Recent Posts

6326

General Software Discussion / Re: Making a custom XP cd

« Last post by f0dder on November 28, 2007, 04:01 PM »

Deozaan: unfortunately it's possible to remove critical stuff with nLite so you get boottime BSODs, but if you only integrate drivers/hotfixes and don't mess with anything else, then that shouldn't happen.

Once you get into component removing, be careful, and test in vmware before installing

6327

ProcessTamer / Re: New Feature: Process Time Watcher and Killer.

« Last post by f0dder on November 28, 2007, 03:59 PM »

Hmm, if you get heavy disk I/O, process priority doesn't matter that much, because the disk I/O itself will be killing you. You say you have 30-50 clamav processes running concurrently? That sounds wrong! :-s

If the memory problem is that one process is leaking, you might be able to fix it with some NT quota stuff, but if it's because you get multiple processes where you shouldn't, then I dunno if it's as easy to fix. And I'm not sure how you set those quotas anyway, just that it should be possible

6328

General Software Discussion / Re: Are you testing XP SP3 RC ??

« Last post by f0dder on November 28, 2007, 07:49 AM »

f0dder, every time you load a M$ product (or any other for that matter), you are beta testing on your machine. There is no such thing as a "final" release.

-Nighted (November 28, 2007, 07:42 AM)

*grin*

But at least with non-beta and non-rc software, you have a right to bitch about it, without anybody telling you "yeah well, stupid, you're not running release software".

Btw., ever poured over changelogs for (release/stable) linux kernels? Pretty scary sometimes.

6329

General Software Discussion / Re: Are you testing XP SP3 RC ??

« Last post by f0dder on November 28, 2007, 07:03 AM »

I wish people would stop saying "OMFG 10% PERFORMANCE INCREASE!!!", since it hasn't been properly verified yet, the test done is sketchy, etc. Not that I'd mind 10% boost, that is

I'll wait until SP3 goes final, and even then I'll check it in a VM first. No way I'm doing beta testing for Microsoft on my "live" machine!

6330

General Software Discussion / Re: Hard Drive Diagnostic Software

« Last post by f0dder on November 28, 2007, 07:02 AM »

When I do a chkdsk on the external, it is finding the errors, but it reports "Errors found.  CHKDSK cannot continue in read-only mode." So I assumed that means I need to do it at boot time.

-tinjaw (November 28, 2007, 06:51 AM)

Nah, just means you have to do "/f", as Ralf mentioned. "volume unmount" should only happen if you have open files/folders on the drive.

6331

Developer's Corner / Re: Dilbert On Agile Programming

« Last post by f0dder on November 28, 2007, 06:58 AM »

Hehe, cute one

The followers of that cult does seem to be pretty agile at dragging $$$ up people's pockets for consulting. Isn't that what it's all about, anyway?

6332

Best E-mail Client / Re: Best IMAP Client

« Last post by f0dder on November 28, 2007, 06:58 AM »

I'm in the process of moving the guys at the museum from POP3 hosted externally to IMAP hosted internally - backups of their local Outlook Express mail archives were turning out to be a disaster, generating several gigs of incremental backups per user per day >_<.

From very sketchy tests I did, thunderbird does seem to be okay, at least when the IMAP server is hosted locally - did take me a while to find the setting to "subscribe" to all mailboxes on the server, though.

6333

Living Room / Re: Forum Angst

« Last post by f0dder on November 28, 2007, 06:54 AM »

I only use a limited amount of forums (donationcoder, win32asm, flatassembler) because I know I'd get totally lost... I have a bunch of feeds that I read, but not as many as I expect some of you guys do.

Anyway, keeping a balance? Nah. Throwing out the gf so I can have more time to spend on computer zombieing? Yeah, +1.

6334

Living Room / Re: What's Your Favorite Programming Tool?

« Last post by f0dder on November 28, 2007, 06:48 AM »

Haha, that graph is great, pure genius of the type you'd expect to see on http://xkcd.com/

I had to vote "Coffee/Tea", although it's more like "Pick one of {Coffee, Coke, Coffee + Coke, Beer, Beer + Coke, Beer + Coffee + Coke}"

6335

General Software Discussion / Re: Going back to XP

« Last post by f0dder on November 28, 2007, 06:42 AM »

XP-SP3 will increase your speed another 10%.

-zridling (November 28, 2007, 03:25 AM)

I wish people would stop saying that, since it's not really confirmed yet, and based on one test that sounds pretty half-assed. (Not that I don't wish it to be true, though).

6336

General Software Discussion / Re: Hard Drive Diagnostic Software

« Last post by f0dder on November 28, 2007, 06:41 AM »

When you schedule multiple boot-time CHKDSKs, they are all performed - although with all the trickeries of USB drives and reassigned letters, I dunno if there's a risk of that failing.

Shouldn't be necessary to do boot-time chkdsk of an external drive though, you should be able to do that under normal windows operation :-s

6337

Living Room / Re: Feedback on New Fun Software Please

« Last post by f0dder on November 28, 2007, 06:40 AM »

Now I said I was going to do something good with this, and I kept my promise...

I have uncovered proof that the Anti-Christ is trying to take over the U.S. by running for President in the next election....and yes, he is a Rebublican. 

If you like the page, Digg it!

-app103 (November 17, 2007, 12:41 AM)

I didn't know Jesus was a Presidential hopeful: Jesus Bilal Islam Allah Muhammed (1656)

Wait a sec, Jesus and Allah? As well as Muhammed and Islam? What a gaudy name. 

-Deozaan (November 27, 2007, 03:59 PM)

I wonder if muslims would throw a fit if somebody took a picture of that guy? *giggle*

6338

General Software Discussion / Re: .NET Application Startup Times

« Last post by f0dder on November 28, 2007, 06:39 AM »

I believe it is called Native Image Generator and the command is ngen.exe

-hamm4915 (November 27, 2007, 11:21 AM)

That was it, thank you

6339

ProcessTamer / Re: New Feature: Process Time Watcher and Killer.

« Last post by f0dder on November 28, 2007, 06:36 AM »

Ugh, that sounds pretty nasty!

Yes, clamscan should be a 32bit console app, so it would be possible to track normally - but that's a job for mouser to implement

It sounds weird that it pegs down the CPU even if you run the task as low priority, are you sure that the priority setting works, that clamscam doesn't increase it's own priority manually, and that it doesn't start any child process with normal/higher priority?

6340

General Software Discussion / Re: Making a custom XP cd

« Last post by f0dder on November 27, 2007, 05:46 AM »

I've used nLite for quite a while, both for tweaking and driver+hotfix integration. I've always used RyanVM's update pack, since when I tried manual hotfix integration (hotfixes downloaded with windows update downloader), I appearantly tried to slipstream something that wasn't really a hotfix, which gave an error message during installation.

Other than that, I remove components and apply some registry tweaks for performance and app settings, like integrating xplorer^2 to replace explorer, set filetype associations for Notepad++ and ACDSEE32, etc.

6341

General Software Discussion / Re: File synchronization: moving away from incremental backup (HELP!)

« Last post by f0dder on November 27, 2007, 05:39 AM »

Tivoli has been IBM for, like, forever - at least as long as I can remember (which isn't more than max 5 years though  ).

6342

Living Room / Re: Seriously, wtf is going on with Apple's Mac vs. Pc ads?

« Last post by f0dder on November 27, 2007, 05:38 AM »

Ralf - you kill me!

-Renegade (November 26, 2007, 09:46 PM)

Is it really Ralf that's killing you - or your regular beehiving sessions? 

6343

C / C++ / Re: Exploring C++

« Last post by f0dder on November 27, 2007, 05:37 AM »

STL = Standard Template Library = "libc++"... basically things in the std:: namespace, like vectors and strings.

SDL = Simple Directmedia Layer, graphics (and more) library.

6344

General Software Discussion / Re: Hard Drive Diagnostic Software

« Last post by f0dder on November 27, 2007, 05:34 AM »

Ummm, I thought that it was chkdsk that obsoleted scandisk? The last time I saw scandisk was on Win9x boxes

6345

General Software Discussion / Re: .NET Application Startup Times

« Last post by f0dder on November 27, 2007, 05:32 AM »

The JITter is supposed to cache results, though, so you should get a first-time JIT penalty, and then not so much on subsequent runs (although dynamic JITing based on runtime profiling is also supposed to be done - but I dunno if this is just "we want it to" or "we are doing it already" ).

Iirc. there's a "compile [dotNET] assembly to nativer code" tool shipped with the framework, but I can't for the life of me remember it's name. Might help you out somewhat, worth a search anyway.

6346

Living Room / Re: Seriously, wtf is going on with Apple's Mac vs. Pc ads?

« Last post by f0dder on November 26, 2007, 05:55 PM »

The only way I'd run a beta or RC would be in a virtual machine - it's asking for punishment to do it on a live machine.

6347

General Software Discussion / Re: Hard Drive Diagnostic Software

« Last post by f0dder on November 26, 2007, 05:55 PM »

Yeah, full format and then the manufacturer's diagnostics tool, and be sure to look for "remapped sector count" in SMART info.

6348

General Software Discussion / Re: Why the Windows Registry Exists

« Last post by f0dder on November 26, 2007, 05:45 PM »

The registry is actually a pretty nice thing, pretty efficient (binary search), and imposes a nice structure (instead of the fugly /etc/* files each more or less with their own syntax), and pretty safe (journalled access).

Ths problem, as always, is really the legacy of Win9x and people used to running with admin privileges, meaning that applications are accessing locations they shouldn't. And people (including Microsoft themselves) storing information that shouldn't be stored.

NT uses "hive files" for branches of the registry, so you can already backup per-user registry settings. Problem is that the "Documents and Settings" folder structure has a horrible layout, and the files aren't as obvious to get at as they could be. A hive file per application could be a pretty interesting idea, with the addition of an application being able to use either the default hive or specify it's own custom location - this should already be possible, really, but requires some API calls that most developers aren't familiar with.

But because the world looks like it does, I personally do prefer .xml files and the ability to store either per-user in %APPDATA% or (portable mode) the application folder, even though the registry is technically superior.

6349

Mircryption / Re: Are the tcl encrypt functions secure?

« Last post by f0dder on November 26, 2007, 05:33 PM »

SSL is vulnerable to man-in-middle attack, PGP (asymmetric ciphers in general) would be pretty impractical and still has the problem of (public) key distribution.

Dunno about OTR, perhaps it's worth checking out?

6350

General Software Discussion / Re: .NET Application Startup Times

« Last post by f0dder on November 26, 2007, 05:30 PM »

The first time you run a dotNET app after system bootup, you take a huge penalty for getting the dotNET subsystem started. After this, iirc, it stays loaded.

Also, the first time you run a dotNET app, regardles of whether you have the dotNET runtime loaded, you get some JITing penalty.

After that, it's not all that bad, although dotNET binaries are heavier than native code.