Notes

I have a WinXP installation that is used to only connect to another PC with RDP. A dummy user account gets logged in automatically, then the user must click a link to start the RDP connection with predefined parameters. Is there a way to run the RDP client without Windows Explorer being accessible? Answer You can edit the Registry to replace the default shell program (Explorer.exe) with the MSTSC.exe application and include any valid parameters you wish to use. In the Registry, navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon] and change the value named Shell to: %SystemRoot%\System32\MSTSC.exe /V:YourServerName You can replace the /V parameter with the specific ones you want. One caveat of this solution is that when your user exits the Remote Desktop application they'll be presented with a blank screen and must press Ctrl + Alt + Del and choose Logoff to get back to the local machine's logon prompt. Because of this you may consider ...

I have downloaded a multipart ZIP archive. It contains a video file. Unfortunately, IZarc reports a CRC check fail when extracting the archive. Downloading the archive again is a long task, since I used a freemium digital locker and JDownloader, it will take me several hours to download all files again and I'm even unsure if the result will be better. So I want to ask: provided that the archive is composed by .zip , .z01 ... .z09 parts, and provided that a few bytes damaged in a video stream don't necessarily make the video unreadable (it's an MP4), How do I extract a multipart ZIP archive disabling CRC checks or at least preventing the zip utility from deleting a file that fails the check? Answer Cygwin 's zip has the command line switches -F and -FF. They can be used if some portions of the archive are missing. Use zip -F broken_archive -F --out fixed_archive.zip to create a new ZIP file that contains the same files with hard-fixed CRC, then extract the usual way...

Recently I've been running programs that really like to soak up my system memory. So much that a lot of the time I don't even have a gigabyte left. This has led my system to hang and eventually crash quite often. I see in task manager there's a variable that tells me my compressed memory. I don't have it enabled, but from the sounds of it, it could solve my lack of memory issue until I buy more. How would I go about enabling Windows 10 memory compression? Note: Yes, I've looked else where before posting, surprisingly I didn't find much, only things I found were to disable it for odd reasons. OS: Windows 10 Pro System Specifications: CPU: Ryzen 7 2700X - 3.7GHz 8C/16T RAM: G.Skill Trident Z RGB - 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4-3466MHz Mother board: MSI X470 Gaming Pro Carbon Video Card: EVGA GTX 1060 - 3GB DDR5 Power Supply: EVGA 650W - EQ (80+ Gold) 1st Hard drive: Western Digital Red - 2TB 7200RPM 2nd Hard drive: Western Digital Blue - 1TB 7200RPM 3rd Hard drive: Samsung Ev...

I use a laptop. Not a mac, but with a multitouchpad so I scroll down and right click with 2 fingers still. I hate the fact that if I move too much my fingers over tabs, the scroll will but activated and it will switch to another tab (pretty randomly since my scroll was unintended). It can sometimes be difficult to find my tab bacK. Is there a way to disable this behaviour? In general, Chrome seems very minimalistic in terms of behaviour customization ... Someone had the problem on Firefox, which I actually don't have there: How can I disable mouse wheel scrolling of Firefox tabs? Maybe this extension could help, but I have a negative feeling about it. Somebody uses it? https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/shortcut-manager/mgjjeipcdnnjhgodgjpfkffcejoljijf I'm using Chrome 30.0.1599.101 in Lubuntu 13.10. Thanks Answer As of today this is built-in functionality within Chrome GTK/Linux only. Here is the key thread discussing the change: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/is...

I heard that Microsoft released Windows 7 Service Pack 1 yesterday. By sheer coincidence I planned to format and reinstall Windows 7 on my PC, next week. Is it possible merge (slipstream) the original Windows 7 installation and the new Service Pack 1 in a single ISO image ? Note : Bonus points if you suggest a method that works also for Windows XP. Answer WARNING: YMMV. I think we're close, but not quite there yet. These instructions have worked for some people, but I'm getting an error on the last step. So I think we're missing something. It's getting late here, I'm going to flag this as a community wiki. Perhaps you can sort out what I've missed. Windows 7 slipstreaming is not officially supported. You can use third party tools to accomplish the task. You can also do it yourself manually by unpacking the cab files, editing three text files, and using dism command to update the installation packages. Here's how to do that step by step: Copy install.wim ...

I use this command to see output both in the console and a file: powershell -command "my_command_1 | tee ('logs\{0}.log' -f (Get-Date -format 'yyyy.MM.dd-HH.mm'))" powershell -command "my_command_2 | tee ('logs\{0}.log' -f (Get-Date -format 'yyyy.MM.dd-HH.mm'))" # etc It works not as good as I expected and I have some questions: How do I redirect stderr also to a file? The output works very strange. For some commands there is a huge delay between text is printed and console/file is updated. For some other commands output seems updated when text is printed (I run commands without tee and I know what it should print). This delay makes this tee almost useless - what if some critical error will be printed so I need to stop the command, but I won't see anything until it's too late? For some commands output is printed only after the full command is done. Furthermore, even if the command asks user input, the console/file output is e...

Specifically, will there be any instability or other problems if I install DDR3 1066MHz (PC3-8500) RAM with a motherboard rated to be compatible with DDR3 1600MHz (PC3-12800) & DDR3 1866MHz (PC3-14900), using Crucial's system scanner. The machine came with a single 2GB 1600MHz stick. I had 2x 2GB 1066MHz sticks lying around, so I was wondering whether I could use them. I tried searching, and only found answers for the other way round (RAM faster than motherboard specification). Answer It is impossible to predict what will happen. Some motherboards run fine with slower RAM (just a bit slower), others will have issues. But you can't damage the computer by trying. Just install the strips and then run memtest86+ for at least half an hour. If it comes through without showing any errors it should work fine. If memtest fails it's not going to work in the normal OS either.

I want to use the following to convert some M4A files to MP3. It works fine, but it displays the VLC GUI for each file and shows 'quit' as a second file to be converted. Is there a 'silent' mode, where it does the conversion with not graphics interface? Or is there something wrong with my syntax? @echo off for /f "delims=|" %%f in ('dir /b *.m4a') do ( CALL "C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe" "%%f" --sout=#transcode{acodec=mp3,ab=128,vcodec=dummy}:std{access="file",mux=raw,dst="converted/%%"} vlc://quit ) UPDATE: I edited per Answer #1 @echo off for /f "delims=|" %%f in ('dir /b *.m4a') do ( CALL "C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe" "%%f" --intf dummy --sout=#transcode{acodec=mp3,ab=128,vcodec=dummy}:std{access="file",mux=raw,dst=converted/"%%f"} vlc://quit move "%%f" trash/"%%f" ) What it does is open a DOS com...

There is an application called granola for windows that can be used to underclock the cpu to consume less power. Is there also an application that can be used to underclock the ram to consume less power when you are just using the computer to download? Answer If you have an OEM motherboard, you can underclock RAM by putting slower RAM in, in place of your standard RAM. Your motherboard will read the SPD and use the timings there. If you have an aftermarket motherboard (such as Asus or Gigabyte), it may come with an overclocker's utility (Windows application) that allows you to change settings such as the FSB multiplier (or HT or QPI). This would allow you to run the RAM slower. There will be a small but measurable performance hit. Usually these utilities overvolt automatically for overclocking, I don't think they undervolt automatically though. For true flexibility in undervolting/underclocking, any motherboard oriented towards overclockers should give you the functionality y...

I know the original VGA standard was meant to output 640x480 and that other standards over the original VGA connector are developed to output a higher resolution. (SVGA, XGA, etc.) But I was wondering if there's a specific limit to the resolution that the VGA connector can take. Furthermore, are, and if so how are for example DVI and HDMI limited on resolution? Answer See How Many Dots Has It Got for what is today still called VGA, but has evolved far beyond 640x480. The resolution champion today seems to be WHUXGA (Wide Hex Ultra Extended Graphics Array) with resolution of 7680x4800 (36,864,000 total pixels). Using VGA, the signal from the CPU is converted to VGA by the video adapter and sent to a monitor with VGA input. The conversion to VGA causes some loss of quality. With DVI the signal is not converted (kept digital) and sent to the DVI input on the monitor. DVI and HDMI are exactly the same as one another, image-quality-wise. The principal differences are that HDMI carrie...

I installed pysdm through this article to auto-mount my NTFS drives. My drive structure looks like this: jatin@jatin-ubuntu:/media$ df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda8 18G 12G 5.5G 68% / none 1.5G 344K 1.5G 1% /dev none 1.5G 216K 1.5G 1% /dev/shm none 1.5G 92K 1.5G 1% /var/run none 1.5G 0 1.5G 0% /var/lock none 1.5G 0 1.5G 0% /lib/init/rw /dev/sda2 50G 50G 277M 100% /media/Jatin /dev/sda3 49G 46G 2.9G 95% /media/Study /dev/sda5 88G 83G 5.4G 94% /media/Fun /dev/sda7 32G 32G 177M 100% /media/Masti /home/jatin/.Private 18G 12G 5.5G 68% /home/jatin /dev/sda1 59G 57G 2.4G 96% /media/Windows7 My pysdm settings as mentioned in the above article are as follows: In the "assistant options for the NTFS-drives", the following options ar...

I have been using the Windows ISO from https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/vms/ I recently purchased a full license and I want to convert that to a full Windows instead of installing everything again from scratch. Is this possible? When I go to the Activation settings, it's missing the button to enter a license key. Answer When you download free Windows virtual machine you must obey their terms and conditions. Here I quote the license section:: "NO ACTIVATION: To prevent its unlicensed use, the software contains activation enforcement technology. Because the software is licensed for testing use only, you are not licensed to activate the software for any purpose even if it prompts you to do so." "SCOPE OF LICENSE: The software is licensed, not sold. This agreement only gives you some rights to use the software. Microsoft reserves all other rights. Unless applicable law gives you more rights despite this limitation, you may use the software onl...

I have multiple web servers behind a single firewall (SVN, Exchange, etc.). I want to be able to access all of the various servers remotely, but since they are All using the same port (the standard HTTPS), is this possible? If I set it up so that each is listening on different ports, would it be possible to make it so that I could access each server using a different sub-domain (so svn.domain.com would point to svn, mail.domain.com would point to exchange server)? Is there perhaps a way to set up my router to forward a port differently depending on which sub-domain the client requested? How do people normally go about this issue? Answer Personally I like using a reverse proxy in apache when serving multiple servers behind one IP address. I wrote up an article on this a few years ago. There may be times when you need to have multiple web servers, but you have been given only one Public IP Address. The issue you will run into is that you want to have your multiple domains resolve the s...

Has anyone been able to install Windows 7 x64 under Bootcamp on a Mac? I was able to get the 32-bit version to install, but I cannot get x64 to install. The Mac doesn't seem to even want to boot the DVD. And even if I get it installed are there drivers that will work with it? I'd prefer to have Windows 7 x64 because I'd like to use the entire 6GB RAM in my MacBook Pro. I'd appreciate any tips or advice. Answer I wrote up a blog post about how I got this to work : Note that you’ll need to do this from a Windows machine. I did it from a Windows Vista VM in VMware Fusion. Create 3 folders c:\efi-iso , c:\efi-exe and c:\efi-dvd Download oscdimg.exe and put into c:\efi-exe Unzip the Windows 7 ISO to c:\efi-dvd (7zip works great for this) Open a Command window Type: cd c\:efi-exe Type: oscdimg -n -m -bc:\efi-dvd\boot\etfsboot.com c:\efi-dvd c:\efi-isowin7x64.iso You’ll now have a new iso file in c:\efi-iso . Burn this iso to a DVD (I used Toast back in OS X). This new DV...

For a long time I have assumed that it is not really possible to download a corrupted file via http as long as it's not corrupted on the server and the implementation of http protocol is correct, which is most likely the case for modern mainstream software. So I always chuckled when I saw a download site offer an md5 hash of a file they provide for download. I haven't seen a case before, where I download a file, the size is correct but the content is not. Well, today, I had a first case of this. I downloaded an iso of Ubuntu, tried to install it, it failed and after a long research (I just could not believe that the reason could be a corrupted download) I checked the MD5 and what do you know, it was wrong (size was correct). So I re-downloaded it and got yet another wrong md5. Only on my third download the md5 was correct. So my question is, is it possible in principle to get corrupted download over http, assuming that the implementation is correct, the transfer has finished su...

I have a computer running Windows 7 that shares a Git repo on drive D. Let's call this PC " win7 ". This repo is the origin of a project that we push to and pull from. The network is a wireless network. One PC on this network is running on Windows 10. Let's call this PC " win10 ". Win10 can ping every other PC on the network including win7 . Win7 can ping win10 . Win7 can access all shared files on win10 . Neither of the PCs have passwords. Problem : Win10 cannot access any shared files on win7 , not from Explorer, nor from Git Bash or any other Git management system (E-Git on Eclipse or Visual Studio). So, win10 cannot pull/push. Every other PC on the network can access win7 shared files and push/pull to/from the shared Git origin. What's wrong with Windows 10? I have tried these: Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Network and Sharing Center\Advanced sharing settings\ File sharing is on, Discovery is on, Password protected sharing is off Adapte...

I am the proud new owner of a MacBook Pro with a mini-DisplayPort. My desk setup used to allow me to position the screen of my old MacBook beside an external monitor, essentially allowing dual-head. It was also advantageous that my old MBP and my external monitor had the same resolution, 1440x900 . Now, I'm searching for a set of two monitors that I can use a HengeDock with. Unfortunately, the MacBook Pro suffers from having only one mini-DisplayPort. Looking up the spec for DisplayPort 1.2 (which the MBP supports), DisplayPort daisy chaining is supported. What I'm looking for is a monitor that has two DisplayPorts so I can daisy chain two monitors off the single mini-DisplayPort. What I don't want is a USB-based video solution. I need full acceleration on both monitors; an external video card won't cut it. I hope I don't have to wait a few years for these monitors to come out. TL;DR: I need two monitors with two DisplayPorts each that I can daisy-chain. Thanks! ...

I recently noticed that one of my external hard drive seems to be missing a lot of space. It was recommended that I try WinDirStat, as it could help identify how much space each file was taking up. This is the result: As you can see, there is about 244.7GB "unknown" usage. Doing a bit of research online, the most common suggestion was (a) Recycle Bin and (b) System Volume Information. (a) As you can see, empty. To double check, I ran Disk Cleanup. It confirmed that it was empty. (Note that a new file appeared by the time I took this screenshot, but it's only 129 Bytes.) (b) Harder to tell. However, according to various forums, the most common reason for System Volume Information to grow large is due to System Restore Files. I had a look, and it is definitely turned off for this drive, as seen here: What else could be causing this issue? It is an enormous amount of storage to have gone missing! Answer Instead of windirstat you should use TreeSizeFree . Run it as admin ,...

My main HDD is failing to boot. (Neither Normal nor Safe mode). Single User seems to work. I can only boot from Recovery Mode or DVD. The scenario was the following: Computer was asleep (lid down). Lifted the lid then connected USB mouse. Mouse nor trackpad nor keyboard responded. Closed the lid, removed the USB mouse then opened the lid again. Trackpad and keyboard responsive once again, but after trying to close some programs computer freezes. Shutdown computer by pressing power button for 10 seconds. At restart computer doesn't boot anymore. When booting in verbose I noticed the following: ... ... USBMSC Identifier (non-unique): 000000009833 0x5ac 0x8403 0x9833 disk0s2: I/O error. 0 [Level 3] [ReadUID 0] [Facility com.apple.system.fs] [ErrType IO] [ErrNo 5] [IOType Write] [PBlkNum 2] [FSLogMsgID 61471212] [FSLogMsgOrder First] 0 [Level 3] [ReadUID 0] [Facility com.apple.system.fs] [FSLogMsgID 61471212] [FSLogMsgOrder Last] jnl: unknown-dev: update_fs_block: failed to update bloc...

The TRRS jack is a recent modification of the 3.5mm audio connector which allows microphone data as well as control signals to be passed from the headset to the device. However, this standard does not seem to be usable on 3.5mm jacks on desktop computer motherboards. On a number of tablet-notebooks , I have noticed that the 3.5mm jack works to control the playback of audio, but I have not ever had one of these headsets work on desktops as a headset device. Are there any desktop based 3.5mm jacks that support the usage of Android/Apple headsets microphones/control signals? Answer Yes. Apple computers (Both Laptop and Desktops) for the last few years have been able to use iPhone standard (CTIA Standard LRGM TRRS) headsets, with remotes even, for audio in and out. Apple Support: How to use Apple Earphones with Remote and Mic with your Mac Which Apple computers work with the microphone and volume controls that are included with the Apple Earphones with Remote and Mic? Any computer that ...

I have an ADSL connection, connected to my PC via ethernet(NIC 1), and a wireless connection(NIC 2). I want to share my internet connection over a wireless network. The problem I have, is that I do not have a sharing tab in the properties on my Local Area Connection. I only have a sharing tab on my wireless connection, which is useless as that is not the internet connection. This is a fresh install of Vista, and everything else is working fine. Latest drivers etc. Before installing, I did have a sharing tab. I can not find any option to enable it. How can I get it back? Answer Do you have any other network interfaces defined? If the interfaces have been bridged or shared that tab might disappear. Also, make sure the ICS service is running on your machine, if it's stopped the tab might disappear. More information could help in figuring out what's wrong. Click Start -> Run... and type cmd In the command-prompt type ipconfig /all and post the output of that command. It might...

I have a multi-monitor setup, and run almost all programs in windowed-mode. This works great for the most part, but is problematic when some applications, or even webbapps, use the position of the mouse inside the window for interfacing. When I inevitably get sloppy, move the mouse too far, and click, the window I was working with looses focus, and all kind of weird things happen with the action I was trying to achieve by clicking. What I want to do is tell windows' desktop manager that untill I tell it oterwise (say by leaving the application by alt-tabbing), the cursor should not be able to leave a selected window. Is that possible? If not, can the same effect reliably be achieved with third party applications? Answer You could try WMC , aka "Warcraft III Mouse Capture": WMC is an extended version of Warcraft III Mouse Capture. It allows you to lock the mouse within a specified window (not just limited to Warcraft III). The primary use of this program is to have a gam...

I am running a database-like application that writes and reads data directly to and from a raw block device. I would like to create a new partition for this purpose, and I am using GParted. I've successfully shrank my regular linux partition, and I can now see the free space listed as “unallocated“. Gparted allows you to choose to format this space to be “ unformatted “ or “ cleared “. I don't understand their difference. In the GParted manual here , is says this: cleared can be used to clear any existing file system signatures and ensure that the partition is recognised as empty. unformatted can be used to just create a partition without writing a file system. I couldn't find any elaboration on their difference. Can someone explain it? Also, is there any impact on the reliability of the partition, or on performance when writing and reading from it? Is one of them better-suited for my purpose? Are there any implications to just leaving the partition “unallocated“ as it cu...

is it possible to extract the file libgnome-shell.so and then change content in some files and compile back? i am using Ubuntu 18.04 I am trying to make some tweaking to gnome-shell by editing .js files in libgnome-shell.so file. Answer Use the gresource command to list and extract resources from an ELF file or a .gresource bundle: gresource extract libgnome-shell.so /org/gnome/shell/ui/main.js > ~/GNOME_Shell/ui/main.js The compiler, glib-compile-resources , requires an XML-formatted list of the resources to be compiled, and its output cannot be easily reattached to an existing .so ELF file. An easier method is to remap some resources to be loaded from the filesystem using "overlays", by setting this environment variable (from ~/.xprofile or ~/.pam_environment): G_RESOURCE_OVERLAYS="/org/gnome/shell=$HOME/GNOME_Shell" Now, instead of the /org/gnome/shell/ui/main.js resource from libgnome-shell.so, GNOME Shell will automatically use the file ~/GNOME_Shell/...

I have a Raspberry Pi, and I'd like to use it as a DNS server on my LAN. I'd like it to work like the following: The Raspberry Pi is a DNS server, but not a fancy one. When it receives a request, if it doesn't have the result cached, it looks it up from another DNS server, and caches it for future. I've looked at a few solutions, but they're all fiendishly complex, as if I'm setting up some kind of uber DNS solution for an enterprise. All I want is to speed up repeated DNS requests to make web browsing faster. Oh, OS is Debian Squeeze.

What are best drivers backup (and maybe update) software? Some of this software do not seem to be good enough to trust... Answer Double Driver is a very simple and useful tool which not only allows you to view all the drivers installed on your system but also allows you to backup, restore, save and print all chosen drivers simply and reliably. Double Driver is freeware.

I started by posting this question on how to create a Windows 10 installation DVD, with preinstalled software (office, antivirus, etc), and it was suggested to try NTlite. After a test, the windows installed (as a virtual machine) with the customized ISO, doesnt have the software I tried to have preinstalled. The windows custom configurations and updates, worked fine, but the software pre-installation is also very important. I'll retrace here my steps and maybe someone can spot a mistake. This is the source loading into NTlite : This is the updates : This is some of the windows configuration (adding user accounts etc) : This is a few software I added for a test : And the final configuration : As I said, the resulting windows installation doesnt have the software I tried to have installed. Ideally, one should be able to create an installation image based on a windows (vm maybe) where the software has already been installed, but I guess that doesnt exist.

I'm tried to run a command line something like this: start /max C:\Program files\foo\ba.exe -somearguments . But I have a problem, the cmd returns an error message something like The system cannot found the C:\Program file and if I put the C:\Program files\foo\ba.exe around quotes, it simply run a new window cmd in MAX mode and don't run the program. How to fix this? Answer All filenames and paths which contain spaces must be quoted. Next, regarding your question, how about stating the path like: start /max /d"C:\Program files\foo\" ba.exe -somearguments

I have a computer with non-genuine windows 7 (cracked with windows loader). I was thinking of buying / upgrading to Windows 8 Pro. I ran Windows8-UpgradeAssistant.exe and was said that I can upgrade to Windows 8 Pro. Can I perform a clean upgrade (format and install) from my current windows 7 to windows 8? In future, in order to re-install Windows 8 do I need to re-install the non-genuine Windows 7 and install on top of it? If my hard disk crash, or I want to install on a new hard disk (clean install), do I need to install windows 7 again before upgrading to Windows 8? If I don't like Windows 8, can I downgrade to Windows 7 genuine? Answer 1) Can I perform a clean upgrade (format and install) from my current windows 7 to windows 8? Yes. Select "Nothing" when the upgrade assistant asks you to choose what to keep. 2) In future, in order to re-install Windows 8 do I need to re-install the non-genuine Windows 7 and install on top of it? No. When you purchase Windows 8, t...

Often I have a lot of stuff open and don't feel like shutting down my laptop, so I just use sleep mode when I'm transferring it. But I have no idea if this might have any disadvantages. So my question: are there technical considerations that would make it detrimental to put your computer in sleep mode every time? Associated implications: Would any such issues be mitigated by turning off my computer every once in a while? Is continuous use of sleep mode known to slow down a system in any way, and for what technical reason if so? Is continuous use of sleep mode known to cause any long-term side effects, and for what technical reason if so?? FYI I'm using Windows 7 on a laptop. Answer One other negative point is that the laptop will still be consuming a small amount of battery while in sleep mode. Hibernation is another other option to consider which would completely power it down - yet still allow you to resume exactly where you were when you hibernated it. Control Panel ...

I have read a lot of posts suggesting to "run sysprep " on a system. I have done some looking around, but Microsoft's site is confusing at best. What is the purpose of sysprep ? What does sysprep do to accomplish its purpose? What are some real-world examples of how sysprep is used? Answer Sysprep is really for corporate environments in creating an image for automated Windows installations that allows unique SIDs to be created. This is critical in Active Directory domains as logins and SIDs are tied together. Outside of Active directory, sysprep is not extremely useful. If you want to use sysprep at home, there's really no point as it won't give you any real benefits, unless you run AD at home (doubtful). Sysprep is meant for system administrators, not end-users. Wikipedia has a shorter, succint explaination here ( link ). FTA: Desktop deployment is typically performed via disk cloning applications. Sysprep can be used to prepare an operating system for disk c...

My parents use a Win7 laptop. I have set it so that they are not administrators of the device, only I am. I have installed OpenVPN for them to access the home network resources when they are out. The problem is they cannot start the client without admin privileges, since the route cannot be added to the system without. I made a workaround by letting the OpenVPN client start from scheduled tasks with a trigger when somebody logs in. That works while they're out, but breaks their network connectivity at home. On top of that, since the client is at that time started as a different user, the UI is not visible. What would be the best way to provide them with the OpenVPN client, without giving them more privileges? Answer OpenVPN can be run as a service which can either be run automatically at startup or you can give certain users permissions to control the service. Below is a link to an article describing this configuration: HowTo Run OpenVPN as a non-admin user in Windows Also see th...

Any time I run the installer for Microsoft Visual Studio Community 2017 , it shows a brief "Extracting Files" screen, then silently closes without any error message. Looking at task manager, when vs_Community.exe finishes extracting files, it launches another process called vs_setup_bootstrapper.exe . Both processes are only active for about two seconds and do not persist after the installer has closed. I am using a Lenovo laptop running Windows 7 Professional SP1 (x86). While it's a fairly old computer, it should meet Visual Studio's minimum system requirements .

I have a specific requirement (probably silly!) for testing a browser of Chrome. I realize this requirement isn't the most logical, but politics being what they may I'd like to know the technical workaround. I need to test a site in version, let's say, 28 of Google Chrome. Obviously Google runs a silent updater which can be disabled, but at this point they don't (to my knowledge) release old archives of the MSI installers (which I can easily use to reinstall and force a no-update option for testing). If we can get this working on a single instance then there's a possibility that a virtual machine or some other workaround will give us an easy restore point to meet this test. If anyone has a good idea of where to start here that would be amazing. I've already floated the "why are we doing this question?" and the answer is that it is part of the requirements so we need to make a best effort. UPDATE: FileHippo appears to only archive the online installer ...

The question Mounting NFS in Cygwin suggests it is possible to directly mount a NFS share (we have a NFS server running on a linux machine) in the Cygwin file system, even though the The Cygwin Mount Table documentation doesn't mention that. I have done some searching but couldn't find any solutions on how to do that, most articles suggest mounting from a Samba share instead. I think directly mounting through NFS would be preferable as it'll avoid the translation of the POSIX permissions (from the GNU/Linux server) to Windows permissions and then back to Cygwin (POSIX) permissions but have the permissions in my Cygwin environment directly match the ones that are effective on the GNU/Linux NFS server's share. I tried the following on the command line: $ mount server:/share /local/mountpoint > mount: /local/mountpoint: Invalid argument $ mount server:/share /local/mountpoint nfs binary,posix=1 > mount: too many arguments $ mount -fsb //server/share /local/mountpoi...

In many Windows programs when I open a file, the GUI dialogue that starts with "Look in:" and provides a list of directories and files to open has a thin panel on the left-hand side with the following 5 icons: Recent Places Desktop Libraries Computer Network Is it possible to add my own icons to this? I wish to add three for various folders related to the work that I do, and I haven't been able to find a way to customize this. Answer See if you can tweak them with these instructions. This will only affect dialogs with the places bar on the side like the one you're displaying here. http://windowsxp.mvps.org/PlacesBar.htm For other dialogs with the folder list on the side, Mehper's answer should work, but Opera isn't using that.

New Mac owner here, but long time Linux user. Can anyone describe to me the differences between installing a piece of software, such as Subversion, from a .dmg image as opposed to compiling and installing from source on the command line? Does the software end up in the same location? What other differences exist, such as uninstallation procedures? What would you consider the pros/cons of one approach over the other? Answer A .dmg is just a virtual disk ("disk image"), and on its own has nothing to do with installation. When the disk image contains just an application (usually there will be some explanatory text asking you to drag it to your Applications folder), then all the code and support files are contained within that one file. The application is responsible for doing any setup on first launch and responsible for providing an uninstall mechanism if anything is installed later on. Many developers are using the Sparkle framework to find and install updates. If the dis...

I have Git version 1.5.4.3 installed, but I think this must be an old version. I'm running Ubuntu Hardy 8.04. I need to install at least version 1.6 to get a Git GUI to work. How do I upgrade my installation? Update: I managed to upgrade my installation of Git, but I also realized that my version of Ubuntu was old so I upgraded to the newest version, which automatically gave me access to newer packages (including Git). Answer I used the PPA for Ubuntu Git Maintainers to update Git from 1.5.4.3 on Hardy to 1.6.5.2. No compiling, just add another entry to your sources list, apt-get update and you're good to go. https://launchpad.net/~git-core/+archive/ppa More info on the page (Technical details > Read about installing). Or just run: sudo apt-get install python-software-properties sudo add-apt-repository ppa:git-core/ppa sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install git

I was updating my system (Debian Sid x64) using apt-get , but I got the following error: Setting up fuse (2.9.3-14) ... dpkg: error processing package fuse (--configure): subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1 Errors were encountered while processing: fuse I had an error like this before (also with fuse ), but then there was some information about the error displayed so I could do some research. There's nothing in /var/log/syslog or /var/log/apt/term.log . Last time it was solved by updating the kernel, but I would prefer not to update the kernel at the moment without any prove that updating the kernel solves the problem. Is there any way I can actually see what's causing the error instead of a message that just says it failed to install? Answer It seems that line 20 in /var/lib/dpkg/info/fuse.postinst has a syntax error. According to this the -e should be changed to -a . I did that and finally installed on my test VM. So udevadm test...

Eclipse and Resharper have a nice way of navigating files. If I have the following folders (or files) in my current directory MyReallyLongName MyReallyLongAndFunName MyReallyLongAndNotReallyFunName In eclipse I can navigate to them by using only the capitalized letters. Correspondingly in zsh I want to be able to type: cd MRLAFN(Tab)(Enter) To get into MyReallyLongAndFunName in one step If I want to do that with zsh right now, I have to type My(Tab)Fun(Tab)(Enter) Answer This works for me: zstyle ':completion:*' matcher-list 'r:[^A-Z0-9]||[A-Z0-9]=** r:|=*' Then I can do this in a test directory: touch MyReallyLongName MyReallyLongAndFunName MyReallyLongAndNotReallyFunName ls MRLANRFN ls MyReallyLongAndNotReallyFunName I cobbled it together from tips in the Zshell User's Guide .

Yes, yes. I shouldn't do that.. Whatever. I've heard it a million times and chances are you wont convince me today. So: Previous answers from years ago do not work because windows update service reenables itself everyday regardless of whether or not you disabled windows update service I want to create a batch file (?) that will periodically (every 15 minutes maybe) stops and disables the windows update service. There is no point in doing it manually because windows re-enables it everyday or something like that. What are the commands for stopping and disabling windows update service How can I make it repeat every 15 minutes How do I turn it into a file that I can put in my startup folder (ensure it runs in admin mode)

I have an Ubuntu guest VM operating inside Windows 7 host (VirtualBox with Bridged Networking enabled). In my VM, instead of browsing to http://localhost/somesite I set up virtual directories in apache to point to http://somesite . This is fine for when I'm working within Ubuntu, but I need to try to connect to the site from my Windows 7 host. If I enter 10.0.0.5 in my browser address bar, I do indeed see the apache welcome page, but how can I browse to my Virtual Directory/Site? Answer I don't know the Virtual Directory/Site feature, but if it is similar to the Virtual Hosts feature in WebSphere, setting up a hostname "somesite" with IP 10.0.0.5 in the Windows hosts file (default: C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts) should work. The entry would just look like this: 10.0.0.5 somesite Please note that you need Administrator rights to edit this file in Windows 7. Easiest solution might be to open Notepad with those rights (right click -> run as Administrator) ...

I want to block (not redirect) access to a website via http, but not if the user types in https. I am using Windows 7. How can this be done?

It seems this is quite a common problem that you cannot copypaste properly in Outlook 2007, and whenever I've checked for solutions, I haven't found any. Common scenarios where you run into this issue: Copypasting from another program into Outlook message - nothing gets pasted into Outlook, but works when pasted into other programs Copying an email address from a person's properties within Outlook, and pasting it into another Outlook message (eg. doubleclicking a name, and copying the address from the dialog) Answer After some time, I have discovered the true culprit. It is to do with the Send to Bluetooth add-in (of all things!) in Outlook 2007. A similar discovery can be found in this thread: http://www.sevenforums.com/microsoft-office/304125-word-2007-copy-paste-issue.html My previous answer also worked some of the time, but not 100 % of the time, until I disabled the Send to Bluetooth add-in. After that change, I have never had copy paste issues in Outlook 2007 in the...

I am fairly new to Ubuntu and I am loving it! But I don't quite understand the difference between the shell and the terminal. Can any one explain? Someone told me that a terminal is just a "tool" to view the shell, akin to using a browser like Firefox or Chrome to "view" the web. Is his analogy correct? Also what is the default shell of Ubuntu? Bash, tcshell, or something else?

I have a workstation running Windows Server 2008 that's logged into an AD domain, and I have a dual boot with Ubuntu Linux. When running Linux, I'd like to be able to use the same Thunderbird profile I use under Windows, so I pointed Thunderbird to use a profile I found under: \Users\(myname)\AppData\Local\Thunderbird\Profiles It turns out it was not the correct profile -- it had the right configuration, but the Inbox was an old version. I eventually found out the correct path was: \Users\(myname)\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles What's the rationale behind those different places to store application data? Answer Roaming is the folder that would be synchronized with a server if you logged into a domain with a roaming profile (enabling you to log into any computer in a domain and access your favorites, documents, etc. Firefox stores its information here, so you could even have the same bookmarks between computers with a roaming profile. Local is the folder that is s...

I am using Google Chrome "Version 34.0.1847.131 m". I used to be able to save web passwords, but the option is now disabled. How can I re-enable? Answer try this: SyncDisabled = 0 PasswordManagerEnabled = 1 Key Path: HKLM\Software\Policies\Google\Chrome\ Value Type: REG_DWORD

I made a partition to install another OS. But I want to get rid of it now. How do I do it safely? Answer If you are using Windows Vista or Windows 7, go to Disk Management , and simply delete the partition you do not need, then extend your existing one to take over the space. If you are using Windows XP, the best bet is to use Gparted to do the same operation. If you need any help on any of these stages, let me know.

I read here that: 127.0.0.1 is the IP (IPv4) address of your local computer, synonymous with localhost . When I run the command ipconfig what I actually see is some other IP address. So I’ve pasted my questions below: C:\Users\Dhiwakar>ipconfig Windows IP Configuration Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection* 9: Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection: Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::6089:2937:e839:26ec%10 IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.36 Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0 Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1 Which is my IPv4 address of my local computer? Is it 127.0.0.1 (as mentioned in the article) or is it 192.168.1.36 ? Is the IPv4 used to uniquely identify my computer/machine in the world or my domain or only restricted the my LAN i.e within the set of computers that use the same...

I have Windows 7 and I am wondering how to make all items in a folder show up in the detail view by default. How can I accomplish this?

I found out that Windows calculates much more used space on my 128GB SSD than the total volume of all files on it. WinDir calculates only 62.4GB even with junction point following, but Windows shows an used size of 87.8GB, 40% more! I found a few questions on cases like this, but none of them provided the good answer to me: What could be the cause? Is there any way to reclaim that 25GB space of mine? (System: Windows 10 only, 128GB SSD + 1TB HDD, user folders natively moved to the HDD. If you need any other details, ask for it.) Answer The answer is simple, as @Daniel B pointed out: Run WinDirStat as Administrator. Since I assumed it does so by default, I haven't, so it couldn't count about 25GB file in other users' folder.

I have a video with audio that I am trying to merge with 2 images - one image before the video starts and one image after the video ends - but right now I am getting this error - Stream specifier ':a' in filtergraph description [0:v] [0:a] [1:v] [2:a] concat=n=3:v=1:a=1 [v] [a] matches no streams. This is the code I am using - ffmpeg \ -loop 1 -framerate 24 -t 10 -i default_start.png \ -i output-first.mp4 \ -loop 1 -framerate 24 -t 10 -i default_end.png \ -f lavfi -t 3 -i anullsrc \ -filter_complex "[0:v] [0:a] [1:v] [2:a] concat=n=3:v=1:a=1 [v] [a]" \ -c:v libx264 -c:a aac -map "[v]" -map "[a]" -y output-second.mp4 2>&1 EDIT I am also trying to use 2 different commands, each using 1 image file instead of two -- // Image at start only ffmpeg -y \ -loop 1 -framerate 24 -t 10 -i default_start.png \ -i output-first.mp4 \ -f lavfi -t 3 -i anullsrc \ -filter_complex "[0:v] [2:a] [1...

How can I write a batch file for printing a text file to a dot matrix printer? The printer is connected to the system using USB and the port is the USB002 virtual port.

I just tried to clone a failing existing boot drive for a dual boot system with Ubuntu karmic and Windows XP installed using Clonezilla. The cloning worked fine right up until the end when I got the following error: Running: grub-install --no floppy --root-directory=/tmp/hd_img.twABYW /dev/sdb grub-probe: error: Cannot open '/boot/grub/device.map' /usr/sbin/grub-install:line 374: [: =: unary operator expected What's my next step? I imagine I need to somehow rebuild my boot record for Windows and Ubuntu and edit grub. Answer When you want to re-install Grub from a system that you cannot boot, you usually boot from a live CD like Knoppix or Ubuntu. There you mount your Linux installation: mount /dev/sdbX /mnt Where X is the partition number on your hard drive. Then, you have two possibilities. Either you install the Grub version installed on your live CD: grub-install --no-floppy --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sdb Or you install the Grub version on your Linux installation: chro...