 01:49 AM »

Here is some more information about the Skype problem: 
http://www.infoworld...ug-hits-Skype_1.html

4399

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: My Windows Cursors

« Last post by app103 on August 15, 2007, 08:49 PM »

and you hear a flushing sound when you empty it. 

-app103 (July 28, 2007, 09:59 PM)

I use a program that makes a flushing noise while cleaning, but how did you get the recycle bin to do it
That would be hilarious to do it on all my computers at a set interval every day

-wreckedcarzz (August 15, 2007, 08:34 PM)

• First you need a wav file of a flushing sound. (one attached to post)
  
• Then go to Start> Settings> Control Panel> Sounds and Audio Devices.
  
• Click on the Sounds tab.
  
• Under Windows Explorer, you will find an entry for Empty Recycle Bin.
  
• Click that and then click the Browse button and find the flush wav file and select it.
  
• Click Apply.
  
• Click OK.
  
• Go empty your Recycle Bin and hear it flush. 

I don't know if you will hear the sound when running utilities that empty the Recycle Bin for you, but you will hear it if you manually empty it by either opening the Recycle Bin and clicking Empty Recycle Bin...or by right clicking the Recycle Bin icon and selecting to empty it from there.

4400

General Software Discussion / Re: Latest MS updates borks WinXP?

« Last post by app103 on August 15, 2007, 08:37 PM »

Out of curiosity, what kind of CPU is in the machines affected?

There was issues for some people with KB936357 being installed even though it wasn't intended for their specific CPU and it causing a bunch of problems.

If that is one of the updates you installed, you might want to take a look here: http://cranialsoup.b.../kb936357-funky.html

And everyone else should too, because there is a serious problem with that update on some machines. It contains microcode for your system's BIOS and is meant only for certain CPU's. For those CPU's it is a necessary update, or you need to update your BIOS with something from your motherboard manufacturer instead.

But if your CPU is NOT on the list, do NOT let it install!

On some systems, it is misdetecting the CPU type and trying to install itself, with disastrous effects to either the computer or a router that may be attached to it.