Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with windows and Vista

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?

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.

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.

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.

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 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?

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?

install Windows XP on Vista laptop

gigimakka — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 22:43:49 -0800

Trouble installing windows xp on a vista laptop (Acer 6530) I wiped my acer 6530 laptop hd, and upon attempting to install windows xp, it only recognizes 131 GB of the 250 GB hard drive.

Is this because I did not install the Win XP BIOS before I wiped the drive of Vista? (I have the XP bios on a flash drive, downloaded from the Acer site.) I did change the original Vista bios settings from AHCI to IDE, and boot order to DVD ROM drive first.

I'm considering 2 plans: 1) Install Win XP on the 131GB space I do have, and then install the Win XP BIOS, re-wipe the HD and re-install Win XP, or 2) Re-install Vista, replace those Vista BIOS with the XP BIOS, and then re-wipe the hard drive and do a clean install of Win XP. Which would you recommend?

Alternatives? Thanks...

Ultimate OS?

geekyguy — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:22:43 -0800

I am currently running Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit on my laptop and am looking forward to stepping up to Windows 7. This is a great deal that would allow me to upgrade from Home Premium to Vista Ultimate which would then qualify me for Windows 7 Ultimate, right? Is this going to be the cheapest path to Widows 7 Ultimate?

Can you save remote desktop connections to log in to different user accounts?

Mokusatsu — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:36:27 -0800

Is it possible (in Windows Vista Ultimate) to save remote desktop connections to the same computer but for different users? i.e. have icons in my quick launch menu which log me in with a click to user1 or user2? I have a computer which is used for several specific purposes, accessed only by remote desktop (i.e. it sits in a back room and is rarely used in person).

I want to be able to quickly access each of the individual accounts by saving an RDP file and then shortcutting to that from my quick launch bar.

So I enter the credentials for user1 and "save as" the RDP file as username1.rdp and drag it onto the quick launch bar.

Clicking on this RDP logs me in to user1's account.

Then I open remote desktop again, enter the credentials for user2 and save username2.rdp.

When I click on username2.rdp, I get instantly logged in to user2's account.

So far so good.

But if I close that and click on username1.rdp, I get logged into user2. If I manually change the credentials by opening remote desktop and enter the credentials to user 1, username1.rdp will on the next attempt log me into user1's account, as does username2.rdp.

So saving a connection doesn't save the credentials, it possibly saves the computer I'm logging into, but not the user.

Am I doing it wrong or does an RDP file just not contain credentials? Is there some way I can set it up so I can one-click log in via several icons to any one of several accounts?

Vista or Windows 7?

cowmix — Thu, 21 May 2009 10:04:19 -0800

Vista or Windows 7? I've been running Ubuntu on my laptop but I just bought a new laptop (to run Ubuntu) so I want to turn the old laptop into a Windows machine. The laptop shipped with Vista so I could restore to that.. but using Vista was painful.

My question: aside from the fact the Windows 7 RC isntall will stop working in few months, are there any other advantages to run Vista over Windows 7 RC?

Defragging problems

ricochet biscuit — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 07:35:31 -0800

I have a Toshiba laptop running Vista (alas) and a recent spate of problems (extremely slow operations, mostly) seemed to have possibly been caused by fragmentation. I tried defragging, with mixed success. This is my work computer. I checked the properties of the hard drives and for the defrag option, it seems to be set up to do this automatically weekly at 1:00 am (when the thing is never in use, of course). Just to be sure, I manually started the defrag when I left Monday evening and when I came in Tuesday morning it was still going (fifteen hours later). I stopped the defrag and worked. Yesterday I took the afternoon off and worked from home,again starting the cycle when I left. 22 hours later when I came in again, it was still in progress.

I see a couple of possibilities. One is that the weekly automated one is not happening, and the machine has not been defragged in two years, which might explain the time it is taking now. A cowroker suggests that when I am doing the defrag now, when I leave it alone for a few minutes it is going into sleep mode and so is not doing any real defragging.

Any suggestions?

Windows Vista has found a creative new way to kick me in the Jimmy

Televangelist — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 02:51:26 -0800

Windows Vista has taken me to a new, interesting level of hell. For some reason, starting about a week ago, anything I select with the mouse -- text, even files -- automatically gets copied to the clipboard. If I select any word in this paragraph, for instance, that word will go to the clipboard and overwrite whatever I had there before. It's becoming a real headache. I can't find anything in Control Panel that deals with this feature, and I'm not finding anything on Google. How on earth do I turn this off? Thanks in advance. :)

Forget-Me-Not

geekyguy — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 10:06:24 -0800

Firefox Forget-Me-Not: My browser no longer seems to remember me. When I launch Firefox 3.0.9 I am no longer automatically logged into the sites I have set to load on open. I usually have 25+ tabs open at a time and have Firefox set to 'Show my windows and tabs from last time'.

When I visit a site, like Metafilter, I am no longer automatically logged in. Instead, when I click the [Login] link, my username and password are already there so I haven't lost my saved passwords, just the automatic passing of that information from one session to another.

Incidentally, my browser crashes fairly regularly, at a rate of 3 crashes in a 2 day period. I figure it is due to the high number of tabs I run with. Yes, it is annoying but as long as the browser remembers me, I have been able to live with it.

The laptop in question is a dual 2ghz 64-bit Windows Vista Home Premium with 4g RAM. The browser in question is Firefox 3.0.9 running the following add-ons:
Delicious Bookmarks
Evernote Web Clipper
Forecastfox
Greasemonkey
Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant
RealPlayer Browser Record Plugin
Skype Extension for Firefox

Is now the right time to buy a new PC?

stuehler — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 08:28:52 -0800

My trusty 3-year old home office PC is starting to drag a bit, so I'm thinking about replacing it. Should I bite the bullet and buy something with Vista? Go with XP, even if it means not getting the latest Intel processor? Or, should I wait until Windows 7? A few considerations... I'm a web developer, so I'm on my PC about 10 hours a day. So, performance and reliability matter a TON.

I always have a Firefox window with 6-10 tabs, plus a few Office apps, plus Photoshop, and a few development tools. I'm not an avid gamer, but I appreciate playing the latest FPS every now and then. So, when I buy something new - I tend to buy pretty close to the high end, in terms of processor, RAM, and video card.

I'm pretty rigorous about "maintaining" my PC - (e.g., using CCleaner and Malwarebytes daily, keeping antivirus updated, etc.).

I want to keep things as simple as possible, and invest as little time as possible. So, even though many of my more tech-minded friends say, "Build a linux box", I don't have the skills or time to learn how to do that. I want something that works right out of the box. I also don't want to invest the time in building my own PC from scratch.

And as much as I appreciate Apple (I LOVE my ipod and iphone), I'm not inclined to buy a Mac, since I've got so much invested in Windows software. (I know I can run that on a Mac, but it seems like that means compromising on performance and stability.)

I'd love to buy another XP pc, but it looks like the major manufacturers aren't offering that as an option with the latest and greatest processors. I hate to spend $1,500-$2,000 buying a dated processor.

The reviews on Vista seem mixed, but I'd hate to buy a new PC and end up with performance that's no better than my 3 year old XP box.

So Should I wait until Windows 7? Or, is Vista performance not as bad as I've heard?

What are the best resources for computer novices?

contraption — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 23:14:36 -0800

What are the best resources for computer novices? I often find myself in the position of helping friends and family figure out how to operate their computers (typically Windows XP or Vista, but OS X tips are welcome too.) While I realize there's no substitute for face-to-face instruction, my time is not infinite and I'd like to be able to set them up with some bookmarks or documents that will give them guidance when I'm not around. I'm especially interested in a well-structured, non-intimidating quick reference tool with general tips like locating a file in the filesystem, compressing/decompressing files, using the clipboard, and selecting which program is associated with a particular file type. It should not take any knowledge for granted, and wherever possible should offer detailed step-by-step instruction with explanations of any necessary jargon terms. Reliable, regularly updated lists of good free programs for various tasks would also be helpful.

64-bit Vista on Mac Pro?

richg — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 16:24:02 -0800

I'm thinking of getting one of the new desktop Mac Pros recently announced. I'd like to both run Apple's OS X and also use Boot Camp to run 64-bit Windows Vista on it. The question is: will I be able to use the Mac Pro's keyboard and mouse with Vista? Will I be able to use an Apple Cinema Display with Vista? If I have to plug in a PC keyboard and mouse, and use a PC display, that doesn't appeal. I'd like to use the 64-bit version of Windows Vista to access more 6 or 8GB of memory. I'm worried about the lack of 64-bit device drivers, esp. for the Apple keyboard, mouse and display.

I'd appreciate advice from anyone with experience or insight into this.

How to keep Google Desktop gadgets without the search?

inbetweener — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 15:54:42 -0800

Is there a way to keep Google Desktop without it hijacking Vista's search? I installed Google Desktop on my Vista Home Ultimate PC. I want to keep it installed because I like the gadgets.

However, I really don't like the way it hijacks the windows search (which I much prefer to the Google Desktop Search).

Could anyone suggest a way to keep the gadgets but ditch the Google desktop search - Google helpfully doesn't provide an option...

Minimal set of Vista Updates?

papafrita — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 14:13:25 -0800

Just reinstalled Vista in my laptop, and now the next step is to install MS updates, right? The thing is, I don't think now installing every available update from MS Windows Update is a good idea. What are the absolutely necessary updates to install, if any? After some unresolvable issues with my HP laptop, I decided to format the disk and reinstall the Vista Business version included with the computer (in a different partition). Now, after some bad experiences after installing some updates in the past months, I now want to install nothing more than the bare minimum in this PC -- which is for work only.

Could you please recommend the smallest possible set of Windows Updates to install? I tried googling a bit, also looked around in AskMe, but no luck yet. My main concern is security; driver updates and such are of little concern.

Any recommendations? Maybe another website that could help?

If it helps at all, I took some screenshots of the list of 74 (!) updates that MS wants installed: 1, 2, 3.

Convert FAT32 to NTFS without data loss

NoMich — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 15:05:53 -0800

Is it possible to convert an external drive that is FAT32 to NTFS on Windows Vista without any data loss on the drive?

Laptop and projector need to play together nicely.

wile e — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 00:02:33 -0800

Managing a projector with a laptop at a different resolution. The short: classroom training sessions with a Dell laptop hooked up to a projector is giving me some issues, looking for advice on how to rectify the situation. Windows Vista Ultimate
Dell Vostro 1400 w/ embedded Intel video card (temporary, my Nvidia motherboard blew up, long story)
2gig Ram
2.0ghz Core 2 duo
VGA output

Half of my time is spent in a classroom training on how to use a particular software. The classroom changes weekly, so cannot give specs on the projector, but all are generic classroom projectors that take a VGA input on them.

When I hook up my laptop to the projector, it takes me out of my 1440x900 default resolution, and kicks me back to 800x600. If I try to change it back to 1440x900 it refuses as the projector cannot handle the resolution, even if I have it set up to not share my desktop. I can get it to work with 1280x768, but since this is not my default resolution, it annoys me to screw up all my settings on my laptop during the session.

So my question is this: Is there a way to better manage all of this, since I spend most of my time dealing with this? Are there programs to aid in this? I have briefly looked into Displayfusion and Ultramon, but they seem to be more aimed at permanent multi monitor setups. Whereas my situation tends to only be during 9-5 every other week or so.

It just seems the management utility that is in my laptop now cannot be the best thing. I would like to have some real control over what happens, not just resolution if possible. Like I would like to share certain windows on my screen with the projector, but not all.

Well anyway, if anybody has some insight into this, I would appreciate the help.

I will be checking this throughout the day, so any info I left out, feel free to ask and I will supply the answer if I have it.

How can I make Vista share with xp with no problems?

mrbenn — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 11:49:00 -0800

My new (XP) Netbook is refusing to open shared folders on my Vista main PC, yet if i reboot main pc it will suddenly work again! Can anyone help stop me tearing my hair out? Netbook is a Compaq 702EA running XP home and connected to network through wifi, main pc is running Vista Home Premium. When both machines are freshly booted, Netbook can open, read etc all shares on main pc. However, if I put netbook into hibernation and then turn it on again (next day or whenever) it suddenly gets permission denied errors when trying to access main pc shares. If I reboot main pc, all will be well again until netbook sleeps and then cycle starts all over! Netbook can access shares on 2 other vista pcs in the house with no problem, just the main one. Have googled and tried numerous things (static ip on both, chaged workgroups, network setup wizard on XP, netbios over tcp/ip enabled etc etc). Can ping using ip or computer name both ways. At end of my tether trying to figure it out, can someone help???
(Netgear Router ties the network together and no firewall on either pc is enabled)

The font which was not there

splice — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 08:44:39 -0800

On Windows (XP/Vista), how does Microsoft Office look up the list of fonts which are available to the user? I ask because there is one font in the list which I cannot locate. I know the filename and its location. I can see the filehandle in process explorer so I know this file is being loaded for the font, there is no doubt. However, this file is not in the standard Windows Fonts folder (c:\Windows\Fonts), is not visible in the control panel applet, and is not referred to anywhere in the registry. How does Word know how to find this font?

Alternatively, is there some way of preventing Word from making a specific font available to the user, without removing said font from the system?

Vista 64bit stopped recognizing and connecting to external drives...

pghjezebel — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 19:59:18 -0800

Vista 64bit has recently stopped recognizing my iPhone and WD MyBook external HD...please help! I have a WD 500GB MyBook and an iPhone. Both have connected without problems to my Vista 64bit machine. Now, I can no longer access them.

My PC on some level still "sees" the devices because the iPhone will connect and sync with iTunes and the HD is listed in the device manager. However it is listed as "This device is not configured correctly." I've tried uninstalling, disabling, reinstalling drivers, different ports and have had no luck getting my machine to see either device.

And I've verified that there is nothing wrong with the HD or the iPhone. Both connect flawlessly on my husband's Vista (non 64bit of course) machine.

Any suggestions would be appreciated! Thanks!