Recent Posts

4401

Living Room / Re: why is it so difficult to pick out a new computer?

« Last post by 4wd on January 23, 2011, 08:22 PM »

A good barebones unit is ASUS V6-M4A3000E (about $140 US) which comes with case, PSU and motherboard with  integrated Radeon 3000 graphics and 7.1 surround sound.

-Carol Haynes (January 23, 2011, 09:52 AM)

Nice Carol 

~AU$132 here - I'll have to remember to look for it next time someone asks me for a computer.  Always liked the way you fit practically AMDs entire CPU line into the same socket, (AM2, AM2+ and now AM3).  You could scale the processing power to the end requirement easily.

4402

General Software Discussion / Re: Why is System Restore not placed the proper place?

« Last post by 4wd on January 23, 2011, 06:39 PM »

Either keep tapping F8, or when you see the progress bar to start windows, shut it off by the power button or plug.

-cmpm (January 23, 2011, 06:36 PM)

Except sometimes you end up filling up the keyboard buffer so then all it does is beep at you, although I can't say I've noticed it with my USB keyboard.

I usually try F8 immediately after the various drives are recognised.

4403

General Software Discussion / Re: Why is System Restore not placed the proper place?

« Last post by 4wd on January 23, 2011, 05:47 PM »

-no, no and no!!! F8 was in the old days!

-Curt (January 23, 2011, 05:25 PM)

It's not actually, taken from the F8 screen on my Win7HP computer less than 5 minutes ago:

Didn't my first line state that it was a lady who couldn't tell a picture from a program? Please don't tell about a hundred useless solutions! I actually updated her Vista to SP2, if you know what I mean.

-Curt (January 23, 2011, 05:31 PM)

And, no you said:

Today a girlfriend came with her laptop and said, "I thought I was opening a picture my son had emailed me, and suddenly all these things and flares came up...". Sigh!

At no point did you say it was an executable, (it could has been a link to a website or something else), and also at no point did you say what OS she was running until the last post.

EDIT: Sorry, you did mention Vista in the first post - I missed it, apologies.  

Still the answers I gave are valid in the context of the thread, (except for the XP one).

And:

This leads me to my simple question: Why on earth must I start an infected system, in order to start a blocked program, in order to clean the infected system?

-Curt (January 23, 2011, 04:59 PM)

My answers c->f give you the option of not booting the infected OS.  Plus you can still boot from a Windows installation disc into recovery options.

Also, BTW, the main reason I've found for computers not responding to F8 is because people aren't fast enough to push the key or don't at the right moment.  Also W7, (and possibly Vista) no longer blatantly advertise it's presense as XP did.

4404

General Software Discussion / Re: Why is System Restore not placed the proper place?

« Last post by 4wd on January 23, 2011, 05:20 PM »

Press F8 and either try:

a) Last Known Good working state (or something like that), or
b) Boot to Command Line and run System Restore, (%systemroot%/system32/restore/rstui.exe - for XP).

Or:

c) Windows 7 has a System Recovery disc that you created after installing W7....right?, or
d) Restore from your periodic backup, or
e) Boot from a PE, (WinPE/BartPE), disc to repair the problem, or
f) Download a anti-virus LiveCD to try and repair, (eg. CureIt).

Booting from Windows installations discs will also give you recovery options, (eg. XP->Repair Console from which you can manually copy the registry from a backup).

Personally, I'm glad System Restore isn't easy to get to because of the few times I've used it, it's always FUBAR'd my system so that I've had to reinstall anyway.

Why isn't System Restore placed next to Log-in???

-Curt (January 23, 2011, 04:59 PM)

I can just imagine this:

"I was logging into my computer but because I wasn't fully loaded on caffeine yet I hit the wrong button and now my system is FUBAR."

4405

Living Room / Re: why is it so difficult to pick out a new computer?

« Last post by 4wd on January 22, 2011, 09:45 PM »

4wd.. your prices are Australian dollars, correct?

AU$421

-techidave (January 22, 2011, 09:25 PM)

Yes, as I said, just an FYI from our semi-nationwide discount computer parts store.

MSY - If you're interested, no where near the range of Newegg.

4406

Living Room / Re: why is it so difficult to pick out a new computer?

« Last post by 4wd on January 22, 2011, 09:09 PM »

I suppose it's "love" then? 

-Renegade (January 22, 2011, 09:07 PM)

Up until you install Windows on it 

4407

Living Room / Re: why is it so difficult to pick out a new computer?

« Last post by 4wd on January 22, 2011, 08:54 PM »

HP, Dell, etc have the benefit of volume, (purchase/sales/labour), in the case of PCs using All-in-one type motherboards.

For anything that requires more customisation than an AIO motherboard solution then you'll start saving your money but usually only if you don't count the labour.

It usually works out cheaper if:
a) You build it yourself, AND
b) you're building for yourself, (because you don't consider it labour ).

Just FYI from MSY here:

Intel D55PJ                     - $89
i3-550                           - $129
PQI 4GB                         - $45
WD 1TB                         - $62
Coolermaster Elite RC-335 - $74  (The Antec you mentioned isn't avail., this looks decent.)
LG DVD-RW                    - $22
Total                             - AU$421

Do it even cheaper by going with a non-Intel board.

4408

Living Room / Re: USB Madness With Cooked-Off Ports

« Last post by 4wd on January 21, 2011, 06:31 PM »

I suspect it might have had a bum receiver now that I'm thinking back. The keystroke light didn't flash as regularly as the instructions said it was supposed to.

-40hz (January 21, 2011, 06:18 PM)

This is why whenever I'm tempted to find a wireless device I always look for a Bluetooth version first.  At least I know it'll work with any Bluetooth receiver even if the one in the netbook packs it in, $3 will get me another.

4409

Living Room / Re: USB Madness With Cooked-Off Ports

« Last post by 4wd on January 21, 2011, 06:09 PM »

That's just a GUI for the DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES environment variable that Shades discussed earlier. It only for removing complete devices that are straggling about on the system.

-Stoic Joker (January 21, 2011, 06:02 PM)

I know, the reason I mentioned it is because I find it's interface easier than trawling through Device Manager.

But what about uninstalling the USB stack/driver?

EDIT: I just realised you might have thought I meant the USB driver for the device.  I meant the driver for the USB hardware, (motherboard), not the device.

4410

Living Room / Re: USB Madness With Cooked-Off Ports

« Last post by 4wd on January 21, 2011, 04:55 PM »

Can't say I've had this specific problem, closest I've had is where a device will no longer work in a specific port because of mechanical problems, (socket/plug contacts no longer have good contact).

You could try GhostBuster to show/remove the ghosted devices and then uninstall the USB driver so that Windows has to reinstall it on next boot.

4411

Site/Forum Features / Re: Forum Themes

« Last post by 4wd on January 20, 2011, 07:01 AM »

Nice, thanks again Winkie!   

4412

General Software Discussion / Re: Unlocker punishes you for not installing toolbar.

« Last post by 4wd on January 20, 2011, 05:20 AM »

Update: after a little REing, I found it uses GetLocaleInfoA to detect if you're in GBR or USA and if so installs the bing bar, doing a 30 sec countdown with the delay.dll NSIS plugin, if not, just offers QuickStores with no delay whatsoever.

-scancode (January 19, 2011, 09:46 PM)

Wow!  So there's a benefit to living below the equator....cool!

4413

General Software Discussion / Re: Why am I having a frozen screen trying to install Windows 7?

« Last post by 4wd on January 19, 2011, 06:15 PM »

If you're going to be hot-plugging SATA drives then you should enable AHCI mode because the ability to hot-plug correctly is provided in the AHCI driver.

There are some boards that can hot-plug without AHCI being enabled, (it all depends on the driver), like my old AsRock 939 board but it was an exception.

AHCI also enables NCQ, (Native Command Queuing), if the drive supports it - the benefits of which are dubious in a home type environment.  Staggered Spin-up is part of AHCI - some drives enable it via hardware, (eg. Samsung - no ground on SATA power connector pin 11 causes Staggered/Delayed Spin-up).

There's most likely other AHCI specific things but in your case the main one is hot-plugging.

You can grab the AHCI specs from Intel, if you're interested, here (1.2MB PDF).

Actually, you could leave the system drive connected to the purple ports in IDE Mode since you're not likely to ever want to hot-plug it, (I'm reasonably sure there won't be any performance hit but f0dder would probably be able tell us for sure).

4414

Site/Forum Features / Re: Forum Themes

« Last post by 4wd on January 19, 2011, 05:59 PM »

You haven't got something for the CODE boxes have you?

They're still glaringly white - like a smack in the face when you're sitting up in the night

4415

General Software Discussion / Re: Why am I having a frozen screen trying to install Windows 7?

« Last post by 4wd on January 19, 2011, 05:45 PM »

Why does this fix my problem, I'm just curious.  I do think you might be right about all this, because I remember dealing with those plugs and ahci stuff, etc, when i was adding all the drives.

-superboyac (January 19, 2011, 09:11 AM)

It doesn't 'fix' your problem as such, it gets around a couple of problems that W7 throws up with AHCI drivers.

There are two main problems regarding the install of W7, wrt AHCI:
1) If you install W7 while the OS drive is connected in AHCI mode it will, literally, take hours for the installation.  Both times I've done it, it took 4-5 hours.
2) If you install W7 while all drives are connected in IDE mode, then the install will happen in an hour BUT you will be unable to change to AHCI, (not without a fair bit of trouble anyway), because the driver won't exist in the OS since it wasn't installed.  You'll get BSODs.

So the best way to get around these is to install W7 while the system drive is in IDE Mode, (for install speed), but the rest are in AHCI Mode, (to install the driver).

Gigabyte boards give you these two SATA ports where you can set a different mode on, (the purple ones), so what you can do is:
a) Set the purple ones to IDE Mode
b) Set the yellow ones to AHCI Mode
c) Put the system drive on the purple ports

The effect of this is:
1) The installation of W7 will happen at its normal rate, ie. it will take about an hour.  (This get around problem number 1.)
2) The AHCI driver is installed, so when you switch the system drive to AHCI, (you can do this by moving it back to a yellow port), W7 will just install the driver for it and ask to reboot.  (This gets around problem number 2.)

This is how I've previously installed both XP and W7 when I wanted AHCI enabled and it's worked without a problem.

4416

Site/Forum Features / Re: Forum Themes

« Last post by 4wd on January 19, 2011, 04:19 AM »

This covers the links, change the #colours to suit.

Code: CSS [Select]

1. @namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);
2.  
3. @-moz-document domain("www.donationcoder.com") {
4.  
5. /* Outer background - works on complete DC site (without subdomains) */
6. body, #topnavbar, .forumbodytop {
7.   background-color: #444444 !important;
8.   background-image: none !important;
9. }
10.  
11. /* Content background */
12. .windowbg, .post, .windowbgdc, .windowbgdc2b, .windowbg2,
13. .windowbgdc2, .windowbgdc5, td.smalltext {
14.   background-color: #666666 !important;
15. }
16.  
17. /* Quotes, Recent posts */
18. .quote, .orangemed, .orangesmall {
19.   background-color: #aaaaaa !important;
20.   border-color: #828181 !important;
21. }
22.  
23. .nav:visited {
24. color:#ff0000 !important;
25. }
26.  
27. .nav:link {
28. color:#ffff00 !important;
29. text-decoration:none;
30. }
31.  
32. a:link {
33. color:#ffff00 !important;}
34.  
35. a:visited {
36. color:#990000 !important;}
37.  
38. }

4417

AutoHotkey / AutoIt instead of AHK for assignments OK?

« Last post by 4wd on January 18, 2011, 07:27 PM »

Since I have way too much time on my hands I thought I might as well start learning something again.

What I'd like to know is can I do the AHK assignments in AutoIt instead?

4418

General Software Discussion / Re: Dual Booting Win XP and Win 7

« Last post by 4wd on January 18, 2011, 07:13 PM »

Right. I was trying to diplomatically give HB some room to elaborate on why they wanted XP to be the primary OS (what is the reason driving that requirement) ...

-Stoic Joker (January 18, 2011, 06:59 PM)

Yeah, I realised that after I hit the Post button....ah well.

Never let it be said that I let a little thing like a Post button get in the way of something truly obvious to everyone else.    

Still, if nothing else, I have proved that SS2 runs like shit in a VM

4419

General Software Discussion / Re: Dual Booting Win XP and Win 7

« Last post by 4wd on January 18, 2011, 06:54 PM »

Does hardware acceleration even work (properly) if you run Win7 in a VM? I know vmware supports "some" version of Direct3D, but iirc it was a relatively low version - and I bet there's a speed hit as well.

-f0dder (January 18, 2011, 06:15 PM)

VirtualBox uses hardware acceleration, (still listed as experimental): DX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904) in my XP VM
The W7 VM says it's DX11 and Direct3D is enabled but there's no AGP Texture Acceleration.

I'm guessing with that disabled, any game is going to run pretty rough.

Just as a test I installed Serious Sam II, (original version, not HD - so not the latest in gaming requirements necessary), in a W7HPx86 VM, (2xCPU, 4GB), and besides the mouse interaction being hyper-sensitive the actual framerates were absolute crap - estimate at around 10fps (if you were lucky).

Note, this was running the VM on my W7x64 machine, so as SJ said, running it from XP is probably going to fare much worse.

4420

General Software Discussion / Re: "Search Everything" with saved searches would be cool.

« Last post by 4wd on January 18, 2011, 06:46 PM »

Here ya go.

4421

Site/Forum Features / Re: Forum Themes

« Last post by 4wd on January 18, 2011, 06:16 PM »

Thanks Winkie!

At last, DC for troglodytes!

4422

General Software Discussion / Re: Dual Booting Win XP and Win 7

« Last post by 4wd on January 18, 2011, 06:12 PM »

Might help a bit if you expanded on why you want to stick with XP as a primary OS. Which would indeed be a substantial performance hit trying to VM 7.

-Stoic Joker (January 18, 2011, 05:45 PM)

Given he's already mentioned he wants W7 for games:

Some games doesn't work well in Win Xp, soon getting a 1GB Graphic card for this; hopefully those games will run in Win 7.

-hulkbuster (January 17, 2011, 10:44 PM)

Using W7 in a VM to run games is pretty much a cr*p solution right from the start no matter what graphics card he has, considering the resource usage of W7 and then the resource usage of modern games on top of that.

Much better to do as both Carol and f0dder say, install W7, (use that for the games), and use XP in a VM, dual boot or use a removable drive caddy/cage.

4423

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Wireless sensor

« Last post by 4wd on January 17, 2011, 03:44 AM »

OK, I'm going to have to call 'uncle' on this.

I still cannot get the damn tooltip to reappear on the Windows logon screen after someone has logged off without the computer having to be restarted.

So despite all the help from SJ, (thanks again), the best I can still come up with is a tooltip on the initial Windows logon screen and a SysTray icon that'll appear whenever anyone logs in, (at least that part worked).

Here's my code so far, there's no need for a service since I can't get anything to work after a log off anyway.

Code: AutoIt [Select]

1. #NoTrayIcon
2. #Region ;**** Directives created by AutoIt3Wrapper_GUI ****
3. #AutoIt3Wrapper_UseUpx=n
4. #AutoIt3Wrapper_UseX64=n
5. #AutoIt3Wrapper_Res_Icon_Add=On.ico
6. #AutoIt3Wrapper_Res_Icon_Add=Off.ico
7. #EndRegion ;**** Directives created by AutoIt3Wrapper_GUI ****
8.  
9. Opt("TrayMenuMode", 1)
10.  
11. $loggedon = (ProcessExists("explorer.exe") > 0)
12.  
13. HotKeySet("^+!\", "_Exit")
14.  
15. If $loggedon Then TraySetState()
16.  
17. While 1
18.         If (ProcessExists("explorer.exe") > 0 And Not $loggedon) Then ExitLoop
19.         $ret = DllCall("WinInet.dll","int","InternetGetConnectedState","int_ptr",0,"int",0)
20.         If $ret[0] then ; Connected
21.                 If $loggedon Then
22.                         TraySetIcon(@ScriptName, -5)
23.                         TraySetToolTip("Network connected")
24.                 Else
25.                         ToolTip("Connected", 0, 0,"Network Status", 1, 5)
26.                 EndIf
27.         Else            ; Not connected
28.                 If $loggedon Then
29.                         TraySetIcon(@ScriptName, -6)
30.                         TraySetToolTip("Network disconnected!")
31.                 Else
32.                         ToolTip("Not Connected", 0, 0,"Network Status", 3, 5)
33.                 EndIf
34.         Endif
35.         Sleep(1000)
36. WEnd
37.  
38. Func _Exit()
39.         Exit
40. EndFunc

Attached is an archive containing the AutoIt3 code, executable and icons (used in the SysTray).

To work out whether there's a network connection all it does is ask Windows every second - this seems to work fine here whether it's wireless or wired.  So it'll know whether it's connected or not as soon as Windows knows (in theory).  It also means it doesn't need to call third party programs or need network access through a firewall.

You can exit the program by the hotkey combo: Control+Shift+Alt+\   (That should avoid any clashes )
Or just kill it in Task Manager.

Set it up in the Group Policy editor as in this post EXCEPT when it comes to the User Logon script entry, it needs no parameters.

It needs no config file since the only thing configurable would be the hotkey, the executable is the only file required and can be copied to the same places as mentioned in the post.

Sorry I couldn't give you exactly what you wanted techidave, I'm actually still surprised that Windows allowed me to put anything on the initial logon screen.

It's going to take the likes of mouser or f0dder to solve this problem

4424

General Software Discussion / Re: Word Processor OS

« Last post by 4wd on January 16, 2011, 06:04 PM »

Thanks guys  

If anyone is interested, Wikipedia was my jump point when I was looking for an alternative to an "in BIOS" Instant On^w OS, (the most common one is the rebranded SplashTop OS, eg. ASUS ExpressGate, etc).

xPUD was free but there's also Mandriva's InstantOn - (€9.9015 when you go to buy it), HyperSpace - (now owned by HP), Ubuntu and a few others.

I dare say most of the main Linux distros will probably have some form of 'Instant On' type sub-distro by now but they're all kind of aimed at getting you on the net as fast as possible and not what the OP wanted - still, xPUD at least provides a text editor

EDIT: Update Mandriva price and it's only 4:3 resolutions - a bit of narrow thinking.

Addendum: You can grab more opt packages for xPUD here.  Be warned, they are test versions.
And for those interested, Redo Backup & Recovery is based on xPUD.

4425

General Software Discussion / Re: Word Processor OS

« Last post by 4wd on January 16, 2011, 05:10 AM »

TinyCore also has Cloud functionality in mind, so that's still an option.
The only drawback is you'd need net access, but that might not be such a hurdle these days.
And as long as we're talking about doing it on the net, how about using something like Dropbox as the write folder?
Just boot, type your manifesto, save it to your dropbox folder, retrieve at will.

-Edvard (January 16, 2011, 03:56 AM)

Perhaps you might want to check out xPUD then.



You can run it from USB or install to your Windows netbook, it will then give you the option to boot into it, (the default is Windows after 30s).  It boots in about 20s on my Aspire One.
They state that optimum hardware is basically the early netbooks: Atom CPU, Intel chipset/integrated gfx, etc.

Option packs add DropBox, OpenOffice, more drivers, codecs, Skype and Extras (which includes the geany text editor).

Just a note: I couldn't get it to install to Flash drive using the unetbootin program, (it didn't download the image), but you can do it by downloading the ISO and telling unetbootin to use that as the source.

You can also wizard up your own xPUD using the mkxpud program on a working Ubuntu 9.10 system - so you can trim out anything you don't want.