You know that peel-away silicon caulk you can use to seal up leaky window panes in the winter and then dispose of in the summer? That stuff's awesome. Unfortunately, I must have accidentally used the regular silicone caulk last fall. Any ideas how to get it off without destroying the finish on the panes?
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posted by Mayor Curley
on Mar 22, 2012 -
6 answers
Advice needed: how to put together a DIY, on-the-cheap home music system where I can listen to my music from any room in the house?
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posted by zooropa
on Mar 10, 2012 -
13 answers
Windows 7 Homegroup on both my desktop (where it was created) and tablet. Tablet can see desktop just fine. Desktop doesn't even show another member in the Homegroup, when tablet is right there beside it, awake (and with My Docs shared). What gives?
posted by IAmBroom
on Mar 3, 2012 -
1 answer
I'm looking to sort an entire folder alphabetically by name, but Windows 7 insists on always keeping files and folders separate.
There was a solution for XP
earlier, but under 7 that option is nowhere to be seen. I'm open to 3rd party file manager solutions, just as long as they don't look like a programmer with ADHD designed it
ala.
posted by a.
on Feb 22, 2012 -
3 answers
Someone close to me is going blind. What kind of screen reader and other software should I set them up on so they can continue to read and send email?
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posted by Mitheral
on Feb 22, 2012 -
4 answers
Since about a week my work as a web developer has become incredibly frustrating due to intermittent but very frequent FTP problems. Making small changes in a remote stylesheet has become agony (7 out of 10 times the uploading fails, have to restart software and try again). I cannot find the root cause. It's not the software (tried several different applications), it's not the server (problems occur on all the websites I manage) and it happens on both uploading and downloading. I have turned off firewalls, antivirus software and things like DropBox but all to no avail. I don't have any other connection issues (I'm not on WiFi and web browsing and bittorrent work fine for example).
I'm on a 64-bit Windows 7 Professional (Service Pack 1 with all the latest updates installed) laptop. That is the only variable I cannot change, I don't have another computer at hand.
Does anyone have an idea what could be causing these problems? Is there something else I could try to fix it?
posted by dinkyday
on Feb 20, 2012 -
15 answers
Help me diagnose/repair my Toshiba Satellite A355D-S6889.
When I try to boot, I get BOOTMGR MISSING.
When I try to reinstall XP from a CD it seems to start out fine, copying drivers and such, until it gets to the message Starting Windows, at which point I get a blue screen o' death with the code 0x7B which google informs me is a hard disk error.
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posted by Obscure Reference
on Feb 10, 2012 -
8 answers
Help me set up a media server for my computer network on one of two old Windows boxes.
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posted by rocketman
on Feb 6, 2012 -
7 answers
What's the story with Windows and big disks? Specifically, Windows 7 and a 3tb drive.
I've read what Microsoft and others say about using large drives with Windows 7. I gather it works. However, I haven't found a how-to guide that actually spells out how to get the thing done.
In my case, it would not be the boot drive. I'd boot off an SSD and use the 3tb drive for storage. How can I do a clean install on that? I've tried and Windows doesn't see all of the 3tb drive. (The GPT format option is greyed out.)
Then, if I get Windows to recognize the 3tb drive, can I partition it into multiple logical drives? So, for example, the SSD would be C: and I'd split the big drive into D: and E: . Doable?
posted by justcorbly
on Jan 17, 2012 -
12 answers
I have several hundred machine-generated, human-readable TXT files; one text file per serialized device tested. Each file has test values in predictable places, although in a very irregularly-shaped "table" if you could even call it that. I want a simple Windows program where I say: "Okay, program, here's the row and columns where field #1 starts and ends, ... here's the row and columns where field #n starts and ends ... Give me a CSV file with those values I need and nothing more."
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posted by ZenMasterThis
on Jan 14, 2012 -
18 answers
I want a Mac, but I also have some software (games) that I need to run in Windows. I know I can use bootcamp to run a virtual machine with Windows on it, but will it be flawless?
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posted by jasondbarr
on Jan 11, 2012 -
16 answers
My Mac has become a host for infected Windows office documents. I have hundreds of Office documents with other people's Windows viruses on them. Help!
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posted by wingless_angel
on Jan 11, 2012 -
12 answers
I have questions about how to use the new directory structures we now have under Windows 7 and Vista.
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posted by crapmatic
on Jan 10, 2012 -
3 answers
IT Manager Interview help! Crash course resources and interview tips wanted.
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posted by j03
on Jan 9, 2012 -
6 answers
My colleague uses a Windows editor for writing code and a Unix system to run it. He has practical issues with version control. Suggestions?
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posted by knz
on Jan 8, 2012 -
12 answers
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?
posted by UrbanEye
on Jan 4, 2012 -
3 answers
I'm looking to beef up the graphics card on my Shuttle XPC but I'm limited to a 300W power supply, a single slot PCI-Express and a budget of under £100 (~$160). What cards would you recommend?
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posted by mr_silver
on Jan 3, 2012 -
9 answers
Do you use a Mac laptop in combination with a PC desktop computer? Please tell me how you manage your workflow between the two. Can you recommend useful software and/or hardware to make coexistence as painless as possible?
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posted by embrangled
on Jan 3, 2012 -
21 answers
My Vista laptop isn't successfully restoring itself to factory condition.
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posted by Trurl
on Dec 30, 2011 -
10 answers
How can I make font display in Windows look better?
I recently had to set up a Windows 7 (64-bit) machine. I haven't used Windows for several years. The quality of the font display doesn't seem to have improved.
Fonts look ragged to me. Big headline fonts at news sites are pretty awful, like they were slapped on by a sloppy painter. How can I make this better? Any tricks or products that address this? I've used Cleartype but, frankly, I not sure I noticed anything change.
posted by justcorbly
on Dec 24, 2011 -
33 answers
How can I thoroughly test the Windows 7 desktop machine I built for my dad before I give it back to him? He lives 4.5 hours away so I won't be able to easily respond to problems once he has it.
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posted by decrescendo
on Dec 19, 2011 -
11 answers
The Binding of Isaac runs really quite poorly on my PC. I think SpeedStep the problem. How can I force my PC to run at maximum speed for the duration of the game?
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posted by ArmyOfKittens
on Dec 19, 2011 -
4 answers
Is there a non-expensive way I can add system-wide EQ to my Windows 7 HTPC (Asrock ION 330)?
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posted by ManInSuit
on Dec 18, 2011 -
12 answers
My installation of Windows XP Pro (SP3) seems to have developed intermittent amnesia. I've noticed a couple of times in the past week that files which I edited and saved under new names just -- disappeared. (Details inside). Today, after restarting the machine, I found my desktop wallpaper and Quick Launch icons had reverted to what I had several months ago, and my Recent Documents lists in MS and Adobe products was showing material from July 2011 and earlier. Plus, my iTunes library had suddenly been unable to find about 10% of my songs, although I have been able to manually locate them and make iTunes recognize a few again. These "missing" songs are both old and new: I don't see any pattern in time re what has gone missing. I'm assuming the worst -- XP death throes in progress! -- and am updating my data backups NOW. All my applications seem fine so far: I'm not missing anything that was recently installed. No other data seems to be actually missing. While I back up, is there anything else I should investigate or hypothesize?
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posted by maudlin
on Dec 8, 2011 -
25 answers
I just created a fresh installation of Windows XP with updates and drivers on my parents' computer. How can I preserve this installation, so that they can
easily rollback (or even wipe the hard drive) to get back to this uncorrupted state after it is inevitably infected with some unremovable malware? The contents of the hard drive are under 4gb and can fit on a DVD. They don't store content locally, so I'm unconcerned with losing data.
And, no, switching to Linux is not an option. Thanks!
posted by Bushmiller
on Dec 7, 2011 -
16 answers
My semi-senile older friend needs a computer just for email and web, but keeps messing with Windows cfgs, viruses, spam etc. a support nightmare/comedy. Is there a recommended Linux or Windows distrib for a 5-year old PC, that stays the same with every reboot, support for web and email only, prevents messing with OS, and remote support ability?
posted by stbalbach
on Dec 6, 2011 -
10 answers
We are doing a campus wide migration to gmail, and that means I have a few hundred thunderbird users who need their settings changed to point to a new imap server (and change their username to username@foo.edu). What is the best way to get this done?
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posted by mrzarquon
on Nov 30, 2011 -
8 answers
I bought a
Belkin Easy Transfer USB Cable for Windows 7 thinking it would act much like a direct crossover cable connection would. Instead, it only seems to let me transfer the files and folders needed to set up your old Windows profile on a new copy of Windows, rather than giving me access to all files, folders and partitions, which is what I need. Is there a hack to get this cable to do what I want it to do?
posted by Effigy2000
on Nov 27, 2011 -
3 answers
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.
posted by joannemullen
on Nov 24, 2011 -
17 answers
Is there a public test Windows XP machine online somewhere I can remote into with rdesktop and tsclient? I am trying to see how it is going to look and work when I remote into work machines on this Ubuntu box, but these are not yet set up. Other Windows are fine too.
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posted by By The Grace of God
on Nov 21, 2011 -
4 answers
Our double-hung windows have sprung alumin[i]um jamb liners, a bit like
this. After taking the sashes out to paint and re-putty, how do you get them back in the frame?
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posted by holgate
on Nov 19, 2011 -
0 answers
I'm trying to customize a default user profile in Windows 7 professional, with the intent of using it to create a mandatory profile. Microsoft requires the use of Sysprep. I am but an intern, and Sysprep confuses me. I can't get Sysprep to run with the command-line switches I need.
The SteadyState replacement saga continues...
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posted by UrbanEye
on Nov 16, 2011 -
2 answers
Crap! My computer is borked and I don't know what to do about it. System Restore can't seem to find Windows, either.
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posted by Scientist
on Nov 16, 2011 -
9 answers
Two questions about putting Windows 7 on a MacBook Air. First, how do I get a Windows 7 ISO? Second, am I crazy to even do this in the first place?
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posted by Cool Papa Bell
on Nov 15, 2011 -
5 answers
