Recent Posts

5076

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: xplorer², a powerful windows file manager and explorer replacement / alternative

« Last post by Darwin on August 16, 2007, 09:18 AM »

Both TC 7.1 and xplorer² look great. I'm resisting the urge to reinstall the trial for TC and to install the trial for xplorer² that I downloaded... I have no need of another File Manager and yet, for some reason, I find them oddly compelling.

5077

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR finds but can't open?

« Last post by Darwin on August 16, 2007, 09:16 AM »

Thanks for posting about this CleverCat and mouser, thanks for the solution. I have both DirectAccess and ActiveWords installed (but never running at the same time!) and have been experiencing this issue since I started running the alphas for v.2 of FARR. I've *never* until today been able to launch anything with it and have always put it down to a conflict with one or the other of my other launchers. This morning I thought "sod it, I'm going to figure this out" and found the thread within 0.1 secs of coming here...  So, I'm an idiot for waiting so long (at least 7 months) but the story has a happy ending. The BEST thing is that FARR coexists with DirectAccess quite nicely 

Finally, DCUpdater is awesome! Thanks mouser (can you tell that I'm on my third mug of coffee in under an hour?)...

5078

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

« Last post by Darwin on August 16, 2007, 08:41 AM »

Wow - glad everything is OK Eóin.

5079

General Software Discussion / Re: Shortcut hotkeys

« Last post by Darwin on August 16, 2007, 12:37 AM »

Thanks Curt. I've got this kicking around somewhere already, but it's great to have copy ready to hand.

5080

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

« Last post by Darwin on August 16, 2007, 12:35 AM »

Thanks Grorgy. That looks very interesting.

5081

General Software Discussion / Re: DonationCoder apps integration with PortableApps?

« Last post by Darwin on August 16, 2007, 12:33 AM »

Cool! I hadn't even thought of this, mouser, but Screenshot Captor running from my thumbdrive will be the bomb!

5082

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

« Last post by Darwin on August 16, 2007, 12:31 AM »

accommodate clipboard managers (or maybe it only happens with AI RoboForm) and only add the site to C&G if it is the current item in clipboard. As it is, C&G pops up the window to add it if there is one anywhere in the clipboard manager whenever anything is copied to the clipboard

Interesting - which clipboard manager do you use? I use Clipmate 7.2 and don't have this problem (if I select a non-url item from within the list in the "inbox" C&G ignores the clipboard- even if I have numerous urls and e-mail addresses in the clipboard). I'll have to take a look at my settings and see if there's anything in there dictating this behaviour. Nope - just the option to have C&G monitor the clipboard for urls. Must have something to do with how Clipmate manages the older items.

Anyway, nice list! I'll try to get in touch with the author tomorrow and see what happens. I'll direct him here as well.

5083

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: My Windows Cursors

« Last post by Darwin on August 15, 2007, 09:03 PM »

I'm not really into the custom cursor thing anymore - I have a licence for CursorXP but don't even have it installed anymore. I *did* like changing my cursors under Windows for Workgroups 3.11 a lot - I used to use both ToggleMouse and Plug-In for Windows to do so. I still really miss Instant File Access, Plug-In for Windows, and FM StepUp from my 3.11 days... Actually, I stil use FM Step-Up with XP! I copied over winfile.exe from Win2k or NT (forget now...) and it works perfectly. Plug-In for Windows though... sigh. These apps are why I never went for Windows 95 - didn't feel I needed to at the time.

5084

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

« Last post by Darwin on August 15, 2007, 08:54 PM »

Hi App - thanks for the link (love your webpage's new (?) look). I have both computers set up for manual updates and haven't installed KB936357 on either of them. Mine (running Pro) is a first generation Centrino while my wife's is an 18 month old AMD Athlon 64+ - so neither of them are good candidates for the patch! I think I was chasing phantoms - apparently my wife's computer has been doing the Active Restore Recovery trick every couple of days for over a month! Her cousin has been here from Korea for the last 6 weeks and installed a number of dodgy add-ons to Internet Explorer and a Korean equivalent to CCleaner. I uninstalled everything, set up a user account for the cousin and reset the Active Desktop settings (as mentioned, it wasn't being used anyway) and all seems to be well, for now.

Regarding my notebook - I reinstalled all of the MS patches that I had installed earlier today and have no further problems. The only thing I can think ofthat might explain this is that I updated DiVX Suite (or whatever it's called) and accidentally allowed it to install the Google toolbar and Desktop Search (I was mindlessly clicking OK, forgetting that just about everything wants to install either Google or Yahoo toolbars - GRRRRR). I was informed that I had to reboot to finish the Google part of the installation, clicked "Cancel" and then uninstalled it via Your Uninstaller 2006. The Google uninstaller ran first and told me that it couldn't uninstall because of the reboot so I let Your Uninstaller rip it out... This is probably what screwed everything up. I'd forgotten about the Google angle until later on and came back here to update my tale...

PS I hear you Phil! I went the manual route about a year ago, around the time that automatic updates started pegging peoples' processors. I have no desire to go back, especially in light of the contents of app's blog!

5085

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

« Last post by Darwin on August 15, 2007, 07:43 PM »

Hear, hear! Where Is It? is awesome. I like SoftCat Pro's abiity to auto-catalogue the s/w on my system but I wish it would search my registry... I'm not sure if Where Is it? will auto-catalogue my installed software or not... I know I can have it catalogue the contents of whatever folders I tell it to, but that won't get to the registry, either.

Check&Get 3 is great - I don't use it's URL organizing features (even though evidently this was its original "role") and have found the developer to be quite friendly and helpful, but then I haven't been requesting features and such. Ken, what features would you like to see added - or bugs fixed for that matter? I'm curious... and might try writing to the developer myself, raising the same issues. Never hurts to try, try again... Actually, the developer has been active here in the past - why don't you start a thread and we can try to get him to respond there?

5086

General Software Discussion / Re: Q: Preferences backup for installed applications?

« Last post by Darwin on August 15, 2007, 05:32 PM »

Thanks justice! As noted here, I managed to get myself into a pickle right after recording the video for you - you saved my bacon because I had a recent image to restore and all is well. I just wish that I had gone straight for the restore instead of wasting time trying to get things up and running...

5087

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

« Last post by Darwin on August 15, 2007, 05:28 PM »

Well the plot thickens... I've reinstalled the updates and rebooted and all is well on the Pro machine. I disabled Active Desktop (which wasn't being used anyway?!) on the Home machine and it's fine, too. It is starting to look like a coincidence... But, I can't for the life of me think what I was doing prior to the reboot that would make explorer.exe go ballistic like that. Anyway, for now all seems well. I've been monitoring the web to see if anyone has anything to report but it's quiet...

I'll boot into safe mode via msconfig and run my anti-spyware/anti-virus just to be safe.

Thanks for responding, Tom!

5088

General Software Discussion / Latest MS updates borks WinXP?

« Last post by Darwin on August 15, 2007, 04:55 PM »

Hi all,

I updated both my XP Pro Sp-2 and XP Home Sp-2 machines this morning and am having issues with both of them today. The Pro machine had to be restored to a pre-update image (thank you Acronis TrueImage! And thanks justice for prompting me to image my drive early this morning - right before the update!) because explorer.exe crashed fatally on each and every reboot and I could not get it to start in Safe Mode. My wife's notebook running Home won't wake out of Standby - explorer.exe doesn't crash but freezes and the computer is rendered unresponsive. After hard booting, the Active Desktop Recovery message appears on the desktop.

Lovely.

Anyone else having trouble, or is this just one of those random conincidences? FWIW the Home machine runs AVG 7 Pro  and Ad-Aware 2007 Pro while the Pro machine runs SpySweeper with AntiVirus. Both are behind a hardware firewall and have the Windows firewall enabled.

Pissed in Courtenay... (sorry, potty mouthed because I've wasted almost an entire day on this issue).

5089

General Software Discussion / Re: Q: Preferences backup for installed applications?

« Last post by Darwin on August 15, 2007, 11:56 AM »

Well, this was going to be a screencast, but it seemed more relevant to do screencaps from the cast of the relevant "bits" of the operation. The only thing I didn't get was the last screen, which would have shown an "operation completed successfully" pop-up. I've combined 14 images into a powerpoint presentation and saved it as a Shockwave File. Click on the link below and it should open in your default swf player (for me, it's GOMPlayer). I don't know how useful this is, but there it is!

http://

5090

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

« Last post by Darwin on August 15, 2007, 10:34 AM »

Yeah, I've tried Secunia Personal Inspector. It's not bad - it works, but I uninstalled it as I use Check&Get to monitor the version history pages of all of my applications. I like this better than having to download a db file and scan my system. It's more accurate, forces me to read the history notes and make a decision about whether or not I want to update/upgrade and I'm used to it, so it works for me!

5091

General Software Discussion / Re: Google now includes StarOffice as a free download!

« Last post by Darwin on August 15, 2007, 09:58 AM »

Yup. I liked Office 2000 a lot. Update to 2003 was simply a necessity - I needed features of Excel that were unavailable in 2000 (don't ask me what they were - I had to batch replace text in 10's of 1000's of cells spanning three different workbooks and numerous worksheets. The software I was using didn't support Excel 2000). As my copy of 2000 was from my former employer the upgrade to an academic copy of 2003 seemed appropriate.

My earlier point stands though - if anyone is looking for a office suite without the cost associated with MS Office OpenOffice.org/StarOffice is a great alternative for consideration. Of course, there is also WordPerfect Office, but it's more expensive.

5092

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: xplorer², a powerful windows file manager and explorer replacement / alternative

« Last post by Darwin on August 15, 2007, 09:55 AM »

Ha, ha... I liked the look of TC... Of course, the font used is a bit dated looking, but it didn't bother me. i presume that that can be changed in the options/preferences/settings dialogue.

5093

General Software Discussion / Re: Q: Preferences backup for installed applications?

« Last post by Darwin on August 15, 2007, 08:37 AM »

Ouch! Sorry justice I never got back to this thread  (lame excuse: went to Vancouver the next day for a three day visit and then left for five weeks in Belgium on June 16 and it slipped my mind). I'll get some screencaps ready and post them here later today.

5094

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

« Last post by Darwin on August 14, 2007, 03:43 PM »

Nice find Carol - thank you for updating us. I'll be downloading the resource kit and the batch file post haste to keep in a safe place!
 

5095

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

« Last post by Darwin on August 14, 2007, 01:19 PM »

Wow. Talk about egg on Steve Job's face - how many trees died to get this month's iPhone bills out?!

5096

Living Room / Re: Smashing Magazine's Best of July links — holy freakin' moly

« Last post by Darwin on August 14, 2007, 01:16 PM »

Darwin, I guess you're already familliar with Edward Tufte's work on data visualization, etc?
...Very interesting stuff I'll be using (partly...) for my thesis.

-Armando (August 14, 2007, 01:08 PM)

Er, no. Thanks for the pointer! Right off to Google Edward Tufte now...

5097

General Software Discussion / Re: Google now includes StarOffice as a free download!

« Last post by Darwin on August 14, 2007, 01:02 PM »

I actually sometimes use OOo to "correct" problems (usually : table problems) in MS Word documents by opening/saving them in OOo and then reopening them in Word. Strangely, it fixes the tables etc. 

Hmm... thanks for that tip, Armando. I may get some use out of StarOffice yet, then.

5098

General Software Discussion / Re: XP or Vista user — take the poll!

« Last post by Darwin on August 14, 2007, 11:46 AM »

Now I doubt I'd be able to get XP preinstalled when I buy my next computer.

Yup - confirmed at my local Futureshop, where not a single notebook is available with XP as an option, let alone preinstalled. This is out of a range of over 40 choices on display. Desktops were the same story. I don't see buying a notebook and then paying $200 for XP as a reasonable solution and, as I have software that will not run under Vista (ESRI's ArcGIS 9.1 - the latest version, 9.2,  is not yet Vista compatible and is a $900 upgrade for me!).


edit by jgpaiva: fixed quote tag

5099

General Software Discussion / Re: Google now includes StarOffice as a free download!

« Last post by Darwin on August 14, 2007, 11:20 AM »

Yes - I hope my point was clear: StarOffice/OpenOffice are excellent alternatives to MS Office, but if you've got Office you don't need this and there's not much incentive to switch (yet!).

5100

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

« Last post by Darwin on August 14, 2007, 08:31 AM »

Hmm... Jim you've raised a good point. I'm running the trial and for my needs SoftCat Pro looks good, it's picked up on apps that I've installed in non-traditional (ie the program files folder) locations but it is a bit disappointing that it won't scan the registry... Also, the forum is slow and the developer doesn't seem hugely interested in suggestions (although his curtness could be more of a language issue than anything else).

Note that the option to scan a folder exists and works. It scans sub-folders, too,. However, because it only catalogues the largest exe file in a folder you'd have to place every installation file into its own folder in order to have it auto-catalogued. Of course, what this really means is that SoftCat Pro auto-selects the largest exe file in a folder - you can click on a radio button to select and add them to your database.