Notes

I got an strange icon overlay on my USB stick drive: In my previous question I could identify it's EhStorShell.dll drawing that overlay there (Thanks!). The dll has the description Windows Enhanced Storage Shell Extension DLL . So what is it? and how to turn this enhanced storing thing off (I don't mind) to get the normal non-overlayed icon?

I'm using Windows 7 with dual monitors. I found that when I open a new application, its window can show up on any of the monitor. Some application will show up on the main monitor, others will show up on the secondary monitor. Can this be controlled? Thanks. Answer I used [Dual Monitor] for over a year and was quite pleased with it. It gives you direct control over things as which screen an app opens on and now supports up to 3 monitors. While I use Windows 8 now, which features multiple task-bars, I still miss some features from Dual Monitor. It is a free and open source application.

Since around October last year I've been having an on going issue with my HTPC where the color on video will randomly get messed up when watching full screen videos. The display ends up getting heavy pink or green tint to it or the colors appear to be inverted. For example: It seems to happen most frequently when a video transitions between scenes or when entering/exiting full screen playback. It doesn't always happen however. Player software seems to be irrelevant, some seem to be more or less prone to it happening, but none are immune. Turning the TV off and on again, or switching inputs will get the colors back to normal. Some players seem to detect this though and stop playback with no resume option. I presume for HDPC/DRM reasons. Sometimes after being fixed it will simply glitch again in a few minutes, other times it'll finish the video just fine (and typically glitch after leaving full screen mode). What I've tried Complete format and re-install of windows 10 N...

I need to test my application when there is a change in the IP address. What should I do to change my machines IP address? Note : The IP address for my machine is obtained automatically. It's not a static IP.

Why do 7-zip / WinRAR unzip files to "temp" before moving them to their destination? I do not see any advantage against just directly unzipping to destination. It is really irritating, especially for large files (as it is now!). Edit: Please explain why they are not done in place . Answer How exactly are you extracting the files? Are you using the command-line or the GUI? Are you dragging the files or selecting them and using the extract function? Are you using the shell-extension context-menu? If you enter a destination folder and then select the extract function or use the shell-extension, then they do not extract to a temporary folder first, they extract directly to the destination. If you select the files in the UI and drag them to the target folder, then it will extract to a temporary folder. The reason is in how the destination is selected. If you enter the target folder or use the context-menu item, then the program knows exactly where it needs to extract to. Howe...

My system disk, a Corsair GT 120, suddenly stopped showing up in BIOS. It has been working without issues before. I've checked the cables, the SATA port on the motherboard, the power cable. Tried connecting the disk to a different computer, but it didnt show up in bios there either. Nothing made any difference. Is there any other steps I can try to check the disk or try to get data from it before I go and buy a new one?

Is there a definitive reference of all of the Windows shortcut keys along with which operating systems they apply to? For example, we all know about Ctrl + Alt + Delete , but I've met quite a few people that don't know about Windows + L to lock the computer in Windows XP and up. Answer I doubt there's a full one anywhere, since programs can make up their own, but this Microsoft one is pretty good.

I have 2 hard disk, one with one partition with OS, and the other with 2 partitions, one with OS and the other one whithout. I want to be able to decide which OS I want to load each time I boot the computer. Of course, I can change BIOS' configuration and modify the boot order, but I don't want to do that each time. Edit: Both OS are Windows XP Answer There are several layers where you can act. Beware, however, that all these options can make your operating systems unbootable, if done improperly. You are responsible of what you do, please be cautious. Bios-level boot menu Modern BIOSes have an option for a "boot menu". Look at the BIOS settings. It can even choose other boot options, like CD, USB or network boot. But it needs to press a key (often ESC, F10 or F12). Pros: will work if you add or remove disks Cons: no personalized labels, usually just brand name of disks MBR-level boot menu MBR is Master Boot Record, the first sectors of the hard disk the BIOS boot o...

Is there any way to create Internet shortcut files that will work with all operating systems (including Mac, Windows, and Linux)? I often switch between Windows and Linux, and I haven't yet found a way to create an internet shortcut file (on the desktop or in a local folder) that is compatible with all operating systems. Answer I found a reasonable cross-platform solution. This HTML document could be used as a shortcut to stackoverflow.com, and it would immediately redirect to that site when opened from the desktop:

All the usages of tee I ever saw were such: do_something | tee -a logfile Or: do_something_else | tee logfile Is tee invented for those that don't know you can do the same with shell pipe redirections? Such as: do_something >> logfile Or: do_something_else > logfile It's practically the same and it takes less keyboard hits to type out. What hidden features am I not seeing in tee ?

I have a large Acrobat file (currently 92 pages, 25MB) which is constructed from lots of different sources (1 InDesign and 80 Illustrator files). Since I first brought these sources together, each page of it has been replaced a good dozen times, and the file is starting to creak under the weight. Acroat is giving me warnings about possible corruption, and crashes occasionally when saving. No data has been lost yet, but it's enough to give me pause. I could reconstruct the file from sources if I had to, but it would take forever to get all the bookmarks and links set up just the way they used to be. Is there any way of getting Acrobat to rebuild the file from the ingredients and make it easier to work with? Answer Did you ever use "Save as..." and choose a different filename after your page replacing operations? With "Save as..." you'll notice that Acrobat indicates various steps of "consolidations" and "optimizations" while it saves th...

Using TeraCopy , the file timestamps are preserved. However, if you copy a large nested directory, the modification date of some (but not all) of the directories are lost (replaced by the current time). Are there any user-friendly file copy utilities that can preserve directory timestamps even for nested directories?

Symptoms: after changing heatsink on graphics card, computer won't turn on when graphics card is plugged in PCIE slot. When I press the power button, fans move a little bit and that's it. The card is XFX Radeon 6850. With the card not plugged into motherboard, but plugged into power, computer boots. With the card in motherboard, with or without power, it doesn't. The heatsink was Arctic Cooling Accelero S1Rev2. It was a tight fit, and I had trimmed some of the heat spreaders to get them to fit. When testing with Furmark one of the temperatures was much higher than others, so I decided to reapply thermal paste. After doing that was the last time the system successfully POSTed, it went like this: BIOS screen came up, GRUB came up, Windows started loading, and then the screen went black, all fans stopped, and the power LED started flashing. It continued flashing even after I disconnected power cord from PSU, and stopped at the moment I disconnected monitor. I took the heatsink...

There are weird commas after the real-name parameter of some lines in my /etc/passwd file. kye:x:1000:100:Kye,,,:/home/kye:/bin/bash What gives? Why are they there? Can I remove them? Answer Some tool you used to create the account (adduser?) added them. The tool in question sees the comment / real name field in the passwd file as a GECOS field: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecos_field The field values are User's full name (or application name, if the account is for a program) Building and room number or contact person Office telephone number Any other contact information (pager number, fax, etc.) However, I cannot think of an applicaton which uses them. I believe these fields are close to useless. Use a different tool for adding users (useradd?) or explicitely give a value for the GECOS field if possible.

I was double checking my notes for 'Virtual Memory' and the definition in my text book is: Process of allocating a section of secondary storage to act as part of the main memory Where as Wikipedia says: Virtual memory is a computer system technique which gives an application program the impression that it has contiguous working memory (an address space) and (Wikipedia also says) Note that "virtual memory" is more than just "using disk space to extend physical memory size" Can anyone offer any clarification as to which is correct? Answer Note that "virtual memory" is more than just "using disk space to extend physical memory size" Virtual memory is a layer of abstraction provided to each process. The computer has, say, 2GB of physical RAM, addressed from 0 to 2G. A process might see an address space of 4GB, which it has entirely to itself. The mapping from virtual addresses to physical addresses is handled by a memory management unit, w...

I'm currently thinking about buying a ThinkPad X201 and equip it with a SSD drive. Now, to protect my data I always used Linux with LUKS full disk encryption on my laptops. However, as stated in another SuperUser post, this would disable the support for TRIM - so that doesn't seem to be a good idea with a SSD drive. I've read that SandForce-1200 based SSDs offer integrated AES encryption tied to the BIOS password. However I can't find proper documentation on this. Questions: Any general drawbacks to this approach? I suppose this would require BIOS support for the feature - how to find out if works on a X201? Old BIOS versions only supported short (like 6 or 8 characters) passwords, has this situation improved to provide sufficient security for a disk encryption? Update: This Source says you can't even set any password on these drives. Huh? That doesn't make sense, why would you even do the complicated AES operatins when you don't allow to use a key? Thank y...

Using the TabMixPlus plugin for Firefox or Chrome, I can right click a page and choose "reload every..." and I could choose an interval. I'd prefer not to install a plugin unless I really have to, and I am aware that you can type special things into Chrome's address bar. This makes me think that something like this typed straight into the address might work: javascript:setInterval(window.location.reload(), 2000); //2 secs` I haven't managed it yet, but still don't want to rule it out as a possibility. Is this possible? Answer After 6 years I have a solution for this! The answer is inspired by the other answers here. Edub's answer didn't work for me, it reloaded the page over and over, and didn't observe setInterval 's duration parameter. I don't understand why Edub's answer doesn't work as expected. This works for me in Chrome 67: javascript:document.getElementsByTagName("body")[0].innerHTML = " ";reloadTimer ...

I have a Dell Inspiron 530 desktop with a manufacture date of 2008 August 12. It's a quad core 2 with windows vista. Anyway I want to add a SSD to it. How do I know what SSD is compatible with my machine? This looks interesting to me, but how do I know if it's compatible? Thanks. Answer Its the OS to worry about, W7 is optimized for SSD, in Vista and XP you have to do some tweaking after the OS is installed, like partition alignment, disable disk defragmentation, etc . It should work fine in your Dell. Do lots of reading. Install the OS clean when using a SSD drive. See this article http://lifehacker.com/5586733/how-to-take-full-advantage-of-your-solid+state-drive Also http://www.kingston.com/support/ssdnow/faq/default.asp?s=SNV425-S2BD

Currently I have some data like this, here is some dummy data: Month Senior Manager Average Hours Jan Bobby Jones 93.5% Feb Bobby Jones 81% Mar Bobby Jones 94.5% Apr Bobby Jones 95.5% May Bobby Jones 89.5% Month Senior Manager Average Hours Jan Joanne Jones 93.5% Feb Joanne Jones 81% Mar Joanne Jones 94.5% Apr Joanne Jones 95.5% May Joanne Jones 89.5% I have about five other senior manages like this. What I want to do is create a line graph with each senior manager having its own colored line. The Y axis Should Have the % numbers from 0 - 100% plus, because some managers employees go over the targeted hours. Further, on the x axis I want the Month and the Senior Manager corresponding to that month to display. How can I do something like this, or anything remotely similar? I have tried making a line graph, but it simply pus everything on one line graph with the same color. Here, Bobby Jones...

I'm running a virtual instance of Ubuntu Server using VirtualBox in Windows. To access the site hosted in it, I want to forward port 80 to Ubuntu, so that I can simply go to localhost to mess around with it. But I'm not sure it won't mess up my regular connectivity. Is there anything that will botch the regular internet/network access? Answer It should not affect regular internet/network access The only caveats would be if you were also running a webserver (or other service) listening on port 80. If that were the case, it is also possible to forward another port (ex. 1234) to port 80 such that you could access it in a web browser by http://localhost:1234

I'm trying to use FFmpeg to create a video from a series of images, named snapshot-00001.jpg , snapshot-00002.jpg , and so on, by using the command ffmpeg -f image2 -r 10 -pattern_type glob -i '*.jpg' output.mp4 . However, I'm faced with the error: $ ffmpeg -f image2 -r 10 -pattern_type glob -i '*.jpg' output.mp4 ffmpeg version 0.10.9-7:0.10.9-1~quantal1 Copyright (c) 2000-2013 the FFmpeg developers built on Oct 4 2013 06:35:56 with gcc 4.7.2 configuration: --arch=i386 --disable-stripping --enable-pthreads --enable-runtime-cpudetect --extra-version='7:0.10.9-1~quantal1' --libdir=/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu --prefix=/usr --enable-bzlib --enable-libdc1394 --enable-libfreetype --enable-frei0r --enable-gnutls --enable-libgsm --enable-libmp3lame --enable-librtmp --enable-libopencv --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libpulse --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-vaapi --enable-vdpau --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-zlib ...

When I start Outlook 2010 it opens the Outlook Data File's inbox However, I want it to open my own Inbox by default. How do I change the default Outlook 2010 start folder? Answer Here are the steps: Click on File Click on Options from the menu. Click on Advanced (left pane). Under Outlook start and exit, click on the Browse button to designate a different folder. Select the folder you wish to use. Click OK to save the selection.

On a Mac, when I'm downloading fonts am often given the choice between OTF (OpenType Format) and TTF (TrueType Format). Is there any difference in the way ligatures work or anything between the two formats? Answer OTF is more likely to be a “better” font, as it supports more advanced typesetting features (smallcaps, alternates, ligatures and so on actually inside the font rather than in fiddly separate expert set fonts). It can also contain either spline (TTF-style) or Bezier (PostScript Type 1-style) curves, so hopefully you're getting the shapes the font was originally designed in and not a potentially-poorer-quality conversion. On the other hand, if you're downloading free fonts from shovelware sites, you're unlikely to get any of that. Indeed, you may simple be getting a TTF font renamed to OTF.

I wrote a simple application which communicates using UDP sockets (in C). Application is simple: clients sends numbers to server, and server computes the sum of them. Now, I know how can I capture the packets exchanged by client and server, but I wonder how can I, using Wireshark, observe the difference between little endian and big endian byte order for my packets? Answer On Wireshark not recognized protocols you will only see TCP or UDP packets with a "non-parsed" payload field. if the protocol "is" recognized by Wireshark (BOOTP, DHCP, DNS, SMB, HTML, etc etc) you will see that Wireshark "shapes" the TCP/UDP payload area displaying the corresponding recognized higher level protocol fields. Wireshark has included many dissectors for well known protocols and you can create your own if you want to display your particular protocol payload in a formatted way; see here. https://www.wireshark.org/docs/wsdg_html_chunked/ChDissectAdd.html in your case your di...

I used WinDirStat to display my hd content to find what take so much space. I found that there are five files of 15.9 GB in C:\Windows folder. Does someone know what are those files? Can I delete them?

I am trying to subtract hours from a time, but it's giving me strange results A1 = 06:00:00 (manual entry, hours to deduct) B1 = 00:30:00 (=C1-A1, start time) C1 = 06:30:00 (manual entry, end time) This works fine and continues to work as long as the difference is 6 hours or less. Why do I get hashes in B1 if A1 is 07:00:00 for example, or if C1 is 05:00:00 ? Answer In your case you can't extract more hours then you put in. In your second example you are trying to subtract 7 hours (A1) from 6 (C1). In your third example you are trying to subtract 6 hours (A1) from 5 (C1). If you mean that A1 is your start-time of the day and C1 is your end-time of the day (where the end-time could be the next day ) you should use the formula =C1-A1+IF(C1 . That way there is a day added to your end-time if the end-time is lower than your begin-time. Also make the format of your cells [H]:MM so the hours are displayed correctly.

I need to enable Virtualization Technology (VT) in my Samsung Chromebox (Series 5) from Google IO 2012 because of Android x86 emulator from Intel. I am on developer BIOS, but I have no clue, how to modify its settings. Any help or idea is appreciated.

I have downloaded CodeBlocks 17.02 without mingw and installed it, then I downloaded MinGW64 from here( https://mingw-w64.org/doku.php/download ) and only changed the architecture option from i686 to x86_64 during the installation and left the rest as default. Then tried to add this path to system paths: C:\Program Files\mingw-w64\x86_64-8.1.0-posix-seh-rt_v6-rev0\mingw64\x86_64-w64-mingw32\bin . But when I opened the CodeBlocks, it couldn't find the compiler. Also when I go to settings>compiler and try to set GNU GCC compiler it says: can not find the compiler! How should I specify the MinGW64 for CodeBlocks om Windows 10? Answer Here I explain the procedure with the ZIP files which does not requires administrator privilege or a setup.exe, just extract those with any decompression tool. This procedure is focused on C/C++. These settings may vary in other languages. The required links will be in last section. Download Code::Blocks and mingw-w64 from it's download pag...

While installing Windows 10 from the Repair Tools command prompt, I ran clean command by mistake on the whole disk, so it becomes a single 465GB partition. Previously, it contained four partitions. How can I recover them with the data intact? Answer Assuming you haven't made any more writes to the disk, I believe TestDisk should easily be able to fix this for you. Just in case something goes wrong or if this otherwise does not work, I would advise you first take a raw image of the disk's current state, so you can roll back your changes and not put your data at any more unnecessary risk.

I've got a DVD that I've burnt from an MSDN ISO. I'm not entirely sure if its Windows 7 64bit or 32bit. How can I be sure? Answer Quickest way is to go to the drive root. If you have a file named Bootmgr.efi you are running a X64/64-bit version. Next way is disk size, the x86/32-bit version comes out at ~2.32GB whilst the x64/64-bit version comes out at ~3.0GB. Lastly, you can go to the drive root and open the autorun.inf file. In notepad, the 64 bit version shows: [AutoRun.Amd64] open=setup.exe icon=setup.exe,0 [AutoRun] open=sources\sperr32.exe x64 icon=sources\sperr32.exe,0 The 32 bit version shows: [Autorun] open=setup.exe icon=setup.exe,0

I love Firefox Reader View. But not its fonts. More specifically, these are not the best choices: body.serif, body.serif .remove-button { font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; } body.sans-serif, body.sans-serif .remove-button { font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; } I'd rather have this: body.serif, body.serif .remove-button { font-family: "Cambria", serif; } body.sans-serif, body.sans-serif .remove-button { font-family: "Open Sans", "Segoe UI", "Tahoma", "Calibri", sans-serif; } Now, I can apply these changes manually every time I open the Reader View via the developers tools. But is there a way to automate this? I tried Stylish, but either I could code it correctly or Stylish wasn't up to the task. Answer In case you haven't gotten around to hunting this down yet, and/or for posterity, as of FF v60 the solution is to: locate your profile folder (listed in about:support ) in there...

I noticed that on my workstation (Windows 7, connected through ethernet cable) I ping between 100-500ms to my Android phone which is also, of course, connected to the same WiFi through wireless. Strange thing is if I try to ping my workstation from my phone the ping is normal (13-15ms) This happens as well to other phones (namely iPhones) connected to the same router but doesn't happen to laptops connected always through wireless. Ping between other devices connected to my router through ethernet cable all ping each other under 1ms. What could possibly be the cause? I even tried to boot up a Linux live cd and try to ping my phone and see if it was Windows fault or something but the high ping is still there. I tried to use another router as well but high ping remains.

I'm formatting a 1TB external hard drive as a single NTFS partition. This drive is mainly meant for storing media. Should I choose something other than the default allocation unit size ? The options range from 512 bytes to 64K. Are there any guidelines that I should use with partitions storing other data? Should I stop poking around and just leave it at "default"? Answer If you are a "Standard User" by Microsoft's definition, you should keep the default 4096 bytes. Basically, the allocation unit size is the block size on your hard drive when it formats NFTS. If you have lots of small files, then it's a good idea to keep the allocation size small so your hard drive space won't be wasted. If you have lots of large files, keeping it higher will increase the system performance by having less blocks to seek. But again, nowadays hard drive capacity is getting higher and higher making small differences by choosing the right allocation size. I suggest you ...

I am trying out the information provided at: So far I am seeing the following: Connecting to 192.168.2.69 ... Connected with 192.168.2.69. Waiting for welcome message... Connected Starting the session... Reading remote directory... Session started. Active session: [1] NAS Watching for changes, press Ctrl-C to abort... Scanning 'D:\_DOCS' for subdirectories... I've tried Rebit to synch my docs with my NAS in real time but was completely disappointed. Now I am trying WinSCP but don't know how good it is, and whether it can handle syncing giant directories.

When I have a random file of unknown format with a file extension I've never heard of, where can I turn to find out about the extension. The obvious choice is to google the extension along with some combination of the words "file", "extension", and so on, but that just yields pages of spam websites peddling anti-virus ("Fix virus problems related to XYZ files!"). Is there any better way?

I've got an Epson WF-3540 printer. It is connected to our network wirelessly. It used to not give us any problems until I had to reset the router. Now the printer hardly ever works for us, because it always appears to be offline. I've no idea why. And what is contradictory is I can easily get to the printer's website by navigating to its IP address, so it can't be offline. So why does it appear to be offline to every machine in our house when it never was before? Answer I found I had to delete the printer from Devices and Printers. Then add it back in by using it's IP address. I don't claim this will work for everyone experiencing this problem, but it is worth trying in case you encounter this problem.

I have recently purchased Asus K43sj . It has NVIDIA GeForce GT 520M 1GB DDR3.Problem is that it does not have optimus. Battery life is 4+ hours while surfing. But if I could enable Optimus I could squeeze more battery life. The graphics card itself has Optimus because it is mentioned on Nvidia site and other notebooks having gt520m also have it. Even Asus k53sc (15" model of my laptop) has Optimus. So Asus has disabled Optimus on this model for some reason. I have searched BIOS settings but there is no option to enable Optimus. Please tell me how to enable Optimus ? Answer The Asus K43SJ does not use the integrated Intel HD graphics (whether it's on the CPU or not), so you're not going to be able to use Optimus. I came to this conclusion by the fact that the Intel Graphics are mentioned nowhere on the support page for that model, and the fact that they ONLY offer the nVidia driver (where as the K53SC does provide both the Intel and nVidia drivers). The technology is the...

The purpose is to restart the machine if it doesn't get an abort command from the user. The problem is that the way the terminals are set up, user must supply SU password for shutdown , init , reboot , etc. commands. We are wondering if it's possible to supply password in bash script itself, maybe using stdin. i.e.: #!/bin/bash # (script) echo "Terminal will restart in 60s, Ctrl+C to cancel." sleep 60 su - root -c "init 6" We are going to try putting the password in a file and stdin that. Edit: sudo and expect are out as solutions as getting them installed will be impossible due to a massive amount of paperwork for permission and a limited timeframe. Also we would like to use init 6 or shutdown -r rather than reboot .

I threw out a Windows XP machine a while ago (the motherboard failed). I kept the hard drive and the XP installation media. Problem is the license key was on a sticker on the machine - doh! The original manufacturer has gone bust (Evesham) and I suspect that Microsoft will be of little help. Is there any easy way to get the license key off the hard disk? Can I just find the file with the registry data in it and get the key using a hex editor? I really need a spare XP key for use in a Windows VM. Answer If the old machine had a sticker, it was most likely an OEM license. OEM licenses cannot legally be moved from one computer to another one. They die when the computer dies. But, in answer to your question... Load the old registry hive on your new computer and then find the XP key . -- EDIT make sure that you open the SOFTWARE hive instead of SYSTEM mentioned in the first guide, then open this just-opened-offline hive in the second guide.

I am downloading thousands of files over FTP using Filezilla. The download takes several hours, so I want to run it overnight, but there is a problem - Filezilla keeps re-asking the password every now and then - almost like every 10 minutes! Why? How to fix this? I've enabled FileZilla to establish 2 simultaneous FTP connections. It is strange that FileZilla keeps re-asking for password, even if I have set Logontype to "Ask for password". Snip from the documentation : Ask for password : FileZilla asks you the password during logon, and it remembers the password during the session. Interactive : FileZilla asks for the password, and asks again for every new connection to the server. This means that when I set "Ask for password", it shouldn't ask for every new connection to the server. Yet it does ask again and again... Site manager settings: Login settings: Settings: The log just after Filezilla re-asks the password (with 1 simultaneous connection only ...

I've got a pair of headphones with an inline microphone in the cable, connected into a socket that is described in the "other connections" section of the manufacturer's spec list as: Dual Microphone, Stereo Speakers, DC Jack, 1 Headset (Audio) It's not the clearest prose ever written but it sounds to me like it's describing a dual socket for microphones and stereo speakers allowing the connection of one headset for audio purposes. So I expected the two to just work together. My problem is, when I connect my headphones, nothing happens. Nothing appears in the "Recording" section of Control Panel > Sound > Manage Audio Devices, and programs like Skype fail to see it as an input option. The headset does work perfectly first time on other devices e.g. an Android phone. Do I need to do something like install drivers before this will work? Is detecting headsets something Windows 8 is normally capable of? If not is there any 3rd party software etc? T...

Is there a [virtual-]filesystem that can automatically split files in storage but present them to the user as single files? For example: The user sees: /user/files/10TBfile But it is stored as: /backingstorage/user/files/10TBfile.{1..100} Basically the same way a split archive works but in real time. I feel like it should be possible since it's basically storing each virtual disk block as a separate file but I don't know of any existing solutions for it. If you're curious, the end goal might be something similar to this question: Divide out local files in different servers with limited space with rsync except that I have single large files that need to be split and the files need to be updated in real-time so a daily cron/rsync and split tar are out of the question. I already have the remote drives mounted so I just need a way to split the file and present it as a single file to the user. Thanks! Answer What you want is chunkfs : ChunkFS is a FUSE based filesystem that a...

I keep a PC running 24x7 as it handles several light (processor-wise and disk-wise) tasks and acts as a jumping point into my network from outside. I'd like to keep it as energy efficient as possible. I've always wondered about the "Turn off harddrive after XX mins inactivity" type settings. I can imagine on Win 3.1 that this might work well for unattended PCs, but I figured that in more modern OSes there are so many background tasks running and likely touching the disk periodically that this setting is pretty ineffective. However, I'm more concerned/interested in knowing whether it is dangerous. I can imagine that spinning down the harddrive every 20 mins just to have it get spun right back up again (and maybe worse, spun up while it is spinning down) might be bad for the drive. I've definitely seen some TCO figures from way back about lab machines used only during the day but cheaper to leave them running since the drive failures are increased with spin up/d...

I want to use Firefox portable as my main browser. I noticed when I use the shortcut key built into the keyboard to launch the web browser, something strange happens. A version of Firefox opens up but it doesn't have the same home page and doesn't have add ons that I have added to the portable edition. I checked the control panel and there are no installations of Firefox (which makes sense because the portable edition wouldn't show up there anyways). This is what I mean by keyboard shortcut key How can I launch Firefox portable (with all it's normal features and settings) from pressing the button on the keyboard? This is the keyboard used. I checked the manufacturers website and it doesn't appear to have any drivers. Here's a picture: FireFox portable - with all the add ons and proper home page. I can only get this by clicking on the shortcut button. When I press the key built into the keyboard to launch the web browser this loads, and all the settings are diff...

I have a Hyper-V Server running on a Windows 8 machine (machine A). I have another Windows 8 laptop (machine B) that has Hyper-V Management GUI installed . Now when I connect Hyper-V Server from machine B to machine A, it gives me the following error: Hyper-V Manager An error occurred while attempting to connect to server "KEFEI-HOME". Check that the Virtual Machine Management service is running and that you are authorized to connect to the server. You do not have the required permission to complete this task. Contact the administrator of the authorization policy for the computer 'KEFEI-HOME'. I'm wondering if it's possible to allow remote Hyper-V management for a Hyper-V Server running on a Windows 8 machine.

A couple of years back MP3 was the most supported format for portable devices. Then Apple came along and wiped the floor of all the portable devices with the iPod as well as the iPhone . They clearly favour M4A (AAC). When to choose, right now, the 'best' audio codec to encode music to, which would you choose to achieve maximal independence of portable device vendors: MP3 or M4A? (I am well aware of Ogg (Vorbis): no market (maybe this changes with HTML5 and more WebKit on portable devices), I am also aware of FLAC : I don't want to discuss long term storage.) Answer If you plan to use your audio files on more than one portable player, especially if you want to use them on future players that you haven't bought yet (so you don't know what formats they will support), MP3 is more or less your only option. Even for players with support for other formats, that support is often incomplete and buggy. Unless you make sure to only buy Rockbox-compatible players. Then y...

Possible Duplicate: How to remove boot loader entry on Windows-8? some time ago i bought an SSD and since i had to reinstall windows i bought windows 8 with it. I kept windows 7 on my old HDD and i installed Windows 8 on the SSD. For some time i had both, and a dual boot screen would allow me to switch between them. But now i deleted the windows 7 partition and merged it to the partition where i keep all my files, movies etc. But i still have the dual boot screen showing up with windows 8 and windows 7 options. How can i remove the dual boot screen and just make it boot to windows 8? Answer fixmbr was the command to use. Need to bootup to command prompt, I used to use bartpe cds for this, but now it looks like you should bootup off the Win8 cd. Check out this page on the steps to follow: Repair / Fix MBR in Windows 8 using the Command Prompt Might be another way as well. Used to be you could edit the boot.ini, you should be able to select the default OS to boot to and how long to wai...

ffmpeg –i test.mkv -vf "movie=watermark.png [watermark]; [in][watermark] overlay=10:10 [out]" outputvideo.mkv I'm trying to simply add a watermark to a video to start testing with ffmpeg. But it simply does not work although I can't see any error. I also tried ffmpeg -i test.mkv -i watermark.png -filter_complex 'overlay=10:main_h-overlay_h-10' output.mkv But no success there either. Output: ffmpeg version 1.1.1 Copyright (c) 2000-2013 the FFmpeg developers built on Jan 20 2013 23:05:28 with gcc 4.7.2 (GCC) configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --disable-w32threads --enable-avisynth --enable-bzlib --enable-fontconfig --enable-frei0r --enable-gnutls --enable-libass --enable-libbluray --enable-libcaca --enable-libfreetype --enable-libgsm --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libopus --enable-librtmp --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libtwolame --enab...

I have an 8GB Sony USB memory stick and only 49 MB are being detected. I've tried on multiple USB ports and tried formatting it several times. I checked it for errors and it said none are found. I want to use it to install Windows 8 off of but 49MB is way too small. By the way, what's the most universally accepted name: thumbdrive, usb memory stick, jump drive, flash drive (I thought flash memory was for digital cameras)? Answer Probably you've flashed some boot USB or ISO image which have size of only ~49MB. That process clears the flash drive's MBR and replaces it with the one in the image that contains a small partition. You can verify that by opening diskmgmt.msc and check if there is only a single 49MB partition If that's correct then just delete and recreate the partition. Or use some 3 rd party partitioning tools like gparted , or EaseUS® Partition Master or MiniTool® Partition Wizard Home Edition to extend/recreate the partition Another GUI solution is...

I have an issue that my HP 650 laptop is doing refreshing of taskbar and desktop in every 2 minutes. When refreshing the icons from the taskbar are disappearing for 1-2 second and then again shown. What can be the reason of this problem and how can I solve it? Thanks. Answer I'd suggest updating the display driver for your laptop but it could be malware as well. I can suggest malware removal tools but try the display driver(s) first.

I have a Dell Inspiron XPS 15 (L502X) laptop, with an eSATAp port. I also have a Western Digital 1TB 3"5 SATA drive, that I'd like to use with the laptop. I bought a eSATAp SATA 22-pin cable (from Delock). When I use this cable my 3"5 HDD does NOT power up, no spin up. I thought that it's just this HDD taking too much power from the motherboard. However, I tested too with my 2"5 SATA HDD and it works successfully. Now the weird thing is that this 2"5 HDD takes 1.1A at 5V, and that the 3"5 HDD takes 0.7A at 5V. I don't understand why it can't work. Is there anything I could do for it to work ? What is really the problem ? Thanks for your help, Hugo Answer There exist two versions of this port. The first one, usually built in laptops, provides only +5 V through the USB connection. The other one has additional two pads, placed against the plug's "horns", which provide +12 V. The second one is needed if a 3.5" HDD or 5.25"...

I'm using v 15.13.1 of Outlook for Mac. I'm trying to figure out how to change the default search behavior from "search this folder" to "search all folders", as I rarely change to the correct folder first. I know this was possible on old versions of Outlook on Windows so I am hoping it's possible here as well. Thanks!

I use a Dvorak keyboard layout, controlled through the language bar "United States-Dvorak". I'm trying to use the Chinese IME (Simplified, Pinyin), but whenever I switch to that mode, the keys go back to QWERTY, so I can't type... Note: The OS is Windows 7, which has the new Pinyin IME. Edit: I wish I could put my SO rep up for a bounty here. :\ I guess 100 has to do for now. Answer Save as .reg file and run (as admin on Win7, I guess... or just use regedit to make the change manually): Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layouts\E00E0804] "Layout File"="kbddv.dll" This changes the keyboard layout that ‘MS Pinyin IME 3.0’ for Chinese (Simplified) delegates to to two-handed Dvorak. This does give me ‘你’ for ‘lg’ on a QWERTY keyboard on XP. If you want a different IME or layout variant you'll have to change it a bit. If Windows 7's IME has a new ID number you might have to look...

I upgraded my Mac OS To OS X El Capitan. Now it is not getting connected to internet via Ethernet cable but Wireless works just fine. What happens is when I connect the Ethernet cable it says self assigned IP as shown in screenshot. I have tried to manually enter all IPv4 information but doesn't help

I have a Sony VAIO laptop that has an i7 processor, 6 GB of RAM and a 7200 RPM 500 GB 2.5 inch drive. I work in .NET, so I have SQL Server Developer, Visual Studio and a lot of other tools like that. The machine takes nearly 4 minutes to boot up. I actually timed it this morning and it is 2:45 seconds, although it is still isn't really responsive at that point. It's clear things are still loading, in other words. I have ReadyBoost but that doesn't seem to help. Most of the boot up occurs before ReadyBoost even comes online, which is a shame because the flash memory for it is quite fast. Is there a way to speed up the boot time and/or make ReadyBoost more effective?

The folder name was listed in File Explorer with just plain four dots .... . When I tried opening it, I came into some kind of endless rabbit hole loop where I opened the exact same folder again and again - I could do this endlessly. Showing the path like C:\ExamplePath\....\....\....\....\.... , etc. It was hanging my TypeScript compilation in one specific project. It took me more than a year before I found this folder and its related problems, because it was rooted deeply in nested folders. I never expected an issue like this, so I never looked for it. I couldn't delete the folder the normal way because of the special name. In the end, I could remove it by using the command line and deleting the parent folder with rd /s /q path . Afterward, I tried to create the folder again but was unable to do so with both File Explorer and the command line. In my 20-plus years of using Windows I have never seen this bug before, so I can imagine that it would really be an annoying and confusing...

In spite of being a dead-end technology, there are a couple of apps built using Microsoft Silverlight that I have to use. I'm mostly migrated to using a Chromebook full-time, but these couple of apps are keeping me from going because Silverlight is for Windows or Mac. What can I do to use these apps with my Chromebook? Answer Google recommends RDP-ing to a remote machine that can run the silver light code ... http://support.google.com/chromeos/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1290513 Sucky solution, but there you are.

How might I go about limiting the execution time of a command line program in windows? I know in linux there is timeout/timelimit available, but I have been unable to find similar utilities for windows.

I have the following problem on my Windows 7 computer: I am a member of Administrators, but do not have full Superuser privileges. I have been told that this is by design, and that I need to explicitly "run as administrator" programs where I need Superuser privileges. How do I do this with control panel?