Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with Vista

What is the difference between Eject and Safely Remove Hardware in Vista?

dave99 — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 00:12:39 -0800

What is the difference between Eject and Safely Remove Hardware in Vista? When I use my Kindle with Windows Vista, and I plug it into the computer through USB, the Kindle shows a message that I should eject the Kindle to continue to use it while it recharges.

I tried doing "Safely Remove Hardware", and the message remains. I then unplugged and reconnected the Kindle, and then tried to "Eject" the Kindle from My Computer, and that worked fine, the message disappeared.

I always thought Safely Remove Hardware and Eject did the same thing. Obviously the Kindle can detect the difference - so what is the difference?

This disc was made for bootin'

CodeMonkey — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 13:10:19 -0800

I would like to make a custom boot disc that is very simple to the user. All it would do is restore an image from 6 DVDs to a hard drive. The only options I would like the user to see is: 1) format drive 2) restore drive 3) exit I would like to create this menu and all sub menus that I see fit. I have seen UBCD but it is too complicated for the people I know. I would like to use Driveimage XML and have it read the discs one at a time to restore the drive. Any suggestions?

Can I still restore my laptop after Windows 7 Upgrade?

octothorpe — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 07:59:59 -0800

I'm planning on upgrading my HP laptop to Windows 7 and want to know if the internal Vista restore image will still be available after I do that. I have a HP DV6915 Pavilion Laptop that came with Vista pre-installed and came with a Vista restore image on a separate partition on the harddrive. I've used that image to restore the machine to the factory settings twice now without any problem. Now, I just bought the Windows 7 upgrade disk but haven't had the courage to apply it yet. What I want to know is if that upgrade will kill off that restore image or if I will still be able to use it revert back to Vista if the 7 upgrade goes flooey.

Trying to get old files from older HDD

Student of Man — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:56:49 -0800

I'm trying to get my old files off of an old Hard-disk. Old PC is XP newer PC is Vista. I removed the Hardisk from the OLD computer. I bought a USB to SATA/IDE cable. When I plug in the Hard-disk via USB, I hear the confirmation tone that you hear everytime you plug in a USB. I see a "ST340082 0AS SCSI Disk Device" in the "Safely remove hardware" icon in the tray. but I do not see the Drive. I can't really afford an External Hard drive. But I will eventually if I have to. Cna anyone help me please.

Vista won't connect to internet

malhaley — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 07:21:01 -0800

I'm having trouble connecting to the internet with Vista Home. I connect using a repeater and line of sight to a business next door to my office (with their permission). My laptop is a HP G60. The same laptop has a partition with ubuntu on it and it connects without a problem. A older laptop with XP on it connects also. Trying to connect with Vista Home is intermittent. Any of you hive members have any suggestions.

Error installing Vista SP2

sailoreagle — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:28:56 -0800

I've a computer running Windows Vista 64-bit SP1. Attempting to install SP2 yields an error of "ERROR_NO_PROC_SLOTS(0x80070059)". Googling for the error code has found some people having the same issue, but no working solution at all. Any help? I can provide hardware specs / info if necessary.

Hard drive trouble?

R a c h e l — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:59:55 -0800

Hard drive(I think) corrupted - I'm drowning in information. Help? I'm sure this has been addressed elsewhere but since there are so many different problems that happen with computers/hard drives/etc, I'm having a lot of trouble differentiating.

Me: HP Laptop, running Vista and an expired beta of windows 7 on different partitions. Also have a recovery partition installed by HP but that's just the OS and stuff, not my stuff. I almost always use(d) Vista, and all my files are accessible from there.

Problem: Vista only starts up partway,then gets stuck with a blank screen (after the "Windows loading" screen). I eventually power it down, turn it on, and the computer suggests I try startup recovery, which fails.

Oh: a note: my dad may have been the last one to turn on my computer before this happens, and he said it said something about installing an update (I think he said a service pack, but there hasn't been a new one recently - why would this be installing now? I usually just let the automatic updaters work their mojo, don't pay too much attention to it, so I can't provide more detail, sorry)

In the 'details' section, the two tests that startup recovery said failed were Unknown bugcheck: Bugcheck 50 (with some parameters listed - I can provide those if it's helpful) and then it said repair action: system files integrity and repair. Result: failed. Error code: Ox2

Then, the other "root cause found" by startup repair was "System volume on disk is corrupt. Repair action: File system repair (chkdsk) Result: completed successfully Error code: OxO

It tells me that startup repair failed. If I power it down and start again, the same thing happens.

Windows 7 works fine, if that's relevant.

So, my question is multifold(Is that a word?): Can this be repaired? Can I recover my pictures etc on my harddrive (yes, I know I should have backed them up, was actually external harddrive shopping the day that this happened)? I have another, legal, copy of Vista. Can I install that(after recovering my data)? About how much will data recovery cost?

Thanks so much, this is my first Ask MeFi question so I'm a little nervous. Do let me know if I did anything wrong!

No sounds from laptop after 7 upgrade

wile e — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:51:24 -0800

Laptop upgraded from vista to 7, now having sound issues. Dell Vostro upgraded from Vista to 7. No sound from speakers, even after installing the dell supplied sigmatel driver. When I uninstall the Dell driver, Windows installs some driver itself and it gives me sound from my headphone jack, but not my speakers.

Dell Vostro 1400
Windows vista 32bit upgraded to Windows 7 32bit
4gigs ram
160hd
2.0 dual core

I am stumped. I hate wasting an askme on this, but I want to throw this thing out the window.

SSH, transparency, tabs, windows, and !putty.

SpecialK — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 18:26:38 -0800

Windows SSH Client for linux sysadmins that's not PuTTY? Transparency and Tabs needed! I'm obviously missing something. I mean, I've got xterm and all of it's clones on x11 and I've got iTerm on Linux, and both support fast rendering, background transparency to desktop (alpha), and there are nice features in some like custom keyboard shortcuts for different servers and scripting command to run across a group of servers.

Unfortunately, putty seems to be the only free option on Windows that's any good. And it doesn't have tabs without a wrapper add-on, and the add-on doesn't support transparency. KiTTY has background alpha, but no tabs, and background alpha doesn't work with the wrapper. Epic fail.

I'm willing to pay. What are the best ssh clients for Windows Vista or 7 with tabs and background transparency? "Use Mac/Linux" is as much of a deal killer as "no transparency", I'm afraid. There just isn't any other option at work.

Why don't my proxies work anymore?

msbrauer — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 17:08:00 -0800

Why have my proxies (Privoxy and GAppProxy) suddenly quit working? I'm using an up-to-date Vista installation. I use proxies periodically to get past China's Great Firewall. In the past, a strategy of Tor (by means of Vidalia/Privoxy/Torbutton) and GAppProxy (through FoxyProxy, set up using these instructions). I never use the two at the same time, i.e. if I'm using Tor, I'm not using GAppProxy, and vice versa. When I was last in China, in July, I had been using this setup for a few months with no problems.

I've just returned to China, and after a day or two of flawless operation, both proxies have quit working. To clarify, both proxy setups manage to get past the Great Firewall and transfer data. However, within a few seconds of data transfer through the proxy, I get a message from windows stating, "Privoxy has stopped working" or "HTTP Proxy. 127.0.0.1:8000 has stopped working" in the case of GAppProxy. Privoxy is running on port 8118.

Restarting the computer or the proxies doesn't solve the problem. Running one without the other doesn't solve the problem. Is there a possibility that something other than my computer is causing the problem, perhaps new strategies used by the Great Firewall spike the proxy somehow? The proxies remain operational if they are not in use, which is to say, if I start Privoxy or GAppProxy and don't transfer data through them, the services run with no problem.

While I haven't installed any internet-using programs in the week I've been back in China, since I didn't use the proxies for two months while outside of China, I can't be sure that the problem is a result of new conditions.

How can I troubleshoot this problem?

Thinkpad refuses to obey my wishes for higher resolution!

midatlanticwanderer — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 07:52:42 -0800

My new-ish laptop running Vista keeps resetting to 800 x 600 resolution on restarts (from crashing) and restarts from intentional shutdowns. How do I prevent this from happening in the future? Among other woes with Vista on my relatively new Lenovo Thinkpad T400 (purchased from the Lenovo outlet three months ago), it seems to crash frequently. When restarting from those crashes, it often resets to an 800 x 600 resolution from its default resolution of 1280 x 800. Also, when I intentionally shut down the computer, it will sometimes then start up in the 800 x 600 resolution.

I have seen some mention of this issue elsewhere (namely, here and here). The second link recommends setting the monitor to be the primary monitor and have it extended across the desktop, which I have already done. Otherwise, some of the solutions don't seem to apply (i.e. my "base video" item is unchecked on the boot tab of MSConfig).

The monitor on the laptop is a Thinkpad MaxBright Display 1280 x 800 ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3400 Series.

Any wisdom from the generally-more-informed hive mind would be much appreciated!

Vista can't find my soundcard?

NekulturnY — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:24:43 -0800

Why can't I record sound on my Vista box? I was trying to record some streaming media from the internet (video + audio) with Camtasia. I also tried with CamStudio (freeware) . Recording the video worked like a charm, but none of them managed to find any sound. So I tried to record some sound with my Windows Recorder, and even that wouldn't find any sound, so I'm guessing I didn't configure the sound options right. Fwiw: I can hear the sound just fine in my headphone.

Problem: there's two distinct "sound" centers in my control panel. One called "Sound" and one called "Realtek HD Audio Manager".

I already read some stuff on the internet about enabling the Realtek "Stereo Mix", so I did just that. The result is the same: no sound.

So for some reason, Camtasia and Camstudio can't find my sound card, it seems. Can anyone help?

How to merge multiple text files keeping original filename and date

chimrichalds — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 19:07:01 -0800

Hi AskMeFi. Can someone tell me how to combine 350 text files into one large text file so that the original filenames and dates are included above (or below) each entry? I'm using Vista Home Premium and they are all generic .txt files. I'm moving all of my notes into Evernote but want to save the names and dates of the individual txt files.

Can I make my taskbar transparent in Vista?

Pope Guilty — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 13:40:27 -0800

I recently got a new computer with Vista (I'm behind the curve, I know) and I'd like to know if I can make the background of the taskbar transparent. Google produces a number of weird and contradictory answers. Here's a picture of my desktop. I like how the gadgets and taskbar sit on either side of the screen, but would absolutely love it if the taskbar elements could hang there without a visible taskbar the way the sidebar background hides itself when it's not moused-over. Is this possible?

how risky is installing Win7 RC?

wilful — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 03:47:47 -0800

I'm installing Win7 RC over Vista - just how scrupulous should I be about backing up stuff? What is the likelihood of losing programs, data etc?

External hard drive for Mac & Vista PC?

saileyn — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 18:44:34 -0800

I need an external firewire hard drive for video editing on a Mac at university. Is there a product that will also let me access the footage stored when I'm at home on my Vista PC? We're using Final Cut Pro to log and capture our footage, which will be stored on the external drive. We're then editing on FCP, again using the external drive, but I was hoping to be able to also have access the footage after classes have finished, using my copy of Premier on my Vista PC at home.

Our lecturer recommended Western Digital drives, which I read can work on Mac and PC, but he's Mac-only so wasn't much help with my question. He's also recommended we get a "IEEE 1394b 800 (9 pin connection) Mac-compatible external drive, at least 500GB, preferably 1TB" if that helps any...

I need to go out and buy something this weekend, and am from Melbourne, Australia, so if anyone has any suggestions as to what might be suitable, and be available out here, it would be fantastic!

Thanks for your help!

What's up with my music files on my PC?

ishotjr — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 17:12:02 -0800

What is up with my music files' titles turning into nonsensical four-letter titles? Ok, this is a little long, but it's a weird problem that is hard to describe.

I use iTunes on a (Dell) Windows Vista PC laptop. I noticed this issue probably over a year ago, but was too lazy to do anything about it until now.

Thousands of my music files are in files within "C:\My Music" that are named with F and then a number, F00 thru F49. All of my music was originally in "C:\Users\ishotjr\Music\iTunes\iTunes Music," and some of it still is. Within the F-named folders, the files are named/songs titled in three different ways.
1) Most are with four letters in caps, example: AJOM. They are seemingly random and not acronyms of the real titles. Within this, most, in the artist/album, etc. fields in Windows Explorer, have the correct info. A few have nothing at all in those.
In either case, if I choose to play it in iTunes (by clicking the option within Windows Explorer, where I'm viewing the files), it brings me to the song that is properly titled within iTunes (i.e., AJOM takes me to "Levitate Me" by The Pixies in iTunes).
2) A few of the songs are named with their correct name, but with the track number proceeding it (i.e. 01 Debaser)
3) Even fewer are named completely normally, with just the actual song title.

Another weird twist is that in iTunes itself, there are a handful of files that are actually named with the four letter names. Most of these are all from a Velvet Underground greatest hits compilation, but there are a few that aren't.

There seems to be no pattern as to how I procured the music and what's in these weird files. I did bring most of the music onto my computer from my iPod when I got the computer, but some of it I have purchased since owning this computer. The software I used to bring the songs from the iPod to the computer was some free program that I don't recall the name of and deleted to save hard drive space when I was done using it.

The real kicker is that most of these weirdly-named tracks are NOT duplicates, so I can't just delete them. Most of the time, it's one or two songs from a given album that are named weird and in the F-named folder instead of in the folder with the rest of its album-mates.

It seems that I might be stuck consolidating the 49 "F" folders into one (not so hard, just tedious), then trying to rename the thousands of song backs to their proper names by clicking them through to iTunes and manually entering the name of each song into the file name in Windows, then moving all of the songs to the correct place. It's not necessary to do this to be able to listen to the songs, but it's annoying having my files all over the place, especially when I want to delete entire albums off of my hard drive to make space.

My actual question is two-part:
1) Has anyone ever had this weirdo thing happen to their music files before?
2) Does anyone know a better way to fix it than to do everything manually (which will take for-ev-er)?

I swear, I don't know how I killed your internet

Decimask — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 20:03:40 -0800

Please help me unb0rk my cousin's router. Partly, I'm just trying to figure out what the hell happened.

I just landed at my cousin's place temporarily. I pulled out my laptop (running Windows Vista), pulled up the network connections to hook up to the wireless. Everything seemed to be going normally, when it asked me for the PIN number on the Router. I had the WEP key in front of me, so this was surprising.

Got the PIN, continued in what I thought was an otherwise normal connection set up, and clicked "OK". BAM! Cousin on another computer loses internet access, and the connection is now named after my computer. I spend a bit of fiddlig trying to undo it, then get pissed off and hold in the "RESET" button on the back

Now:

I can't connect to the generic "Linksys" connection

She can't connect to it either.

I can't access the router's settings using 192.168.0.1 (conection times out) from the computer that's directly connected to the router--yet I can access the modem's settings just fine.

What the hell happened?

Router's a WRT54G2, if it matters.

I just want to play UNIRACERS!

Bageena — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 11:20:30 -0800

Argh. I've installed the drivers, I've searched high and low online, nothing is helping, so I'm coming to ya'll: how can I get my Xbox 360 wireless controller (connected to my PC via the charge and play kit via a USB port) to work on my computer? Specifically, I want to play ROMs with it. ZSNES and project 64 are the two emulators I'm trying to puzzle out right now. I've installed the 360 drivers (I'm running a 64 bit copy of Windows Vista Home Premium), it shows up in my Device Manager under 'Microsoft Common Controller for Windows Class' as 'Xbox 360 Wireless Controller via Play & Charge Kit' and says it's there and fine.
HOWEVER... under Control Panel - Game Controllers, there's nothing. I open it up, there's no controllers on the list. I click advanced, I go to choose my preferred device, again - nothing. Not on the list. When I plug the controller in, the computer makes a noise and the light on the charge part of the controller shows it's plugged in, but the controller doesn't turn on (not sure if it's supposed to actually) and it certainly doesn't seem to be working with my ROMs.

Help Mefi, help! Pretty please?

What codecs do I need?

Chocolate Pickle — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:05:29 -0800

What tool can I use on Vista to look at a decrypted M2TS file and to find out what audio and video codecs it uses? (M2TS is the file format used on Blu-Ray disks.)

BitLocker and the battery NomNoms

@homer — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 18:55:36 -0800

How much will BitLocker eat my battery? I've been using BitLocker on my laptop since Vista came out and continue to use it with the Windows 7 RC. In my experience the drive performance with and without BitLocker is about the same. What I don't know is if power usage is the same. I've read everything I can find about BitLocker and anything related to resource usage talks about disk reads and writes and system speed impact and how little impact there is. I can guess that since there is encryption and decryption that my battery life between charges is shortened. What I'd like to know is by how much. Are there any hard numbers from Microsoft or is there any way for me to calculate the extra load and figure out power usage from that?

Computer display flipped 90 degrees. Help!

goatdog — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 19:59:37 -0800

How do I fix my computer display? All of a sudden, everything on screen is rotated 90 degrees clockwise. Mouse controls are similarly changed: left is now up, etc. Resulted from a mistaken key combination, but I can't figure out which keys I hit. Running Windows Vista on a Toshiba Satellite laptop.

My god, it's full of permissions.

Iosephus — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 06:34:39 -0800

Registy editing permissions, group policies and Windows Defender, I think... Windows Defender, I guess I never cared much for you. It sat there disabled for a long time, but anyways I idly tried to turning it back on. Security Center said unable to. Googling lead me to a certain registry key that had to be edited manually (this being Vista Home Basic, wtf Microsoft?), called DisableAntiSpyware that was disabled by group polices or some such. So to regedit we go. Trying to delete the key tells me I don't have the permissions for it. I see the "edit" submenu of regedit should allow me to gain permissions. Nope, after I change to Administrators having full, I can't save it for unknown reasons (says unable to save). And that's as far as my googling led me.

This is certainly not critical (I have no stuff for WD to take care of re: malware or so), but I figured it would be a good time to learn how to do this kind of damned thing regarding registry fiddling. Help?

How do I make a folder in the root of a shared network drive inaccessible over the network but accessible to that computer?

token-ring — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 15:08:18 -0800

I have a 1TB secondary drive in my desktop computer that I have the root of shared over my local network. Inside are 5 folders, all but one of I want to be accessible over the network (one is a backup folder I don't want accessible to other network computers). Before I reinstalled my OS I had figured some way of changing the permissions so that if I was on the desktop itself I could get into the backup folder, but if I was on any other computer on the network I could see the shared drive and modify any folder but the backup one. I just recently reinstalled Windows Vista (Went from 32 bit to 64 bit) and now I can’t remember how I had set the permissions. I have a 1TB secondary drive in my desktop computer that I have the root of shared over my local network. Inside are 5 folders, all but one of I want to be accessible over the network (one is a backup folder I don't want accessible to other network computers). Before I reinstalled my OS I had figured some way of changing the permissions so that if I was on the desktop itself I could get into the backup folder, but if I was on any other computer on the network I could see the shared drive and modify any folder but the backup one. I just recently reinstalled Windows Vista (Went from 32 bit to 64 bit) and now I can’t remember how I had set the permissions.

Does anyone know how I can make that drive shared, and all the folders but the backup one accessible over my local network? I don’t want to set up a different share for each folder and I don’t want to create a separate folder for the shared stuff, I would like to leave the root of the drive shared but with one folder a network user can’t get into.

I am running Windows Vista Business 64 bit edition

Computer slowing for no reason!

moiraine — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 09:54:53 -0800

Why did my laptop (Vista) started slowing down dramatically for no reason? This is after I rebooted (many times), and turned off half the startup programs, ran anti-virus programs and AdAware. Today, I was using my laptop (Vista), had a couple of programs running, but nothing insanely memory-hungry -- Excel, Word, Publisher, SigmaPlot, EndNote, Chrome --, when all of a sudden, my computer started slowing VERY noticeably. When I am working within a single program, my computer works fine. When I switch programs, it takes a while before the other program opens. This is very frustrating, because I am a heavy Alt-Tab user, and while five seconds doesn't seem like a long time, it does in Alt-Tab world.

Anyway, I tried all the usual suspects -- rebooted, turning off start-up programs, checking the computer for malware. No luck.

Please help me!