Recent Posts

5451

Living Room / Re: Internet Explorer 7 Beta 3 - nothing but problems

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 30, 2006, 10:47 AM »

Useful tip - I had often wondered what ctfmon was - it always reappears when you remove it from startup. I knew it was from MS so just ignored it.

5452

Best E-mail Client / Re: opera deserves a real try

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 30, 2006, 10:42 AM »

I hadn't noticed Outlook threading messages? Do you mean Outlook Express (it is a different program - Outlook is part of MS Office)

5453

Living Room / Internet Explorer 7 Beta 3 - nothing but problems

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 30, 2006, 05:02 AM »

Anyone else suffering from issues with IE7b3?

I downloaded it and decided that for a couple of days I would set it as my default browser to see how it stood up against Firefox.

There are a few nice touches - I like the RSS feeds feature (though it seems a little obscure how you try to read them) and I also like the TABs snapshot feature.

However I am having real issues with page rendering - I get a lot of pages unavailable errors when clicking refresh then displays it (this happens when I open a number of tabs simultaneously - like reading a groups of messages here). Also if more than one page is rendering at once I get errors on the pages - both scripting errors and also graphics that do not display properly. I have done all the usual IE tricks of emptying caches etc. but it makes no difference.

I am also finding the new 'security' features a right PITA ... even websites that are in my trusted zone still stop some active content from running. I have disabled all of the 'security features' in the trusted zone and disabled all the popup blockers, phishing filters etc. to see if there is a way to stop this but I still get bars saying "IE hasn't opened .... to ensure your security Click here for options" or pop ups saying there is a potential security issue. This is with websites that are explicitly listed as TRUSTED with all TRUSTED zone features set to allow !!! WTF !!!

Reminds me rather of my brief foray into trying Windows VISTA where you seem to spend 90% of your time removing 'security issue' dialogues from the screen to the point where you forget what you were trying to do. Maybe that is MS's answer to security issues - stop users doing anything so that there isn't a chance they can download any malware.

Back to firefox I think !

5454

Best E-mail Client / Re: The Bat is nice BUT... MAJOR omission no HTML

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 30, 2006, 04:49 AM »

Personally after trying a number of alternatives I have gone back to OulookXP - not perfect by any means but with combined with Benign it works well enough for me.

5455

General Software Discussion / Re: Congratulations Ryan (Renegade) on shareware award

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 30, 2006, 04:47 AM »

Hey, well done Ryan, that's great.

5456

Best E-mail Client / Re: The Bat is nice BUT... MAJOR omission no HTML

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 29, 2006, 07:28 PM »

I agree - that is why I played with the Bat briefly but decided it wasn't for me.

My previous post was really to illustrate that security needn't be a security issue when using other email clients (and to suggest a useful app for anyone wanting to filter HTML mail content without making it unreadable).

5457

Living Room / Re: George Bush singing "Sunday Bloody Sunday"

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 29, 2006, 06:42 PM »

What an amazing amount of work! Brilliant.

5458

Best E-mail Client / Re: The Bat is nice BUT... MAJOR omission no HTML

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 29, 2006, 06:29 PM »

A perfect solution for me (re. HTML security) is to run Firetrust's Benign in the background with any mail app. It intercepts all email arriving any you can tailor Benign to strip out unwanted HTML, scripts and potential security issues (like one pixel images) before they ever reach your inbox. It has three basic security settings (High, Medium and Low) but each are completely customisable so you can either be casual about security or paranoid and strip out all HTML. Different profiles can be applied to different mail servers. You can also create your own security profiles.

The best thing is that the resulting email is still readable after unwanted crap is removed.

There is a trial version and the cost if you buy is $39.95.

The way it works is that you change your incoming mail server by adding a .b9 suffix and ensure the POP3 ports match between the mail app and B9. Most popular mail clients can be configured automatically.

You can also chain ports too so that if you use an antispam utility (such as POPfile) which works through the 'localhost' system you can pass incoming mail from one app to the next before it arrives at your inbox. (The settings take a bit of fiddling though!).

Here are screen shots of the security profile (Low) in B9 as configured on mys system.





See http://www.firetrust...firetrustbenign.html for details.

5459

General Software Discussion / Re: The Best Browser? With Roboform?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 29, 2006, 06:19 PM »

Personally I have not noticed any probs with RoboForm and Firefox (which I use almost exclusively these days).

5460

Living Room / Re: 1 Day Only (1st August) All Xara Products 50% Discount!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 28, 2006, 01:09 PM »

Yep I just got the email too - don't miss out on Xara Xtreme at a really good price.

For simple websites WebStyle is good too, and if you want animated java script menus. (It also plugs into Dreamweaver and Frontpage).

5461

General Software Discussion / Re: Toying with TheBat! - any plugin suggestions?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 27, 2006, 03:33 PM »

Thanks, I've retreated to Outlook and cowering in the familiar corner

5462

General Software Discussion / Re: recovering an incremental backup. Programs that can do the right thing

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 27, 2006, 03:32 PM »

If it works like that get yourself a decent backup app and ditch the rubbish. That is definitely not how incremental and differential backups work.

5463

Living Room / Re: phonespelling.com - what does your phone number spell

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 26, 2006, 05:53 AM »

Must have been a glitch yesterday but it does seem to work for me too now (Firefox on Windows)

5464

Living Room / Re: phonespelling.com - what does your phone number spell

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 25, 2006, 06:55 PM »

Here is a link to the main page at Amazon for the item: http://www.amazon.co...p/product/0618329706

You should be able to look at pages by hovering over the image and clicking on the page you want to look at - does this work for anyone or is the site broken - all I get is a menu on the left and a grey blank area where the page should be.

I have tried it in IE and Firefox and can't get it to work in either.

5465

General Software Discussion / Re: Good programs for helping you manage what programs start with windows?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 25, 2006, 04:44 AM »

You can manually drag stuff on the time bar at the bottom (rather than entering times) which is a lot easier than manually entering times, though still a bit tedious. I agree that the UI could do with some work - I emailed the author with some suggestions months ago and got no response. Having said that you only really have to tweak things occasionally so it is a one off job - and it does work!

5466

General Software Discussion / Re: Online Photo Hosting

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 24, 2006, 12:07 PM »

Here is the upload page which shows the privacy options (click thumbnails):



You can send out invitations to contacts and you select whether they are firends or family form the contacts forms:



You can also send emails to your account by email (which is nifty) and have small and large versions of images (small for onscreen view, large for printing decent copies). You can also post your images on flickr directly to a blog page.

5467

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Multi-boot default changer

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 24, 2006, 11:56 AM »

Doing what exactly - sorry I am bit confused?

If you edit your Boot.ini file you can acheive all of the things you want in any of your installations with about 3 mouse clicks ??? and once an option is set (in any of the boot environments) it is set up permanately in all of them until you change it?

I though that was what you wanted.

For example - here is my boot.ini file ...

[boot loader]
timeout=8
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /noexecute=optin
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional D ... XP Graphics" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional E ... XP Audio/Video" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional F ... XP Development" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft WindowsXP Recovery Console (needs RAID driver floppy)" /cmdcons

If I want to have a set up where I can switch to any of these in safemode on startup I just need to copy the four installation lines and add the safemode switches that I want ... like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=8
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /noexecute=optin
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional D" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional E" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional F" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /noexecute=optin
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional (minimal safe mode)" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /safeboot:minimal /sos /bootlog /noguiboot
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional E (minimal safe mode)" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /safeboot:minimal /sos /bootlog /noguiboot
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional F (minimal safe mode)" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /safeboot:minimal /sos /bootlog /noguiboot
C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft WindowsXP Recovery Console (needs RAID driver floppy)" /cmdcons

Now I can use the system applet to select either a normal boot option or a safemode boot option for each of my 4 Windows XP installations (same applies to W2003) and that setting is fixed which ever OS I manually decide to boot up.

5468

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone know a good free folder locking program?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 24, 2006, 11:53 AM »

I tried MPF briefly (I don't really have need for it) and it seemd to work fine.

Basically it created a folder in you User Profile root folder (C:\Doccuments and Settings\Username) and added a shortcur to the desktop.

I think the level of security was based on how good your password is (true of any system). To open the folder you double click the icon and it asks for your password and adds a tray icon from which you can control various options (including automatic locking after a period of inactivity). Once the folder is open it works like any other.

If you uninstall the utility you can still open the folder with the password (as far as I can tell - it certainly suggests that when you uninstall).

Give it a try - it doesn't affect any existing data on your system.

5469

General Software Discussion / Re: Online Photo Hosting

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 24, 2006, 11:46 AM »

www.flickr.com

You can make files private or public (and if I remember correctly restricted to friends too but I haven't used that function)

5470

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Multi-boot default changer

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 24, 2006, 11:29 AM »

You only have one Boot.ini file on your system (it will be on the C: drive usually) and that dictates which OS and partition loads at startup.

To get the other options that you want you can add other boot options for each partition and select them (eg. safe mode).

You can either edit Boot.ini manually (it is a text file) and add the boot switches you require for the settings you want or there are some utilities that will do it for you.

Basically the simplest way is to open Boot.ini in Notepad and copy the line used to boot a particular OS and add the safe mode switch to the copy. When the system starts there will be a boot option for that version too *don't forget to change the display text so you know which is which).

You can then use the system applet to choose the default boot partition and mode of operation. That will stick until you change it again, which seems to acheive what you want.

Here is a list of the possible boot time options: http://www.winguides...ry/display.php/1268/

and another 'manual':  http://www.sysintern...rmation/bootini.html

and Microsoft's Manual: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/833721

If you want further info on these switches there are lots of sites explaining their uses (try http://www.google.co...oot%2Eini%20switches)

If you aren't sure how to do this open c:\Boot.ini in Notepad and copy the text to a follow up message here with a note of what you would like to achieve for each partition and I'll try to help.

5471

Living Room / Re: hahahaah - what if microsoft clippy was in vim editor for unix

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 24, 2006, 06:41 AM »

In Office XP right click on Clippy select options and uncheck "Use the Office assistant" and you'll never see him again. When you use help in future (F1) it just opens the normal help window.

5472

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Multi-boot default changer

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 24, 2006, 06:36 AM »

It's already there in Windows ...

Just go to Control Panel > System >Advanced > Startup and Recovery Settings

and select the default OS to boot up.

It works by changing the ini file so which ever OS is currently running will change the same ini file to set the default OS.

A quick way to get to the "System" applet is Start and then Right click on My Computer and choose properties.

If that is too time consuming and a problem for you I am sure someone can write a simple app to change the Boot.ini file for you - but it really isn't needed.

5473

Living Room / Re: hahahaah - what if microsoft clippy was in vim editor for unix

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 24, 2006, 06:32 AM »

I never understood the paranoia with Clippy - it takes about 2 mouse clicks to permanently turn it off !

5474

General Software Discussion / Re: Good programs for helping you manage what programs start with windows?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 23, 2006, 09:55 AM »

I know it has been mentioned here before (but not in this thread)

Startup Delayer (http://www.r2.com.au...&show=startdelay) gives control over the startup process - you can delete entries you don't want, add new entries and also time the startup of applications so that you can introduce a delay during startup if you have a lot of apps trying to load all at the same time.

5475

Post New Requests Here / Re: Sticky Key Sounds

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 23, 2006, 09:27 AM »

You can use an accessibilty feature in windows to make an on/off sound for caps lock, scroll lock and Num lock. Go to Control Panel, Accessibilty Options. On the key board TAB check "Use toggel keys"

To make Ctrl, Shift and Alt make sounds you can use an AutoHotKey script and keep it running in the background all the time ...

[Select]

loop
{
Sleep, 10
if GetKeyState("Shift", "P")
 SoundBeep, 750, 500

if GetKeyState("Alt", "P")
 SoundBeep, 600, 500

if GetKeyState("Ctrl", "P")
 SoundBeep, 450, 500
}

If you haven't got AHK installed on your machine you can download it from www.autohotkey.com

The two numbers following SoundBeep represent the pitch followed by the duration of the sound so you can modify them as you want.

The script above is saved below as an AHK file, all you need to do is double click it to get it to run in your system tray.

If you can't be bothered download AutoHotKey you can just download the .exe version below (which is a compiled version of the script), just double click it to make it run.