Recent Posts

4676

Living Room / Re: if proxy connection works - who is blocking me: my ISP or the server?

« Last post by 4wd on October 08, 2010, 06:40 AM »

Try running ipconfig /flushdns at a CLI to flush out XP's DNS cache also.

4677

Living Room / Re: if proxy connection works - who is blocking me: my ISP or the server?

« Last post by 4wd on October 08, 2010, 05:48 AM »

Can you tracert or ping to it?

4678

Living Room / Re: Old Rubik's Cube book rediscovered via the Internet. I love you Internet.

« Last post by 4wd on October 08, 2010, 12:19 AM »

I've had this one sitting on my shelf for the last 25 years.



I'm sure I could find the cube in the garage if I looked hard enough.

4679

Living Room / Re: if you had just one wish

« Last post by 4wd on October 07, 2010, 01:26 AM »

I recently bought Duke Nukem 3D from GOG, (then they had for 50% off - typical), it brought back a lot of good memories.  The two dimensional graphics are still a good laugh 

4680

Living Room / Re: tc1100 tablet pc dies before i've even set it up

« Last post by 4wd on October 07, 2010, 12:31 AM »

oooohhhhhh!!!  Bike Terminator!


Crap!  I just bought a Coolermaster Storm Sentinel.

4681

Living Room / Re: if you had just one wish

« Last post by 4wd on October 07, 2010, 12:29 AM »

GRANTED!








Just in case no one knew.

4682

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by 4wd on October 06, 2010, 12:36 AM »

I've started re-reading all the Necroscope^w series, currently on The Last Aerie:



Brian Lumley has also written books relating to the Cthulhu mythology, (which I've yet to read).

Life Expectancy by Dean Koontz

-kyrathaba (October 05, 2010, 08:11 PM)

Another of my limited number of favourite authors, his Frankenstein series is excellent.

4683

Living Room / Re: tc1100 tablet pc dies before i've even set it up

« Last post by 4wd on October 06, 2010, 12:04 AM »

And then he'll buy another on ebay to try and make a complete working one.

4684

General Software Discussion / Re: ConnectFusion Download Accelerator

« Last post by 4wd on October 05, 2010, 11:02 PM »

Just wondering, what would you like to see added?

For anything big that I need to leave downloading overnight I still use WellGet, also last updated in 2005, and it offers a lot more options than ConnectFusion.

Also, both ConnectFusion and WellGet will run without installing, just extract the installers and run the executables.  They both leave traces in the registry, (their settings), so can't truly be called portable/stealth.

4685

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: STEAM: Left 4 Dead & Left 4 Dead 2 - US$10.19 for both

« Last post by 4wd on October 05, 2010, 10:43 PM »

 

Shows you how much I look in this forum.

Sorry Deozaan 

Thanks for the answers guys.

4686

Found Deals and Discounts / STEAM: Left 4 Dead & Left 4 Dead 2 - US$10.19 for both

« Last post by 4wd on October 05, 2010, 09:48 PM »

As per the subject - Midweek Madness sale.  I'm thinking of seriously whipping out the credit card here, however I have one question for which I can't seem to find an answer.

Can you play Steam games in a multi-player LAN environment without having to be connected to the internet?

eg.  If I take my PC to our LAN night and the others were running a L4D2 multi-player game, would I be able to join if I'm using a Steam based version of L4D2 and had no internet access for validation.

Or are Steam games purely single player if there is no internet connection?

4687

General Software Discussion / Re: Format NTFS from DOS!

« Last post by 4wd on October 03, 2010, 10:10 PM »

I was hoping someone would come up with that suggestion i.e., Load DOS DISK and format the drive, well my friend it ain't any good since the drive is already a NTFS partition

-hulkbuster (October 03, 2010, 02:28 PM)

My circle is expanding  (PS. How will I recognise you in the street?)

Honestly, yes I goofed suggesting it, (add fdisk and it's fine though, just tried it here with my laptop - delete partition, create, format - although my laptop only has 2 partitions), and I apologise if the tone of my response was unsavoury in any way.

But also honestly, the statement 'I was hoping someone would come up with that suggestion ...' implies you were setting a trap and is counter-productive to asking for help.

All the various responses to your query could have been avoided by adding: "I want to do this with a view to restoration of an OS image.", to your OP.

In which case, everyone would have responded that a format isn't necessary.

Please correct me ,,,,,i have no idea or is it not so necessary to format prior to restoring.

As f0dder and I both mentioned, an image-based restore will wipe whatever is there but only on the sectors that are overwritten.  Some image software can zero any unused sectors.

Files that were fragmented before the image was taken will be fragmented after the restoration.  Files that were stored in the MFT will still be there, (deleted or not).
It is better to defragment before creating an image of your OS.  (Added: Defragging the system offline is even better - locked files will no longer be locked.)

Also, if you're concerned about any left over data, (eg. for security purposes):
- before your restore then you can do the full format, (as per your OP), or
- use a program to wipe unused sectors, (including deleted files in the MFT), before you create your image.  (I recommend doing it after a defrag.)

I've used Moo0 Anti-Recovery and it has worked very well, nothing recoverable after a deep scan with Recuva or Restoration.

Again, sorry if my tone was offensive but as I recently mentioned to someone here, I get irritated rather quickly if I have to play 20 questions to discover what the real question was, (or should have been).

Spoiler

People can be too secretive

4688

Living Room / Re: OMFG! Beauty of the Web...

« Last post by 4wd on October 03, 2010, 07:18 PM »

Another secret message

Spoiler

Your exclamation was directed at the speed of the download not the content of the site....which isn't measured in fps.

4689

Living Room / Re: OMFG! Beauty of the Web...

« Last post by 4wd on October 03, 2010, 12:16 PM »

It took exactly how long I calculated it would.

Spoiler

2426.88/45 = ~54 seconds

Big deal........

Spoiler

- and then it took a lot longer once you realise that, as usual, it's just a web-loader.

4690

Living Room / Re: Firefox Stability Issues

« Last post by 4wd on October 02, 2010, 10:11 PM »

Oooppss!  Spoke too soon, whatever they did in the update yesterday totally hosed my Minefield install.  Couldn't browse anything without it crashing.

Forgot to mention, I'm using Minefield x64 builds with the x64 Flash beta - definitely walking on the dark side here

EDIT: Found the problem, the OptimizeGoogle addon no longer can be coerced into running 'nicely'.

4691

General Software Discussion / Re: Format NTFS from DOS!

« Last post by 4wd on October 02, 2010, 09:12 PM »

So summing up:

You need to be able to boot into DOS in less than 10 seconds and do a full NTFS format prior to restoring an image of your OS.

Correct?

If so, then you can boot with a boring old DOS floppy and issue a full format command.  It doesn't matter what filesystem you format it in, it will be wiped when you restore your OS image.

However, if you mean that you will be restoring files and not a complete OS image, then:

Boot with a DOS floppy and issue a full format command.  It doesn't matter what filesystem you format it in since when you choose to install the OS you can then do a quick format into NTFS - the result will be the same.

If you're now going to say that you don't have a floppy drive then the answer is:

In the amount of time spent downloading the relevant DOS files, prepping a Flash drive, copying the files to it and then rebooting to use it - I could have booted off a XP CD and partitioned/formatted the drive.

How to boot from a USB Flash drive.  Partitioning/format tools here.

Just a question: Why do you need to do a full format before restoring your OS?

4692

Living Room / Re: Firefox Stability Issues

« Last post by 4wd on October 01, 2010, 11:17 PM »

Running Minefield 4.0b7pre - no problems, (apart from a couple of my favourite addons no longer working).

4693

Living Room / Re: Why do we go out of our way to be unhelpful in forums?

« Last post by 4wd on October 01, 2010, 11:08 PM »

Please no! I can't stand that woman!

-Deozaan (October 01, 2010, 09:06 PM)

Just for you:

NSFGF

@superboyac:
I have a better question: Why don't people who ask questions in forums provide enough information for a helpful response?

(Instead of having to play '20 Questions' almost all the time.)

4694

General Software Discussion / Re: Format NTFS from DOS!

« Last post by 4wd on October 01, 2010, 10:55 PM »

Is there any reason you can't just boot from the Windows CD/DVD, (eg. Windows XP CD), into a Recovery Console and issue a Format, (and/or DiskPart), command?

No 3rd party software involved.

4695

General Software Discussion / Re: Application Virtualization - Make your applications portable

« Last post by 4wd on September 18, 2010, 03:02 AM »

It seems pretty nifty. You can apparently install in a sandbox and make the app portable from there without actually installing it.

This is how I have been doing it anyway manually - maybe Cameyo can do it automatically and save me some work.

-brahman (September 18, 2010, 02:45 AM)

I haven't had a look at the latest beta, I know it was discussed/requested.

I use a VM with a base XP-SP3 + .NET OS to capture installs using Cameyo - then just revert to the base snapshot after transfering the package out of it.

4696

General Software Discussion / Application Virtualization - Make your applications portable

« Last post by 4wd on September 17, 2010, 10:43 PM »

For those that are interested in making their applications portable, there's a new kid on the block - well, it's been around since April but I haven't seen anyone mention it here.

Cameyo - Free Application Virtualization



Very easy to use and you end up with a single executable application 'package' which seems to run ok on other Windows OSes, (providing the necessary dependencies are there of course).

A slightly cheaper alternative to ThinApp.

Addendum: From browsing the forum, you can add a parameter to the executable command line to remove the temporary files from the host system: "yourapp.exe -remove".
Also, the latest beta can be downloaded from here.

EDIT: Change the subject to be a little more descriptive.

4697

Living Room / Re: HDCP Cracked - Is HD Content doomed due to lack of DRM now?

« Last post by 4wd on September 17, 2010, 07:51 PM »

It must be real!

4698

Living Room / Re: Tipping - Why does this appear to be a "requirement"?

« Last post by 4wd on September 17, 2010, 09:16 AM »

Some info to figure out.

This is US government, so it's a CF.
http://www.dol.gov/w.../minwage/america.htm
http://www.dol.gov/d...ages/minimumwage.htm
http://www.dol.gov/e...faq/esa/flsa/002.htm

-cmpm (September 16, 2010, 07:54 AM)

So basically:

if minwage > (wage + tips) then
  wage = (minwage - tips)
else
  inc tax
end if


Where: wage = what the employer pays employee
           tips = what the customer pays employee
           minwage = what the employer is too cheap to pay employee
           tax = universal constant

4699

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for a portable document and info management tool

« Last post by 4wd on September 16, 2010, 09:18 AM »

Not sure if you can make the freebie portable,.....

-cmpm (September 16, 2010, 06:54 AM)

Extract the downloaded setup executable with UniExtract, then extract the Tabbles.msi with UniExtract.

Run the Tabbles.exe program, select your language, click OK, enter the dotTech serial and Bob's your uncle.

I didn't take any notice of where it put the serial, (eg. %appdata%, .\ - doesn't appear to be in registry), but it ran without installing so it shouldn't be too hard to make it fully portable.  I'll have a look later today since it's now 0020.

I'd hardly call it portable though since it requires .NET v4.

4700

Living Room / Re: Tipping - Why does this appear to be a "requirement"?

« Last post by 4wd on September 13, 2010, 10:00 AM »

^ Wow... thanks for that info.  I never knew that, and am planning a cruise currently...  of course, whether or not I'll be able to take it in the next decade is still up in the air...

-wraith808 (September 13, 2010, 09:22 AM)

I should clarify that this might only apply to the cruise line we used this year, (C***a - did I say that?), but where one does it I'm sure there's others.

See here for a bit of info.

And while you're there get a cheap deal