Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with windows and resolved

An app for Windows for hunting down and eradicating multiple copies of files?

Unhyper — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 04:30:29 -0800

Is there an app for Windows that you know of for hunting down and eradicating multiple copies of the same files? Let's say I have a 1TB drive (I do) full of junk (I do) and much of that junk has duplicates, triplicates, and octuplicates of the same files in miscellaneous folders.

I'd like to find a program that I could leave running and it would scan the drive for these multiple copies and perhaps erase them for me, or at least allow me to do that later.

Know of any?

Please help me make Christmas memories for my boys

FunkyHelix — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 20:04:55 -0800

Children and Christmas in NYC - where are all the good windows? Where should we eat dinner? And what else should we check out? Next Friday I'll be taking my 6 and 11 year old boys into NYC via train for some Christmas site-seeing. It's something my mom did and it was always a bright holiday memory. So I really want to pass it along to my two.

We're going to swing by the big tree in the morning and possibly try the ice skating. From there we want to check out the fancy Christmas windows. Which ones would you suggest visiting as being awesome/interesting/etc?

We're going to street cart it for lunch and then look for somewhere interesting for dinner. We need somewhere moderately priced, not overly kitschy, touristy, or crowded and with a patient waitstaff (6 yo is ADHD and autistic.) Not looking for something like MacDonalds. It's a sin to be in a place as awesome as NYC and then eat at a franchise fast food place. Any suggestions?

We're going to try walking past the tree light up for night time on the way back to the train station. Anywhere to get hot chocolate and decent coffee that isn't a Starbucks that you'd suggest?

Finally? Besides the tree and the windows, I'd love any other suggestion for things to check out that are kid-friendly.

Thanks ahead of time!

Does my hard drive have permanent issues?

R a c h e l — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:05:00 -0800

Can I remove a partition and use my hard disk as normal? Rather long explanation... So, my original problem would be best explained by this older question I asked.

Basically, my vista partition stopped booting one day, with a couple error messages when I attempted startup recovery, the most significant (I think) being "system volume on disk is corrupt". Does this mean there is a part of my hard drive that has been messed up? I've never been too gentle with my laptop, and I have dropped it 3-4ish feet onto carpet more than once (yes, I know how terrible that it. I'm completely aware).

I'm determined to use this until it refuses to turn on, though. I mean, I also cracked the screen and am losing real estate all over at a fairly constant rate. An external monitor helps with that, though. At any rate, I'd like to install a copy of windows 7 that I just bought (I've been using the beta, which I've had since March, and likes to tell me it's counterfeit frequently. This was installed on a different partition from Vista, and has worked fine since Vista stopped.)

So, in installing the copy of Windows 7, I would like to give it a bit more room than the current Windows 7 partition of 20gb. Vista has 200gb, and everything I need on there has been backed up. I know fairly well how to erase the vista partition, grow the Windows 7 partition, etc.

My question is, will I run into problems because of whatever caused the Vista failure? Is there a bad sector or something that will give me grief? Is there some sort of formatting I can do before installing windows 7 to sort of start over with the disk? (There is absolutely nothing on this computer that is not backed up that I need.)

I'm sorry for the long explanation, with probably plenty of extraneous information. Thanks very much for your help!

Can't watch a specific channel on my computer!

mhz — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 17:17:06 -0800

Why can't my USB TV tuner find channel 11? I have a Hauppauge USB TV tuber (950Q, I think), and I can't get WPIX in New York. I have no idea if it's ever worked, as I've never tried it before. I've scanned repeatedly, but still nothing. This is using EyeTV, on the Mac, and I'm in Brooklyn. All other over-the-air networks work perfectly.

A couple of notes:

It's not an antenna issue; the same antenna finds 11 just fine when connected to the cheap DTV converter I have.

I tried adding it manually with the frequencies I found online, and nothing.

I've tried using a file I downloaded from TitanTV with the frequency, and nothing.

My brother just called me, and he's using Windows (Vista or 7, I'm not sure) with Media Center, and an ATI USB TV Wonder, and he's having the same problem. Neither of us ever noticed this before, because the Giants weren't on WPIX before.

Any suggestions? Again, this issue does not appear to be the antenna, and it's appearing with two different brands of USB tuners, on two different operating systems.

VPN woes

randomstriker — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:20:09 -0800

I have set up a VPN connection, and two network adapters: wired and wireless. How do I force the VPN connection to use the wireless adapter, without disabling the wired adapter? I am on Windows 7.

Problem is that the wired network connection on my company's LAN goes through a firewall that blocks my ability to use the VPN connection that connects me to my customer's LAN. The wireless network, however, is open to the internet.

Currently I disable my wired adapter, fire up the VPN which connects over the wireless adapter, then re-enable my wired adapter. This works fine but is really annoying.

Want separate desktop on Virtual Machine

hdh — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:13:22 -0800

Question. I upgraded to Parallels 5.0 to run a Windows Virtual machine on my Macbook. The problem is that icons on the Windows desktop show up on the Mac desktop and vice versa. How can I set up Parallels so that both desktops are separate identities that don't impact each other?

Formatting Differences in MS Word on Windows vs Mac

spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:35:47 -0800

How consistent is MS Office between Windows and OSX? Will using MS Office on my Mac solve this formatting problem I'm having? I'm have a MacBook Pro running Leopard,and I've been using Open Office to write my papers. It's great. I love Open Office (and love that it's free). When I need to turn something in, I just save it in PDF format, e-mail it to myself, then go to a computer lab, check my e-mail, and print off the PDF document. Perfect.

The problem is that I have a professor who needs some documents turned in via e-mail, and they use MS Word. I can save an Open Office document as a Word file (.doc or .docx), and for plain text formatting that's fine, but as soon as an outline or numbered list is created, things look crazy. It seems fine when I save it in Open Office, and it's fine when I then open that document using Open Office, but if the document is opened with MS Word, the formatting is horrible.

I can buy the MS Office suite for Mac at school using my student discount (it's around $35 I think). If I install that, and use Word to create these documents, will they appear the same when my professor opens them using Word, on her Windows computer?

If there will still be differences then I'll skip the $35 and just keep going to the computer lab to tweak things.

If I save a document in MS Word on a Mac and send it to a person using MS Word on a PC, are there formatting differences?

iTunes keeps reordering my songs!

bluefly — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:06:15 -0800

iTunes won't order/list/play songs in an album in the order of the track number. I have specified the correct track number of the songs in the info thing, but it won't sort according to that field within an album. Is there some way to get around this? I am downloading albums (from friends' bands) to my computer, and then dragging those folders and dropping them in the "Automatically Add to iTunes" folder (which was created by iTunes 9, I think). iTunes then does some magic which makes the songs appear in iTunes (and is organizing them in the iTunes Music Folder). But the songs are in the wrong order. Is there some other way to add albums to iTunes? I thought this drag and drop thing would keep everything nice and organized, but perhaps not. This is only happening with these downloaded albums, not with albums I buy through iTunes. (I searched around for answers, but they were so varied, I wasn't sure what to do. I am not an iTunes power user, but I would like to be).

I have a Windows 7 computer with iTunes 9. Thanks.

Help with buying a new mid-range windows gaming PC?

cortex — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:37:45 -0800

I'm looking at purchasing a new PC for gaming, wanting to spend between $1000 and $1500 total, would prefer not to put it together myself, and am waaaay out of the loop on hardware at this point, particularly graphic cards. I've been pricing out desktop builds from some of the major manufacturers this morning and I'm realizing that while I'm comfortable making some basic price/performance calls as far as CPU and memory, I'm completely out of touch with the GPU market and need some guidance.

I'd like to be able to play current releases without flinching, at crisp resolutions. I'll be happy with non-distracting performance: 30fps is great, 60fps is not something I'm going to care about so much.

I'd rather just buy a box from someone and have done with it than do much work myself inside the case, but as far as buying my own GPU to install in an otherwise standard box that's certainly not outside my comfort zone.

Looking at Dell's builds for both their normal beefy desktop line and their Alienware stuff, it seems like a lot of the latter is Ooh, Shiny packaging. I don't need a pretty box. But options for GPUs are pretty slim on non-gamer boxes, which has me wondering if going in that direction for a reasonably bullshit-free desktop build and then slotting in my own card is the smarter move.

Any specific advice on targeting a good-enough-for-current-games (biggies on my list include Dragon Age now, Mass Effect 2 and Diablo 3 when they drop, for example) GPU on the saner side of the price/performance break? Any particular good deals/providers for a solid out-of-the-box system in my price range?

Free/Open Source Scan-to-PDF Software?

cowbellemoo — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:20:19 -0800

What's the best free or open source software (for Windows XP) which will scan multiple pages in a row and output a PDF with zero fuss? I don't really like the software that came with the scanner and I don't want to pay for Acrobat Pro. Currently I'm using OpenOffice Draw, which works fine except for having a few too many mouse clicks between importing each page as a scanned picture -- which are annoying when I'm trying to concentrate on something else while I scan a bunch of things in.

Ideally I'd like to just place a new page, close the lid, click a button, scan, rinse, repeat. That's basically how Acrobat Pro does it, but is there a free/OS alternative that behaves the same way?

On-Screen Keyboard for Windows 7

wintermute2_0 — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 09:23:21 -0800

How can I get my on-screen keyboard to work in 64-bit Windows 7? I'm currently running Windows XP and am finding it hard to resist the eye candy of Windows 7. I have the hardware to run the 64-bit flavor, but I have a compatibility concern. I use an on-screen keyboard called WiViK and I couldn't get it to run in the 64-bit beta. The WiViK states that it will run in 32-bit Vista, but not 64-bit.

WiViK hasn't had meaningful updates and the publisher doesn't seem too interested in future revisions. Am I stuck in a 32-bit world or is there any way to hack the code to make it 64-bit compatible? Barring that, are there other fully-featured Windows on-screen keyboards (word prediction, abbreviation expansion) that are 64-bit?

I'm thinking I should just start an open-source project to create a better and more flexible OSK. Any takers?

Skip the Black Friday Madness?

dyno04 — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:51:20 -0800

I am in need of a new desktop computer. I am wondering if I should wait until Black Friday and brave the crowds or take advantage of some of the Windows 7 deals this week. I live in the Twin Cities, MN metro area if that makes a difference.

We need to argue for a local server

scruss — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:32:12 -0800

Our office is losing hours of productivity a week due to networking decisions from head office. We'd like to price out a server to replace the dodgy technology that's been foisted on us. Not surprisingly, HQ gets kind of defensive if we use that language. Please help me cost out a server, and make it seem like it was their idea all along. I work in a regional office of an energy company. Head office is many thousands of kilometres away. Head office likes to keep complete control of their data centrally, so offices that used to have servers were replaced by WAFS boxes on the end of a 10Mbit link.

Since the WAFS boxes went in, users in remote offices have had nothing but trouble. Accessing files over the network feels like dialup speed. MS applications zone out for minutes on end thinking about autosaves. We have been known to start applications, go down to the coffee shop, come back, and the application might just have initialized. The WAFS machines themselves are unreliable, needing replaced every few months and rebooting weekly.

Our office has about fifteen professionals in it - engineers, lawyers, developers, environmental and admin staff. We're told that we never quite manage to fully fill our 10Mbit allocation, and that our connection maintains a supposedly quite speedy ping time of 50ms to Head office.

We're not digging the slowness. We estimate that we're each losing several hours per week waiting for the system. Some users have taken to working from home, as using a Citrix connection over DSL to head office is many times faster than running local applications in the office. We've lost staff over this issue.

Head office is all about the centralization, though. So much so that, a couple of years back, a fire alarm knocked out our central data server for 18 hours and we had no offsite failover. We'd need to make a very good case that having a local server would be cheaper than what we're using now.

Head office admits that the WAFS didn't deliver all it was supposed, and are looking at a similar technology from a different vendor. We're worried it will be a big spend with the same result - slow performance, and yet more technology that local techs barely understand. We have some allies in IT at head office, but not the ear of the head of IT.

So just how much would a robust small server with local support and backup cost for a 15 user office? We're in a big Canadian city with good access to service and support.

Did dude steal a Dell?

ChurchHatesTucker — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 19:16:05 -0800

Is this computer hot? A friend of mine found a good deal (person to person) for a Dell Windows Vista laptop. He's wondering if the deal is good because the computer is hot. Is there any easy way to get a fair idea? (He's a newbie, I'm a Mac.)

Help me connect Mac-at-home to Windows-at-work?

OlivesAndTurkishCoffee — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 07:40:00 -0800

What could happen to my mac if I connect remotely to my windows computer at work. Is there a viciously secure way of doing this? I need to connect my home mac to my office's windows computer remotely. So far, this has stumped the tech guy so I've been using a small windows netbook and connecting via vpn. But opening files on the company network takes forever and we need a better solution.

He is currently working on a solution that allows me to connect to the small business server using my mac via the windows Remote Desktop Connection Client 1.0.3 for Mac.

This worries me because I don't want windows stuff touching my mac! But my worry is based on mere suspicious distrust of windows rather than any actual knowledge of how these things work.

Those of you who do know about these things: Will using this client application make my mac vulnerable to windows risks; and, if so, is there a better more secure solution? (or a better solution with the netbook?)

How do I fix this WinXP logon?

imjustsaying — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 09:34:06 -0800

To begin, click your user name. Huh? I am the only user of my Windows XP Home computers. Until last week, when I booted up a computer I ended up on the Windows desktop.

Since installing a replacement internal DvD drive and it's accompanying software on my office machine, for some reason I now boot up into the screen which has a vertical line down the center, has "To begin, click your user name" on the left side of the screen, and my user name and icon on the right side.

Also, under my user name there's a notification of the number of new emails I've received as well as the number of programs open.

I'd like to go back to booting up into the Windows desktop without having to click through on my user name.

TCP port switcheroo

AltReality — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:28:11 -0800

I would like to forward a local port to another local port...in effect, disguising one port for another. Is this possible? First, I'm on Windows XP SP3.

I would like any apps on my PC that try to make a connection through (for example) port 1234, to be routed out through port 4321 instead.
kinda like a hosts file, but for local ports, not IPs/DNS names.

I've been playing with NetCat and FPipe, thinking they might work, but I am obviously not getting the correct command line.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

How do i get my pc CD drive to read cd's properly?

sockpim — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 04:30:54 -0800

Why wont my cd drive in my laptop read any CDs? I have a Hi-Grade pc laptop with windows home vista, that's about one year old, but was reformatted about 6 months ago.

The cd drive wont read any new cd's, it will only read game cd's that have previously been installed on the laptop (even those cd's take a while before they're read by the laptop). When it has the cd's in the drive it makes a clicking/tapping noise. I've tried using a cd cleaning disc in it, but that hasn't seemed to work at all.

Does anyone know what the problem is, or what I can do that might help?
Cheers.

What is the date, Gates?

fish tick — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 06:29:42 -0800

Windows clock/calendar annoyance: why does the date appear only sometimes when the mouse pointer hovers over the taskbar clock? It seems to be the same with XP and Vista.

How to find out Mac creator / type info on a PC?

jzed — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 02:24:03 -0800

Is there a windows utility to read the creator / type information of old (pre OSX) mac files? I've inherited a lot of old mac files (probably .eps or old .ai's or something but I'm not really sure at this point) and I'm trying to get them open on my windows machine. I think I probably have the most likely applications I'll need to open them, but brute force guessing what program to try is time consuming. Is there a straightforwards (preferably freeware) utility to help automate this process? My googling has revealed this util which looks... a bit unwieldy; and this mac app which would do the job if it ran on windows!

How do I safely move my iTunes library to a different HD?

valleys — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 07:50:47 -0800

How do I safely move my iTunes library from one hard drive to another? I've read numerous horror stories on here from people encountering all kinds of problems when moving iTunes libraries around, so would like to get advice on how to plan and execute it correctly!

I have about 50gb of files on my 110gb internal HD, which is pretty much out of free space.

I have a 500gb external HD (that I currently use mainly for backups of all my digital photos) that I would like to move the iTunes library to, then delete it from my internal HD to free up space for work on the internal drive, and have much more space for new music on the external drive.

This is on Windows XP SP3. iTunes version 8.1 (I think - not there at the moment, but I haven't installed the latest update that it asked me if I wanted...)

And yes, I have another backup (Mozy) in addition to the external drive.

So, how do I move that 50gb of files without confusing iTunes or risking losing anything?

What do I not need on Windows 7 Ultimate?

mr_silver — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 09:52:21 -0800

I'm moving from XP to Windows 7 Ultimate. What, that I used to have on XP, do I not need installed any more? I know that defragmentation software isn't needed, but what about Unlocker? What about disk backup software? Anything else?

Help me update my PC / Windows literacy for the 21st Century

KMH — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 04:26:02 -0800

I used to feel pretty confident with computers / IT in general (80s child). Now I need a boost to get back up to speed, especially digging around in the OS / filesystem. Recommend me a good book / website / hands-on project? I want to improve my general PC knowledge, focussing on the real "under-the-hood" day-to-day stuff, like managing my Windows configuration, playing around with files, building my own website on my own domain etc.

The background is that back in the day (15 years ago!) I felt I knew more than average about computers; I had an Amiga back when they were more cutting edge and could play around with the set-up, etc. I could learn all I needed from Amiga Format and fellow geeky kids.

At university I did Physics, and we learned C++ and basically built a very, very simple memory unit and so forth, so I'm sure I have the "smarts" for this stuff. Plus I passed ECDL with no problems, I work with IT all the time, just not "under the hood".

It just seems the computer world has moved on a bit, and while I'm sure I could handle the ins and outs of Windows / DOS / etc etc, I feel I've missed the boat and there's way too much detail.

I own a fairly decent Inspiron laptop, but is it my imagination or is Windows just not self explanatory? Where is the manual? PC magazines don't seem to help much either.

Can anyone recommend a couple of books, websites, (cheap/free) online courses or whatever to get me back up to speed with this stuff???

Yes, obviously I should back-up more often.

PhoBWanKenobi — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 07:00:21 -0800

Did my fiance's computer bork my thumb drive, and what can I do to get my data back? I use a 2 GB Kingston DataTraveler to transport my writing (particularly my novel*) between my two home PCs--both running Ubuntu--and my Windows XP work computer. I always always "safely remove"/unmount and haven't had problems with it on either type of system.

Last night, I plugged it into my fiance's Windows XP machine for the first time. It pulled up an error message--"USB device not recognized" and asked us to install drivers, but when I went through the driver installation wizard, it said the drivers were up to date. Since then, no other computers recognize the Kingston at all; it's as if I haven't even plugged it in. What's more, the thumb drive doesn't show up unless I plug it into the same USB port on my fiance's computer, in which case it spits out the same error message.

I realize that USB sticks are unreliable and sometimes just die but the fact that it still shows up on the fiance's computer when I plug it into that one port makes me wonder if the data/stick might somehow be recoverable from that port. Plus, I had been using it (and safely removed it) just twenty minutes before at work! I tried rebooting and unplugging the power supply (as well as installing drivers), but that's all so far. I'm at work right now, so I can't try any data recovery programs--and the computer doesn't "see" the stick, anyway--but I'll try any and all suggestions once I get home today.

So, metafilter, what are my options to try getting my data back?

*Luckily, I'd backed up my data two weeks ago, so I'll have only lost 17 pages; the drive being bricked would be a pain, not a disaster. But still a pain. Back up your data, kids!