Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with Windows

Windows Presentation Foundation for designers

relucent — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 08:40:56 -0800

What are some good resources for Windows Presentation Foundation that focus on its potential for designers? I work at a software company that is looking to rewrite our current product next year to utilize Windows Presentation Foundation. I have a very strong opportunity to be a user interface designer on this project - the person who comes up with the mockups and feature ideas, rather than the person who programs them.

Are there any good resources for WPF that focus on its potential for designers? Books, web sites, PDF propaganda from Microsoft, anything. I am looking for an overview of what it can do, features and limitations - things that would help a designer without getting too overly technical. (I can handle the technical if it'll help - I'm just trying to avoid a reference manual.)

Downgrading multiple Vista machines with one XP Professional license

danwalker — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 07:12:53 -0800

Can I "downgrade" multiple computers with Vista pre-installed using only one license of XP Professional? I need to purchase several computers, and it's getting more difficult where I am to find suitable hardware that comes with the Windows XP Pro downgrade pre-configured.

It's my understanding that, if Vista Business or Ultimate is pre-configured, I can "downgrade" to XP Professional if I have a copy of XP Pro (and am comfortable doing the downgrade myself, which I am). What I'm wondering is whether I need to own multiple licences of both Vista and XP, or if only one copy of XP is OK.

One would hope that one wouldn't need to purchase Vista AND XP for each machine, but I know this is not an area where reason rules. There's lots of reference online to doing the downgrade, but I'm having trouble finding specific mention of downgrading multiple machines with only one XP Pro license.

Your thoughts?

iTunes/iPod conversion - temp file?

Sweetie Darling — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 19:52:23 -0800

Help me solve an iTunes problem I hope I won't have. My poor little Dell has been working hard all day, processing a .M4V file using the "Convert Selection for iPod" feature in iTunes. After 12 hours it's about 75 percent done, but it's raining here. Our power has a bad habit of going out during storms, and I'll be really depressed if I lose this in-process file if/when the computer reboots. I can't find a temp file in any of the logical places to look, even though I assume (?) iTunes creates a second file when it converts. I guess I don't know exactly what iTunes is doing right now. But I am basically screwed if the power goes out? Will I have to start over from square one, or is there any chance the process could pick up where it left off? If so, what do I need to do?

Bonus points if you can explain why I'm having to convert this file, in spite of using Handbrake's iPod presets.

Rain, rain GO AWAY.

Undelete after a copy/paste error?

YoungAmerican — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 13:40:21 -0800

I lost a big file in a cut-and-paste snafu. Help! Yesterday I did an interview for my radio show, which generates a big (600+ meg) wav file. Today, I was getting ready to upload it to my FTP server so my editor can edit it. In FireFTP (FTP client for firefox), I cut the file along with another related file, and pasted them into a folder. It asked me if I wanted to overwrite the existing file (there was no existing file), so foolishly, I clicked yes. I got an error that said "error copying file" or something along those lines... and my files were gone. Not in the new folder, not in the old folder. I downloaded a file recovery program to another HD and am running it now. Is there anything else I can do? I'm using XP.

which windows server?

cowmix — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 08:28:25 -0800

Which version of Windows Server do I need? I have a timecard application that requires IIS on Windows 2003 or up.. That's all I need.. I don't need CALs (I don't think) or anything like that.. Just IIS..

What is the cheapest / best version of Windows 2003 to get.. and where should I buy it?

thanks!

Name that alternative file viewer

Lokheed — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 16:01:54 -0800

A few years ago I came across an alternative to Windows Explorer that let you browse the contents of your drives by disk space used. The display was a kind of Mondrian grid, with the files and folders taking up the most disk space having the largest area on the display. Can anyone point me to this utility (or something similar)?

Looking for an anti-duplicate file finder.

cosmac — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 17:14:12 -0800

Can someone suggest a Windows utility to search for non-duplicated files on different hard drives? I've got multiple hard drives with tens of thousands of files on them. Many are duplicates, but not necessarily in the same directories. I need to identify the files that are on one drive, but not on the other, regardless of their location in the directory tree. I've found plenty of comparison utilities, but they all seem to take into account the file path. There are also duplicate finders that work well and ignore the path, but I need an "non-duplicate" finder. I've done this before by using a duplicate file finder (Clonespy), deleting the duplicates. The files left are the ones I want. However, I really would rather not modify the original disks. Thanks!

Why aren't there universal 32->64 bit driver translator/emulators?

Mokusatsu — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 15:37:56 -0800

Why aren't there universal 32->64 bit driver translator/emulators? 64 bit versions of Windows require 64 bit drivers for printers, scanners and other devices. Many people upgrading to a 64 bit computer have had to retire perfectly good hardware simply because of lack of 64 bit drivers.

One way around this is to set up a 32 bit guest OS in a virtual machine and then run your devices from the guest OS, i.e. you can install your printer on a VMWare (or other type) virtual machine with XP or Vista 32 bit (or perhaps a Linux distro) and transfer your files to the guest OS when you want to print them.

Clearly the virtual machine is able to pass on commands to the device either via the host OS, or bypassing it altogether. This seems to me to be a proof of concept for a universal driver translator.

My question is, would a 64 bit emulator program doing essentially the same job as the 32 bit virtual machine be possible? Basically it would be a virtual machine with a stripped down OS that does nothing more than run 32 bit drivers on a 64 bit host.

If it is possible, how come such a program hasn't been written yet?

I'd willingly pay $100 for such software instead of updating my hardware, because running a full blown 32 bit guest OS purely to scan or print things is a bit of a hassle. I'm sure thousands of people would, and the existence of such software would remove one of the major objections people have to getting a 64 bit OS.

Gotta Be a Way

thedoctorpants — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 14:38:37 -0800

I want to easily port my cocoa app (osx) to windows. What are my options? Do I have any?

I feel like the Flash at a disco.

Shepherd — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 11:05:07 -0800

Why is MP3 playback sssuuudddeennllyy gggrriiinnddiinngg doowwnnnn? Until about six months ago, give or take, I could listen to MP3s on my computer pretty much regardless of whatever else I was doing. I did a pretty routine wipe everything/reinstall everything (XP Pro, upgrading from SP2 to 3 after the reinstall) back in May.

Recently, the MP3 player has started to grrriiinnnddd when I do pretty much anything on the computer. I've gone from WinAmp to QCD to Billy to try to minimize the program's CPU "footprint," but it persists. The songs start to stretch out, like HAL at the end of 2001 but with more digital artifacting. The MP3 players never crash, but stutter and grind to a halt, then slowly get up to speed, then start staggering again.

This happens when I open a program, or a document, or save something, or copy a file from one folder to another, or check my e-mail, or load a Web site like MetaFilter, etc. etc. Pretty much everything other than typing or moving the mouse -- and sometimes it just starts to spontaneously stutter as well.

I have an up-to-date Avast!, Ad-Aware and ZoneAlarm (free versions of all) showing no viruses, malware, etc. on my computer.

I've used the Ctrl-Alt-Del resource manager to see what's hogging resources, but the open programs like Firefox, Celtx, Thunderbird, etc. all clock in about 25K for CPU resources, and this "grinding" often happens when I'm running at about 50% of CPU in use.

Nothing on my computer has changed in terms of hardware since before and after this big reinstall and the consequent MP3 grind. No major software changes, either. It's really danged irritating. Is it SP3? General resource creep making all the programs that used to not kill my system resources suck up all my system resources? The difference between six months ago and now is extraordinary: I used to be able to just listen to music while doing whatever, and now everything makes playback stutter and stall.

I've reached the limits of my knowledge. Insight, folks?

What systems do illustrators use today?

tcv — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 19:22:34 -0800

I worked in printing directly for nearly 11 years. My last job that had anything to do with the industry ended in 2002. In 2002, the design side was still pretty Mac-centric. How is it today? Have people stayed with OS X and Macs? Or have they gone to PCs? I am asking for a niece who is interested in persuing 2D illustration in her college studies.

Graphics driver issues for XP on an iMac

mdonley — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 10:29:03 -0800

We can't boot into Windows XP, except in VGA mode, without the screen going black after the Windows XP "loading bar screen"; we can still hear everything, though. This is on an Intel iMac running Boot Camp, and the Mac side (Leopard) works fine, which leads me to believe this isn't a problem with hardware. Here's the chronology of what's happened so far. I'll try to provide as much detail as possible, which means I might include some red herrings; we're relative novices with Windows, so bear with us.

1. Upon restarting into Windows from the Mac side last night, an error message was displayed before any of the Windows warm-up/loading screens came up: "Unable to find Windows/system32/config/system" and asked us to insert the Windows XP disk to reinstall this file. (We're not totally recalling the phrasing here.)

2. Upon inserting the disk, we ran "chkdsk /r". This took hours and it was late, so we headed to bed.

3. This morning, the process looked finished, so we restarted.

4. The problem, as described in the lead-in above, occurred.

5. We went to VGA mode, and upon trying to go through the Appearance>Display control panel, were given an error message which told us that "the current graphics display driver cannot be used because it was written for a previous version of Windows" (which makes no sense, since we've never had another version of Windows on this computer...) and that we need to either "contact our hardware manufacturer to get an upgraded driver" (presumably this is Apple?) or "select one of the Microsoft provided drivers."

So the question seems to be: how do we procure this new driver? We can't get on the internet from the Windows side, and if it's telling us the driver that came with XP is somehow not compatible anymore, I'm not sure what we need to do. Where do we look?

One other thing that may be worthy of note, based on what I've read in other forums, is that this computer is used for some pretty heavy MMORPG playing, so perhaps the video card or graphics hardware may be reacting to being really hot and giving us display problems? We don't have any cooling system set up other than what came with the iMac.

If it makes a difference, I'm typing this question on a Macbook without Windows/Boot Camp.

One install is better than many

mcarthey — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 22:54:01 -0800

How can I create a Windows install image (ISO) from an already installed XP installation? I've used nLite in the past to create a slipstreamed version of Windows from my installation media, but I now have a fresh install of XP with all the basic applications installed that I'd like (virus scanners, chat clients, network tools, etc) and I'd like to avoid having to do this process all over again. Would it just be easiest to ghost the drive and can I do this to a CD image or is there another way?
I'm looking for a simple and cheap/free way to do this.

Thanks much!

How do I copy browser histories & saved passwords from one machine to another on XP?

GuyZero — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:40:00 -0800

How do I copy browser histories & saved passwords from one machine to another on XP? My PC got hit by a trojan. Not dead, but not well. The only way to be sure is to nuke it from orbit. Is there any way I can grab the browser profiles for IE and Firefox and re-install them after reformatting so that I still have my web history, saved passwords, etc?

External hard drive problem with XP

droplet — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 10:47:04 -0800

Can I get my WD external hard drive back to the way it was? Last year, I bought a WD5000C032 My Book Essential 500GB external hard drive. It's plug and play, so I plugged it in, formatted it, Windows assigned it as drive I and all was good. I got XP Service Pack 3 a few weeks ago and all seemed well. Also, XP is set up to automatically update, I use CCleaner about 2x a week, and I've got AVG 7.5 as my virus detector.

Last Friday, while on my computer, I got the data write error message. I'd never seen that before. There was only one folder in it when I checked the drive. I shut down, unplugged everything and rebooted. Then I replugged. Nothing. In the device manager, it's detected as a device, but disk management doesn't detect it as a drive. GetDataBack listed the device as a 2TB drive, which it isn't. Upon starting the data retrieval procedure, it gave me an "I/O error 23," showed 10 bad sectors and then stopped responding.

I've looked up on the the Windows XP support site and on various tech forums for a solution, but none seem to work. I also downloaded the WD drive manager from the support page, ran it and nada. The drive manager doesn't even see the drive.

Am I screwed? I will have a straight-up fit if I lose the media on this drive.

automatic back-up solution for someone who doesn't understand computers

conrad101 — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 06:11:02 -0800

I'm helping out an elderly lady who is using a laptop with XP which is showing signs of unreliability. It is now permanently sat on a table so it doesn't get moved around. She is especially concerned about a failure leading to a loss of outlook express e-mails. This person is easily confused by all things computer related so it has to work with minimum intervention and be as simple as possible. I was thinking of using an external drive and Acronis true image 11 home. I would set up True image to mirror on to the external drive. I was also thinking of automatically forwarding all outlook express mails to a web mail account - yahoo mail - as she has a yahoo account already. Being able to read from a webmail account would allow uninteruped service should anything go wrong. Is there anything wrong with this?

Keeping my hot side hot and my cool side crisp

Shepherd — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 06:19:17 -0800

When is a heat pump worth it? [warning: a bit long] Due to circumstances that are really too long to explain, I need to totally remove my oil heating system and replace it with an electric system. Quotes to tear out the old furnace, upgrade my ductwork and put in an electric furnace come in at about $4K. That's pretty much a given. Adding a heat pump, however, would cost about $5K to $6K. I currently have no air conditioning in my very old house with very old windows, and while I don't mind suffering a bit to save a few bucks, my fiancée is very much of the opposite opinion... but she currently lives in the southern States, and isn't really familiar with Canadian summers (it only gets stinkin' hot from about mid-July to mid-August where I live).
The pluses of getting the heat pump are essentially that I'm getting everything torn up to put the new furnace in and wired up right now, and installing something like a heat pump later would be much less convenient than getting it done now. It's also a "fire and forget" kind of solution for the next era of home ownership: get it done and it'll never have to be done again.
It's a two-story house built into a hill, so the upper floor is at street level and is entirely aboveground; the lower floor is below street level but is 90% aboveground thanks to the slope of the hill. About 80% of my time is spent on the upper floor -- the lower floor is my workshop, workout room, guest room, furnace room, storage space and a second bathroom. Total square footage is about 1800 sq.ft. divided evenly between the floors.
Since I've never had electric heat OR air conditioning, I'm in no position to compare expenditures vs. projected savings to cost out whether it's worthwhile. I'm tempted to put the $6K towards new windows, but that'd just be a drop in the bucket as far as window-replacement costs. The windows I have now are entirely unsuitable for window-mount air conditioners, and I'm not convinced those are a good idea at the best of times.
Most of the resources I've found re. heat pumps need you to figure out what you've been spending on heating/cooling for the past X years, but I don't have any such data. Previous threads like the one for Atlanta thread is interesting but not especially relevant for my situation. The Arkansas AskMe was a bit more helpful, but I'm more interested in its cooling properties than the heating ones.
I can't think of any other relevant information, but feel free to post more questions if that'll help me puzzle out whether or not this is a good move.
The environment is also a concern: while I know a standard air conditioner would be cheaper, is there one option that is much more green than the other? I'm already happy to be switching from oil to electric, as Quebec power is relatively green (mostly hydroelectric from northern dams).

WMM 5 versus 6

sandra_s — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 08:13:24 -0800

How do i get Windows Movie Maker 6, Vista, to publish at 640x480? By asking my members, the consensus was that they would prefer my videos to be .wmv format, high bit rate, high quality and at 640x480. Thats what my customers want.

Up until today, I had been using WMM Ver 5.1 on my XP machine. Using the "best fit to size" function I could find the best option by increasing the MB size through 320x240 then 640x480 until it hit 720x480, and go back down 1MB, and there it was.

That machine has gone all wonky and I had to upgrade to my Vista machine using WMM Ver 6. You would think that the newer version of WMM would be more robust and have more options. However, when I go publish now, the "best fit to size" goes straight from 320x240 to 720x480, adding 30-40% to the file size. The same file size that used to be assigned to the 640x480, are now assigned to super-high quality 320x240

As this is for an adult site, bandwidth is an issue, so I cant tack on all those extra MB.

Is there a way I can get 640x480 out of WMM Ver6 on Vista?

Thanks in advance!

XO

P.S. Please refrain from the "dump Windows Movie Maker and buy XYZ professional software" answers. :-)

My server just wont ... let ... go

bhance — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 19:00:05 -0800

Why won't my shiny new Windows 2008 server let its TCP connections go? I have a new Windows 2008 server (64bit, running on a big Dell rack) that acts as a file server for about 70 people - standard windows SMB, people hit it at \\servername on their XP desktops via login scripts.

Twice now, the thing has randomly 'frozen' and caused mass panic - all connected user machines freeze up when attempting to access their various shared drives on \\servername. Also, all their applications that rely on files on \\servername\mount also die/freeze/kill themselves/crash etc.

The thing is:

- All eventlogs on this box are clean. Zero. Nothing bad, no errors, application, system or otherwise.
- The network itself is fine. No high-bandwidth intruders, no heavy loads, no disconnects, no bad pings, nothing like that. Bandwidth is normal.
- Server processes are normal, nothing's eating up the local system's network or processor or HD load. No antivirus has kicked in, no special timed thing is happening, processor shows 99% idle, network is 1%usage, and so forth.

The *only* symptom:

.. a netstat shows many, many, many CLOSE_WAIT connections being held by all connected users. So desktop 'UserGuy' might have the following entries when the thing is 'frozen':



(a dozen similar CLOSE_WAITS ...)

TCP    192.168.1.201:445      UserGuy:1300      CLOSE_WAIT      4

 TCP    192.168.1.201:445      UserGuy:1302      CLOSE_WAIT      4

 TCP    192.168.1.201:445      UserGuy:1304      CLOSE_WAIT      4

 TCP    192.168.1.201:445      UserGuy:1306      CLOSE_WAIT      4

 TCP    192.168.1.201:445      UserGuy:1308      CLOSE_WAIT      4

 TCP    192.168.1.201:445      UserGuy:1310      ESTABLISHED     4

... and that sort of CLOSE_WAIT repeat occurs for all 70+ connected users. We reboot, log back in, and when it's fine and behaving we don't have this long litany of CLOSE_WAITs.

My initial hunch is that there's a similar open-tcp-connections limit of some sort that is being met, which then freezes out further TCP connections. XP users used to up this kind of internal Windows limit when torrenting and so on.

My hours of Googling shows you can up this number with registry hacking, but to me that's treating a symptom - not the cause.

So what's holding the connections open in the first place? Why won't they die? What am I missing here?

Windowless Workspace

u2604ab — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 16:23:08 -0800

Tips for making a windowless workspace a pleasant place to work long hours? I will move with the rest of my research group to a nicely renovated 3rd floor interior lab in just a few days. The lab, being in the center of the building, has no interior windows. Our desks are next to our benches, so I will soon be working all day without routine exposure to natural sunlight.

For those who have worked in similar situations: How does it affect you? How do you make a windowless workspace habitable? Houseplants? What kind? Supplemental lighting in addition to the overhead fluorescents? Artwork on walls? Other ideas? What works/worked for you?

How can create a simple program to modify Windows Address Book and Outlook Address Book entries?

mrbloo — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 07:53:09 -0800

I'd like to create a simple program that would modify the phone numbers in my MS Windows and MS Outlook Address Books (reason is we got new area codes). What is the simplest programming language on windows and best way to get this done by directly accessing the address books (without exporting to CSV)? I've done some VBS with WMI, Windows batch scripting, perl, python, javascript, PHP.. so I understand programming but not programming with MS Windows DLLs and COMs and APIs etc.

I've done some searching and found it quite complicated to work with VC++ or a similar language on MS Windows so far. Any input would be much appreciated. Thank you very much in advance.

Disabling The Trackpad on a Dell Inspiron 1525

NotMyselfRightNow — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 12:56:50 -0800

How do you disable a trackpad on a Dell Inspiron 1525 running XP? (Feeling like an idiot for having to ask this...)

My Dad got a Dell Inspiron 1525 running Vista Home a couple of months ago, had Geek Squad come out and transfer his files from the old machine and swap out Vista for XP. He's using a Microsoft Trackball Optical, and keeps accidently brushing the trackpad with his hands while typing.

He called tech support (me) to ask how to turn it off, and I can't figure it out. I'm a ThinkPad person myself, and I'm used to the UltraNav controls for the trackpad and nub, but the Dell doesn't have this menu. Instructions that came with the machine tell the user to disable it through a Control Panel menu that doesn't appear to be there for him. Windows help isn't being helpful.

I apologize for the potential lack of detail in the question - My dad isn't very tech savvy, and I'm trying to do this from a few hundred miles away. I'd appreciate any help or suggestions!

How do I enable simple file sharing on Server 2008 and stop my network from crashing?

Magnakai — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 09:15:12 -0800

How do I transparently share files from a Windows Server 2008 box to several XP computers? I want it to stop asking for a username and password when people try to access files. Also, can anyone point me in the right direction to solving this weird network issue I've been having? I've been assigned to run the IT stuff for the small business that I part-time for. They have four machines running Windows XP. One of them used to host all the office documents in a shared folder, enabling it to be accessed from across the network. They're connected via brand-new Cat 6 cables going into a wireless router, which is connected via another brand-new cable to a rather ancient 4-port ADSL modem.

They now have need of a dedicated server, and because of some incoming (in the next year) custom written software, it needs to be Windows Server 2008. I built them a low-cost machine with stable components and it seems to run fine.

I hooked it up to the network, connected to current share and transferred all the office files over. I then shared that directory. I created accounts that have the same username and passwords as the default accounts on the XP machines. I gave access to the office file directory to Everyone. At the top of that screen, it specified that if you selected Everyone, it wouldn't ask for a username or password. But it does!

When they were shared from the previous workstation, you could happily access them without entering a password. Is there any way to revert to this level of behaviour?

My second question follows from this - I tried accessing the folder from one of the comptuers on the workgroup, and I then entered Administrator and the password for the server into the request box that popped up. It connects absolutely fine. But once it's connected, at regular but random intervals, it seems to hang the workstation for a period of time and kill the network connection for the server. Other computers were able to access the network and connect to the internet fine. I can reproduce this problem Can anyone give me pointers to trying to diagnose this error, as obviously it makes the whole endeavour rather useless!

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, and thank you for reading this long question.

Reinstalling Windows on Laptop Without CD Drive

OverlappingElvis — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 12:03:12 -0800

We have a laptop at work that's just so full of crap, etc. that it's near unusable and we've decided to just wipe it and do a fresh install of Windows XP (for which we have the CD). The problem is, this laptop doesn't have a CD or floppy drive - it has some kind of dock connector on the bottom that I guess might have a CD drive, but we don't have that either. Any ideas?

Is Outlook the Best Option?

Bunglegirl — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 11:13:50 -0800

What email program should my older mother use on her new Windows machine? My 65 year-old mother's computer died and her new one arrived a few minutes ago. It's running Windows XP Pro, I believe. She uses it to look at her money on Quicken, play casino video games off of CDs and check email.

She was using some very old version of Outlook before. It always had problems that she had trouble with like non-clickable links and not loading images or opening images. It's interface was cluttered with all kinds of functions she doesn't need. Her email consists of maybe 10 messages a day, mostly forwards from her friends which often include images. She doesn't use a RSS reader, calendars or any Office programs. She's gotten pretty good on the computer for someone who only started a few years ago (she's not hunting and pecking anymore) but I think a simpler interface will help her.

I'm a Mac person and, although I am often forced to help her on Windows, I don't really know what I'm doing. What email program should I tell her to use? I am in charge of setting it up so whatever I tell her is "email" she will use. I simply switched her default browser to Firefox and she didn't care. I'm thinking of Thunderbird (she doesn't like webmail or web applications) but have no experience with it. What email program should I install for her or will whatever comes with it be fine and un-complicated?

Bonus question: She insists on having Norton and Spysweeper on there. I tried to get her to use something else less bloated/horrible and she refused. Those programs crippled her last computer (but it was super old and pieced together by my dad). She just paid for new subscriptions so are there any steps to make it work well but not kill this new machine? I've read a lot about it but could stand to do some more research for specific steps.