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4576

General Software Discussion / Re: My new favorite ftp client: Total Commander (yes, really)

« Last post by 4wd on November 17, 2010, 07:20 PM »

Yes, I would need all that with Explicit something or other.  Most ftp clients I've encountered do not have this.  It's not clear if Dopus can do it either, since there's nothing about the details of its ftp features on the Dopus website.  I'd love it if it could, since I use DOpus primarily.  Has anyone here connected to the dc server using Dopus?

-superboyac (November 17, 2010, 08:46 AM)

Form the website here:

Advanced FTP is an optional feature that you can select at the time you purchase Directory Opus, or add later.

It enables support for Secure FTP protocols, including:

    Secure FTP via SSL

    Both Implicit and Explicit Secure FTP connections are supported. Implicit means the client (Opus) issues an AUTH command and asks for an SSL connection. Explicit means the client assumes the server is running a SSL connection on port 990 and attempts to immediately open a connection (for example, as used by the excellent FTP server - Serv-U). Normally, implicit connections are recommended.

    Note that if the SSL connection is not accepted, then the FTP connection will fail. For security reasons it will not auto-fall back to a non-secure connection – instead, you will get an error message informing you that a secure connection could not be established.

    SSH / SFTP over SSH on port 22

    This system is based on the freeware Putty source code of Psftpa by Simon Tatham et al. Opus provides a seamless integration of the SSH connection type on port 22 and FTP over that connection as if it were a normal FTP connection. The SFTP protocol is more limited than normal FTP and some options in the FTP settings do not apply to SSH - these will be ghosted when this connection type is chosen. Because Opus essentially is based upon the Putty system, any settings from an existing Putty installation stored in the registry should be recognized and used as if you were connecting via the command line Putty version.

To order Advanced FTP with your Directory Opus 9 licence, simply select it under the Licences and Optional Features section on the order form.

4577

Living Room / Re: Is "Quick Format" safe?

« Last post by 4wd on November 17, 2010, 01:54 AM »

Still, when you compare it to what it used to do on some early ATA drives, (render them useless or do nothing), it could be called an improvement.

4578

Living Room / Re: Is "Quick Format" safe?

« Last post by 4wd on November 17, 2010, 01:47 AM »

So my terminology is wrong - so sue me

But I believe that a LLF also initiates a bad block scan, something a single-pass wipe won't.

-4wd (November 17, 2010, 01:35 AM)

And I probably should of put it this way:

But I believe that a Reinitialisation, (what I termed LLF), also initiates a bad block scan, something a single-pass wipe might not, (depending on the software you use).

4579

Living Room / Re: Is "Quick Format" safe?

« Last post by 4wd on November 17, 2010, 01:35 AM »

FWIW, AFAIK all modern "low level format" utilities actually perform a "zero-fill erase" or "single-pass wipe" operation - so it's all just different ways of saying the same* thing.  

-40hz (November 16, 2010, 10:32 PM)

But I believe that a LLF also initiates a bad block scan, something a single-pass wipe won't.



Edit: Remove f0dder reference because of my misinterpretation.

4580

General Software Discussion / Re: My new favorite ftp client: Total Commander (yes, really)

« Last post by 4wd on November 16, 2010, 11:12 PM »

I use DOpus - it simply opens a pane in my two-pane UI and it works just like any other directory. Pretty sweet!

-J-Mac (November 16, 2010, 10:30 PM)

But I believe superboyac wants SFTP/SSH capability - with DOpus that costs an extra AU$10 per license.

4581

Living Room / Re: Is "Quick Format" safe?

« Last post by 4wd on November 16, 2010, 06:33 PM »

This is somewhat of a shock to me - first, because this means a format doesn't wipe your data. Second, because new bad sectors might not be discovered merely from a read, and sector reallocation only kicks in on a write. Eek.

Thanks for making me look into this, Joker - I'll be sure to do an explicit single-pass wipe instead of format from now on.

-f0dder (November 16, 2010, 06:59 AM)

You could always try a Low Level Format, it worked on my 1TB Samsung - took a very long time, probably the same amount as doing a single-pass wipe.

4582

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Low Cost Hosting (Web, Semi-Dedi, VPS, Dedicated Servers) + Low Price TLD's

« Last post by 4wd on November 16, 2010, 06:02 PM »

Slightly more sophisticated than Smeg^w-Dedicated. 

eg. Darn smegging website!

4583

Living Room / Re: The Story of Stuff - Cosmetics, Bottled Water...

« Last post by 4wd on November 16, 2010, 07:06 AM »

We already have a reasonably efficient recycling service in place here, (Yarra Ranges, Victoria, Australia) - throw any paper, cardboard, cans, glass and recyclable plastic in the recycling bin and it's sorted at the depot, (mostly automatically - coloured glass is hand sorted).  The whole recycling centre is in a large warehouse probably 60m x 30m x 12m, (WxDxH) - including where they dump the recyclables.  The only plastic not recycled is plastic bags.
The recyclables are loaded onto a conveyor by a frontend loader, fans separate the paper and cardboard out, magnets pull out the steel cans/tops, electro-magnets kick aluminium cans/tops off the belt (induced currents), glass is hand picked off and tossed into appropriate bin (clear/brown/green) and what's left is generally plastic.

The local tip allows free dumping of recyclable material into specific areas so you can drop off any steel, fridges, washing machines and other defunct white goods for free, used oil can be left also for recycling for free.

In my area we get two bins: non-recyclable rubbish and recyclables, (no green waste bin because in my area burning off is still allowed - bushfire danger area, so fuel reduction is allowed).
Pickup is with just two trucks: rubbish and recyclables.

In other areas, they get a green waste bin for organic waste - no burning of rubbish anywhere in the metro area.

In Devon, UK, where I've spent a bit of time, (18 months), I really can't understand what cretin designed their recycling collection - you get:
1 (small) bin for Glass jars or bottles, cans (Al/Steel), cloth, plastic (but only plastic milk or soft drink bottles!) and paper, (I think but no cardboard).
1 (smaller) bin for organic kitchen scraps (introduced this year).
1 (large) bin for non-recyclable rubbish.
The recycling truck has a bloke in the back hand sorting the contents of the bins collected by the two outrunners.

All other recyclables have to be carted by you to the various points in the county:
1) Paper or glass to the local supermarket where they usually have large bins - you have to sort the coloured glass yourself.
2) All other plastic (and possibly oils) have to be carted miles away to the local recycling "centre" which is nothing more than another load of bins being watched over by council workers to make sure you sneak nothing into the wrong bin.

And there was talk of even more bins being introduced for householders to better sort the stuff themselves - considering a good portion of people in the UK live in flats/terrace houses with no front yards or anywhere to really store these bins....well....it seems to me to be the height of inefficiency on the part of the council.  (There was talk in some local papers about the possibility of residents having to cope with 5-9 bins.)

PS. Sorry if you live in the UK but honestly, your rubbish/recyclable collection system just seems to be backwards to me.

4584

Living Room / Re: The Secret Life of Machines

« Last post by 4wd on November 16, 2010, 06:23 AM »

but for visitors it could give the wrong impression - I was just reporting it (more to mouser I guess) simply in case it was important - I know nothing about these things so I never know what's important

-tomos (November 16, 2010, 05:20 AM)

He already knows, discussed back here and explained by Gothi[c] back here.  


Dear visitors, please don't be put off by my laziness in changing a DC HTTPS link to a HTTP link.  You have nothing to fear, we are all honest Used Car Salesmen.

4585

General Software Discussion / Re: Easier way to make a WINPE 2.0 DISC

« Last post by 4wd on November 16, 2010, 12:14 AM »

For BB-7PE, (VistaPE is depreciated and not updated), here's a prelim WinZip plugin cobbled together after a couple of hours from the 7-Zip & Partition Find and Mount scripts, a log created by RegShot of the WinZip install and grabbing reg entries from within the PE.  Registry entries were converted using H7PB.

It's for WinZip 32bit, licensing info works and it runs.

Things that don't work that you can fix
1) Haven't added optional 64bit support - check out the 7Zip script to see how they do it;
2) Haven't tested it.

For it to work you need to 7Zip your WinZip directory as follows and Attach it into the script, (as shown in the NetScan demo above).

4586

Living Room / Re: Xtranormal

« Last post by 4wd on November 15, 2010, 11:53 PM »

I guess you'll be asking nudone to create a Steve Jobs character so you can add videos to your new blog (HINT!).

4587

Living Room / Re: Is "Quick Format" safe?

« Last post by 4wd on November 15, 2010, 06:11 PM »

My MFM drive (on an Amiga 500) would already lose its data when I (lightly) bumped the table it was resting on. The difference between those highly unreliable drives and the rock solidness of the current generations still baffles me.

-Shades (November 15, 2010, 05:50 PM)

The RLLs in my A3000 are still reliable, (well after the drive has spun long enough to desolidify the lubricant they are - they sure run hot until that happens ).

4588

Living Room / Re: The Secret Life of Machines

« Last post by 4wd on November 15, 2010, 05:07 PM »

Seeing the topic The Story of Stuff brought to mind a TV series I saw a couple of years ago:

-4wd (November 15, 2010, 06:37 AM)

that (donationcoder) link upsets Firefox - presumably because it's https (why make a dc link https?):
"The security certificate is not trusted because it is self signed"

-tomos (November 15, 2010, 07:34 AM)

Are you saying you don't trust us here?  

Fixed - sorry about that.  Wasn't a typo, just copy/paste from address bar.

The reason I use SSL on DC is because for reasons I haven't looked at yet I cannot attach multiple items, (or a really big one), to any posts using plain HTTP.  I get a burst of maximum upload rate then it will sit there twiddling its thumbs for ever and a day, (or until I cancel).

HTTPS is a simple workaround until I can motivate myself to find the cause, (which will be unlikely - the motivation part not the cause ).

4589

Living Room / The Secret Life of Machines

« Last post by 4wd on November 15, 2010, 06:37 AM »

Seeing the topic The Story of Stuff brought to mind a TV series I saw a couple of years ago:

The Secret Life of Machines



For any of you with a mechanical/electrical/electronic/engineering interest or you're just interested in how stuff works, I can recommend this TV series which is available for download here.

They cover the history of the device and then go on the replicate it using common low-tech apparatus.

4590

General Software Discussion / Re: Best PORTABLE video player?

« Last post by 4wd on November 13, 2010, 08:45 PM »

MPC-HC, just download the zip file and extract, you can delete everything except the executable.

4591

General Software Discussion / Re: Easier way to make a WINPE 2.0 DISC

« Last post by 4wd on November 13, 2010, 07:38 PM »

I want few plugins like Notepad++, Irfanview, Acronis Disk Director Suite 10 , Acronis True Image 14, XYplorer 9.60, Q-Dir 4.19 , Adobe Acrobat 5/7 ,Winzip , UltraISO etc etc some with complicated registry in Winpe. Would it be possible with your methods.

-hulkbuster (November 13, 2010, 01:22 PM)

I'll be downloading VistaPE and the WAIK at the library, their connection is 3-4 times faster than mine

Creating plugins will definitely be a fair bit of trial and error.

No need to go through the thread for BB-7PE, bbLean 7PE will accept almost all the Vista-CAPI plugins, (as will pretty much any of the WinPE3 projects).  So you only need to download the project and then add in whatever scripts you want from VistPE, (actually, VistaPE-CAPI now includes bbLean as one of the shells so you can also go the other way - add plugins from the BB-7PE project to VistaPE).

Regarding your above examples, (search through the forums first, someone may have already done one that hasn't been integrated):
WinZip - Either use the already created/working 7Zip plugin or use it as the basis for a WinZip plugin;
Q-Dir   - Win7RescuePE includes it, attached below so you can tweak/integrate;
IrfanView - Also in the Win7RescuePE (download link in Post #14);
NotePad++ - Already in VistaPE (xVPE Np++.script);
UltraISO - In LiveXP project, should be easy to adapt.  Available at Galapo's LiveXP scripts;
XYPlorer - Set it up how you want then run it in portable mode, script would be easy - basically same as the netscan one above;

Acronis DD + TI - You really can't go past Mustang's scripts, he has one for DD10 and TI11 that are pretty much fully functional.  They do require payment though, DD is $4.99 and TI is $9.99 - (I've bought both in the past but no longer use Acronis programs).  He also has MustangPEBuilder2 for creating WinPE2 discs as well as a couple of PE building tutorials.  IIRC, Acronis provide BartPE plugins for registered users, these can be converted to Winbuilder scripts.

There's also a couple of free plugins for Acronis TI, here for an earlier version of VistaPE/TI and here for TI2010 and VistaPE-Leopard - both should be relatively easy to update for later TI versions, it's just a matter of comparing what value's are required with what's in the registry and extra files - I've done it before in updating a TI plugin from an earlier version, (sorry I don't have access to it, all my backups are located elsewhere ATM).

When you say Acrobat, do you mean Acrobat or Acrobat Reader ?

There's bound to be a BartPE or WinBuilder script for almost anything, just do a Google search: eg. +acrobat +(bartpe|pebuilder|winbuilder)

Then it's just a matter of converting/tweaking to get it working.

4592

Living Room / Re: Why Apple's Distortion Field Works

« Last post by 4wd on November 12, 2010, 11:56 PM »

They're actually just free subdomains. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.cc

-Renegade (November 12, 2010, 11:23 PM)

Hey, thanks for that - didn't know it an Australian (sub)domain, (I really should read more), anyway all I can say is I've had a free one for 1+ years and it's still working, (I just have to remember to renew it after an hour of twiddling my thumbs wondering why it stopped working  ).

4593

Living Room / Re: Why Apple's Distortion Field Works

« Last post by 4wd on November 12, 2010, 10:16 PM »

* People to come up with appropriate domain names that I can buy (I wanted "isa.co.ck", but couldn't get it. steve.jobs.isa.co.ck would have been awesome!)

-Renegade (November 12, 2010, 07:05 PM)

CO.CC are generally free, isa.co.cc is still available but will cost $14 - so you can still have steve.jobs.isa.co.cc

 

4594

Living Room / Re: Why Apple's Distortion Field Works

« Last post by 4wd on November 12, 2010, 04:40 AM »

Oh man, I just had the weirdest thought:

If we could cross y0himba with Renegade we'd have the perfect Steve Jobs Terminator!







Disclaimer: Time for another drink me thinks.

4595

General Software Discussion / Re: After re-installing XP - what?

« Last post by 4wd on November 12, 2010, 04:14 AM »

I'm a bit unclear on the "make a boot cd" step. How do I do that? I take it the CD does not hold the image, but a program to restore the image from the external drive?

-JennyB (November 12, 2010, 03:54 AM)

Both Paragon Backup & Recovery and Macrium Reflect, (including free editions), allow you to create a bootable CD, (and/or Flash drive in the case of Paragon), that you can boot your system off so as to restore a previous backup from, for example, an external USB drive, CD/DVD discs or another internal partition/drive.



eg. For Paragon Backup & Recovery Free Edition just click on Recovery Media Builder and follow the prompts, you'll have your choice of writing to an ISO, (to burn to CD later), writing a CD immediately or installing it to a Flash drive.

Addendum: FWIW, I'd do the following, (this is using Paragon B&R), if you have a Flash drive of around 8GB it should be more than ample for your OS with quite a few applications installed, (unless they are really big spacehogs):

1) Install PB&R Free Edition
2) Create Recovery Media on the Flash Drive
3) Create a system backup using maximum compression
4) Copy the backup to the Flash drive
5) Put it somewhere safe you can find it when necessary, (whenever I put something "somewhere safe" I can never find it again   )

This is what I've done with my netbook, I can get 2 complete OS backups on a 4GB Flash drive.

4596

General Software Discussion / Re: After re-installing XP - what?

« Last post by 4wd on November 12, 2010, 01:12 AM »

Also you can use vLite to create an XP install CD with some of the stuff, like games, stripped off.

-MilesAhead (November 11, 2010, 06:49 PM)

vlite for Vista.

nlite for XP.

For already packaged addons that can be added via nlite:
johndoe74's addons
rado354's addons
Addon list

MSFN is the place to go for anything related to Unattended, Addons or stripping down Windows installations.

4597

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011: List Numberer

« Last post by 4wd on November 11, 2010, 08:20 PM »

I think you should change the screenshot to something maybe associated with this particular program

4598

Living Room / Re: Too Stupid to Own a Computer

« Last post by 4wd on November 11, 2010, 05:50 PM »

(given that it was an oil tycoon they targeted)

-Stoic Joker (November 11, 2010, 07:10 AM)

His oil tycoon relative will just put up your fuel prices to cover the cheque....should be recovered in 2.5748394858 seconds.

4599

Living Room / Re: Why Apple's Distortion Field Works

« Last post by 4wd on November 10, 2010, 06:12 AM »

Renegade, I still feel you were holding back.....you should tell us how you really feel....

BTW, you probably could have increased impact by increasing font to, say, 20 ?

 

I really want to see when you get into:

<rant mode="NUCLEAR">

Mind you, I'm not sure I want to be in the same country.

4600

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

« Last post by 4wd on November 10, 2010, 12:01 AM »

This will remove AHCI from the system drive while you install - you can change it all back afterwards or in the event that you still have a problem with the install hanging/BSODing.


Referring to the picture of your motherboard above:
1) If your system drive is connected to one of the SATA ports in the RED outline, connect it to one of the ports in the GREEN outline instead.  (If both are in use, leave the DVD connected to one and temporary unplug whatever other device is connected.)
2) Turn the computer on and press DEL to get into the BIOS.

At the BIOS Main page, use the cursor keys to go to Integrated Peripherals and press Enter.


On the Integrated Peripherals page, use the cursor keys to go to Onboard SATA/IDE Ctrl Mode and change it to IDE if it isn't already.


Then hit F10 followed by Enter to accept the changes and reboot.

If the system fails to boot saying it can't find a System Disk, (or just doesn't boot), reboot and press F12 to get to the Boot Menu - you can then choose which drive to boot off and it should boot normally.

It sounds like your system is set to boot CD first so it should still boot the Win7 DVD OK and allow you to choose where to install.

After you've done the OS install you should be able to move the drive back onto it's original SATA port and reverse the change in the BIOS, (if you made one), and the system will still boot.

Depending on how anal that particular BIOS is you may need to go into Advanced BIOS Features and change the order of your drives under Hard Disk Boot Priority, but that's no problem.

I remember mouser saying something like once you get past 4 or 5, weird things start happening.

-superboyac (November 09, 2010, 09:37 PM)

This must be a YMMV thing because I regularly have 7 drives connected without a problem - it also has a lot to do with how good the BIOS is so a bit of luck is probably involved.

I hate this stuff.

I love the smell of frying transistors first thing in the morning.......


Makes the fault easier to spot