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5751

General Software Discussion / Re: Stupid question time, "Any way to *prevent* crapware loading on new box?"

« Last post by MilesAhead on September 03, 2010, 02:44 PM »

...

@MilesAhead: While that link about vlite was interesting, a better place for information on using vlite on Win7 is at MSFN.
I also found the link in the last comment more interesting RT7Lite - now if only their download links worked.

There's also 7Customizer at MSFN.

-4wd (September 02, 2010, 11:47 PM)

Thanks for the links.  I'll check 'em out.

5752

General Software Discussion / Re: Stupid question time, "Any way to *prevent* crapware loading on new box?"

« Last post by MilesAhead on September 02, 2010, 11:03 PM »

The most fool proof method is the image backup.  Unless you have an exotic disk controller, any of the major image backup programs, like Macrium Reflect, should work.  The advantage is you can do it incrementally.  As you strip off more and more of the flotsam, just make another image. It's a good idea to have a backup that's not hooked to the machine, in case you get hit with a real nasty malware. I do backups every few days, and periodically dig out an external USB to do a backup and return it to storage.

Especially if your backup image is lean, restoring at USB 2.0 speeds should only take about an hour.  To get back to your pristine condition, boot the image backup boot CD, connect your USB drive and start the restore.  Make a sandwich.  Much easier than configuring custom install scripts.  That unattended install is great if you have a PC farm.. but for one machine it can drive you nuts with the trial and error and dependency track down involved.

5753

General Software Discussion / Re: Stupid question time, "Any way to *prevent* crapware loading on new box?"

« Last post by MilesAhead on September 02, 2010, 09:14 PM »

The only way I know to avoid doing it yourself, assuming the machine has Windows pre-installed, is to pay a technician.  One approach is to create a custom install DVD such as this:

http://www.intowindo...vlite-for-windows-7/

The other would be to get the programs on the HD exactly as specified, then create a backup image on a set of DVDs or a USB external drive.  If your system gets hosed, or you want to return to this pristine state, restore completely from the image, or install clean from the DVD alluded to above.

The trouble with doing this stuff yourself is the first time is always the hardest. You make all the mistakes, figure out the easy way to do it, then it's done and you don't do it again for years, so you forget everything you learned.

Less frustration but more expensive to get someone to do it for you, provided you can find competent people who won't just hodge podge it together to get your money.

edit: btw, for all things bootable, I haven't found a better resource than this site:

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/

5754

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Verbatim 8x dvd+r dl a buck ea

« Last post by MilesAhead on September 02, 2010, 08:51 PM »

btw looks like this deal ran out.  It's back up to $39.99.

5755

Found Deals and Discounts / Verbatim DVD+r 16x DVD5 blanks $19.99/100

« Last post by MilesAhead on September 02, 2010, 07:27 PM »

http://www.newegg.co...17-507-003-_-Product

I've had good luck with these on both my burners. Not ink jet hub printable but I just use a Sharpie anyway.

5756

General Software Discussion / Re: 27 Good Reasons to Love Linux

« Last post by MilesAhead on September 02, 2010, 01:27 PM »

Didn't see 1 big reason mentioned - Live cd's !!

Whether its system rescue,, tv recording (myth), htpc (xbmc) or a million other specialized use cases, you can find a Linux live cd for it. And they fit on a usb, boot and run faster than Windows. I'd never use Linux for a desktop os (no need really and it'd take me 3x to get stuff done as I'm not familiar) but there are plenty of Linux distro's I use.

Another reason - the regular flame wars over Linux are almost always informative

-MrCrispy (September 02, 2010, 03:52 AM)

Have to go with that. Stuff like Macrium Reflect uses Linux boot/restore CD among other options. The coolest thing though, was creating a boot diskette that booted your HD install.  Like say your MBR got hosed and you didn't come up to the usual boot menu, stick in the diskette and boot from it. It mounted the HD Linux install as root after booting.  In fact you can do a similar thing with a USB key and Windows if you have a machine that can boot from USB and bootable USB key drives.  You boot the UBS key and get the same boot menu you would if the system booted from the HD(the multi-boot menu on a multi-OS machine, not the repair install jazz.)  Like the Linux diskette, it's dedicated to the machine you made it with.

5757

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Verbatim 8x dvd+r dl a buck ea

« Last post by MilesAhead on September 02, 2010, 02:32 AM »

@Deozaan on the ps3 you might try
http://forum.digital-digest.com/

and flag your question attn: Admin and/or Blutach.  Those guys have been doing video stuff for years before I got into it. If I don't have the particular hw to mess with I can't do trial and error(er, I mean scientific experimentation) to figure it out.

5758

Living Room / Re: I'm ready for the TV revolution to hit!

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 31, 2010, 07:08 PM »

Maybe there was some truth to the song that said The Revolution will not be Televised!

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Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Verbatim 8x dvd+r dl a buck ea

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 31, 2010, 05:35 PM »

Yeah, x264 kinda' changes the game.

-MilesAhead (August 28, 2010, 04:43 PM)

Hmm. . . You make it seem like x264 is really good quality with good compression/small file size. But I'm using one of the x264 programs to convert a 650MB AVI to MP4 and the program says it will be 1.4GB.

-Deozaan (August 31, 2010, 03:44 AM)

I'm no expert on x264. I use programs that use it.  But is perhaps the .avi standard def while the .mp4 is 1080P or 720P? Are you sizing up? If so, you're going to use more bits.

-MilesAhead (August 31, 2010, 01:45 PM)

Turns out it was actually 2.34GB when it finished converting, but you bring up a good point I hadn't thought about.

But I just checked and the AVI was 720x480 and so is the MP4. So no, it didn't upscale. I didn't customize any settings, I just picked the preset to convert to play on the PS3. What's worse is that I spent all those hours converting the video and the PS3 doesn't even seem to recognize the file. . .

-Deozaan (August 31, 2010, 02:51 PM)

Don't know what to tell you. I don't have ps3.  I have WD HDTV for USB.  I use BD Rebuilder mostly.  Sometimes I use Quick AVI Creator as it does both xvid and x264. For more control a bit rate calculator comes in handy.  For tools like bit rate calculators I look first on videohelp.com

since it has great search tools for video, audio, subtitle and other tools:

http://www.videohelp.com/tools

Also the biggest determining factor I've found is the quality of the source.  If you have a BluRay video with rich colors you can get a great quality DVD9 using HC encode, or a great quality .m2ts file using BD Rebuilder.  HC enc takes longer as you really need to use 2 pass "best" profile, but it has the advantage you can play it on an upscaling DVD player and get output very close to the original.  BD Rebuilder you need a compatible set top box or BluRay player.

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General Software Discussion / Re: 27 Good Reasons to Love Linux

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 31, 2010, 04:49 PM »

Took a look at the article.  Looks like advertising copy to me.  At least it led with "free" since that was going to be my reason 1 through reason 26.  Reason 27 being you can download unimaginable free programming software.  More than you could ever investigate in a lifetime.  Data bases, CORBA .. stuff that would likely cost you thousands on other platforms.

If you are going to do Linux the best way is never touch a Windows machine.  Then you won't be distracted thinking "If I boot Windows I can do this in 1/2 hour."  You'll just take the week to get it set up because you'll have to!!! hehh heh

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General Software Discussion / Re: 27 Good Reasons to Love Linux

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 31, 2010, 02:01 PM »

...

Support is a sore subject for me. Trying to learn Linux, I had hoped I could use various forums or IRC support channels to learn the OS and figure out what I was doing wrong.
...

-Josh (August 31, 2010, 01:40 PM)

Things have changed a bit since I was messing with Linux.  But I did have best luck asking for help on the usenet groups. I did notice a feeling of "I spent 3 months to get it to work so why should I just hand it to you?" on some of the groups.  But usually if you showed you were trying to do what you could to get there, you would get some pointers which direction to pursue.  Definitely not the type of hand-holding common on Windows groups.

I must have had a masochistic streak because I kept messing with Slackware distros.
I'm glad I did it but I have no real desire to go back.  I'm just too entrenched in Window type editors.  I have to think too much about how I'm doing stuff rather than what I'm trying to do. Looking through the help to find out how to delete a line or some other mundane thing every couple of minutes doesn't help.  If I started with Linux things would be different.  But going from Dos 3.1 on up though all Dos/Windows/OS2 based stuff, it's just too ingrained.

edit: btw I did try all the "Windows" style editors available at the time. The ones that come with the word processor packages, kate I guess, I didn't find appealing.  There was one decent one but I'll be damned if I can remember the name of it. The key bindings were pretty close to Windows default.. but that had its quirks.  The only one totally transparent for me was kylix ide editor.  But that's a lot to bring up just to edit a file.  Of course I leaned enough console based editors to do the scripts.  One thing I think is somewhat self-defeating, is they try to give you little applets to do everything.  The applets reflect what you do in scripts in /etc. If you never learn the /etc scripts and what does what, if the little applet doesn't save you're hosed.  To some extent the hard-asses are right because you have to do it and struggle to really learn it.  Sure the new distros you can install, boot to a window manager and use a browser and email.  But you'll never really control it unless you get into the nitty gritty under the covers.

5762

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Verbatim 8x dvd+r dl a buck ea

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 31, 2010, 01:47 PM »

Can get Memorex DL off of NewEgg for $30 for 50 discs: http://www.newegg.co...Item=N82E16817501023

-cthorpe (August 31, 2010, 12:25 PM)

Have you used Memorex DL?  I haven't. I don't know a cheap way to try them. If I buy a 5 pack in brick & mortar store it will prolly cost me $19 to find out if they work in my burners.

5763

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Verbatim 8x dvd+r dl a buck ea

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 31, 2010, 01:45 PM »

Yeah, x264 kinda' changes the game.

-MilesAhead (August 28, 2010, 04:43 PM)

Hmm. . . You make it seem like x264 is really good quality with good compression/small file size. But I'm using one of the x264 programs to convert a 650MB AVI to MP4 and the program says it will be 1.4GB.

-Deozaan (August 31, 2010, 03:44 AM)

I'm no expert on x264. I use programs that use it.  But is perhaps the .avi standard def while the .mp4 is 1080P or 720P? Are you sizing up? If so, you're going to use more bits.

5764

Living Room / Re: Double-sided tape with one side to be removed later?

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 30, 2010, 06:44 PM »

Fortunately next time I went to Walmart in real life the thing was there.

When you're young you half believe they'll come up with androids so you can transfer your memories into a body that won't die.  When you get old you just laugh at those young enough to still hope it's gonna' happen.

5765

Living Room / Re: Double-sided tape with one side to be removed later?

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 30, 2010, 05:08 PM »

...
All I'm asking for is double-sided tape.  It's not a complicated product.
...

-superboyac (August 30, 2010, 04:02 PM)

It can be frustrating.  I wanted to get a small plastic stack of drawers to store internal drives when not using them in my docks.  Somehow I couldn't hit the correct search term.  Finally I just looked through every container WalMart had sorted by price to find the thing.  Took me about 3 hours of work to find a $7 item.

5766

Living Room / Re: Double-sided tape with one side to be removed later?

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 30, 2010, 03:44 PM »

Darwin, I didn't see any double sided tape on the source site.  Maybe they don't sell it anymore.

MilesAhead, the poster tape is what I'm talking about, except it's a foam tape also.  I'm looking for regular (thin) tape.  The clear kind.  The kind they put on USPS boxes to seal the lids.  You peel it off and stick it together.  That's exactly what I want.

-superboyac (August 30, 2010, 03:41 PM)

Haven't used those myself so I wouldn't know what the package looks like.  Maybe if you went directly to some of the tape manufacturer's sites you may be able to get the part number and search the stores with it.  sku number or whatnot.

5767

Living Room / Re: Double-sided tape with one side to be removed later?

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 30, 2010, 03:33 PM »

The one I have is Scotch Poster Tape.  It's double sticky with a liner.  Also it's "removable."  I use it for mouse pads that tend to crawl under the mouse.  Can't get the old thick mouse pad with the good gripper underside anymore it seems. I have to anchor it with this tape.

http://www.michaels....ge?productNum=gc0256

5768

Post New Requests Here / Re: All AutoHotkey (AHK) coders read: No more upx packing of compiled ahk utils

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 30, 2010, 03:27 PM »

Thanks for the feedback.  At the size of my stuff even a v90 dial-up it's only a few seconds difference on the download.  Plus some newbs may wonder why there's a .7z file inside their .zip file.  So it's not really worth messing with it at this point.  Zip may not be a the best but it's built into Windows. Pretty much guaranteed to be there even for the newbiest newbs.

edit: I did find out 7-zip command line implementation has a switch for more thorough .zip compression.  But at the size of my files, the archive is only about 1 or 2 KB smaller.  Guess I'll stick with 7-zip shell integrated version.  .7z does come out a bit smaller but "file not found" is about a fate comparable to death. Too much risk and not much reward trying to change links. If I was just starting now I'd probably go with .7z format though.

5769

Post New Requests Here / Re: All AutoHotkey (AHK) coders read: No more upx packing of compiled ahk utils

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 30, 2010, 01:16 PM »

There are adjustments to zip compression - it supports a few different algorithms, and the most common one (deflate) can have compression characteristics adjusted; not much point in going for less than maximum compression on today's hardware, though . The .7z and .rar formats have fairly more decent algorithms, but they also have a huge advantage over .zip: solid compression, which matters a lot when your archive includes a lot of small files (typical for source code distribution).

-f0dder (August 30, 2010, 01:12 PM)

Maybe you can tell me which (free) zipper you are using? I looked at four and didn't see any "more thorough" setting for .zip format.  Only other formats.

5770

Post New Requests Here / Re: All AutoHotkey (AHK) coders read: No more upx packing of compiled ahk utils

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 30, 2010, 01:15 PM »

This issue caused me to look into some of the pros/cons of UPX compression.  I can't seem to find the links right now.

-MilesAhead (August 29, 2010, 06:02 PM)

f0dder wrote a nice article about (some of) the reasons why exe compression is bad:

http://f0dder.reteam...org/packandstuff.htm

You can add the never ending problems with false positives to that.

-Jibz (August 30, 2010, 01:25 AM)

Recognition of UPX may have triggered false positives but I think many of these av apps are seeing scripting code wrapped as an exe.  Many will flag compiled scripts UPX or no UPX I'm thinking. I know Malwarebytes does.   I have to empty my recycle bin of old compiled scripts or it sucks them up and wants to reboot my machine to purge them.  It seems to sick any ahk or autoit3 script compiled to exe.

5771

Post New Requests Here / Re: All AutoHotkey (AHK) coders read: No more upx packing of compiled ahk utils

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 30, 2010, 12:58 PM »

For some reason I also thought zip compressors had an adjustment how thorough a compression to use.  At least the free ones seem to do it all about the same.  7-zip .7z format seems to compress a bit more, but I'd either have to change the download links or put a .7z file inside a .zip file.  To get 207KB download instead of 240KB it's not worth the effort or confusion.

5772

General Software Discussion / Control Click for Chrome

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 30, 2010, 12:14 AM »

It was bugging me that middle clicking a link in Chrome opened in a new tab behind the other tabs.  I found out the standard combination to open in a new foreground tab is Control-Shift-Left Click on the link.  I don't like holding down 2 keys as it's just awkward.  I made this ahk to do the job on middle mouse click.  Thought someone else may find it handy. You can even use it with Speed-dial. The dial you middle click will open in a new tab in foreground instead of replacing the Speed-dial page:

[Select]

SendMode Input

#IfWinActive, ahk_class Chrome_WidgetWin_0
^LButton::
  Send, ^+{LButton}
Return

edit: since posting it's become evident this interferes with mouse middle click drag to scroll in the browser.  I just changed the hotkey to ^LButton.  At least I don't have to hold down 2 keys while clicking.

5773

Post New Requests Here / Re: All AutoHotkey (AHK) coders read: No more upx packing of compiled ahk utils

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 29, 2010, 06:02 PM »

This issue caused me to look into some of the pros/cons of UPX compression.  I can't seem to find the links right now. But one of the issues mentioned was Windows system handling of compressed exes afa paging into memory etc..  The gist of it was, the only benefit was reduced download size, while the side-effects included Windows loading the entire exe into memory instead of paging in the code(which may not matter for small utilities.) But in any event it made me think I'm just as well off not to use compression.  These days most people can handle downloading 800KB as opposed to 600KB. Not a big issue.  Guess I could try a more thorough 7-zip or other zip program compression setting as a means to reduce the download bulk.

5774

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Verbatim 8x dvd+r dl a buck ea

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 29, 2010, 03:37 PM »

I'd heard of h264, but not x264. Thanks for letting me know.

-Deozaan (August 29, 2010, 01:57 AM)

I guess one is the standard and the other is the encoder program itself. I'm no video expert.  Reading what "pull-down" is makes me dizzy. 

5775

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Verbatim 8x dvd+r dl a buck ea

« Last post by MilesAhead on August 28, 2010, 11:47 PM »

What is x264?

-Deozaan (August 28, 2010, 08:15 PM)

That's an encoder that produces better quality than divx/xvid or dvd with a lower bit rate. Even the company that does divx is giving up on divx format.  Their new "divx plus" is .mkv using 264 encoding. Here's a link to the encoder these programs are using:

http://www.videohelp...m/tools/x264_Encoder