windows - Best filesystem for use with multiple OS?

what's the best file system to use with windows, osx, and linux that is not fat32.
I need a file system that can share large video files with good performance

ubuntu - Dual booting windows 8 and Kali Linux 1.0.8

I'm trying to install kali linux along with windows 8
The latest Kali version (1.0.8) supports booting alongside windows 8

I installed Kali Linux from a LiveCD, rebooted and it went straight to windows. I thought I should use boot-repair

I used my ubuntu liveCD and used boot-repair in the hopes of it installing GRUB that will either allow me to boot into windows 8 or Kali Linux

Boot-repair was running fine but in the end it failed.

I was hoping if someone could help me with my problem
This is the dump of boot-repair: Dump

Thanks for any help

Visual Studio 2013 updates via Windows Update

I remember that Visual Studio 2005/2008/2010 would all automatically update via Windows Update like 99% of every other Microsoft product.

Now however it seems that Visual Studio 2013 wants you to install updates manually. Is there some way of re-enabling automatic updates?

I've attached screenshots of the updates and also the Windows Update, because from my searching a lot of answers are something like "make sure Windows Update says it will update other products" which mine does and yet still won't update Visual Studio.

Answer

In an enterprise environment you always have the options of using WSUS or SCCM. I've used WSUS to update our team's VS2012 environment in the past. We haven't migrated to VS2013, so I don't know the situation for it but because the mechanism behind it is very simple I don't doubt that it will support VS2013 updates, too.

Here are some articles for your consideration on WSUS for VS updates:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/robcaron/archive/2013/04/04/how-to-install-visual-studio-2012-update-2-offline.aspx

This one mentions VS2013 updates but the script is not something official so I can't be sure: http://www.vmwareandme.com/2014/02/How-to-install-configure-wsus-windows-server-2012-R2.html#.VHRl0hE43sk

SCCM is another way of integrating a central update mechanism but its purpose is much broader and it would be an overkill to use it just for software updates.

I need a traffic monitor for Linux, that only counts in a specific wireless network

I need a simple traffic monitor for Linux, that counts the traffic in a specific wireless network because I have volume restrictions on that one.

I tried it using the following iptables rule:

iptables -m mac -A INPUT -p all --mac-source  \! -s 10.0.0.0/8

where is the router's one. 10.0.0.0/8 is the local subnet.

What I actually want is something like --routed-through .

Also, is there some way to gather iptables's statistics? Or is there maybe another tool that does what I want (reliable)?

How to prevent Vim from inserting function key names literally when in insert mode?

I'm using Vim on Ubuntu. When I press a function key in insert mode, the name of the key is inserted literally.

For example, if I'm in insert mode and I press Ctrl+F12, the following text is inserted . I have this key tied to a global shortcut key to trigger a Google search box. Furthermore, I can see no personal practical value to inserting the name of a function key into the file I'm editing.

• How can I get Vim to not insert the name of a function key when a function key is pressed in insert mode?

Answer

Try this:

:map  
:map!  

See:

:help :map
:help 

However, I would assume that having a global shortcut key defined should "eat" the key events so Vim never sees them. Is it possible to tell your OS to behave that way for this binding? After all this probably only solves your problem for Vim, and not other applications.

macos - Why won't my Western Digital My Book Home 500GB drive mount on my Macbook Pro via Firewire?

I can connect the drive via USB and it mounts correctly. However, when I connect via FireWire, the drive powers down.

The drive realizes that it is plugged in. When I plug in via FireWire, the lights on the front of the drive flash the same as when it it mounting via USB, but then the drive powers down. I've upgraded the firmware on the drive, but it still won't mount via FireWire.

Edit: After a relatively painless RMA process, I got a new drive from Western Digital and it is working on my Macbook via FireWire.

Answer

Probably because WD uses really cheap bridge chips in their re-branded enclosures. Or you could have a busted FireWire port.

desktop gadget - How can you make Windows 7 sidebar work like Vista's

I have some world clock gadgets in my Windows 7 sidebar that are quite useful for me to be able to glance over and look at on my second monitor. In Vista you could make the whole sidebar 'always on top' and other windows on the screen wouldn't maximize over the top of it, or under it. In Windows 7 gadgets are now free floating. You can make each gadget 'always on top' but this just means they render over the top of any maximized window on the screen.

Does anyone know of a way to make the Windows 7 sidebar function like the Vista one? I tried changing the compatibility of sidebar.exe to Vista, but it seems security permissions/properties for things under 'Program Files' are very difficult to change.

Answer

In short, No. At least not by default.

You have three options:

Make a folder in /Program Files called VistaSidebar. The full path should be C:\Program Files\VistaSidebar. Copy the Sidebar from a Vista machine into the new folder on the Windows 7 machine. Sidebar, on Vista, is stored in C:\Program Files\Windows Sidebar. Close down Sidebar, and open sidebar.exe from the VistaSidebar folder.

You should get the old Vista sidebar. You can then just go into the Sidebar preferences and set 'Start Sidebar when Windows starts'.

I have not actually tested this myself, but it should work. Some gadgets may not work.

DesktopCoral

Download and install DesktopCoral and configure it to make a completely transparent bar at the side of your screen, then just move your gadgets over under the 'sidebar'.

Google Desktop

Download and install Google Desktop and use the Google Desktop Sidebar.

boot - Hard disk is always only detected after the computer is switched on the second time

At the first press of the power button to switch on the computer, the hard disk is not detected, BIOS says "unknown device" instead of hard disk.
Then I switch off the computer by pressing the power button and turn it back on and then as if by magic, the hard-disk is detected and everything boots up and works fine.

I am forced to think that the hard-drive is bad, (I did change the hard drive cable with a new one but with no success).

This has been happening for a week and without fail, it always works the second time the computer is switched on. The switching on-off-on must occur one after the other with no or a few seconds time interval.

Why does it always work the second time?

Answer

Sometimes this is caused by the computer trying to boot before the harddrive has time to spin up. I believe this usually happens on drives which have many platters (due to the weight the motor takes longer to get up to speed), but that may be entirely incorrect ;-)

Usually there's a setting in the bios to add a delay before detecting the disks. I'd suggest trying there first.

edit: this article indicates it's actually due to ide drives taking longer to initialise. Same solution, though.

hardware failure - Remove bad sectors on a hard disk in Windows 10

My old laptop has become utterly slow and unresponsive to the extent that after loading it takes a good 30-40 mins before I can even use it. It's mostly in an unresponsive state and doesn't change even if I do a hard restart. I did a SMART test and it shows my hard disk is 58% healthy.

I read somewhere on a forum that the OS or the NTFS disk itself will mark bad sectors and wouldn't write to them. So my question is, my disk is 750 GB, 58% of which is 435GB. My total data on the disk is roughly 300 GB. But I think the hard disk may still be reading/writing to those bad sectors and thus my system is not responsive. So my question is, can I do something in order to block all those bad sectors and use the left over good sectors only ? Most importantly, will it be a good idea in first place or should I just replace the old hard drive?

Note: This is an old computer and I only use it occasionally to stream movies on my tv via hdmi.

Answer

That is not true that a drive won't write to the bad sectors.
Actually there are several aspects here:

1. Hardware bad sectors that can be remapped by the HDD itself during its operation trough its firmware. Every HDD has a set of factory defined sectors that are hidden by default, that the HDD can use to remap bad sectors. The number of these sectors is very limited (several hundreds). This action increases relocation sector count value in SMART of the drive. When these backup factory sectors are over, the drive stops remapping and just ignores those bad sectors (if there is some data in it, it will try to read it, but not to write). Please note that it considers bad sectors those sectors with read times higher than 750 ms.


2. Besides those bad sectors, there can be multiple slow-read sectors (250 ms or more). They are not considered as bad sectors but bring you a lot of troubles - actually exactly those sectors cause system slowness when reading them.

It's true that the drive won't write to the bad sectors but it will attempt to write to the slow sectors considering them operative.

The next thing is that ckhdsk will never remove bad sectors, it will tell OS to ignore/skip them. During "CHKDSK /F C:" it will detect bad sectors (as it OS sees, they may not match to the hardware bad sectors sometimes) and will try to move data from them to another place and will mark the faulty sectors as non-operative.

The problem is that if the bads started to appear, their number will constantly increase. So, your actions with ckhdsk will lose their effect in some time.

You may check the real amount of bad and slow-read sectors using tools like HDDScan to scan the disk surface.

These guides might me useful:

Can't delete folder (in Windows 10) that contains special character

I have run into something that looks like a bug in Windows.

I have extracted a RAR archive onto my PC and the extracted folders cannot be deleted by any means!

My OS's language is English with some culture aspects of it set to Greek.

The character that seems to create the problem seems to be 'å'.

Here is a screen-shot that displays the problem:

Using DEL from the cmd doesn't seem to help.

When I try to delete the folder from Explorer nothing happens.

When I try to rename the folder from Explorer I get these weird messages :

Seems like a part of Windows thinks it's a file, while another part of it thinks it's a folder.

So, the question is: does anyone know what goes on here and any way to delete this thing?

EDIT:

As you can see, I have found a solution.
But if someone could explain to me WHY Windows has problems with this character while it generally supports Unicode, let me know. I would like to understand the internals of it... (that's the only difference from the other question, I guess)

Does NTFS support both Unicode and ASCII files names and that file used ASCII (for some reason)? Then if it used ASSCII, how on earth was the character displayed correctly in Explorer?

Convert vga to HDMI

I have a VGA female port on my laptop. Can I get a converter which will allow me to connect a HDMI cable to my monitor?

Searching on Amazon yields these

These don't seem to offer what I want ?
Is this possible and if so will the output quality on monitor be HDMI ?

Answer

It is possible, but not trivial. You will need an actual active converter rather than a cheap cable. The reason for this is that HDMI is digital only, and the old VGA signal is analog.

As to the quality, that depends on the output on your VGA/DB15 plug and on the quality of the convertor. I looked before and I could not find any limitation in the VGA standard. However most VGA cards come woth a 400MHz DAC which would commonly limit it to any configuration using a lower than 400MHz bandwidth. (E.g. 2048x1536@85Hz which needs 388 MHz bandwidth). If your DAC is less capable or there are other limits then the maximum resolution will be lower.

windows 7 - My custom wallpaper is gone, and I can't set any existing wallpaper. Large & extra large icons are blank

Today my Windows 7 Pro booted, but without my custom image desktop image.
The path was correct and image was there (and could be previewed with any software), but Windows didn't display it.
I tried to set it up again, but there was no thumbnails (previews) for it, even for Windows' own wallpapers:

I tried everything I found on Internet, but with no results.

Besides that, there are two strange side effects I noted:

1. There is no icons in "Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Devices and Printers". But if I change from "Large icons" to "Medium icons", they show right!


2. Not all programs (which should be loaded on startup) are present in SysTray. I checked all missing programs and they have checked "Load at startup" (or similar option) as before. I checked msconfig and there are really missing some items (unchecked).

I checked my computers for viruses (Avira) and malware, but nothing was found.
I haven't installed any software lately.

Addition 1:
I have opened registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\Wallpaper - it was empty. I have changed it to the path of the picture, and it showed a small icon:

Addition 2:
This is shown when I try to delete a file:

It seems to me that some sort of Windows image engine has some problem?!

Addition 3:
I have found after much digging exactly the same problem at Microsoft site, but without a solution:
Windows 7 - Folder / File icons dont show up in Large and Extra Large Icon view - Medium Size icon view works ok

Answer

Finally I have found a solution for my problem!

There are two registry keys which affect this strange behavior:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows]

and

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows]

In my Registry they were empty, but they should be like this:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows]
"IconServiceLib"="IconCodecService.dll"
"DdeSendTimeout"=dword:00000000
"DesktopHeapLogging"=dword:00000001
"GDIProcessHandleQuota"=dword:00002710
"ShutdownWarningDialogTimeout"=dword:ffffffff
"USERNestedWindowLimit"=dword:00000032
"USERPostMessageLimit"=dword:00002710
"USERProcessHandleQuota"=dword:00002710
@="mnmsrvc"
"DeviceNotSelectedTimeout"="15"
"Spooler"="yes"
"TransmissionRetryTimeout"="90"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows]
"IconServiceLib"="IconCodecService.dll"
"DdeSendTimeout"=dword:00000000
"DesktopHeapLogging"=dword:00000001
"GDIProcessHandleQuota"=dword:00002710
"ShutdownWarningDialogTimeout"=dword:ffffffff
"USERNestedWindowLimit"=dword:00000032
"USERPostMessageLimit"=dword:00002710
"USERProcessHandleQuota"=dword:00002710
@="mnmsrvc"
"DeviceNotSelectedTimeout"="15"
"Spooler"="yes"
"TransmissionRetryTimeout"="90"

You can make two .reg files in Notepad, fill this and enter it in registry. It works immediatelly, there is no need for a system restart!

Of course, you should make a system restore point, just in case.

Source:
Large & extra large icons blank

partitioning - Shrink Windows XP boot partition to put Windows 7 at the beginning?

I currently have Windows XP installed at the beginning of my hardrive in the first partition. I want to switch to Windows 7, but keep XP for dual boot.

I would like to have Windows 7 where XP now is, is it safe to just shrink and move the XP partition so the beginning is unallocated?

Disable Hindi language for Google interfaces in Chrome

I am using Chrome 21, and realized that lately all of the Google web applications such as Google Maps, Google Analytics, Google Reader, etc. are coming up in Hindi.

I am from India and Hindi is the main language here. I have heard that Google recently implemented this feature that detects the location of the user (I'm not sure whether they're using IP address or HTML5 geolocation), and automatically presents the content in the local language.

I want to disable this.

My Chrome settings already contain English as the default language and Location Auto detect is disabled. Still it does not work.

Do you have any ideas?

Answer

This issue is not to do with Chrome, it's Google's detection of your IP address.

I would recommend creating a Google account and then setting your preferences in there. This means whenever you log onto to any PC, all you need to do is log onto your account and your preferences should be as you want.

Try this: http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35892

General details:

1) Go to the Google search homepage, www.google.com.

2) Click on the Advanced Search link beside the search box. Specify the language of your choice in the Language section. This is recommended if it is a one off search in that language. If you need to make the language selection permanent, follow steps 3 and 4 below.

3) Click on the Preferences link beside the search box. Select from the list of languages given in the 'Search Language' section and save the preferences. This is recommended if you frequently search for pages in a particular language.

4) Set Google to display its tips and messages in any language. This can be done by clicking on the Preferences link and selecting an Interface Language from the drop down menu.

laptop - USB Mouse not working when connecting the power source

Am using Sony Vio laptop. when connecting to the power source (AC Adapter) my USB mouse stops working. when disconnect the power source its working. Do i need to change any settings to work even my lap connected with power source??

linux - sequential SSH command execution not working in Ubuntu/Bash

My requirement is I will have a set of commands that needs to be executed in a text file. My Shell script has to read each command, execute and store the results in a separate file.

Here is the snippet which does the above requirement.

while read command
do
    echo 'Command :' $command >> "$OUTPUT_FILE"
    redirect_pos=`expr index "$command" '>>'`       
    if [ `expr index "$command" '>>'` != 0 ];then

        redirect_fn "$redirect_pos" "$command";        
    else  
        $command 
        state=$?
        if [ $state != 0 ];then
                echo "command failed." >> "$OUTPUT_FILE"
        else
        echo "executed successfully." >> "$OUTPUT_FILE"
        fi
     fi

    echo  >> "$OUTPUT_FILE"
done < "$INPUT_FILE"

Sample Commands.txt will be like this ...

tar -rvf /var/tmp/logs.tar -C /var/tmp/ Commands_log.txt
gzip /var/tmp/logs.tar
rm -f /var/tmp/list.txt

This is working fine for commands which needs to be executed in local machine. But When I am trying to execute the following ssh commands only the 1st command getting executed.

Here are the some of the ssh commands added in my text file.

ssh uname@hostname1 tar -rvf /var/tmp/logs.tar -C /var/tmp/ Commands_log.txt
ssh uname@hostname2 gzip /var/tmp/logs.tar
ssh .. etc

When I am executing this in cli it is working fine. Could anybody help me in this?

windows 7 - Alt+Tab behaves like Alt is sticking (but it is not)

Sometimes, when I press Alt+Tab and then release, the window select menu stays up until I chose a window with mouse or press Enter. Just like if I wouldn't let Alt key go (but I do). Anyone has an idea why this could be the case?

1. My keybord is brand new (3 days old). Also I opened screen keyboard and see when Alt/Ctrl/Shift/Win keys are pressed and when they are not. So I'm sure none of those 4 keys are sticking by any mechanical reason.




2. The behavior is "localy stable". I.e. it works many times in a row. And then (when I forget about it) it behaves normaly many times in a row.




3. I doesn't it when switching from specific windows. But those specific windows are different each time. I mean when it starts to "stick" it sticks all the time for some windows A,B,C and doesn't stick for D,E,F; then it stop to stick and starts again in a while and now it sticks for A,E,F and doesn't stick for B,C,D.




4. It behaves in the same way with left and right Alt.




5. I use SharpKeys to remap control keys. Caps -> Left Ctrl, Left Alt -> Left Ctrl, Left Ctrl -> Left Win, Left Win->Right Alt.




6. I have sticky-keys disabled.

Answer

I have discovered that that happended only when a top window is in foreing keyboard layout (I've tried Greek, Russian, German). When I switched layout of the top window to English I could use AltTab normally.

Then I was able to check if this disappears when I turn off SharpKeys (thanks to @JaredT for the hint). And I've found out that the problem was that my Right Alt on my keyboard is actually Alt Gr. So when I used SharpKeys I actually used AltGr+Tab instead of Alt+Tab. Once I've rebinded to use Left Alt instead of Right everything started to work fine.

So I guess AltGr makes Tab to mean something different when you use layout different from English.

GNU Screen equivalent for Windows?

Is there such a thing as a terminal multiplexer (i.e. GNU Screen) for the Windows CMD.EXE, or for that matter, is there anything I can use to run a text-only program such as a non-curses python script on Windows XP or Vista in such a way that it can only be detected by using Task Manager, similar programs, or by observing any network traffic that the script generates?

Answer

I used a *.pyw with a shortcut pointing to it and the required command-line arguments. It now runs just perfectly and with no console window.

windows 7 - Hot-insert (non-RAID) SATA drive causes Intel RAID array to rebuild

Inserting a SATA drive into a “hot swap” tray causes a momentary problem that leads the Intel RST RAID 10 array to begin rebuilding. The first message from Intel begins like this:

SATA array disk: Removed.

Volume FS_RAID10_A: Degraded. 
Volume FS_RAID10_B: No longer present on system.
Volume FS_RAID10_B: Detected.

On one occasion one of the volumes was at this point flagged as having 23 parity errors; the other had none.

The OS is Window 7, and the freeware program HotSwap! is installed so the drive can be easily removed later. It’s resident, but it's not clear that it is involved upon drive insertion. (On XP I need to invoke it when I insert a drive, else the OS won't see it, but that's not the case with Window 7.)

What there is of common wisdom on the subject holds that it’s a power supply problem, and powering the drive from a different cable will be the solution. I’ll try that, but if the system were that glitch-sensitive people with similar loading would be seeing it every time a drive (or array of drives) woke from napping.

The RAID array is serviced by the Intel hardware on the motherboard; the drive being swapped connects to the other RAID controller on the motherboard. The hot-swap tray is passive and just passes the SATA connections through.

Thoughts from anybody with specific knowledge about what's happening?

macos - Option and command keys in Mac OS X are swapped and keyboard preferences do not set them back

On my MacBook Pro, I occasionally use external keyboards, generally Windows ones and things have been fine.

Yesterday, I plugged in a new one, remapped the command/option keys so the windows/alt keys were in the same configuration, again, nothing new here. However, this time when I unplugged the USB keyboard, the laptops option/command keys remained switched.

More annoying is that if I go into the System Preferences -> Keyboards -> Modifier keys, remapping the keys to actions does not work. I can use the drop downs to disable any specific keys, but switching the behaviours does nothing. (Cmd/Option obvious, tried remapping anything to caps lock and a few other combinations, no joy. Restore defaults set the configuration to what I'd expect, but the settings are evidently ignored.)

So: Any ideas?

Answer

I had the same behavior. Clicking the Restore Defaults button in the Modifier Keys... pane of the Keyboard & Mouse panel of the System Preferences (take deep breath) of 10.5.8 didn't work to unswap the Command and Options keys but, clicking it after plugging in a non-Apple keyboard worked, so the MacBook Pro keyboard started working correctly (a big relief).

Intel 82801G ethernet controller driver for Windows 7 32 bit

I do not know which one is my Ethernet Controller. It was working fine in Windows XP, but after installing Windows 7 (clean install), it is not able to detect driver for Ethernet Controller, so I am not able to connect to internet.

Looking at the other devices in Device Manager, there are several entries for Intel 82801G ICH7 family ..., so I guess that is my chipset model.

Looking at the back of the computer, there is no external network card, the lan cable is going to the motherboard provided LAN slot, so it is the integrated network adapter.

I did google search for at least 1 hour, most links are pointing to torrent sites or require me to install one of the downloader softwares, which are fraught with risk.

I went to intel download center, there also I could not find any driver for ethernet controller for the specific chipset 82801G ICH7 family.

Any help will be greatly appreciated, as I need to connect to internet from the Windows 7 machine.

Thanks.

EDIT: Looking at the Hardware Ids of the Ethernet Controller, there are 4 hardware ids:

PCI\VEN_10EC&DEV_8136&SUBSYS_813610EC&REV_03
PCI\VEN_10EC&DEV_8136&SUBSYS_813610EC

PCI\VEN_10EC&DEV_8136&CC_020000

PCI\VEN_10EC&DEV_8136&CC_0200

Why are there 4 hardware ids?
I googled for the 1st hardware id. I found it belongs to "Realtek RTL8103E Family PCI-E Fast Ethernet NIC". But I could not find the driver for even that in google. As earlier, most sites are torrent sites or require their own downloader to be installed.

EDIT 2: I found that the Realtek RTL8103E driver is already included with Windows 7. But If I try to install driver manually, it says "Installing this driver is not recommended", still if I proceed and install, it says The device failed to start. I am sure my ethernet controller is fine, as it was working a few hours ago when I was on XP. It is quite confusing, as the hardware id points to Realtek RTL8103E, but driver bundled with Windows 7 does not recognize it.

I ran CPU-Z to collect details about the motherboard. The results are:
Motherboard Model: OEM, Chipset: Intel P35/G33/G31, Southbridge: Intel 82801GB (ICH7/R),
BIOS Brand: Phoenix Technologies, Version: 6.00 PG

When I restarted the PC, I observed the first screen which comes displays "MERCURY". I opened the PC cabinet. On the mainboard, Mercury is written. Between the CPU fan and RAM slots, there is a string "G31CCL2-07", I guess that is the motherboard model. Don't know why CPU-Z says motherboard manufacturer and model is OEM!! Searched google for G31CCL2-07. Some links are there, but they require me to download their own download managers, which is risky. Searched Mercury site for G31CCL2-07, but could not find any driver. I am running out of ideas!

I have tried RTL8103E downloaded from http://152.104.125.41/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=7&PFid=7&Level=5&Conn=4&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false#RTL8100E/RTL8101E/RTL8102E-GR/RTL8103E%28L%29%3Cbr%3ERTL8102E%28L%29/RTL8101E/RTL8103T%3Cbr%3ERTL8401/RTL8401P/RTL8105E%3Cbr%3ERTL8402. But it was not recognized by Windows 7 as a valid driver.

Also tried "Win7 and WinServer 2008 R2 Driver" and "Win7 and WinServer 2008 R2 Auto Installation Program (SID:1522305)" from the list in this link: http://www.realtek.com.tw/Downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=14&PFid=7&Level=5&Conn=4&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false. Does not work.

Answer

I was able to solve the problem, by using an alternate internet connection and allowing Windows to search driver automatically. I connected my Android mobile to the PC, and used the mobile's internet connection from the PC using PDANet.

linux - Unable to boot Windows XP after installing ubuntu 10.10

I have ubuntu 8.10 & Windows XP installed on my PC. I formatted the C:\ partition and installed a new fresh copy of Win XP.

After that I was not able to login to ubuntu 8.10. It is clear that Win XP overwrote the MBR.

I tried to re-install the boot loader (Grub) again by boot ubuntu 10.10 CD. Finally, I was able to boot both ubuntu version 8.10 and 10.10. However, I was not able to boot Win XP.

There is an entry in grun menu of ubuntu 10.10 specific for WinXP, but when I press enter to boot Windows I get back to grub menu.

Any idea?

Answer

edit your grub.conf you will find windows xp grub menu and put this

title windows xp

root (hd0,1)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1

check this link http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/grubconf-for-windows-vista-or-xp-dual-boot/

Printing multiple pages per sheet on both side then divide the paper?

I would like to print 4 pages per sheet, on both side of the paper, then divide (cut) the paper into 4 part. If it's just 1 sheet (which can contain 8 printed pages), I can write the print order as 1, 3, 5, 7, 4, 2, 8, 6 so that when I divide the sheet, behind page 1 is page 2, behind page 3 is page 4, and so on..

Now I need to print hundred of pages from a document, since writing the print order simply isn't viable, how do I do this?

Document is in Word format, but I don't mind to use another program (preferably free) as long as it can receive exported files from Word.

Answer

You can do this by printing in two passes on the same pages:

1. First pass will print odd pages in horizontal-first


2. Second pass will print even pages in top-right-first order on the other side of the pages printed in the first pass.

Word can print even or odd pages, but for the second pass you will need
to go into the Printer properties page (if your printer supports it).
For my printer, this is found under Page Layout click Page Layout,
then the Specify... button (see image below).

You may also need for the second pass to put the pages into the printer
upside-down and change the print order in Word to last-page-first.

I suggest making some test runs until getting right this sequence of
operations.

Here is how the Printer properties page looks like in my printer
for the second pass:

How to create Windows 10 installation USB for a Mac without Bootcamp Assistant?

I'm trying to install Windows 10 x64 on a Mac Pro (3,1). The Mac doesn't have OS X installed so I don't have access to Bootcamp Assistant. I tried the following:

• Windows 7 USB DVD Download Tool
  
  
  
  
  • creates a NTFS USB and doesn't show up in Mac's boot selection screen (pressing option at boot)
  
  



• diskpart + xcopy

  
  
  
  
  
  

  • creates a FAT32 USB. It only shows EFI Boot (the UEFI boot) at the boot selection screen but not Windows (the MBR boot)

    
    
    

    

  
  

Did I miss something obvious here?

How did my Windows 7 just manage to download and install a bunch of updates if "auto updates" is turned off?

I know for sure that "auto updates" was disabled before the restart, and they are still disabled now. Yet, when I did the restart Windows showed me the percent ticker during shutdown, during restart, and I can actually see names of newly installed updates with today's date in Control Panel -> Programs and Features -> Updates.

Is this a known issue? Does Windows just brazenly ignore the prohibition of updates when it feels like it?

Can anybody suggest firewall level solutions to this, like prohibiting Windows or some parts of Windows from communicating with the Internet?

ETA: OK, some Internet research turns up similar claims, e.g. see here

windows xp - What is the Cause of Random Freezing/Blue Screen/Restarting?

Problem: Freezing/blue screen/restarting happens randomly on my Desktop PC. Sometimes it just freezes suddenly. Sometimes a freezing, then a blue screen. Sometimes a blue screen, followed with a restart. Sometimes it only restarts (and then sometimes it restarts again when booting). Sometimes it's just a blue screen.

When?: Sometimes it happens when I run applications which consume too much memory (e.g.: Photoshop, watching movies, playing games). Sometimes it happens immediately after I logged in to Windows. Sometimes it happens when I'm not doing anything (usually only having one Notepad window open).

If I recall correctly, the problem happened about a year or two years ago. It happened suddenly. I didn't make any change to the computer before (didn't install new driver, didn't replace any hardware). Well, I did change the hardware, but it was long before the problem happened (was about three or four years ago).

It doesn't always happen though. Sometimes I could run the computer 12 hours non-stop without experiencing a single problem.

EDIT: Also sometimes I cannot turn on the computer. When I push the power button, the machine seems to be running (because it makes the sound, the fan is also spinning). But nothing is shown in the monitor, even after several minutes, as if the computer is turned off.

Usually I have to turn it off again, and try several times, until it turned on correctly. I'm quite sure it's not the monitor cable, because the cable is already plugged in tightly.

Question: I want to make sure and want to exactly know where the problem lies. Perhaps before I take it into service so I could (hopefully) try to fix the problem. Could anyone help me to investigate the cause of this?

Here are several blue screen screenshots I manage to take:

Computer specifications:

• OS: Windows XP Professional SP2


• Motherboard: ZX-I945LM4



• Processor: Intel Pentium 4 CPU 2.40 Ghz


• RAM: 1016 MB

Any help is really appreciated. Thank you very much.

Answer

Other possible reasons in addition to corrupt memory:

• Bad HD sectors in critical areas at the beginning of the disk. I'm almost afraid to give my usual suggestion here (buy a copy of SpinRite), because other posters think I'm advertising. But hey, in those cases it works.





• Corrupt low-level driver. See if disabling/updating drivers helps.




• I'm not sure about overheating if that may cause this. There's free software utilities available that lets your monitor temperatures, I forgot the name.




• Plain old dust. Clean the insides of your machine. At the same time pull the memory modules out and plug them back in. Especially check the fans if they're clean and run smoothly.

External Hard Disk not showing up

I have got an external hard drive Seagate 320 Gb that I use inside a Trust 3,5' case.

Device is not showing up in Computer folder, nor in Disk management.

I tried to look for partition with Active @Partition and Runtime GetDataBack software but the device is not found by these softwares.

Any hint on how to format this HDD in order to use it again? (no data save needed)

Thanks 4 all your help!!!

P.S. Ask for any additional info

Answer

Have you tried another case? Or make sure it's plugged into a USB 2.0 slot, might be not enough power going to the drive.

You can try removing the drive from the case and plugging it directly into the pc into a free SATA/IDE port (whatever your drive is). The BIOS if nothing else will pick up the drive. If it does, FDISK should be able to delete the partition, create a new and format the drive if need be (Directly from DOS, not a CMD prompt within Windows)

ubuntu - Screen doesn't turn on sometimes, after dual boot installation

I have Windows 8 and installed Ubuntu 13.10, as dual boot. After this installation, the screen doesn't turn on sometimes, even though the system loads normally in the background (I hear the welcoming sound of the OS). A hard reset is required in order for the screen to turn on.

These "sometimes", precisely, are:

• When I cold boot the computer.


• When I am running one of the OSs and I restart the computer, so I can load the other OS.

Windows Updates - Does Not Install, how can I remove it

Everytime I shutdown my Windows XP, it comes up with the following screen which says

Turn Off with Installing Updates

(Of course, it also gives me an option as follows, "Click here to turn off without installing updates.")

When I do a normal shutdown asking it to "Install Updates and Turn It Off", it doesn't actually install the updates. Each subsequent time I try to shut down the PC, it still prompts me to "Turn Off with Installing Updates".

I managed to find out that the install was this:

Installing Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition Service Pack 3
(KB955706) update 1 of 1 ....

When I click on the Installing Updates icon (the yellow icon, that appears on the task bar near the clock), and install it, it tries to install but fails:

Why is this install alone failing?

Secondly, if it's not possible to ascertain why the installation is failing, can I at least ensure that it's removed from the list of possible installs so that each time it does not ask me to install it?

Mail merge from Excel to Word: field is formula referring to text >255 characters

I am trying to perform a mail merge from an Excel document to a Word document. The fields in the source document retrieve text from elsewhere in the Excel document. Thus, the actual fields are in fact formulae. The content of the fields is plain text.

This works fine in most cases, except when the source text is longer than 255 characters. I know that usually one can get around this problem by creating a 'dummy record' at the start of the mail merge which contains more than 255 characters - this forces Word to treat the field as a memo. However, this doesn't appear to work in the case where the field itself is a formula referring to text elsewhere in the document. The result is that any fields with text exceeding 255 characters are simply not displayed at all.

How can I work around this?

Answer

The solution that worked for the poster was to divide the formula,
which was previously in one cell, among several cells where each of the cells was
at most 255 characters in size.

The poster used the MID() function to cut up the text.

ubuntu - help in some linux commands

I need help in some linux commands regarding disk space.

When i see disk space using " df -h " it list all partitions with space left in percentage.
But here are few things i need to know more .

1. If i need to see which partition the particular dir is. For example if i want to see " /var/www/ " 's partition .




2. And If i want to see how much space left in particular partition .

Thanks

64 bit - 64-bit applications like VLC etc crash if they try to open file dialogs like open file, save file etc

Something's broken ever since the Windows 10 upgrade. No idea what it is. My own 64-bit application included crashes when it tries to access the open file dialog, save dialog etc. These same 64-bit apps work perfectly fine when tested on Windows 7.

I've run sfc /scannow, that didn't solved the problem. Also 32-bit applications have no trouble accessing any of the file dialogs.

Does anybody have any idea what could be causing this?

sfc /verifyonly result:

Beginning system scan. This process will take some time.

Beginning verification phase of system scan.
Verification 100% complete.

Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations.

Scroll Lock key on for keyboard lights but off for Excel

My keyboard uses the Scroll Lock key to turn the lights for the keys and key background on and off. Excel uses the same key to control movement when using the arrow keys. How can I "tell" Excel the Scroll Lock key is always off even when it is on? I have to believe there is a registry entry I could make do this. Remapping the keyboard doesn't work. I remap the Scroll Lock key and the keyboard reads that key as well. Any ideas please.

memory - Windows only sees 768 MB RAM out of 4 GB

I have a Windows XP machine with 4 GB of memory. As expected (and discussed in a dozen or so other questions on this site) the OS could only see 3 and a bit... until yesterday. As of yesterday, the "System Properties" window shows only 768 MB RAM.

dxdiag shows the same thing... actually, it reports 766 MB. On the other hand, the BIOS still shows 4096 MB, and msinfo32 reports "Total Physical Memory: 4,096 MB."

I've never seen anything like this before. Where could the other 3.25 GB of my memory possibly have gone? Is some faulty driver mistakenly mapping most of my memory to some piece of hardware?

UPDATE: Quick summary of the situation so far: The BIOS shows 4 GB. MemTest86+ shows 4 GB, and all of its tests pass. The msinfo32 utility shows that 4 GB are installed in the computer. However, both Windows XP "System Information" and SliTaz Linux report only 768 MB of memory. MemTest86+ seems to conclusively rule out a hardware problem, but two operating systems seeing the same thing rules out a software problem! So, where do I look next?

UPDATE 2: I tried resetting the CMOS back to factory defaults: no luck. I tried taking out one of the sticks (I have 2x2 GB) and booting: the computer only saw 768 MB. So I took that stick out and put the other stick in: 768 MB. I took them both out and put them in the second set of slots: 768 MB. Finally, in the name of trying everything, I installed the two modules in the "wrong" arrangement, i.e. not in a matched pair: Still 768 MB. No matter what arrangement of memory I have, the computer only sees the first 768 MB.

Answer

Open the Device Manager and under the View menu, choose "Resources by connection". Expand the Memory node and see if you can figure out what, if anything, is occupying the memory. If you're only seeing 768MB, there's probably an entry starting at 3000 0000 named "PCI bus". Expand that node, and see if there's anything actually at 3000 0000. (RAM is "System board".) You can then try disabling that hardware, perhaps installing an alternate (video, network, drive controller, etc.)

windows 7 - Microsoft update (MSU) does not find updates for other Microsoft products (e.g. Office) after MSU update

This post relates to an earlier thread of mine to fix a problem with Microsoft Update (MSU) during which I had to re-install MSU under Windows 7, 64bit, SP1. I installed this Microsoft update to fix the problem.

However, in the process of fixing the problem I had also unchecked the setting "install updates for other Microsoft products" in the MSU setting, as is shown below in highlighted yellow [unfortunately in German, but the idea should be clear]. This screenshot is from the Office online help where it explains that the checkbox should be checked to find Office updates.

However, I unchecked the box before installing the MSU update as an attempt to solve my original problem. I planned to check it again later.

To my suprise, the checkbox disappeared after the update and now MSU only searches for Windows updates. See screenshot after the MSU update: the checkbox disappeared.

On the start page of MS update it can be seen that it only searches for Windows updates. See screenshot, first yellow highlight from top. [In German: "You receive updates for: Windows only"]

In the row below [second highlight from top] it says "Receive other updates for Microsoft products" and the link points to this somewhat oldish strange site at Microsoft, relating to Vista (!): http://www.update.microsoft.com/windowsupdate/v6/thanks.aspx?ln=de&&thankspage=5

This all looks very strange to me. Could it be that this is a bug in the MSU update from November 2015?

I would be glad to get your help on this!

Edit: I found an old thread which discusses that when the link is opened in IE11 with compatibility view then it offers to install MS Update. Should I do this? it seems starnge to me given I just installed an MSU update dating Nov 2015? See screenshot. Plus this seems to be a VISTA help page.

Answer

I found an answer to my own question. I am running Office 2010 ("version 14.x"). To enable updates again proceed as follows:

1. Close all running Microsoft Office components.


2. Open Regedit


3. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\General


4. Modify the "ShownFirstRunOptIn" value from 1 to 0


5. Launch a Microsoft Office component, it will give you the option to download the updates, make sure you select it.


6. Done. If you go back to "Windows Update", then "Change Settings", you will see the "Microsoft Update" and "Software notifications" sections are available again (until the Microsoft Update check box is unchecked again).

The key in step 4 might have slightly different names across office versions. In my source the key was called ShownOptIn under office version 12.

Following these steps also MSU shows the missing checkbox again and it finds all updates including updates for non-office products (e.g. Silverlight)

linux - How to reuse/extend etckeeper's metadata engine for git control of non-/etc filesystems, or extend git natively with said capability?

I want etckeeper-like filesystem metadata control for non-/etc, git-controlled directories. Home and web-app directories, among others, are classically sensitive to metadata (file ownership, ACL, permissions). This can be extremely useful/important to employ git for automated server deployment (along with tools like Fabric), among other things. I would like to re-use etckeeper-like capability on said dirs, either with etckeeper itself or something else.

Can anyone suggest any tips/tricks/working solutions to provide either or both of the following:

1. apply the etckeeper engine (only care about the git-specific capability of etckeeper) to non-/etc, git-controlled directories. (Can assume at least Debian/Ubuntu Linux; would like MacOSX/homebrew support if possible.)


2. extend git with metadata support (beyond over-simplified things like git-cache-meta) to support an etckeeper-like capability or better?

There's a growing interest in extending git with filesystem-metadata-control capabilities. etckeeper's metadata "engine" seems quite powerful and reliable in my experience, and etckeeper seems popular with others as well. metastore less so at least in part due to metastore's non-text-based/merge-unfriendly challenges. Further, etckeeper appears to have started with a metastore-based core, but then switched to its own (speculative?).

Obviously, this has OS/filesystem-specific dependencies. (eg, not trying to auto-deploy on Windows.) Suggest an optional extension (if it's a "native extension") of git, enabled on-demand by the user with understood consequences of cross-platform breakage, such that native behavior doesn't break git's "by default" cross-platform friendliness. Further, don't need to save extravagant unix/darwin/etc metadata (like ACLs); basic user/group/other perms and user/group ownership would be fine. (These are the only things that are currently breaking things in my "security/vulnerability control/policies.") Specific OSes I'm targeting up front: Debian, Ubuntu, MacOS 10.6+. Later: Redhat's (CentOS, Fedora, RHEL), SUSE, maybe other Linuxes, and *BSD (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD). Don't see a need/application for Windows/VMS (even though VMS can be posix-friendly) or other non-unix-like OSes at any foreseeable point.

See also: background on pre-existing git, file-metadata/file-type tracking capabilities at this stackoverflow question I posted.

Additionally: if anyone cares to develop requirements for such capability, I am sure that could prove useful, particularly for a new/uncompleted project to address above.

microsoft excel - How do I stop my account name appearing in Office application title bars?

I have an Office 365 Subscription with Office 2016 installed. All of my Office Apps including Word, Excel, Access and PowerPoint include my name in the application title bar, near the top right corner, adjacent to the "Ribbon Display Options", "Minimize", "Restore/Maxmize" and Close buttons.

I'd like to take some screenshots without including my name in every screenshot. How can I prevent my name from appearing in the title bar?

windows 7 - Download images from a site

I want to download images from a site say, xyz.com which has the following directory structure:

./a/b/c/d/pikachu.jpg

There are thousands of images inside d directory and they are directly accessible if I type the complete address but to download all the images in bulk I am using Extreme Picture Finder which is unable to access through a starting address(It is forbidden).
My question is different form other similar questions in firstly, I can't use wget because I don't have a linux installed. Secondly, I am in favor of delegating the task somehow to Extreme Picture Finder.

Any suggestion is highly appreciated.

I am using Windows 7.

linux - Fedora 19 (you have not created a bootloader stage 1 target device)

I want to install fedora 19 to my HDD but I get errors:

1. you have not created a bootloader stage 1 target device


2. sda6 must have one of the following disklabel types: GPT.

I tried:

• Create 1-2 mb BIOS boot partition. (does not work)


• Change UEFI to Legacy first in BIOS (USB does not boot)


• Delete BOOTX64.efi in EFI folder in bootable USB (USB does not boot)



• Use other USB creator - unebootin, lili usb, linux live usb creator (does not work)

Where is the problem? I've got Lenovo z500.

boot - Stop external usb harddrive from booting

Whenever I boot my machine with an external drive plugged into the usb I get an error:

Reboot and Select proper Boot device
or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot
device and press a key

I've reviewed my boot order, but my bios does not list any USB boot options.
How can I stop my motherboard from trying to boot to my external drive?

 MB: P4P800SE w/ AMIBIOS 1005
 ext. HDD: FreeAgent 750gb

Answer

After I disabled "Legacy USB Support" in the BIOS, the system skipped USB drive detection and booted normally.

windows 7 - Computer slow or is it just me?

My main computer these days is a Laptop with an SSD.

Besides that, I have a desktop gaming rig. It is from last year, but it still runs recent titles really well. Crysis 2, Witcher 2, Diablo 3, not a problem.

However, after startup it is really slow. Like, Firefox will take half a minute from invocation to window. Steam will take minutes until it is up and responsive. Even the task manager takes, like, dozens of seconds to show up.

Later on, Firefox takes less than five seconds to start and everything is snappy, but the system will take at least fifteen minutes until it gets realistically usable. Luckily, it can be used to start games beforehand, so this is not usually a big problem.

The hard drive is about half full and not fragmented. However, this really seems uncomfortably slow to me, but then my day-to-day computer has an SSD and my expectations might be off. I am really not sure any more.

So, is there something wrong with my system or is this really expected behavior?

Edit: I am running an i5 760 @ 2.8 GHz with 4 Gb of memory on Windows 7 x64 with a Radeon HD 6800.

Edit 2: It seems the "slow" time at the beginning is caused by MsMpEng checking all the executables of all the games I have installed. Thus, this will have built up slowly as I installed more and more games. But why is MsMpEng doing that on every startup?

Answer

On Windows 7 there's a great utility called "Resource Monitor", it will show what apps are using the disk/cpu/network/memory (sort by the different columns to zero in on a particular resource usage).

Fire it up and watch what's running. Also, have a look in your Event Viewer to see if there are any services having a problem during start-up.

keyboard - Why does Ctrl+Alt+< not work?

My new laptop has a bit of an unusual German keyboard layout where the < key is located to the right of AltGr (see image below). This makes typing \| (AltGr+ß followed by AltGr+<) really really hard (and when typing math-stuff in LaTeX, this happens really really often). Then, I found out that all the AltGr-combinations can be replaced by Ctrl+Alt-combinations. On my machine this works for all AltGr-combinations EXCEPT AltGr+<.

So my first question is: Why? Why would Ctrl+Alt+* work for all keys except <? And my second question is whether it is possible (preferably but not necessarily without external software) to map AltGr+´ to AltGr+< to make typing \| easier?

Answer

Thanks to @harrymc for hinting at AutoHotkey.

I use the following AutoHotkey-script to map AltGr+´ on my keyboard to the pipe symbol |.

#NoTrayIcon

IconVisible := 0

; Map AltGr+´ to send a pipe character "|".
; ^! means Ctrl+Alt and
; VKDD is the AHK virtual key code for my ´-key.
^!VKDD::Send |

; Toggeling the AHK tray icon
; ^!+ means Ctrl+Alt+Shift and VKDD again is the ´-key
^!+VKDD::

  if (IconVisible == 1) {
    Menu, Tray, NoIcon
    IconVisible = 0
  } else {
    Menu, Tray, Icon
    IconVisible = 1
  }

I found the AHK virtual key code by running some dummy AHK-script, double-clicking the tray icon and then opening View->Key history.

memory - Maximum RAM restrictions

I have a eMachines ET1862 with an Intel i3-550 and 2GB DDR3 RAM. Since 2GB is wayyy too slow (quick look at task manger shows it's been running at ~80% RAM since boot) I want to upgrade the RAM.

Concerning the maximum amount of memory I can fit, I looked up the model of PC and found it could handle up to 4GB. The websites I looked at also said it had 2 RAM slots.

Then I opened up the case and found 1 stick of 2GB DDR3, along with three empty RAM slots. After looking up the motherboard (IT It said H57H-AM2 in a load of places so I figured that was the name) and it came up with four slots and 16GB max.

So now I'm confused: what limits the amount of RAM you can have on a motherboard? I know the OS is fine as I've got win7-64bit. Is there anything more than the motherboard and the OS influences this limit?

Answer

The Maximum amount of memory is also determined by OS, in your case depending of your Windows 7 Version:

Home Basic     : 8GB
Home Premium   : 16GB
Professional   : 192GB
Ultimate       : 192GB

Corporate      : 192GB

Comparison Chart Windows 7

Also is good to check what the brand says.

About ET1862 Here is the datasheet it says:

Maximum 4 GB

And is determined also for CPU:

Here is the datasheet of your CPU it says:

Maximum 16 GB

for your Motherboard Specifications too it says:

Maximum 16 GB

Here is a link for yours:

display - Monitor with different power supply

I want to power a monitor using a 12V car battery.

My monitor uses 19V and 1,5A of power and it includes an AC power supply. However, I don't want to transform my 12V into 110 or 220V and then let the power supply transform it back to 19V again, because that would be stupid I think. So I found a power supply which converts 12V into 19V and it has the proper connector, but says it can output 4A. Therefore I wonder: will this power supply burn my monitor, because it supplies 4A, or will the monitor make sure it will only draw as much as it needs (1,5A)? So is it safe to use a different power supply with a monitor?

Answer

Yes, as long as it supplies the 1.5Amps at the 19Volts plus a bit more (surge) current (Amps) for any startup, charging caps and all, and it will work fine. As long as the voltage is correct, the device will only draw the amount of power (current) it needs.

With notes that some DC-DC circuits might not be as clean as the monitor's own power supply would be. Some DC-DC "adjustable" voltage circuits will only supply their theoretical maximums at specific voltages, not the whole voltage range, so if it is adjustable voltage it might not be 4A real, but 4A maximums.

It is (actually) a good idea to have a higher current converter (of the correct voltage) that would be able to cope easily with the smaller current draw, without overheating and being even less clean power (versus maxing out the capabilities of the design).

It is a good idea to have less conversion like you are trying to accomplish, less losses, but you may have more to learn about power driving a specific device beyond some few specs, and the nuances of a particular curcuit.
Sometimes a curcuit requires an additional heatsinking of the mosfet for the high output, an added output capacitor would make the output cleaner.

hard drive - Windows ssd upgrade with old hdd

I want to use Windows 10 with a Samsung ssd and a secondary internal hard drive. I just added the new ssd, but now the hdd can't be initialized and the ssd boot is so slow. I installed Windows 10 in the ssd without the internal hdd first, and added it after.

I noticed that If I remove the HDD from the Bios the laptop booted in seconds from the SSD, if I add the HDD it boots in minutes.

I think there is a recovery partition in this hdd that is making this happen. I thought linux would help me, so I want to format the hdd from an ubuntu live usb to fix it. I used gparted but It didn't work as expected.

In gparted, I selected my HDD and deleted all partitions, then formated it in NTFS. When I started Windows thinking the problem was solved, the HDD was recognized but the device can't be initialized, and Windows can't access the Hdd. It cannot be formated from Disk Management in Windows neither.

The hdd was fine before the ssd upgrade. What can I do?

EDIT: After unallocating space in my HDD from Ubuntu, I got this

http://imgur.com/a/Or19w

Right click, New simple Volumne, now shows an I/O error message and it does nothing...

Thanks

Answer

I answer myself.

I reconnected my internal hdd physically, in case it was disconnected.

Then, things went better. I cannot create the partition from Disk Management, but I used the following commands to create the partition

diskpart
list disk
select disk 0
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
format fs=ntfs quick

Then I used a Disk Partition tool like Active Partition Manager to rename my device.

Thanks

Windows 10 Child account problems

I have a laptop that was running Windows 8.1 that I've recently upgraded to Windows 10 Pro. I had to delete my six year old son's local account because Child Accounts now have to be Microsoft accounts. That means changing his password to something that's going to be difficult for a six year old to remember, oh well.

I've got a couple problems now. The main thing my son used to do in his account was to watch YouTube videos. We did bing video searches for kid-friendly terms and would then pin them to the start screen. I'm able to do pretty much the same thing now, but he can't watch any of them. We can see the preview of the videos in a bing video search if we hover over them, but when we actually try to view them we just see a blank white square. Also, if I try to visit youtube.com by typing that in the address bar in Edge or IE it seems to run forever, almost like a DNS problem. This was with "block inappropriate sites" set to off in family settings. I've turned it on, but it didn't help.

With 8.1, it would filter some YouTube videos, but it would see a message on the screen to that effect. My recollection with 8.1 is that you could set various levels of blocking set, this seems to be gone now. In general the family settings in 8.1 offered much more control, but there's no message on the page. I'm afraid that if I add youtube to the allowed list, it won't block ANY youtube videos, which would be BAD.

Another problem I'm having is that Windows 10 seems to have lost the ability to ask a grownup for more time. I've allowed my son 1 hour per day (previously 45 minutes, but the new Family Settings time limits aren't as granular as before.) When he ran out of time in 8.1 it would offer me the chance to log in and give him more time. I've been eating up my son's computer time trying to troubleshoot these problems, but I haven't found any way to give him more time. The message that's displayed on the screen when he's running low on time implies that this is possible, but I don't see how.

power supply - Cable from laptop brick to wall

I've seen plenty of questions asked about the power output of laptop bricks to the laptop - however my question is does the plug and cable that runs from the laptop brick to the wall need to match up?

My laptop brick has the following spec:

Input: 100-240v
Output: 19v, 2.1A

The only cable I can find anywhere that will fit this has the following spec:

Voltage: 10A 250V

Is this likely to cause any damage?

Would be most grateful for any advice.

Cheers.

macos - Why does my MacBook Pro (8,2, running Yosemite) get so hot?

This may look like a duplicate, but I've done research and noticed that everyone else is asking why their MacBook Pro Early 2011 (8,2) gets so hot- while they're using it. I constantly have activity monitor open to see if it's working hard and I never get more than 1/4 full- yet my fans are going off like it's a race to see which can spin faster. I also have a Mac Mini that CONSTANTLY hits 100%CPU usage - and I can NEVER hear it's fan. I've tried dusting the fans off, only to find that they were already clean. I've tried looking up possible causes, but it seems that everyone else with this problem is working their mac hard. While typing this, my CPU is at 80% idle and the temp is 163F, with fans at 6192rpm.

windows 10 - Usb stick in system devices but not in drives after re-partitioning with BootIce

I had usb stick that was formatted as iso.

Today i tried to recover it's original size (by using Bootice) and it worked ok, but now I can only see stick in System -> Disk Drives but not in Windows Explorer

Disk is formatted

How do I make usb stick appear in drives?

Shutdown.exe won't run on Limited User account

Win XP SP3 Stand alone PC

My Username has always been an Administrator but for security, I decided to create another Admin account and change my own account type to Limited. Now, using MY account, several problems including shutdown.exe won't work at all. I can turn off the computer using Start>Turnoff Computer>Turnoff but not using the shortcut button to shutdown.exe on my desktop.

What can I do to use shutdown.exe OR can I create a shortcut to "Turnoff"?

Thank you.

How to clear current “read-only” state on a USB flash drive I setup with Rufus?

Three weeks ago I used Rufus 2.2 to install Windows 10 on my machine, and it has write-protected my flash drive.
I’ve tried diskpart:

diskpart

att disk clear readonly 
clean
create partition primary
format fs=fat32 quick

And it kinda worked, it removed the image off the USB, but now it’s showing:

Current Read-only State : Yes
Read-only  : No

Boot Disk  : No
Pagefile Disk  : No
Hibernation File Disk  : No
Crashdump Disk  : No
Clustered Disk  : No

And I can’t format it or write on it.

The drive is a a Kingston DataTraveler G4 32GB model, without physical switches. How would I restore it back to normal (rw) state?

windows - Running a .bat file uploading image files, want to know what files are new?

I've got a .bat file that I created, which uploads new files to my company's server.  It works great, but after it runs, I have no idea what files are new vs same.  When the batch file runs, I can see when it pops up as new and when it pops up as same, but I want to create a log file that shows what files are new, excluding the files that weren't uploaded.

Currently, this is my .bat file:

robocopy "C:\HUSAPOGDATA\Product_Library" "\\NOAMSNYW024.noam.heiway.net\NationalAccounts\Category Management\Space Planning Images\Product_Library" beer.mdb
robocopy "C:\HUSAPOGDATA\Product_Library" "\\NOAMSNYW024.noam.heiway.net\NationalAccounts\Category Management\Space Planning Images\Product_Library" SMSB_Library.mdb
robocopy "C:\Pog Images\Images\Beer" "\\NOAMSNYW024.noam.heiway.net\NationalAccounts\Category Management\Space Planning Images\Pog Images\Images\Beer" /E *.1 *.2 *.3 *.7 *.8 *.9 /MIR /S /V /NP /ZB

I use the below command to log the data,

fromlocal2network_productlibrary_new.bat > C:\Merch\log.txt

but I don't want all of the command output, since the file gets huge from thousands of files being uploaded.  Is there a way to separate out the new files from the old in the log file?

Closing RT windows in Windows 8.1

I used to be able to close RT apps (Reader, Mail, Settings etc) on my Windows 8.1 laptop by hovering to the top of the screen. A black bar slides in with on the right side a red cross. This closes the app as usual.

Now somehow (I am not aware of any updates) I can't close the apps this way anymore. I am using Alt + Tab to get out of the fullscreen apps which gets quite annoying.

With my fingers I can drag the app to the bottom of the screen and the app closes, returning to the Windows 8 Start screen. This on contrary to the red close button, which returned to the previously opened app (I much more like that behaviour). Also working with a mouse in a desktop setting, this doesn't work.

How am I able to return the red cross for RT apps?

/edit:

I now notice the whole active borders are gone. Sticking to the left, the previous apps don't appear. Sticking to the right, the blue bar with settings etc doesn't appear. Swiping my finger from the right border inwards does still work. It doesn't matter if I am using an external mouse or the trackpad.

Disabled automatic login in Windows 10 does not work anymore

In my Windows 10 Pro 64bit I have several accounts without passwords (I won't need it at home, I just want to let each one have his profile) and after following some hacks which involve registry and policy edits I managed to have a solution where the list of my users would show after start without showing the lock screen and without automatically login the last active user.

Now after the last major update it seems to be the case that something changed and the hack does not work again. I could prevent the lock screen, but the system would login no matter what I try.

Did anyone manage to do it very recently without having to set a password for each one?

---

Things I tried:

Can I disable auto logon on windows 10 home

How to prevent automatic login of the last user in Windows 10?

Windows 8: how to stop auto login

Answer

Since Windows 8, Microsoft have been making it very difficult to retain the classic logon sequence - where Windows stops during startup and displays the list of available accounts. This is only an issue when you want to use multiple accounts without any passwords (eg on a family home computer)

The first fix was a simple registry change to the following registry entry:
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI\UserSwitch

Enabled = 1 (default is 0 - where Windows auto starts the last account used)

Windows 10 disabled that fix by resetting the "Enabled" value back to "0" during bootup. Windows 10 Pro users were able to setup a Logon script (using Local Group Policy Editor) - which reset the "Enabled" value back to "1" before Windows checked and used it's value. See this thread: How-to-prevent-automatic-login....

The most recent change has been made in Windows 10 Fall Creators Update (1709)
- where Microsoft have disabled the Logon Script fix. See this thread:
Stop_automatic_login....

Currently there is no working fix to restore the classic "Pause at User Account List" option, and so far I have not been able to prove the exact failure mode of the Logon script hack.

The two possibilities seem to be that after the 1709 update:

1. Windows no longer checks the "Enabled" switch value and just uses a default logon behaviour


2. Windows has change the timing of the logon steps
   
   
   
   
   • and the GPEdit logon script now runs either too early or too late to prevent the unwanted auto logon.
   
   

Any potential new fix will depend on exactly what Microsoft have changed.

windows - How to prevent opening same program on terminal server by the "same user" with command prompt?

I have several users that use Remote Desktop App (Server 2008) and when they open the .BAT file I have created, it opens up two programs...however, I need to prevent the same program (in this case Outlook) from opening up multiple times...

I created this line in my .BAT file...

tasklist /nh /fi "imagename eq outlook.exe" | find /i "Outlook.exe" > nul ||(start /min Outlook.exe)

It works fine...except, I have multiple users logging on to this "terminal server" and running the same .BAT file...so what happens is when "User 2" logs on, they don't get Outlook started because it already shows as running in the task mananger under "USER 1"...

I need to be able to distinguish the "imagename" and "username"...well the "username" would be %USERPROFILE%

Answer

How to prevent opening same program on terminal server by the “same user” with command prompt?

I have multiple users logging on to this "terminal server" and running
the same .BAT file...so what happens is when "User 2" logs on, they
don't get Outlook started because it already shows as running in the
task manager under "USER 1"

Give the below logic a shot as it'll use the %Username% environmental variable to only get the current TASKLIST entry for the Username of the user account profile that runs that command. . .

TASKLIST COMMANDS TO GET PROCESS FOR ONLY THE USER RUNNING IT

TASKLIST /NH /FI "USERNAME eq %Username%" /FI "imagename eq outlook.exe"

USING WITH YOUR EXAMPLE LOGIC

TASKLIST /NH /FI "USERNAME eq %Username%" /FI "imagename eq outlook.exe" | find /i "Outlook.exe" > nul ||(start /min Outlook.exe)

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Additional Reading and Resources

memory - is this iMac RAM compatible with my T530 Lenovo Lunchbox?

I'm looking to upgrade the RAM on my laptop from 8gb to 16gb. It seems that 8gb just doesn't cut it any more and I often find my RAM usage maxed out just by having a couple of tabs open on Firefox and Chrome.

I'm shopping around for laptop RAM and I stumbled across this:

http://www.msy.com.au/pc-components/9692-patriot-imac-so-dimm-16gb-kit8gx2-ddr3-1333-notebook-ram-psa316g1333sk.html

Patriot iMac SO-DIMM 16GB Kit(8Gx2) DDR3 1333 Notebook RAM

PSA316G1333SK

PC3-10600 (1333MHz) Data Rate

204-Pin Dual in-line memory module

Non-ECC Unbuffered SODIMM

2 Rank Double-sided module

7.8US Refresh Interval (8192 CYCLES/64MS)

1.5V Power Requirement

Auto and self refresh capability

PCB height: 1181 (mil)

Serial Presence-Detect (SPD)

100% tested

RoHS Compliant

It sounds good, but I'm no hardware expert. I was wondering if this RAM is only compatible with apple iMacs (seeing as it says "iMac" in the description)? Or would it be compatible with my Lenovo "Lunchbox" T530?

bsod - Windows 7 Shutdown Delay

I am experiencing an issue with Windows 7 Professional. The computer experiences some issues randomly (internet connectivity, slows down, etc). At this point I will try to shutdown the computer, which ends up taking at least 15 minutes. The computer logs out and displays "Shutting down" for 15 minutes. Eventually it will shutdown. When it comes back up it displays an error message and indicates that there is a dump file.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I have already rolled back recent updates but it doesn't seem to have helped. I can link the dmp files somewhere if they would be of help.

Thanks!

microsoft excel - How to apply a formatting rule to a whole row based on a cell value

I'd like to Bottom Border to a whole row where a certain cell is non-empty. I have managed to do that by using conditional formatting formula =$A2<>"" and applied that to the whole column.

My problem with that solution however is that it only creates the border only for the single cell and I want the whole row to have the border. It doesn't look like there is anything can be done from the "Format Cells" dialog.

EDIT:

Below is what I have at the moment:

And this is what I want to achieve (assume that the bottom border goes until the end of the row):

This is the conditional formatting rule that I applied:

Any other way to achieve that?

Answer

Do you want the formatting for every row to be based on the value in cell A2? If so, just select the rows you want to format, and use this conditional-formatting formula: =$A$2<>"".

If instead you want each row's formatting to be based on the value in that row's A column, just use the conditional-formatting formula you already mentioned: =$A2<>"".

partitioning - How do I shrink a partition on Windows, it seems broken?

Hello. I'm using Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit.

After managing my software moving it to some other partition for another OS, I have a partition table that is a bit bizarre. In fact, for example, I can reduce the C: partition to only 14 GB (instead of 70 GB), and I can't add those 14 GB to the partition F:.

So, I ask to you if there are some ways to fix my partition table, without touching the actual OS. (Maybe working when the OS start, or in the pro-visionary modality).

I think this is an hard or maybe impossible request, but I'm looking for a solution I could try!

I remember in the past I use Partition Magic, and sometimes it works for this kind of stuff.
(But, sometimes, not at all hehe).

Cheers

Answer

A great tool that I use to shrink, expand, or even delete partitions is GPartEd (Gnome Partition Editor). The data center I work at uses this tool sometimes too (it's trusted). I would just advise that you attempt to backup your precious data first because I have had a computer BSOD on me after using GPartEd before.

Good luck.

laptop - Swap FN modifier for a particular key

I have recently bought a new laptop and I have a keyboard "steelseries". The keyboard is of very good quality overall, with just a small problem :

The keys "PageUp" and "Origin" are on the same physical key, as well as "PageDown" and "End". The default behavior is to execute "PageUp/PageDown", and I need to hold "FN" to be able to type "End" or "Origin". Not really convenient for a programmer...

Is it possible to swap the FN function just for these particular keys ? I'd like the default behavior to be "End/Origin" and not "PageUp/PageDown"

I am running Windows 10

The actual laptop is a MSI Ghost GS60

Answer

You can use a software mapping tool, such as AutoHotKey or SharpKeys

Although you know this, I put in for clarity (for other visitors) but the search phrase you need is "

software keyboard mapping

Or

keyboard mapping tool

These will usually bring up a wealth of information.

hard drive - Windows 7 "freezes" (chills?), and then "unfreezes" after about 1 minute

I have an Acer Timeline 1810T netbook (4GB RAM) with Windows 7 x64.

About once or twice a day, it "freezes" - the reason I put this in quotation marks is that it does not really freeze, as I you cant move mouse, etc.

I can move my mouse and jump between different applications, but I cant use the applications for anything. So I can jump between notepad and Firefox, but I cant browse to a new web page.

I have been trying to determine the source of this misery for a while now, and I suspect it has something to do with the hard drive - indirectly if not directly. Here are some screen shots of the resource monitor during a "freeze" and during normal operation:

Freeze:

Normal operation:

As you can see, CPU is fine during freeze, but the disk is going bananas.. Does anyone have an idea of what these reading means, or about the problem in general? There seems to be no specific activity that sets this off - it can be during browsing, or during media playback with nothing else open.

The fact that I can see navigate to applications but not use them might suggest a hard drive problem as well? Maybe I can access the stuff that is in RAM, but not anything that would require interaction with the drive.

keyboard - Windows: Why does the Alt Gr key does not work when an RDP session is running?

I came across some really strange behavior in Windows 7. I usually have open a remote desktop connection to another Windows (Win 7 or 10) machine. Nevertheless, I mainly work on the local machine. Everything, including the Alt Gr key works perfectly. Now let's say I lock my PC by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del and unlock it again, the Alt Gr key just does not work anymore. I need to Alt+Tab to the Remote Desktop Window, then Alt+Tab back to some local program like some browser and - voilá - it works again.

This is a problem as some characters on a German keyboard can only be accessed by using the Alt Gr modifier key. When entering passwords I don't usually see what characters I type, so this causes failed login attempts.

Note that I already completely re-installed Windows on both the remote machine as well as the local machine and it does not seem to depend on which remote machine I am connected to. (However, I cannot tell if this also happens when connecting to remote machines running other OSes.) And, of course, when I am not connected to any RDP session, I don't have any issues with that key.

While researching on this issue I stumbled upon this link, unfortunately it does not provide a solution:
https://forum.devolutions.net/topic9714-altgr-key-disabled-by-rdm.aspx

Some (German) Microsoft help page suggested to switch the "Apply Windows key combinations" in the RDP settings to "On this computer" - however, it does not change anything.

Any further suggestions?

Make OneDrive desktop play nice with Bitlocker protected drives

Here is my environment:

• Windows 10 (also occurs with 8.1)


• System partition C: is not encrypted using bitlocker


• "Data" partition E: is encrypted using bitlocker with manual unlock


• OneDrive desktop sync location: E:\OneDrive

When Windows starts, I manually unlock E: using my passphrase.

The problem

When my computer starts, OneDrive complains that my OneDrive sync location is not available. This is because the location is within a bitlocker-protected drive that is not yet unlocked.

We couldn't find the location of your OneDrive folder.
Click OK to reconfigure your OneDrive folder.

[OK] [Close]

Whether I click OK or close, OneDrive deletes its own configuration and starts from scratch. "Hello, this is OneDrive, a place for all your files blah blah blah". I am forced to reconfigure the sync location and a very long sync operation starts.

This has been reported on technet and on uservoice [1, 2]. The only answer people get is:

Encrypt your system partition and enable auto-unlock for your secondary partition. This way the partition will be unlocked before OneDrive starts.

OK but I do not want to encrypt the system partition. I want OneDrive to wait for my partition to be unlocked and then do its job.

Question

Do you know a way of delaying the startup of the OneDrive desktop app?
This would avoid the bug.

Do you know any other trick that would prevent the app from deleting its own configuration and state when this occurs?