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4951

Living Room / Re: Life without XP SP2 - is it possible?

« Last post by Darwin on August 23, 2007, 05:30 PM »

Sorry - jumping in to answer for Carol. Yes, Netgear makes routers and wireless cards. If you buy one of their products and install their drivers from CD, you'll wind up with a bunch of software installed on your computer, one of which will likely be a utility to manage your wireless network connections.

4952

Living Room / Re: Anywhere.FM: Upload your entire music collection - play it anywhere

« Last post by Darwin on August 23, 2007, 05:28 PM »

Man (and Woman)! WTF happened to the icons? I updated, uinstalled and reinstalled it, but v.1.8 consistently displays all of its icons from within it GUI wrong:



 It's like there is a blank where they should be. Well, I guess I've have to rip it out with Your Uninstaller, reboot and try again.

Also, it looks like this has been available since July 30th, so I've been wasting my time for over three weeks! How many degrees does it take to figure out how to update a piece of software?

4953

Living Room / Re: Anywhere.FM: Upload your entire music collection - play it anywhere

« Last post by Darwin on August 23, 2007, 04:43 PM »

Thanks justice  ! This is kind of funny - I've been checking for MusicIP Mixer updates daily but hadn't bothered today and here it is! Life's funny... Anyway off to grab it now.

EDIT: wonder how long it's been available? MusicIP Mixer 1.7 still reports no updates available, yet the website reports the current version as 1.8. Oh well...

4954

Living Room / Re: What's the most complicated wristwatch?

« Last post by Darwin on August 23, 2007, 04:38 PM »

I'd like a Kinetic Relay myself, Eóin. I have everything from Rolex, Girard-Perregaux, through Omega, Longines to Citizens and Seikos. Love them all. Among my favourites are the Hamiltons and Elgins from the 50's and early 60's - still had American made movements in them (as opposed to imported Swiss ones or later Japanese ones). They're not expensive but some of them are exquisite. Of course, this Patek-Phillipe is the Holy Grail for me. The price for this gem from the 1950's? Average price is around $7000. I can buy a lot of computer hardware for that... but will it make me as happy for so long?

4955

Living Room / Re: Flash Game of the Day - Rose Camellia (Victorian slap fight!!)

« Last post by Darwin on August 23, 2007, 04:09 PM »

Funny. The "evade" "attack" "counter" buttons can be hard to "hit" (no pun intended  ) in the throes of battle, but it was a good laugh for about 1 and a half minutes. I lost interest at that point. I wonder if the game "progresses" from there? What are the other levels like? Alas, I doubt that I'll ever find out...

Thanks anyway, Edvard. It's still a hilarious idea. Ridiculous even...

4956

Living Room / Re: Life without XP SP2 - is it possible?

« Last post by Darwin on August 23, 2007, 03:55 PM »

Was going to add the following in edit the above post, but the edit turned out to be long and contains enough new info that I want to make sure Dan reads it! Thus, I have turned it into a separate post

EDIT: was running for lunch as I wrote the above. To elaborate, I used to use Winc by Cirond (who knows what's going on with this one) under Win2k (because the D-Link drivers for the wireless card I was running conflicted with Standby and Hibernate resulting in a consistent BSOD when invoked while running D-Link's utility). Under XP, I found that Winc would ABSOLUTELY refuse, out of the blue, to connect to my security enabled network and I'd have to resort to removing the security protection and setting up new keys, etc. I got fed up and reverted to the default XP utility and have never looked back. However, experience suggests to me that what afflicts one machine won't necessarily have the same effect on another so I'm just working through dantheman's setup to see who it's setup so we can proceed from there.

So, Carol's advice is excellent, dan, if Broadcom is not interfering in any way, we can try deleting the profile and re-creating it. **BUT a word of caution: make sure that your friend hasn't set up any security on your network first. If he has, you won't be able to connect at all when you try to set up your new profile**

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Living Room / Re: Life without XP SP2 - is it possible?

« Last post by Darwin on August 23, 2007, 02:39 PM »

Yes - that's the route I was going to suggest if it proves that Broadcom is not already doing this.

4958

Living Room / Re: download all updates for XP in one go?

« Last post by Darwin on August 23, 2007, 02:04 PM »

By the way, press the "Show options" if you like me like to see the publish date for the updates

Ooh! I like that... thanks again.

4959

Living Room / Re: Life without XP SP2 - is it possible?

« Last post by Darwin on August 23, 2007, 01:53 PM »

Ha, ha - I shouldn't have ass/u/me-d that you didn't have a screencapturing app installed  .

Anyway, judging from the screenshots you've uploaded, you ARE using Windows to configure your connection and you're connecting to a D-Link D-524 router via a Broadcom wireless card. Two thoughts suggest themselves to me - one, perhaps there is a conflict between the Windows configuration utility and a Broadcom utility that may also have been installed. Example: my gateway came setup to let an intel utility handle my wireless connections - I never even tried this utility but set up a third party one that I had paid for before reverting to windows. Anyway, if you've got two different utilities configured to handle the connection, you might be waiting for them to battle out which one is going to actually handle things. The other thought is that it is lunchtime... er, no it's that there maybe an issue with your router configuration.

Let's sort out the utility that's doing the heavy lifting for your wireless card. Can you go into your Program Files folder and see if there is a Broadcom subfolder? If there is, open it up. Open up task manager (ctrl-shift-esc is my favourite way to do this) and click onthe Processes tab, then check for a match between the executables in the Broadcom folder and running processes in the TM Processes tab...

OH - googled this and note that if Broadcom is handling the connection, there may be control panel app that you can look for, so I guess start there.

4960

Living Room / Re: Anywhere.FM: Upload your entire music collection - play it anywhere

« Last post by Darwin on August 23, 2007, 01:18 PM »

My only issue/concern/query has to do with the practicality of uploading gigabytes of data. You can do it in the background while you work and leave your computer unattended doing this overnight and while you eat, etc. But that's a lot of bandwidth.

urlwolf - you've verbalized what I've been secretly fearing/dreading: MusicIP Mixer does indeed seem to be dead. Version 1.7 is idiosyncratic, though usable, I've been anxiously awaiting a newer release with better management of playlists (as in how they are launched), etc. Upsetting.

4961

Living Room / Re: Acceptable expletives

« Last post by Darwin on August 23, 2007, 01:15 PM »

PS: Unless in an argument with my other half - then it's all the nasties like in the worst gangster film 

Fargin bastiges and the like?

4962

Living Room / Re: download all updates for XP in one go?

« Last post by Darwin on August 23, 2007, 01:12 PM »

Looks good, Dirhael. Thanks for the link - I'm checking it out. I'm attracted by the idea of picking and choosing the updates. I usually use the Custom option in MS Updates to achieve this, but like the availability of an option to simply download the files and research the updates without having to have MS or Windows Update scan my computer (and go through all of the WGA checking and so on).

4963

Living Room / Re: Life without XP SP2 - is it possible?

« Last post by Darwin on August 23, 2007, 01:11 PM »

I'm not entirely sure... Can you open up your wireless connections from the Control Panel (right click on Wireless Network Connection and then select View Available Wireless Networks) and press F12 to take a screenshot of the resulting window (maximize the window first, otherwise whatever else you have open may be visible in the screenshot)? You'll then need to open up Paint (usually found in start-programs-accessories) and then paste the contents of your clipboard into it and save it as a png file. Then attach it to a note here and we can take a look. I suspect that when you say that there is a dlink configuration under the wireless connections tab that you are referring to the network and not a third party connection configuration utility

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Found Deals and Discounts / Re: ZTreeWin File Manager August Sale - 50% Off

« Last post by Darwin on August 23, 2007, 01:02 PM »

Heh, heh, yeah I'm not fussed about full-screen mode, either, as it turns out. It looks slightly distortred somehow and the text difficult to read. In normal mode (if I can say that) the text is crisp and clean and easily read.

EDIT: well, full screen mode isn't that bad if I launch ZTWin as a standalone process (ie not from within TCI and 4NT), but I still prefer it in a regular window for the reasons mentioned above.

I'm really loving this - it's partially nostalgia - it's so freakin' easy to get around/manipulate things via the keyboard.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Mouse software

« Last post by Darwin on August 23, 2007, 12:35 PM »

Well, as noted, togglemouse did all this and more under XP. If you can still buy a licence, I highly recommend it. Too bad the developer closed up shop. The last version was rock solid, though.

4966

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: ZTreeWin File Manager August Sale - 50% Off

« Last post by Darwin on August 23, 2007, 12:33 PM »

If you hit Alt+Enter while the program is running, it will switch to full screen text mode.

Thanks for that tip - that's better. ZTWin takes me right back to dos and Norton. Memories... It DOES work with 4NT, etc. I'm going to trial it to see if I actually use it (given that I have DOpus and XYPlorer already). Hmm... wonder if it will run off a USB stick?

4967

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: ZTreeWin File Manager August Sale - 50% Off

« Last post by Darwin on August 23, 2007, 12:19 PM »

Hmm... I wonder if this will hook into (or be hooked into by) TakeCommand/4NT or PromptPal? Of course, this begs the question of how essential this is, but it would be cool to be able work from within a console without having to rely on dir /w or dir /p to find things...

I'll just have to try it out!

4968

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Excel macros.pdf at 50%

« Last post by Darwin on August 23, 2007, 12:15 PM »

Interesting, Curt. Thanks for pointing this out. I find Excel Macros, particularly if scripting in VB, to be a bit cumbersome (this is code for I don't know what I am doing...  ). This might help.

4969

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Power Desk 6 Pro, half prize until Friday

« Last post by Darwin on August 23, 2007, 12:14 PM »

Just FYI - this discount is still active. Verified (though didn't purchase! See posts above) today.

4970

Best Dialog Extender / Re: PowerDesk Pro's Dialog Helper

« Last post by Darwin on August 23, 2007, 12:03 PM »

Yup. Just confirmed that this offer is still alive and well. I wonder if PowerDesk 7 is about to be released or something? I still find myself tempted by the offer, but with both DOpus 9 and XYplorer installed I'm already running more file managers than I know what to do with! Besides, they're bot VERY hard to beat.

4971

General Software Discussion / Re: Recommendations for a screen resolution manager?

« Last post by Darwin on August 23, 2007, 11:59 AM »

superboyac, what video card are you running in your notebook? I ask because both ATi and Intel graphics cards come with utilities that will do what you're looking for via the desktop context menu. They both also offer the same functionality via a the system tray. The Intel version supports multiple monitors... no longer remember whether the ATi one does or not.

4972

Living Room / Re: Life without XP SP2 - is it possible?

« Last post by Darwin on August 23, 2007, 11:38 AM »

dantheman - follow this link for instructions on using the XP built in wireless utility. My intention in directing you there is primarily for you to see and recognize the icons and dialogs associated with it. If you do NOT see the wireless icon in your system tray, it suggests to me that you are using a third party utility (Broadcom or D-Link) to manage the connection. If you could check this out and report back we can troubleshoot this part of your problem from there.

4973

General Software Discussion / Re: What do you use to keep track of your installed software?

« Last post by Darwin on August 23, 2007, 11:31 AM »

I looked into versiontracker.com a few months ago and ran away from it. I read some reviews and opinions and also tried it out myself. My objection to it, and the main objection from the reviews that I read, is that it is not discriminating about whether or not you have betas installed, whether or not the latest version is a beta, and so on. There are also a lot of erroneous "updates" found and applied that mess up installations of programs and in bad instances, windows itself.

Secunia's Personal Software Inspector suffers from a similar problem (though a few noteworthy points: it is and will remain a free service and two it is not automated) in that it flags programs as "end of life" - ie, no longer developed, and harrasses you to uninstall them. Actually, I quite like Secunia but I'd like to be able to disable it running in my tray, an option that I have been unable to find. I *guess* I should contact the development team. What a novel idea, contacting the development team of a piece of software that is in beta... OK, I'm off to do that now.

In sum, look at the Secunia option. Google versiontracker.com for reviews before committing to them, particularly the paid service.

4974

General Software Discussion / Re: imaging & partitioning queries

« Last post by Darwin on August 23, 2007, 09:21 AM »

urlwolf - TWO 160GB drives in a notebook? I'm swooning with envy. You've probably mentioned this elsewhere, but what's the brand and model of the notebook? I'm being SERIOUSLY by a sale at the moment and would like to compare specs/look for what you've got!

Ta.

4975

Living Room / Re: download all updates for XP in one go?

« Last post by Darwin on August 23, 2007, 09:15 AM »

I used Shavlik for about six months back when they were offering a one year licence for free (so, about a year ago). It did the job - I ran my system without using Windows Update at all during that time, but I found the way it presented the info resulting from a scan confusing (could me me, though). Once you learn how to navigate its interface, it's OK. It uninstalled without much drama, so I think your best bet is to try the demo, if they're still offering one.