Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with windows and 7

Software to monitor network activity AND which program is active?

gnossos — Wed, 22 May 2013 08:59:17 -0800

I am looking for some software (cheap, free) that will tell me which program is currently accessing the net AND how much traffic is being transferred. I have found lots of software that will tell me which port is in use, or which port is assigned to a certain program on my computer, but I can find no software that will tell me which program on my computer is currently transferring files to and from the net and the current transfer rates.

I am using Win7 on both 32 bit and 64 bit machines.

Can anyone help?

Thanks.

Gnossos

Solution for attachment-free photo downloads over email?

wavejumper — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 20:55:43 -0800

I help this sweet old lady with computer stuff. She's running Windows 7 and uses an SBC account "powered by Yahoo!" (terribly out-of-date interface). She often receives emails with family photos from her daughter-in-law's iPhone. She CAN download them, and I'm teaching her how to wade through the attachment-folders that seems to create (for virus-scanning I presume) and then copy them over to her Pictures folder, where she can organize them. However, they are often rotated incorrectly because of some iPhone - Windows issue, and they are often checked "Read-Only"... Fixing both of these things is an easy thing for -me- to do, but she's an absolute beginner and not technologically literate - and she really wants to be able to handle photos on her own. She's unwilling to turn off her Norton virus protection settings, etc. She's loathe to switch to a different email program, either, though I suspect that would be the best solution...

Anyone know the best way for an old lady to download photos over email in as few steps as possible? What's the best email program that's going to make this as easy and intuitive as possible?

I know, she should get a Mac really, or an iPad. But within Windows, what would be your solution? You gotta think like a 75 year old. It's not easy to cut-and-paste. Opening a new window is a huge concept. The difference between a browser window and a Explorer window are not at all obvious. Anyway, thanks!

How to stop program from changing window state uncontrollably

aerotive — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 09:49:07 -0800

On a Windows 7 system open windows will sometimes rapidly cycle through windowed, maximized, and full screen states. I've run out of ideas and am looking for suggestions that might fix it. This happens intermittently and happens with most programs that get used on that particular system--Firefox, Chrome, and VLC mainly. Regular explorer windows cycle slower. Utorrent is affected a different way, with the menu bar and left pane rapidly shifting back and forth.

Media Player Classic is unaffected.

So far I've tried:

--Windows Update
--full virus and malware scan
--unplugged the keyboard and mouse (thought it might be a stuck key or button)
--video driver update
--startup repair
--restarted with all background programs off
--restarted with both system services and background programs off

None of those worked. Sometimes this will happen four or five times in a day, sometimes not for a day or two. Usually I can close the program, or get Task Manager open and kill the problem program, sometimes I just restart. That fixes it but just for awhile.

I think something has gone wrong at the core of Windows and my next step is to reinstall, but does anyone have an idea before I do that?

Cant get Modem to Install

CollectiveMind — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 23:29:18 -0800

I am trying to install a 56K modem card from a PC that ran Windows XP onto a PC that runs Windows 7. The card used either the LSI (Agere) driver or the Intel sep 536ep driver. I've found Windows 7 versions (64 bit) of both drivers and both are saved to my new PC. But I can't get either of them to install so that they show up in a list of drivers. One tells me to unzup the file, which I do, and nothing happens. The other says it is installing but again, nothing happens. Nothing meaing (1) neither modem shows up in the list of modems under the Phone and Modem tab in the Control Panel, or (2) the telephone software doesn't see the card, which is supposed to be for voice/fax. What am I doing wrong?

Can't figure out wireless connection issue

camylanded — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 12:22:13 -0800

I can't connect to the wireless network-- have connected with other laptops and my smart phone just fine to this connection. Is there something I can change on my computer? I need to figure this out ASAP or I may have problems with applying for jobs and doing my schoolwork! I share a connection with 2 other people—none of them have had any problems connecting to the network through phones/laptops/game consoles. I have an HP dv6-7122he laptop that runs Windows 7 Home Premium edition. I’m not sure the exact model of wireless modem, but it’s a newer model rented from Comcast/Xfinity/Whatever they call themselves now. Last year, I had an HP netbook that did not have this issue. My android phone also has not had this issue with the wireless connection. This has been going on with this wireless connection since I purchased this laptop in July. I’ve never been able to use this connection with this computer. I was lucky enough to have a neighbor who has been letting me use her connection, but she is moving out of her apartment and once that happens, obviously her wireless is going to go with her. I need wireless for school and would not be able to purchase direct internet for my home until January. I can connect to other wireless connections fine (although I will admit that I’ve had problems with two other connections but the public connection at school fixed itself when I changed it from a public connection to a "home connection")….

When I try to log-in to the wireless network, it says it’s ‘identifying’ for longer than usual, and then it will come up with small exclamation point logo and tell me that it’s an unidentified public network. I cannot change it to a home network. I have also reset the router hoping that would solve the problem, but it does not. Sometimes it will connect randomly to Google for me, but then it stops working. When I try to diagnose the problem using Windows Network Diagnostics, it just tells me to reset the router. I’ve done this several times and it does not work. I know this is a relatively common problem, but I don’t know how to fix it. Please help?

"You have been logged on to a temporary profile. You cannot access your files and folders. You must fiddle with system reg in the dark now. Please hold while we wipe your computer clean. Thank you and have a nice day."

ruelle — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 11:14:04 -0800

Windows 7: "You have been logged on to a temporary profile. You cannot access your files and folders ..." Whoa. An empty slate. But I reboot and my old profile is suddenly back up and running. So, what just happened there? What can I do to make sure this doesn't happen again? Several related questions inside. I've googled around a bit and the "solutions" techs propose revolve around messing with the register key, deleting the corrupted profile and uploading all the data again. I'm not too fond of this "solution".

Why do these errors happen in the first place? Is it because my main profile is too bloated?
I realize that I save everything to about 4-6 folders that are sitting on my main profile's desktop.
Should I be using win7's libraries? Can libraries be shared amongst profiles? Should I make another profile just for my music and films? What can I do to make this mind-blowing bad disaster never come back (or minimize the pain, if/when it does.)

Thank you in advance for all your ideas and help. I feel like I dodged a bullet but I'm too stressed to log off my profile now..

Help me watch the olympics online: technical difficulties edition

stresstwig — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 15:14:52 -0800

When I go to the NBC Olympics site to log in with my cable package details, the iframe that should show the log in fields (username and password) does not load. This is on a win7 machine with both chrome and FF. The problem does not occur on a different computer on the same network (a macbook running 10.6.8). What setting on my computer seems to be blocking this, and how can I get this frame to load? For further detail, when you visit the site, and hit "click here & get ready," it prompts you to sign in by picking your provider (in my case, time warner). But when I click on time warner, the foreground pop-up displays a blank frame-- when I try to view source for the frame, it gives me an about:blank. I figure something somewhere in my security settings is blocking the frame loading from another url, as this happens on different browsers on this same PC but not on my mac. What gives?

All I want to do is play games on my gaming laptop!

QueenHawkeye — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 16:00:30 -0800

Why does my laptop crash to a black screen only while gaming? Model: Gateway FX-7805u
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 @ 2.26 GHz
Video card: GeForce 9800M GTS 1GB
RAM: 4GB

My laptop has only been acting up while only playing games. I've never had this problem before while running Windows Vista, but back in 2011 I had an issue where the laptop would hang at a black screen with only a mouse cursor before the windows login screen. So I decided to finally do a clean install Windows 7.

This laptop only crash to a black screen without warning while playing games (Sims 3, L4D2, Eden Eternal, Trine 2 to list a few). Even while playing at lower settings than what I used to run in Windows Vista it will still randomly crash without warning, and some of these games I've played with no issues when running Windows Vista. No blue screen, no error, no nothing. It will randomly crash during the game, the screen with go black, usually with no sound but the laptop will still appear to be powered on (power button & media bar are lit, along with wifi light & number lock, but hdd light is off.) I have to manually turn off the laptop and turn it back on. Upon start up, windows tells me that my laptop unexpectedly shut down.

I don't believe it's an overheating issue because the laptop is running pretty cool (cooler than before I installed Windows 7). At idle, GPU will be at 42C but while playing games it will be around 75C. I've cleaned/de-dustified the GPU & CPU fans. I've ran a memtest for 4-6 hours and it ran with no issues. chkdsk also did not report any issues. Kaspersky reported no viruses when I did a full scan.

I've also tried changing drivers to no avail, including Dox's drivers, the one listed for Windows 7 on Gateway's website and on Nvidia's website. Using Driver Sweeper each time when installing new drivers.

This also may or may not be related but I did have to replace the original A/C charger a couple months after installing Windows 7 because the wire started to fray and had a burning odor.

Please help me play games on my laptop again!

Fun with Mac drives on my PC

Brocktoon — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 18:07:16 -0800

I have an external drive, formatted for Mac, that needs a scheduled back-up in a Windows 7 environment (or some other solution). A few months ago I migrated from a Mac to Windows 7. On the Mac, I had an external drive that housed all of my graphics related files. I used SuperDuper to schedule an incremental back-up to another external drive, and it worked great.

So after switching to Win7, I realized that I could not transfer the files on this drive to an NTFS format, as this format apparently does not like the length of some of my file names, and/or the large size of some of the files.

So I opted to use MacDrive, which works great for accessing the disk, but for the life of me I cannot get any of the back-up schemes I've tried to work. I still want to mirror this drive onto another external drive with a schedule. Here's what I've tried so far:

Carbonite: does not support non-NTFS external drives

Norton Ghost: errors

Acronis: I can't even get this software to run properly

FreeFileSync: sketchy interface, no schedule that I can find

Straight copy/paste: scans the drive for a bit, then nadda

So I could use some help with:

Transferring the files to an NTFS (and then just use Carbonite)

or

Sticking with MacDrive, with a decent scheduled back-up (incremental a huge plus)

Thank you!

iMac Mac OS and Windows 7

matthelm — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 19:21:02 -0800

I just bought a new iMac for home. I use one at work(Boot camp Windows 7) with programs like Maya, After Effects, Premiere etc and love it. Now with one at home I would actually like to use both Mac and Windows OS but have a hard time deciding what software to put where... Can someone help me figure this out? So...I want to stay with Windows for Maya, After Effects, and Premiere, but maybe use mac for all things music, movies, and maybe pictures? Please help me with ideas as to what the mac os is best for....what programs utilize the mac os? Any and all answers are highly appreciated... I know this question is a bit vague and leans towards personal preferences, but I would really like to know what people love using the mac for....

Old computer for a new employee?

OrangeDrink — Fri, 25 May 2012 07:49:02 -0800

Help me set up my old computer for a new employee, and make this easier the next time. Hi,

This is probably more obvious than I think it is, but I can't find anything.

I just bought 6 new computers for the office, and one is going to me (hooray!). My old computer will go to an intern. I could wipe everything, reinstall windows, reinstall Microsoft Office, but I'm worried Windows will think that's a new user and we'll lose the license for Microsoft Office. Is there something I could do with Users, or is my best bet just deleting all the personal info I have on Firefox and Chrome?

Bonus question! With these new computers, would creating a Recovery Point save me this trouble in the future, including keeping Microsoft Office with the current license?

Oh, running Microsoft Office 2010 and Windows 7. Some computers are Home, some Professional, and some Ultimate. I'm trying to do this legitimately.

Thanks everyone. My google-fu is failing me.

Windows XP and word 2002 refuse to recognize changes on a document made on a different machine.

IndigoJones — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 04:39:40 -0800

Windows XP and word 2002 refuse to recognize changes on a document made on a different machine. What gives? I composed a document on Machine A (Windows XP and Word 2002). I put it on a thumb drive. I moved it to Machine B (Windows Seven, Office 2010 saved as Word 2002) and worked on it there. I saved it to that same thumb drive, returned it to Machine A -

Machine A does not recognize any of the changes.

Wait, it gets worse. I return to Machine B, open a fresh Word document, give it a new unrelated name, copy and paste all the material, save it as Word 2002, return again to Machine A, open it - it comes back with old unchanged document.

Yes, I rebooted the machine.

It wouldn't matter except that I've got an old printer that machine B cannot connect to. That, and the precedent.

Thoughts, advice, solutions, painful memories? It's all welcome

Windows 7 Enterprise Edition and F.O.G: How to avoid manually activating each machine after deployment.

UrbanEye — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 10:44:29 -0800

My company is upgrading a few student labs from XP to 7. We do not want to manually activate each machine after deploying our image, nor do we want to run a licensing server, as our network for the labs is very small. We are using HP machines that came with professional edition pre-installed, so we can legally deploy a new Windows image on the machines. Anybody know how to manage licenses in a more elegant manner when deploying Windows 7?

Begone Norton Security

dave99 — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 02:56:03 -0800

How do you do a clean install of Windows without the CD/DVD? Many times I've read advice here to install a clean version of Windows on a new computer to remove all the crap that gets installed at the factory. That's good advice I think.

But I can't reinstall Windows 7 without a disc or a disc image. No disc is supplied with the computer. I can't use the recovery image supplied with the laptop because that image includes all the bloatware.

If you did a clean install on your new computer, how did you do it? Did you buy a new copy of Windows?

How to remove 0b "Ghost Files" from Win7 Desktop?

joannemullen — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 14:55:17 -0800

I need to remove various 0 byte "ghost files" from the desktops of a bunch of Windows 7 computers. I know DelinvFile works but is there a free alternative which actually works? I know it can also be done by turning off explorer.exe and going into cmd to delete them but what exactly are the steps for doing this? Any suggestions gratefully received.

Windows Live Mail ate my everything!

New England Cultist — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 13:24:36 -0800

Windows Live Mail ate my everything! So, I recently switched ISP's. I went to delete my my previous email account out of Live Mail, and it deleted everything else, too. Messages, all folders, all contacts. Outlook pre-Windows 7 never did this. What a pain.

I have all my old emails on the old ISP's server still, and can access them, but the pain of forwarding everything on to the new address is something I'd like to avoid.

Also, my system restore was turned off, so no joy there. Did Live Mail simply wipe everything off my hard drive?

I've 5 HDD and a sixth I'd like to install an image onto in order to install onto another physical computer so it has it's own MBR.

prodevel — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 02:50:09 -0800

I've 5 HDD and a sixth I'd like to install an image onto in order to install onto another physical computer so it has it's own MBR. Synopsis below...

I'm new to having so many drives and having only windows on all of them and newish mobos. I'd like to install win7 on the 6th, be able to shove it in another box and have it boot OK (it needs it's own MBR (etc.?))
I'd love any suggestions as to how to do this while being able to access the other drives after the basics are installed, or even better being able to access all the drives the whole time as I need to install software from them.

I assume no special, e.g. non-MS software is required but if it might be, please let me know. I'm just trying to get a bootable installation/image onto a drive w/out disconnecting the drives I use daily just to do so. Yep - serial ATA 5 drives full, 1 empty, NO RAID. I tried to do it offline...

Synopsis: I've a coupla decent win7 inst working atm but I've a free drive and my bro has the SAME hardware system. I'm trying to install win7 and a coupla apps and cant... Maybe I'm explaining the problem to myself... wow.

Thanks very much in advance.

Denied by my own! Help!

droplet — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 19:03:09 -0800

I "don't have permission" to go into the desktop XP folders on my network from my Windows 7 laptop, but the reverse is fine. Help me? On the occasion of getting a spiffy new wireless printer, I went through the hoopdedoodle of setting up a network on my new Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 laptop with my old Windows XP Pro SP3 desktop. They both link up fine with the printer, so that's good.

However, when I go into the network from the desktop (XP), I can get into the laptop (Win 7) fine. When I try to go into the desktop through the laptop via the network, I'm denied because I don't have permission. Password is off, file discovery on. Network stuff on. I can see the folders but can't get in them.

I've gone through what feels like every geek-aid how-to website out there for the last three days and none of their suggestions are working.

I just want to be able to access my documents folder for a little while longer until I can replace the desktop with one that also runs Win 7. What will actually work?

How to resize a Windows 7 window to access bottom buttons

sunnychef88 — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 14:39:18 -0800

How do I access the bottom buttons of the RAW image editor in Photoshop Elements? The window is too wide, and can't be resized to fit my screen in Windows 7. I am super frustrated and probably doing something stupid, but the window for the Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 RAW editor just refuses to become smaller when I drag the dimensions of it to adjust it. I am using Windows 7, by the way. As a result, I can't click the very bottom row of buttons that say "Done" "Cancel" and "Open Image" on the far right, and "Help" and "Save Image" and "Depth" towards the left. I tried moving the window up to get that row within the main screen, and even moved my windows taskbar to the right orientation instead of at the bottom. The windows just jumps back down to hide the buttons when I release my cursor! How can I access those bottom buttons?

Screenshot of what I see and can access with my cursor. Here's a screenshot of the second view, when I'm dragging the top of the window with my cursor to show the bottom buttons that are inaccessible.

will windows 7 run a vcn

let444 — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 11:02:14 -0800

does windows 7 support vcn (virtual control network) ? I need to run a windows program on my mac book pro so I downloaded parallels. That program requires me to use a vcn. Will windows 7 support that?

How can I recover my frozen remote work computer from home?

chocolatemilkshakes — Sat, 28 May 2011 21:02:42 -0800

My work computer that I am connecting to through a remote connection is freezing on the log in screen. When I type the password, it gives me the welcome screen, but the little welcome wheel keeps spinning infinitely. I want to restart it to try to solve this. But the only way I know how to restart remotely is using the cmd prompt, which I can't get to until I'm logged in. So how can I restart? I'm in a real jam because I have a deadline to deal with, and thanks to Memorial day, I won't be able to physically power off until Tuesday.

There has got to be some way to restart remotely while on the log in screen. This is a windows 7 machine. I was able to connect fine earlier today. But then I had an unresponsive program. So I restarted the computer using cmd prompt. Trying to log on after this restart is where I ran into this problem.

I really appreciate your help!

Windows 7 - "Windows Classic" theme is the only one that doesn't hang, what gives?

thankyoumuchly — Tue, 17 May 2011 17:09:36 -0800

I'm on a company provided Windows 7 laptop. Here's what I know: When using the "Windows Classic" Theme (right click on desktop>personalize>select "Windows Classic" theme), Windows Explorer does NOT hang/hourglass for ~30 seconds when accessing files/navigating folders. All clicks to save files, navigate through local and distributed files (our MyDocs folder is stored on the Company's distributed file system), etc., are immediately responsive. When using ANY other theme, clicking on navigation of files (local and DFS, even when not connected to the company network) hangs for 10-30 seconds. What gives? Do all of the themes (minus the "Classic" theme) have some sort of "network call" that look through My Docs (which is technically on the DFS/my company's servers, that has a 30 timeout if the network doesn't respond?) Any ideas how to fix this (change a registry setting, ask the company IT team to make a change to a group policy setting, etc.)? What's so special about the "Windows Classic" theme? It's ugly, but it saves me 30 seconds every time I touch a file, open windows explorer, etc. Thanks in advance!

Why can I transfer pics from my phone via Bluetooth to a PC if it's running XP, but not if it's running Windows 7?

Unhyper — Wed, 11 May 2011 08:10:54 -0800

Why can I transfer pics from my phone via Bluetooth to a PC if it's running XP, but not if it's running Windows 7? I have a Nokia C3-01. When I try to transfer files to my PC while it is running Windows XP, everything goes through fine. But if I boot into Windows 7, any transfers larger than about 200 kb will fail at about 20%. If the file being transferred is smaller than 200 kb, it will go through. This doesn't apply if the PC is running Windows XP; XP will accept and happily receive a file of any size.

This baffles me to no end and I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions as to what could be causing this.

SSD Tips

drpynchon — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 07:47:19 -0800

Hoping for reliable info on appropriate care and management of modern SSD drives. I was just gifted a new 50 GB Revodrive PCI-E card, and am new to the world of SSDs. I'm thinking of popping it into my HTPC and putting Windows 7 on the drive with an additional HDD RAID I currently use for my media.

I've been trying to read up on appropriate care and optimization of SSDs, and I can't seem to find straight answers on how best to set them up. Some people advocate no tweaking at all. Others recommend moving caches and temp directories to HDD. Others refer to the recs from Tweak Town, which are over a year old and somewhat contentious.

I ask you: how best to ensure a usable drive life of 5 years, while getting the most bang for the buck out of this drive?

How do I play my video right-side up?

Buffaload — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 07:07:46 -0800

Android Help: When I transfer a video from my HTC phone to my PC, it plays upside-down. How do I fix this, please? Does it have something to do with how I shot the video? Isn't there a "rotate" button on Windows Media Player? ....Everything I've googled seems to be four years old and is about video problems with Windows Vista or XP (I have Windows 7). This might be blindingly easy, but I need remedial help with most technology. Thanks.