Recent Posts

4426

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Video Production Support website and forum

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 19, 2007, 05:14 AM »

Check out:

http://www.videohelp.com/
http://www.doom9.net/ (OK not specifically what you want to do but there are a lot of useful resources and tutorials here for related stuff).
http://www.afterdawn.com (similarly has lots of related stuff).

these are just the ones I have looked at regularly and listed off the top of my head.

http://www.mediacollege.com/video/ looks promising and more like what you are talking about.

Actually I did a search on google on "Video Production Tutorials" and came up with over 2.7 million hits. OK a lot are related to specific software products but if even 1% are relevant to you plans that accounts for a lot of sites out there.

I'm not trying to discourage you as you may have something unique and useful to offer - just an observation that you will need more content to attract visitors, especially those who have already found useful forum sites out there.

4427

Living Room / Re: KenR's health and situation

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 19, 2007, 05:04 AM »

Hey Ken, nice to hear the surgery has been scheduled!

I'm not religious so I won't pray for you, but I'll keep my fingers crossed!

-f0dder (August 18, 2007, 12:41 PM)

Thanks f0dder! I take crossings as well as prayers (and a whole host of other things too actually)

Ken

-KenR (August 18, 2007, 01:17 PM)

I won't pray either but I'll cross my legs - they're bigger than my fingers (just).

4428

General Software Discussion / Re: imaging & partitioning queries

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 19, 2007, 04:58 AM »

thanks people!
I have good article about fdisk & another one about win(XP) install
must read both to familiarize self with it all

I think I read that doing the partitioning during the windows xp install doesnt allow for
FAT32 (?) partitions which I was considering for paging file but thats probably not important

-tomos (August 17, 2007, 02:55 PM)

You won't be able to place paging files during install. Just leave enough space for the partition you want and once windows is installed create the partition manually. If you are using XP Pro click START and then right click on My Computer and select Manage (not sure how this works in the Home version as I have never used it).

Once in the management console choose "Disc Management" in the tree on the left and in the pane that opens on the right you will see your hard discs listed with patition details. In an unpartitioned area of disc right click and select New Partition and a wizard will guid you to build a partition. You can select size, format (NTFS, FAT32, FAT) and drive letter assignment.

An alternative way to start the Disk Management console is to START > RUN the type diskmgmt.msc and press return

4429

General Software Discussion / Re: What do you think of PCTools' Spyware Doctor?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 17, 2007, 02:04 PM »

That post on Shitware made me laugh

-Lashiec (August 17, 2007, 01:00 PM)

Yes he was restrained wasn't he ... glad you feel better

I have just given up on WebRoot Spyware. I have been a happy user of it for a few years and it gets good reviews however recently it has caused real problems on my system with no obvious way to configure different behaviour. First it seems to block some network activity that cut me off from my network storage centre and then the last update decided to change registry permission to the point that my whole system was playing silly buggers. I uninstalled it and not only are the system annoyances cured but it feels like a new machine - gone are the valium days and (at least for now) so has SpySweeper. Shame really - maybe I'll give it another go in a few weeks when it has been updated again.

In the meantime I still have an active Spyware Doctor subscription so maybe I will try the new version.

4430

General Software Discussion / Re: Outpost Suite 2008 BETA

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 17, 2007, 01:53 PM »

Yee haa .... there we go then 

4431

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

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 17, 2007, 11:09 AM »

Only microsoft's checker properly checks to see if your system meets specific pre-reqs for certain updates.

-Josh (August 17, 2007, 10:53 AM)

... and then breaks everything

4432

Living Room / Re: multi-boot system

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 17, 2007, 11:01 AM »

Yes you can do that - I used to have 4 parallel windows partitions set up like this.

The biggest problem you may have is activating them all - I telephoned Microsoft and told them what I was doing. Since the operating system was only being installed on a single computer and only one could be run at a time they let me activate them over the phone - which was impressive (and unexepcted). I'd guess you can't do this with Vista though and they may not let you any more with Windows XP.

There is a trick (if you aren't in a hurry) to automatically activating Windows XP - just wait 90 days - the activation server reverts to unactivated every 90 days for windows XP installation codes.

The multiple booting is automatically handled by Windows setup when you install each copy - when you install a second copy you get a boot menu when you switch on to choose the installtion you want to start up with. Each extra installation you install adds an extra entry to the boot menu. They don't even have to be on separate hard discs either - separate partitions work great. You can even install mutiple OSes onto the same partition (and get a boot menu to choose) though MS don't recommend this for most people as you have to ensure you use different folders for Windows OS files and installed Program Files.

You can even mix and match OSes you install - as a rule of thumb if you want to install an older OS (say Windows 98 or 2000) you are best to start off with a clean hard disk and install the OSes in order of age (start with the oldest). Each version of windows recognises older versions and will install alongside with a boot menu. If you want to add Linux too install that last as most versions (SUSE, MANDRAKE etc) will install a loader that starts up Linux but also offers you your Windows boot menu as well.

If you really want to you you can install OSes in any order - but you would need to be knowledgeable to get them to boot properly or get hold of some boot management software (such as BootIT) which loads before any operating system and loads the one you choose - including Linux versions.

The limit is really what you want to achieve.

I don't do this anymore myself (I found I always ended up booting into the same version) but if you have a slow computer - or want an installation to run particularly fast (say for video editing or running a Audio Studio) and you aren't going to add internet access or antivirus applications etc. then this can be a very efficient way of acheiving maximum performance from your hardware and software.

A couple of further notes:

1) Multiple versions of Windows can share a pagefile - put it on a separate disc drive and a fixed size and then point all the versions of windows at it (don't forget if you have Windows 98 installed it will need to be on a FAT32 partition).

2) Each installation of Windows will be installed but the 'home' drive letter won't be C: for each installation. When you install software etc. in future usually there is no issue as the installation paths are mostly handled automatically but you should quickly check the path it is going to install to to ensure the software behaves properly.

3) NEVER EVER use rgistry cleaners in a multiboot setting or you can get in a right royal mess - a lot of reg cleaners look for solutions on all hard discs and if it finds a missing file in the wrong installation partition it can be the devils own job to sort it out again.

4) Some files don't like being shared by the same software installed in different places. For some reason MS Outlook seems to have issues using PST files in the same versions of Office programs installed on different partitions. It doesn't make sense but you should be aware that there can be odd issues like this.

A common setup is as follows:

C: Windows 98 FAT32 partition
D: Data files (My Documents etc) FAT 32 partition
E: Windows XP (NTFS partition)

This means that both Windows XP and Windows 98 have access to documents and the documents are always on Drive D:. If you need to allow Windows 98 to access drive E: at all then it will also have to be a FAT32 partition

If you are just using Windows XP you could try a setup like:

Drive 1:
C: Windows XP (installation 1)
D: Windows XP (installation 2)
etc.

Drive 2:
P: Pagefile partitions (make it about 1.5 x the size oy your system memory - but no bigger than 3Gb)
X: Documents partition

in this case all partitions are NTFS format

If you want to mix XP and Vista use drive D: (or the last installations if you have more than 2 XP installs) above to install Vista after you have XP installed so that boot menu sets up correctly.

4433

General Software Discussion / Re: imaging & partitioning queries

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 17, 2007, 10:35 AM »

I'm wondering
how does one partition a brand new ("blank") computer -
it has to be done before Windows is installed if I want XP on a separate partition

Any good tips or guides out there ? -
I had a good bit of stuff saved re partitioning but strangely nothing related to the "blank canvas" so-to-speak

thanks, tom

-tomos (August 16, 2007, 04:38 PM)

Simple - install windows and windows setup lets you create the partitions you want, where you want (at least Windows XP setup does).

If you plan to use NTFS formatted partitions avoid FDISK - it was designed only with FAT partitions in mind (and doesn't even work brilliantly with FAT32 partitions).

4434

General Software Discussion / Re: Outpost Suite 2008 BETA

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 17, 2007, 10:30 AM »

LOL - anyone dare to install this?

Their new release versions (of just the firewall) had enough major issues and bugs - a suite still in beta ... you'd have to be barmy to install it on anything other than a testbed!!!!

4435

Living Room / Re: Apple iPhone bills... much bigger than expected...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 17, 2007, 10:27 AM »

ROFLMA ...

These are hilarious - $20 to open a webpage!! 

Serves the idiots right ...

Actually it will be interesting when these little money grabbers arrive in Europe as there is a new legal ruling just come into force that limits the amount phone companies can charge for roaming (I think it £0.30 per minute for UK companies and the equivalent for EU services).

I love the the idea of a 300 page bill too - hernias all round for the postal service heh ... and oops there goes the rest of the Amazon rainforest?

Maybe they will stop sending paper copies and email them to the iPhone instead (it will only cost you $50 to collect your bill each time).

Brilliant ...

4436

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Video Production Support website and forum

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 17, 2007, 10:20 AM »

Perhaps chicken + egg syndrome ... need contributors/articles etc. to have something to look at but is hard to get a community going without something to attract people.

How about starting out by having reviews of useful software for video production? Including quick/free/cheap ideas as well as mid range and pro offerings. Reviews may at least stimulate some debate.

A few getting started tutorials would be good too to attract newbies to the site.

You are facing a lot of competition in this area as there are some cracking sites already doing what you want to do.

4437

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

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 17, 2007, 10:09 AM »

Maybe I am one of the "victims" of KB936357? Maybe. I have not been able to understand why my PC went sluggish and unstable, and have tried both this and that to fix the problem, but so far in vain. I have the KB936357 installed but my CPU is another kind than mentioned. But when I click "remove", Windows will list all these programs and say they will/might be affected:



Forgive me for even asking such imposible question, but do I dare to remove KB936357??
 

Edit: Let me re-phrase: Would you dare to remove this KB936357 ???

-Curt (August 17, 2007, 09:37 AM)

Presumably it has replaced a DLL or similar which will be removed if you uninstall - but the listed applications have an interest in the file(s) that will be removed registered in the registry. Personally I would not be prepared to remove the KB unless I was prepared to reinstall those apps to get them working again!

4438

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

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 17, 2007, 09:35 AM »

Been my experience too - downloading recommended driver updates from Windows/Microsoft Update invariably junked the device and required a lot of hassle uninstalling and restalling the old drivers - or downloading new one from the manufacturers website.

Every time I go to MS Update it tells me to update my Netgear wireless driver - unfortunately the driver it offers for the update is clearly a Marvel LAN driver which is totally pointless!

4439

General Software Discussion / Re: What do you think of PCTools' Spyware Doctor?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 17, 2007, 08:27 AM »

I have a Add-Aware 2007 Plus license, but doesn't even have the program installed, because it was too annoying.

-Curt (August 17, 2007, 01:30 AM)

I keep dithering about asking for a refund (yes, it's that bad). I should spend some time raising Cain on their support forums at the very least. My voice would be like a drop of water in an ocean though - everyone is complaining!

-Darwin (August 17, 2007, 07:51 AM)

Sounds par for the course - they seem to alternate between reasonably poor and abominable ever since they went for over a year without updates. AdWatch has always been unuseable in my opinion.

4440

General Software Discussion / Re: Photo panorama creation

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 16, 2007, 05:06 AM »

How did you shoot your photos? Did you use manual exposure and ensure you used the same setting for all the 8 photos? If not they will have different exposures and then the pano app may attempt to colour correct assuming they should all have the same setting.

Actually it looks like a blending problem to me.

Can you zip up the photos and put the zip file on an FTP site somewhere and I will have a go at combining them using various apps to compare?

4441

General Software Discussion / Re: Is there a way for Firefox to automatically login to websites.

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 16, 2007, 05:04 AM »

@wreckedcarzz

That's what i figured.I set firefox to remember passwords,then i'd go to login,press login...nothing.Right click,no options.I figured it was kinda of silly to have the option to remember passwords for no use except to remember
passwords.I don't know,i might be missing something right under my nose,which has happened a time or two.

-tinyvillager (August 16, 2007, 04:52 AM)

Not sure I understand what you are saying - you have the 'remember passwords' option ticked but when you go to log in to a website the details appear filled in but when you click on login nothing happens? Strange it works fine for me.

The only problem I have found with using the firefox password stuff is that it can get confused if you save more than one set of possible login details for the same site. You can delete them individually within the firefox options page and then save the correct details for that site by manually logging in again.

Actually I have RoboForm installed but I still use firefox to remember some passwords too (RoboForm says this conflicts but I have never had a problem) just because it is even quicker if you just have to click one button.

4442

General Software Discussion / Re: Photo panorama creation

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 16, 2007, 04:58 AM »

FREE Panorama Viewer (updated today):

-Curt (August 13, 2007, 05:52 PM)

Looks neat - and there are some nice panoramic photos on the site too.

4443

Living Room / Re: ARGHHH .... CD/DVD burning woes ... any ideas.

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 16, 2007, 04:55 AM »

LOL - too true ... always try the obvious.

Actually I didn't figure it was that obvious. I bought a box of 200 Verbatim discs (in tubs of 50) and have been using these discs for months and can't remember a bad burn with them from day 1 (even burning at 16x speed and leaving other apps running - though not actively using the computer for other things). It never even occurred to me that a single box of 50 could suffer from this problem. They all came from the same supplier, packed in a Verbatim box so I assumed they were all the same batch. I did inspect the discs but there doesn't look like there are physical problems or uneven dye coverage etc.

Oh well you live and learn!

Does make me wonder about the security of these discs for archiving though. One of the reasons I bought these disks is that they are supposed to have a long (100 years plus) shelf life.

4444

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

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 15, 2007, 08:10 PM »

No probs with the updates here either (XP Pro)

4445

Living Room / Re: ARGHHH .... CD/DVD burning woes ... any ideas.

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 15, 2007, 08:08 PM »

Just emailed my supplier - hopefully they will send out a new pack.

I can't believe I have spent so many hours trying to sort out my system when it wasn't the problem!

4446

Living Room / Re: ARGHHH .... CD/DVD burning woes ... any ideas.

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 15, 2007, 07:40 PM »

Hmmm ... just burned 10 DVDs without a single error - so presumably it was a bad pack.

Now what do I do with about 35 Verbatim discs that don't record properly?

4447

Living Room / Re: ARGHHH .... CD/DVD burning woes ... any ideas.

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 15, 2007, 03:55 PM »

Thanks Armando.

Actually I am beginning to suspect it might be a duff pack of disks as I just opened a new pack out of curiosty and burned two of them at 16x without a problem.

If it is that it is strange as I bought 4 x 50 tubs at the same time and have never had problems with Verbatim discs before (and I have burned hundreds of them in the past - literally). The first pack in the current order caused no problems.

All very strange.

...

I'll probably wish I hadn't said any of that next time I burn a disc and it fails!!!

4448

Living Room / Re: ARGHHH .... CD/DVD burning woes ... any ideas.

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 15, 2007, 12:22 PM »

It seems to be affecting both DVD drives. They are relatively new and worked faultlessly until the last couple of days.

I haven't tried PIO in normal mode - it is just too slow.

The drives are reading happily at normal speeds.

I have noticed that when I put in a new CD/DVD as it loads there is a pause when my mouse doesn't move. I wonder if there is an interrupt from a device driver that has become corrupted?

4449

Living Room / ARGHHH .... CD/DVD burning woes ... any ideas.

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 15, 2007, 08:06 AM »

My system has been running smooth and happy for some time (apart from the odd minor glitch) and I have had no problems whatsoever burning DVDs.

I use Verbatim 16x DVD+R discs - and they have always been good quality and reliable.

My system started as normal the other day and I was getting odd issues - almost all of which have been cured by removing Webroot Spyware (the last update seems to have caused all sorts of issues). EXCEPT that now when I burn discs I get verification errors.

I have tried using MSCONFIG to restart my system with just MS services and no startup items but I still get problems. I have also tried logging on as Administrator in case my user profile had been corrupted (an account I rarely use - though my normal account is in the admin group).

The discs burn fine if I start in Safe Mode - but then only PIO mode is available and they take up to 45 minutes to burn and verify.

I have tried reducing the burn speed to 4x (the lowest offered by burning apps for these discs) but the problem persists. Normally I have no problems burning at maximum speed setting (16x).

I have used various software to try to burn - ImgBurn, Ashampoo Burning Studio 7, Nero Burning ROM 7 - and they all have the same problems.

Anyone any ideas how to troubleshoot this issue? There are no errors listed in my system logs.

Setup is:

IDE 0: PATA M & S hard discs
IDE 1: PATA M & S Pioneer DVD drives
IDE 5: SATA Hard disc (Win XP system disc)

4450

Living Room / Re: Anyone any idea how to fix file assocations?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 14, 2007, 03:30 PM »

Found a solution - that may be of use to others (and more far reaching conclusions ...)

I found this article: http://blogs.msdn.co...06/09/04/739820.aspx which discusses problems with access control lists as a result of failed MS Installer installations. Using the windows resource kit tool SUBINACL.MSI (downloadable from the MS website) and the batch file presented in the article resets the whole registry and all system files back to propper settings for the Administrator group and also the SYSTEM user.

This worked for me - and now music file assoiciations seem to be working properly again and applications that complained about access rights are working again.