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4851

Living Room / Re: Something on computer is fubar

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

I completely pulled apart, (CPU, RAM, HDD, motherboard, PSU - everything), and rebuilt the computer from scratch removing any contamination, (dust, etc), as I went - made no change.

My drives consist of: 2 Samsung 1TB, WD 640, WD 750 and WD 1TB.

I found this thread which describes a problem similar to what I'm experiencing, (except I don't get any noises from the drives).

So, having added a Seagate 1.5TB so I could get the data off of my HDDs, I thought I'd give it a try - low level format every drive in turn using the appropriate manufacturers util.

Watching Win7s' Resource Monitor Disk Activity, I see when it happens that the Response Time blows out to 1-3 seconds on access on only 2 of my HDDs, (WD 640 and WD 1TB), even though another HDD is in use, (Samsung 1TB), it's access times are normal.  The WD 640 just happens to be my system drive and the WD 1TB is where the portable apps I use are located - so I think those two are next for the low level format.

Maybe that's why I see it most when using Firefox, all that caching of small files just happens to make it more likely to hit a defect on a HDD.

Maybe something to try if you have somewhere to shift data to - took 4.5 hours to low level format one of the Samsungs.

4852

General Software Discussion / Re: "God Mode" in Win7? (All Tasks)

« Last post by 4wd on January 05, 2010, 05:41 AM »

Worked fine on the Desktop for me (Win7 x64)

-Stoic Joker (January 05, 2010, 05:36 AM)

Oopss!, I think I just cut'n'paste from zaines original post that had the extra space, I then did it into C:\ but used the text from the website.

My bad.

4853

General Software Discussion / Re: "God Mode" in Win7? (All Tasks)

« Last post by 4wd on January 05, 2010, 04:40 AM »

Didn't work if I did it on the Desktop but did if I created it in C:\.

EDIT: It does work on Desktop.

4854

Living Room / Re: What annoys you to no end?

« Last post by 4wd on January 05, 2010, 04:32 AM »

The version of daemon tools I just installed adds an entry in programs and features in Win7 x64 and x86.

-Josh (January 04, 2010, 04:21 PM)

I think Daemon Tools try to avoid putting to easily recognisable files/links on the computer to try and avoid the continual blacklisting efforts of SecuROM and SafeDisc.

The latest version of Pro Advanced didn't put anything into Programs and Features on W7HP here.

4855

Living Room / Re: Something on computer is fubar

« Last post by 4wd on January 05, 2010, 04:28 AM »

@cmpm: Been there, done that

Besides, I've changed network config so that both of my computers are now networked via a Gb switch and are then plugged into a single port on the modem/router - the other computer that's on 24/7/365 has no problems at all and neither does another that's connected via the routers wifi - it's just something that affects my work/game rig and it does it even with no network cable attached.

@nite_monkey: If I might enquire, can you tell me what manufacturers the HDDs in your computer are?

I think I've found another lead to follow and it's possibly bearing some fruit on my rig.

4856

Living Room / Re: Something on computer is fubar

« Last post by 4wd on January 03, 2010, 11:31 PM »

There's always a dynamite solution  

-cranioscopical (January 03, 2010, 09:42 PM)

I'm thinking thermite since it's legal and easy to make plus you can get up close and video as the slag slowly runs in from the top immolating the motherboard on its way.

Then again, reloading my own shotgun cartridges means there's plenty of smokeless and blackpowder on hand  

Oh well, new BIOS to try.

It wouldn't be so bad if it was something consistant, eg. doing something specific in Firefox and/or Thunderbird, but it seems to be semi-random in that it's only likely to happen if I'm running Firefox.  I've restored OS backups created before it started going wacko but it still does it - still, there's a few more things to try software-wise.

4857

Living Room / Re: Something on computer is fubar

« Last post by 4wd on January 03, 2010, 08:59 PM »

OK, still trying to track my particular bug down.  On Saturday it went really nuts and started doing it's freeze trick rather often, so today I (un)installed Outpost Security Suite (OSS) and scanned the system again with MalwareBytes - nothing found.

But the system has been nice and quiet which causes me to look rather more closely at some of the alerts I was getting from OSS that I hadn't really been paying enough attention too.

eg. Yesterday, an Attack Detection report for IP 192.168.0.254 on high ports, (40000-65000), which is strange because it's apparently my router that's doing it  
Standard service ports I could possibly understand but not high ports.  OSS blocks the IP/Subnet if there's a scan of 6 ports within 600ms, IIRC, which kind of meant my net access just got cut.

Anyway, I've turned up OSSs security settings a notch or two and the computer seems to be behaving itself for now.

EDIT: Typical, 5 minutes after writing that the f'n thing happens again - screw it, I think I'll go back to my Amiga3000 which never gave me this much trouble.

4858

General Software Discussion / Re: Possible to display & use 2 mouses simultaenously?

« Last post by 4wd on January 03, 2010, 08:30 PM »

Its not a problem to use more than one usb mouses at a time..all will work

-shobazi (January 03, 2010, 06:05 PM)

He wants to use two mice and have a cursor for each so as to do possibly two mouse related things at once - something that's not really possible under Windows.

4859

Living Room / Re: Sex Doesn't Sell

« Last post by 4wd on January 03, 2010, 04:14 AM »

Those are both valid points and normally I would agree but I've been watching alot of Cronenberg lately and even though his movie receptions are old, this article reminded me of one IMDB poster's account of someone he knew.

.....and lot's more.....

-Paul Keith (January 03, 2010, 12:12 AM)

Wow, I was just querying the methodology behind the report without even getting into the philosophy behind it all.

4860

Living Room / Re: Sex Doesn't Sell

« Last post by 4wd on January 02, 2010, 06:11 PM »

It could be that:

a) the films that had nudity/sex in them were just total crap, in which case nothing would save them, or
b) films that did extremely well while not having much in the way of nudity/sex did better than they would of because, (even if by a small margin), of the nudity/sex, or
c) the genre of the films they used in their report appealed more to one particular category of movie viewers, (drama, sci-fi, etc), than all movie viewers.

Unless they publish all the names of the films they are refering to so that people can look at what genre, overall rating, country and movie viewer demographics they appealed to, then this report is basically a fantasy.

4861

General Software Discussion / Re: Batch photo filter software?

« Last post by 4wd on January 02, 2010, 03:04 AM »

Infranview will exactly works for your requirement..try that software

-shobazi (January 01, 2010, 07:56 PM)

Already tried, see first post - it doesn't work with this filter.

4862

Living Room / Re: Something on computer is fubar

« Last post by 4wd on January 01, 2010, 12:35 AM »

Well, I ran sophos and after 68 minutes it reported 3 hidden files - all of which I knew of.

I then fired up Firefox to post back into the thread and *BANG* the &%^$*# problem appeared immediately and then occured every few minutes until I killed Firefox and rebooted.

So I've reverted to a proper install of Firefox 3.6b5 with just AdBlock+ and TabMix Plus extensions.......plus all toes and fingers crossed.

Unbelievable, everything works fine for just over a week, the minute I post about it *KAPOW!!*

If that isn't the definition of a haunted computer I don't know what is.

BTW, sorry nite_monkey for kind of hijacking your thread, hopefully you'll get something useful out of it.

4863

Living Room / Re: Something on computer is fubar

« Last post by 4wd on December 31, 2009, 09:54 PM »

I would run the sophos rootkit detector-free.

-cmpm (December 31, 2009, 09:33 PM)

Thanks for the suggestion, I ran HijackThis but it showed nothing being run that shouldn't have been.

However, the more the merrier

4864

Living Room / Re: Something on computer is fubar

« Last post by 4wd on December 31, 2009, 08:58 PM »

Maybe it's an update.

-cmpm (December 31, 2009, 06:57 PM)

That may explain the Win7HP installation but my XP Pro system receives no hot fixes after an SP update - so it will remain at SP3 until I change OS.

Also, the OS is the only software I run from Microsoft and no other software I have receives automatic updates except Outpost Security Suite for the reason that sometimes updates just don't work.

Also if you have an ip blocker like Malewarebytes has,
enable it, sounds like something following you on the net.

I originally thought that after having been infected with Conficker but OutPost kept blocking it everytime it tried to create it's files in System32 and/or removable media.  And MalwareBytes reports nothing over all my HDDs, internal/external, or Flash drives.

I run Outpost Security Suite and also have the SPI firewall in my modem/router enabled, (as well as NAT).  I would have thought you'd need a paid licence for MalwareBytes to enable it's resident features, (I've just used it for on demand scanning) ?

Otherwise, that wouldn't explain how it seemingly only happens when either only Thunderbird or Firefox, (haven't categorically ruled out either yet), is running.

If I run the whole day just using IE8, (blah!), then the problem never occurs - not once, (this was a couple of weeks ago when it was really bad - a run of 30 minutes without it happening was a very good run indeed).

However, this problem seems to be slowly disappearing, this morning was the first time it has happened in about a week - so maybe there is something in what you say and my PC is slowly disappearing below the radar of any possible net tracker/bug.

I'll add that I have been running in Win7HP fully for the last 10 days or so in an effort to see if it made any difference and at the moment the result is pretty positive - I think it's happened only 2 or 3 times, (latest this morning), so I think I'm getting somewhere with it.

I've narrowed it down to either Thunderbird 3 or Firefox 3.5+.

-4wd (December 31, 2009, 06:47 PM)

Interesting. FWIW I've recently had some freezes. Don't use Thunderbird, do use FF 3.5

-cranioscopical (December 31, 2009, 08:38 PM)

One other thing I've noted regarding Firefox, (this I'm also trying to pin down, I think it's add-on related), is sometimes it won't exit cleanly.  ie. Close Firefox, process load in Task Manager immediately jumps to 25% and remains there for a seemingly long time, (minutes+), or until I nuke it.  This has also been going on for about the same amount of time and occurs on Firefox 3.5+.

I'm starting to think the computer is haunted  

4865

Living Room / Re: Something on computer is fubar

« Last post by 4wd on December 31, 2009, 06:47 PM »

Assuming they are SATA cables, use some decent quality ones with locking clips, (like Gigabyte provide with their motherboards).  One of the worst designed connectors ever IMO.

FWIW, I've been having problems that are not too disimilar to your own.  The HDD LED lights up permanently for about 30 seconds, (in this period anything that requires access to a HDD just freezes), then it'll go off for about .5 a second, then back on full for another 30 seconds.  This cycle will continue for approx. 2-3 minutes and it has been doing it for about a month on both XP Pro and Win7HP.

Unfortunately, at the time it started I had the misfortune to have done a few things to the PC all at once, eg. board upgrade to use DDR3, added another 1TB HDD, caught the f'n Conficker.J on a LAN meet   , upgraded Thunderbird/Firefox and other minor tweaks.

After screwing around disinfecting the HDDs, (really slow over 4TB+), testing hardware, re-installing OS's at least 6 times, etc, etc, I've narrowed it down to either Thunderbird 3 or Firefox 3.5+.

I've tried all versions of Firefox from 3.5.5 to 3.7a1, portable/not portable, enable/disable add-ons, etc, etc - made no difference.  If I do not use Firefox or Thunderbird then there is no problem - the system works fine.

I now believe it to be Thunderbird 3 that's the problem and have gone back to Portable Thunderbird 2.0.0.25, (besides the fact TB3's "Smart" Folders were giving me the sh!ts), and Portable Firefox 3.7a1, (both of which ran for months without problems), as of today to see what happens.

As in your case, Task Manager shows absolutely nothing out of the ordinary, and although it has all the symptoms of Delayed Write Fail the Event Log shows nothing wrong also.  Process Monitor didn't show anything wrong, nor did DiskMon, or anything else I could find to try and track it down.

So, the above may or may not help you but I thought my fault sounded suspiciously like yours.

4866

General Software Discussion / Re: Photo panorama creation

« Last post by 4wd on December 30, 2009, 08:33 PM »

For creating panoramas I'd recommend either Hugin, which is free, or AutoPano, which isn't free (99 Euro).

Both allow fine control over syncing of points between images, with hugin being a lot easier in this regard, which IIRC you can't do under AutoStitch.

hugin also has options to input the camera lens specifications to fine tune the correction a bit more - if you know them or they're in the EXIF data.

The panoramas in this post I made were created with AutoPano 1.40, (images 2, 5, 11, 12 are only single photos - everything else is a panoramic composition).

4867

General Software Discussion / Re: Batch photo filter software?

« Last post by 4wd on December 30, 2009, 08:16 PM »

CPU hits about 10% when it's first initialised but then drops to 0% after a few seconds.  The Select and Use filter dialog doesn't close, the whole program just becomes unresponsive.

Like they're waiting for a result signal back from the filter but not getting it.

Whereas, RealWorld Paint.COM runs the filter, CPU load hits about 30%, and returns with the modified image a minute later.

4868

General Software Discussion / Re: Batch photo filter software?

« Last post by 4wd on December 30, 2009, 04:50 PM »

Good suggestion Curt, however IrfanView still didn't work after installing the dlls, again becoming unresponsive.

Personally I didn't think it would because although the 2 dlls are not on my system, both the standalone PDSR and Paint.com, (using the 8bf), worked fine.

ATM, after looking through the slides I've discovered that I may not need to run the filter over all of them, (maybe only about 40%), because the texturing in some of the slides obscures any dust/scratch marks.

So I'm currently just running the standalone PDSR over each affected slide which allows for a greater measure of control since I can mark which area to filter, (using the plugin it would have been the whole image by default).

Thanks for the suggestions.

4869

Living Room / Re: Best. Shop. Ever.

« Last post by 4wd on December 29, 2009, 11:18 PM »

Since, like cranioscopical, I was just joining in for the fun of it, being not in the US of A you can give mine to the person with the largest amount of kids or possibly the biggest kid on DC

4870

General Software Discussion / Re: Batch photo filter software?

« Last post by 4wd on December 29, 2009, 10:11 PM »

Photofiltre, Photofiltre Studio or Infranview might work.

-cmpm (December 29, 2009, 07:26 AM)

Already have the filter, Polaroid Dust & Scratch Remover, the installer provides a standalone and 8bf for Photoshop or something that'll use them.

As per my first post, IrfanView just went unresponsive - note not 'Not Responding' according to Task Manager, just didn't respond to any input.
With Photofiltre, which I use for image touchup along with XNView, I couldn't find where to tell it to use the 8bf filter and the site doesn't mention whether either Photofiltre or Photofiltre Studio can even use them.

Or Harry's filters might work as well.

Haven't tried Harry's filters yet, (installed with XNView), because Polaroid's DSR generally gave a better result compared to other denoising methods with a minimum of effort.

EDIT: Here's a mini-review and download link to PDSR, (down the bottom of the article), since it's now impossible, (or just very hard), to find on Polaroid's website.

4871

General Software Discussion / Re: Make Firefox startup faster.

« Last post by 4wd on December 29, 2009, 09:26 PM »

4wd How have you tested it?

-MilesAhead (December 29, 2009, 12:10 PM)

Like I said, it was a few years ago but from memory, once a program was cached in prefetch then it didn't make much difference - a couple of seconds - I think I can wait

But I bow to f0dder's more extensive knowledge as for me it was just one of those urban legend tweak things back when I cared about speed over stability

4872

General Software Discussion / Batch photo filter software?

« Last post by 4wd on December 29, 2009, 04:15 AM »

Hi folks, having just spent the last 2-3 days scanning 1800 slides I am in need of some software, (preferably free), to automate the next process.

All(?!) that is required is the ability to batch run a Photoshop compatible filter, (Polaroid's Dust & Scratch), over all the images and save to JPG output from TIFF input.

While I'd lose some quality over the final output compared to running the standalone version of the filter, I don't mind because this is purely a BTN archival purpose.

Sounds simple but the programs I've tried don't seem work too well handling 8bf filters externally.  Most either don't work at all or don't support 8bf filters in their batch commands.

eg.
XNView - Becomes unresponsive and doesn't handle 8bf in batch commands.
Image Analayzer - Same as XNView.
GIMP - Couldn't even work out how to use it on the image, (image processing software isn't a high priority function of my existance).
Paint.com - Mentioned in a DC thread, it did work but can't do batch processing.
IrfanView - Same as XNView.

I don't particularly want to learn Photoshop's wierd and wonderful way of doing things, (nor do a massive download just to see if it'll do it), since I'll likely never use it again.

So, anyone have any suggestions?

Or if anyone knows of a freeware image processor that can do Dust & Scratch removal as good as Polaroid's I'll be happy with that too

4873

General Software Discussion / Re: Make Firefox startup faster.

« Last post by 4wd on December 28, 2009, 10:04 PM »

Actually it's for the OS Prefetcher, it's a, (generally), little known switch which, (IIRC - been a few years since I played with it), specifically loads the executable into the Prefetch data directory instead of relying on Windows' usage algorythmns to preload it.  Wikipedia mentions it under Incorrect tweaking of the prefetcher in the Prefetcher^w article.

The prefetcher for Firefox is (dis|en)abled under the about:config screen.

The value required is network.prefetch-next which is set to a default of True.

4874

General Software Discussion / Re: Alternatives to Daemon Tools?

« Last post by 4wd on December 22, 2009, 04:37 PM »

Just checked out Pismo File Mounter in a virtual machine, here's from the install log:

-f0dder (December 22, 2009, 07:53 AM)

Hey, I didn't say it didn't install a driver

I just pointed out how it worked.  With the SDK you could write modules for all kinds of archive/image access.

4875

Living Room / Re: Best. Shop. Ever.

« Last post by 4wd on December 22, 2009, 03:41 AM »

Is it there yet?  Is it there yet?  huh..huh?