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Pm Pete. I can barely post here with my iPod and no pc. Sigh.
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FWIW, I bet your problem isn't your drives, check them in another computer and with different cables - I'm willing to bet it's just as likely the controller or the cabling as the drives themselves (the odds of multiple drives failing at once is rather high)
But yeah, requests for demo site link, PM me and I'll try to sort it ASAP while jotting down how I want to build the new package manager I've talked about.
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One of my sata cables was half disconnected but after I plugged it in correctly it started to fail even more.
I've got 4 disks. 2 are system disks. Both failed. Haven't tested the others but I suspect one of them is still okay.
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Managed to reboot with Windows 7... Even though it's installed on the very first partition that failed for me (and I didn't manage to boot it last time I tried!)
I launched a quick chkdsk on my XP partition (that also holds my Wedge files), and it still fails.
I did an xcopy of the Wedge folder, it stopped again in the cache folder. Then I just created several subfolders and xcopied other, media, Sources and Themes separately. They all worked... Also the root folder. So, normally, all of my recent changes should be retained (phew.)
I'm still gonna have to do something about it... I think I'll go to a computer shop tomorrow, and buy myself a new machine. I'd really rather build it myself, but I found a machine that is 80% of what I was planning to build. (The only issue is that it lacks a SSD, which I can buy separately (I'll also buy an extra 1TB or 1.5TB HD), and has a GeForce 560 which AFAIK is overkill for me and a bit noisy. I like silence. Well, I can always replace it in the future...)
Then I'll install W7 on it and try to recover as much data as possible.
I'm not excited with the idea though... If only it could be a cable problem...! But it really doesn't seem to be linked to that.
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Cache folders are bad voodoo, mess with them at your peril. Good to hear it was at least partly recoverable :)
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Yeah, well, losing my XP is much worse to me than a few days worth of work...
I mean, XP loads, but then when I reach the UI, it says it failed to load my profile, and it builds a new default profile. Yikes. It takes hours to initialize, and then XP fails at doing anything, like launching a program or whatever...
The only difference between that time and the last time it worked, was that I pressed the Reset button because it refused to log off... Then I had crashes at startup -- BSOD + "Hard Error" (never got that one before. It doesn't even show a log!) I suspect it's due to the fact that I'd requested both a partition check (on whatever partition) and a pagefile defrag (through the Contig software) on the next boot. One of the programs must have failed to play with the disk... And then it probably screwed my profile folder as well.
A real mess...
It's 2:27am here. I need to sleep. Badly.
Posted: June 11th, 2011, 02:27 AM
I don't get it... I copied flawlessly my profile from Documents and Settings. Isn't that this folder which is supposed to fail? It's the one with my name on it... Also copied Default User and All Users without a problem. Uh...
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I don't get it... I copied flawlessly my profile from Documents and Settings. Isn't that this folder which is supposed to fail? It's the one with my name on it... Also copied Default User and All Users without a problem. Uh...
I'm going to buy a new machine today. Something in the 1500¤ range. Then I'll plug my disks into it. Even if it's just a controller failure, it *probably* screwed up my disks just by saving data onto them... Otherwise, why would the Wedge folder copy just fine, except for a file in the cache folder? Probably because that file was saved after the disk started to fail... I don't know.
Posted: June 11th, 2011, 09:57 AM
What do you think of this rig?
http://www.ldlc.com/fiche/PB00100625.html
Ok it's in French, but it's just a computer with regular devices...
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What do you think of this rig?
http://www.ldlc.com/fiche/PB00100625.html
Ok it's in French, but it's just a computer with regular devices...
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I'm not sure about the GeForce though-- it's a greedy one, and I don't play that many games... I could do with a GF 460 or even below, see...? But the rest fits me (I can buy the SSD separately.)
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I'd say get it, GTX580 is a very good GPU and can come in handy if you decide to play a game or two.
EDIT : I re-read the specs. I'd say get the PC and ship it to me :P.
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I'm also interested in this one...
http://www.ldlc.com/fiche/PB00110770.html
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Don't you like assembling it by yourself..? It's cheaper! :D
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Nao: have you tried accessing your harddrives from a Linux live cd or pen drive (e.g. Ubuntu)? I know, it might sound crazy, but that's how I usually recover data when a Windows machine fails to boot.
Of course, the success rate will depend on how broken the hardware is...
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I haven't got the time to do it. I need to reinstall Windows and try to import as much data as possible from my earlier configuration... Believe me, I don't WANT to do it. But I can't exactly do it any other way. My hard drives seem to be dead. :(
Aaron: I don't know... I doubt it'd work any better. The problem happens in both XP and 7, so it's not an OS problem. If you mean Linux has better error recovery, I don't know, but I don't have a live CD anyway right now and I'd like to be finished with this ASAP...
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You could always grab the latest issue of Linux Format - it always has a live CD on the front.
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I'm also interested in this one...
http://www.ldlc.com/fiche/PB00110770.html
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I'd say that is more appropriate for you, it has power but not a lot of it. I still beats mine though.
PS: I'm not into penis size contests :P When I buy a machine, it's not so that it's the fastest around -- it's only so that I can be sure I can keep it for as long as possible. My current rig was built in 2005 (using a couple of components I bought as far as in 2001!), and I'm still happy with it -- except for the Ram (2gb), but I postponed the Ram upgrade because I was planning to upgrade the entire computer anyway... Honestly I could have kept it for a couple extra years if it wasn't for the hard drive failure.
Pete: no such thing as Linux Format in France, AFAIK ;)
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Linux Format ships internationally but it is a UK based magazine...
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I'd say that is more appropriate for you, it has power but not a lot of it. I still beats mine though.
PS: I'm not into penis size contests :P When I buy a machine, it's not so that it's the fastest around -- it's only so that I can be sure I can keep it for as long as possible. My current rig was built in 2005 (using a couple of components I bought as far as in 2001!), and I'm still happy with it -- except for the Ram (2gb), but I postponed the Ram upgrade because I was planning to upgrade the entire computer anyway... Honestly I could have kept it for a couple extra years if it wasn't for the hard drive failure.
Pete: no such thing as Linux Format in France, AFAIK ;)
4GB of RAM should be fine, I don't think you really need more .
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*shrug* Can never have enough RAM, but it depends what you're doing. I stuck 8GB in mine last year mostly because I was doing heavy virtualisation stuff at the time running Win Server 2k3 in VirtualBox.
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2GB is definitely not enough when you're a heavy Opera user like me. 4GB would be better, but I'd like to be able to run recent games alongside my Opera... So 6GB is a must, and 8GB is ideal.
I'm also looking into Asus's offerings... Hmm.
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Nao: have you tried accessing your harddrives from a Linux live cd or pen drive (e.g. Ubuntu)? I know, it might sound crazy, but that's how I usually recover data when a Windows machine fails to boot.
Of course, the success rate will depend on how broken the hardware is...
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*shrug* Can never have enough RAM, but it depends what you're doing. I stuck 8GB in mine last year mostly because I was doing heavy virtualisation stuff at the time running Win Server 2k3 in VirtualBox.
Although for someone who's looking to have over 100 tabs in Opera and play Crysis, I'd say get as much as you can.
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Downloaded ubuntu live cd on my safe hd. Crashed halfway through download. Reset. Windows 7 is dead, too.
Yay.
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Error Nº1: Downloading Ubuntu :P
Get online backups! Maybe kind of boring waiting them to download, but, hey... It's safier right?
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So, here I am... With my new PC!
They didn't have the one I came for (the Revolution machine -- first link I posted). However, I was lucky: they did have my favorite rig of all, while it was marked as not available. Only, it was a demo machine that had been running for 2 months already, and was a bit dusty. Because of that, I managed to haggle and get the price down by 200¤ (honestly I'd never have thought they'd offer such a discount! I would have been sold at 50¤ :lol:)
So, the rig is as such:
- i7 2600k (3.4ghz)
- 8GB ram
- GeForce GTX 570 (I would rather have had a 560 for less money, but it's better than the 580 that was on the Revolution... 32W consumption for 580 in idle, and 24W for mine. It's better, though it could be even better.)
- 4 USB3 ports + plenty of USB2
- 1TB drive
- 128GB SSD (yay!)
- :edit: and Windows 7 Ultimate... I forgot to mention it. Ultimate is cool. Has XP Mode... Although I don't know how to enable it, eheh.
- EXTREMELY silent machine. I thought it was noisy in the shop, but it really isn't. I just can't hear it!
All for the price of 1500¤.
I'm pretty happy with my purchase, really. I really can feel the speed of SSD. It's not a myth!
I also bought an external eSata rack for my old drives... Hopefully I can recover them!
I'll get to it soon.
Posted: June 11th, 2011, 05:19 PM
Holy cow! Opera installed in UNDER a second!! :lol:
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12384 points in Peacekeeper... Cool!
(Here's wondering how the top numbers can be above 20k though... Probably heavy overclocking :P)
I just plugged in my biggest hard drive... Using the rack... Here's the question: how the heck do I remove the disk after I'm done with it? :lol:
Seriously, I don't see any way to remove the hard drive from the rack. It's just too tight... :-/
Plus, I've been unlucky in my choice of hard drive. It's the one where I don't remember getting any problems.
I'm currently checking it and it seems to find no problems. Phew... At least that's a gig I didn't lose.
But as for the rest... I'd like to be able to remove the disk :P
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Now throw some pretty games at it in order to do some justice to that beautiful piece of hardware.
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I will, I certainly will...
A bit bothered by my chkdsk on my safe drive... It's a 512GB partition. It took it over an hour to go through 50k files... (Out of 300k) Uh.
And I still can't find any information online on how to remove a hard drive from a rack without breaking it. Uh. Got fooled... I'll have to buy another one is my guess.
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3D Mark 11 runs nicely.
I wanted to stress my GeForce... Well, it gets a bit noisier, but it's barely noticeable. Only when there's no sound coming from my speakers. Nice. I've been using exclusively passive cards for the last 10 years because of a bad experience with a Radeon that screamed at me every time I launched a 3D game. I guess this 'issue' has been fixed by manufacturers in the meantime.
Still, the program crashed on me before the end... (I don't care about getting the score, though.)
And it took so long to install...
Maybe I've got a virus and it's spreading to my new rig :P
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Those kind of woes scare me. At work we have a document management system, that about only 75% of the people use. I've been there 7 months and seen 4 hard drives crash, all of them in the 25% of people saving to the desktop. One of them so completely I couldn't get anything back for her. The other 3 I was able to use an external enclosure to get everything back.
At home I use an external drive and backup my wife and I's data once in a while. Wedding pictures for example are in half a dozen places. :)
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I am VERY paranoid when it comes to important data, that's why I got 2 external hard disks, my main PC got 2 1TB HDD in RAID1 and I got another 2 servers(Both at different locations, one at my dad's office, other at my cousin's house) which contain complete data in case I manage to lose some. I do a weekly update for anything.
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What a stupid idea...
I simply wanted to insert my hard drives into the PC, since, well, at some point I was gonna add new hard drives wasn't I...???
Well, turns out the setup inside the box is quite complicated. The GFX card is so huge, it simply shuts me down from one of the Sata slots. i.e. I can only have 5 disks, not 6. Yay. Then it's the cables... The power unit's cables are shown in a way that I just can't use them. Only one cable is available, which used to power the 1TB drive they gave me... And the other entry (plug?) in that cable is extremely hard to handle. As a result, the power cable is stretched to the maximum and I'm scared at the idea of destroying my hard drive by breaking the power slot over time.
What do you think..? (Yeah, I know, without seeing the picture it's hard to get an idea...)
Oh, that's why I didn't want to build my own rig again. I had this kind of shit happen to me back in 2005.
At least my original Antec case had some pretty cool slots for hard drives. I just had to put them into rails and insert them on the side. They were easy to access and everything... Not so with the new machine -- even though it's still based on another popular Antec case. The entire set of drives is enclosed in a case, and it's that case which is on rails, not the drives themselves... And the drives are positioned in a way I can't access them directly. I have to remove the case. And in order to do that, I have to unplug all of the cables from the drives...
Needless to say, I don't see myself doing that too often...
I fear I'm going to have to go without my extra drive. I'll just plug it into my eSata port and that's all... Uh. And I'll compensate with USB3 drives. (I don't remember... Are USB3 drives supposed to be usable as destinations for programs, or are they only suited for storing movies and such?)
PS: sorry, but it makes me feel better to talk about this crap even though I know nobody will answer... :P
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If you got those 4 pin molex connectors, you can use that to a SATA power converter in order to power the drives.
And how many eSata ports do you got?
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I think I only got 1 eSata port... :(
Sata power converter?
Oh, and the follow-up to my old PC's story... I just plugged in my system drive. It's dead. It's offering to format it... Boooo hoooo hooooo.
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I build my own system and now you know why! I hate prebuild system, there always a catch in those system. At least your system specification is awesome!
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I think I only got 1 eSata port... :(
Sata power converter?
Oh, and the follow-up to my old PC's story... I just plugged in my system drive. It's dead. It's offering to format it... Boooo hoooo hooooo.
Go into any PC hardware store and ask for a 4pin molex connector to sata power connector, just make sure you got enough molex connectors in there(Here's how they look(http://images.ncix.com/forumimages/122C9266-840A-10A8-B609D99738835D47.jpg))
That's how I've powered 2 of my drives in my PC.
Posted: June 11th, 2011, 10:16 PM
Here's(http://www.satacables.com/assets/images/P72550957.jpg) how they look.
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That gives you 3 sata ports(Presuming your DVD drive is SATA), which should be enough quite a while.
Oh my... That's horrible. In addition to all of my XP settings, I lost so many things. My entire fucking to-do list for Wedge!! It was stored in C:\, at the root... Grrr!! My Locate32 database... Where I could have at least retrieved the list of my C:\ files, enabling me to redownload the stuff I'd lost....
My entire photo database... 5 years worth of pictures... >_<
"Thankfully", my CD collection wasn't on that hard drive. 500gb of data... I'd have hated to lose that in addition to my C: drive...Go into any PC hardware store and ask for a 4pin molex connector to sata power connector, just make sure you got enough molex connectors in there(Here's how they look(http://images.ncix.com/forumimages/122C9266-840A-10A8-B609D99738835D47.jpg))
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I thought the only limitation you had was because of short cables, didn't read properly, sorry.
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No, it just can't be explained in simple words... Yes, the cable is too short but I guess I could 'fix' it by moving the farthest drive to the center of the rack.
It won't fix my lack of slots though... :P Nor will it fix my lack of cables. (I don't think I've got any remaining power cables... Hmm.)
Posted: June 11th, 2011, 10:48 PM
Oh, forgot to mention -- managed to retrieve C:, actually! The partition that was dead was another one (which didn't have a LOT of interesting data in it anyway), while C: itself was further down my partition list, so I didn't see it immediately.
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That good to here, data recovery cost is expensive. You may want to invest for a Blu-Ray rewriter, or just use DVD rewriter if you already got that.
Posted: June 11th, 2011, 11:13 PM
I had a Seagate drive with a buggy firmware known for bricking itself which it did, it's had all my photos and luckily I was able to fix it and update the firmware, I had to buy a USB to TTL Serial Cable to do that. I just made a backup copy of all my photos and put it onto a DVD.
http://www.mapleleafmountain.com/seagatebrick.html
I still got the hard drive and is working perfectly fine with a new firmware, so far so good it didn't brick itself again. I hope not.
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Oh, forgot to mention -- managed to retrieve C:, actually! The partition that was dead was another one (which didn't have a LOT of interesting data in it anyway), while C: itself was further down my partition list, so I didn't see it immediately.
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Unfortunately, after a careful evaluation (i.e. using xcopy to mirror the partition to a folder on my safe drive), C: wasn't safe in the end... :(
Although it was 'readable', I only recovered 30gb worth of data, instead of 187gb. Meaning I lost 157gb here... :(
Among other things, I lost my entire SMF folder -- i.e. all of the mods and work I did... Including all file data for all of my SMF websites, and files for Wedge. I guess the files ARE still there, just the MFT or something is corrupted, because yesterday I was able to access the Wedge folder and retrieve all of its data...
I don't really what software to use to attempt to fix the non-trivial data.
For instance, "chkdsk f: /f" simply tells me (in French) "File system type is NTFS. Unable to determine volume's version and state (status?). Cancelling CHKDSK".
So, chkdsk is out of the picture... Anyone got any got experience? Or should I really use Linux...? (I don't want to burn a DVD for nothing really. Plus, my major drive crash happened yesterday while downloading it.... :whistle:)
Going to bed... This wasn't a funny day for me. (Except the moment when I launched my new PC for the first time.)
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I'd use Linux at this point, mount it readonly and see what you can scavenge out of it. There is a took I acquired years ago, called SpinRite, that's pretty good at fixing issues - but I don't know if it works on NTFS or not.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk would also be worth trying at this point.
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Fuck!!! The file that mattered the most -- my list of passwords, uh -- got corrupted... It was copied fine, but it's all a bunch of binary gibberish... :snif:
Linux -> Okay but I don't know a thing about Linux so I don't know which to use, how to install (I've got a self-booting copy of Mint on a USB key but my PC simply doesn't boot it...), and what to expect of it.
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I really wouldn't give up just yet. Just give Linux a shot already. I, for one, have much more faith in it when it comes to copying from a corrupt partition than I have in xcopy.
Fuck!!! The file that mattered the most -- my list of passwords, uh -- got corrupted... It was copied fine, but it's all a bunch of binary gibberish... :snif:
Linux -> Okay but I don't know a thing about Linux so I don't know which to use, how to install (I've got a self-booting copy of Mint on a USB key but my PC simply doesn't boot it...), and what to expect of it.
And, while not helping, I must say I really am surprised to learn you don't seem to have any backups. :(
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Lost my fuckin' Deideo.txt file... >_< (Again, the gibberish binary problem.)
I'd been working on that file for TWO YEARS. Was to be the basis of a complex website with a database of 'stolen' music in movies (i.e. uncredited inspiration from other movies.)
Oh, my girlfriend is going to be so happy about that... She said I shouldn't build that site, that someone would sue me for that. I still wanted to do it. I'm screwed, but not the way she thought... :(
@Aaron> I think the gibberish just means "the MFT was corrupted, and from what we managed to gather, your data was in that cluster, and if it's not, bad luck."
So I don't really see how Linux is going to magically find the correct cluster...!
No, no encryption on my hard drives. I can confirm.
Yes, the USB stick is bootable -- I used it to boot my EeePC after I lost its partition.
Backups: most of my backups are on a hard drive I have yet to test (I'll do it tomorrow). If that particular drive is safe, then I should be able to get back my SMF folder. But I don't think I saved a lot of data otherwise... I know that Deideo.txt was probably not part of it. Because it was in the root folder of C:\, and not in a folder called C:\Root\ where I kept my important text files to save. I'll see... Grmpf.
The other problem is that last Wednesday, I bought myself a new 500GB external drive precisely to store my files and make room for backups... But I was too busy on the Wine redesign and didn't take the time to build these backups. Instead I deleted a lot of the backup files so I could rebuild them from scratch (incremental backups take less space when rebuilt from scratch from time to time.)
It was REALLY a fucking stroke of bad luck for me this week.
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Give this a try Nao. I have successfully recovered data from a drive Windows wouldn't touch with this program.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
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Use Ubuntu! Instead of installing use the "live cd" feature and see if it can recover your data.. Fingers crossed!!
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No, no encryption on my hard drives. I can confirm.
Definitely try a non-Windows solution to try and recover more data, though.
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All right, I'll try tomorrow...
Uh, I just found a copy of Deideo.txt. A backup. YAY. Then I looked at the date... December 2009. Right. You gotta be kidding me. Most of my work on this file was done precisely in early 2010... >_<
:edit: Ah, phew... Found a copy from last February. Good! (See below.)
@Aaron> Nope, it's just screwed up. Here's the (un)funny thing. I salvaged my C: root earlier today, and put it into its own folder. Then I salvaged the entire C: this evening, and checked the salvaged Deideo, and it was corrupted. Now I just checked the copy I'd salvaged this afternoon, and it's in a correct state. Meaning that either xcopy doesn't do things the same way as Windows 7's explorer-based file copy function (and it doesn't do them very well!), or, more likely (because the original file is corrupted to me), the hard drive got in a worse state in the meantime...
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If I were you, I'd probably make a complete binary copy of the entire disk with dd, so you actually have something to work with in case the drive fails completely...
Anyway, I'm off to bed, and I suggest you do the same. You'll have a sharper mind after a good night's rest. :)
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Download Hiren Boot CD:
http://www.hirensbootcd.org/files/Hirens.BootCD.14.0.zip
Boot it, select Run Mini-XP, there are bunch of very good recovery tools available that can scan the drive in R/O mode and get individual files (Recuva, etc)
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Use Ubuntu! Instead of installing use the "live cd" feature and see if it can recover your data.. Fingers crossed!!
I definitely would suggest you to try with TestDisk as somebody else already said.
I have TestDisk installed in my Linux partition and it has been brilliant to recover data from all kind of different places (windows and linux partitions, etc. I even recovered with it data from a camera card that was really badly damaged).
And the good thing about TestDisk is that you don't need to have Linux installed. You can try it almost with anything.
I even saw once a stand alone CD with only TestDisk in it (done in DOS I think). Don't remember where it was, but suppose you can find it with Google.
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Okay, a quick summary of what I lost and what I recovered...
Basically, I lost two hard drives for a total of 620GB of data. Maybe about 20GB were backed up all in all. Out of the unbacked data I'd managed to recover, most of the files are gibberish. I've lost all of my settings, as expected, I reckon it'll take me over a week just to get *functional* again for Wedge, and overall my morale has taken a very strong hit.
See, it's 4am here and I haven't done a SINGLE thing on Wedge today... A big "uh".
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Here is a tutorial on how to recover data using Ubuntu:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery
As you can see, they also recommend (among other programs) TestDisk.
Have you tried to recover any of the "gibberish" files using it?
As I said yesterday, a customer gave me last year a camara card (SSD formatted as FAT16 IIRC) that had been very badly damaged, asking me to do my best to recover anything from there.
All the programs that I tried gave me only a collection of binary gibberish data, not recognisable as any known file format.
Even Ontrack DataRecovery (that had done wonders for me in the past) couldn't get any sense about the data inside the card. Only saw gibberish as well.
That was when I started googleing to see how to do it with Ubuntu (up to 2 years ago I had used only windows and had no idea about how to use any linux system) and found out TestDisk.
That program not only recovered all the pictures my customer had inside the card. It even recovered old pictures he had no idea who had done (apparently they were done before he had formatted the card the first time years ago).
Since then I always use TestDisk first when a customer brings me a hard disk with lost partitions / files.
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I don't get it -- how to recover a gibberish file... I don't see why this kind of recovery program has to suck that much in the UI department. Seriously, it's like the guy's having fun with our brains... (He's French, apparently. No wonder.)
Anyway...
I've only got this machine for a few days, and already I'm wondering whether I should be reinstalling everything again. Since I didn't get to install the OS by myself... It's just weird. In some areas, the machine is lightning fast as expected (the framerate for Fable III and Venetica is, like, 4 times faster.) In other areas... Uh???
Whenever I install a new program, it will spend literally *minutes* (the bigger the program, the longer) in the initial install phase (sometimes it says "gathering size data" or something, sometimes it just says "installing"), and then it'll install programs at light speed. But overall, it's like, twice slower to install than on my previous PC because of the initial startup delay... Uh.
I get crashes in Chrome. Yes, in Chrome. Global program crash, not just a single tab... Fun. I installed the dev channel version, so far it's more stable.
Opera uses its single thread at 100% CPU time. Resulting in a constant 13% CPU use (that's 1/8th of my CPU, since I have 4 cores + hyperthreading). Obviously it doesn't slow down the machine, but Opera itself is slower than on my XP... Ah ah. And when I restart Opera and wait for 10 minutes (it never reaches 100% use before a couple of hours, indicating a memory leak or something), scrolling is slow.
:edit: Oops, strike that. I'm using KatMouse to emulate the mouse wheel behavior in the Windows Explorer, and apparently it introduced a delay when scrolling the wheel. I just restarted KatMouse and it no longer does this... Add this to the LONG list of little oddities I found in Windows 7.
Generally, I find this Win7 to be LESS stable than my Windows XP... Which I installed in 2005, and never reinstalled -- so it was very slow because the registry was cluttered with unused data and all, but it wasn't... glitchy per se.
Other than that, it's great to have 8GB of ram... Being able to run my Opera (200 tabs), Chrome (50 tabs), Firefox (50 tabs) together without a single slowdown is just.. Wow!
:edit: KatMouse does its delay trick again after just a few seconds... Blah! I'll just need to look again for a similar program that dispatches mouse wheel actions to the window behind the mouse cursor... AlwaysMouseWheel just stops doing its magic after minutes, KatMouse does it but it adds this glitch... Uh.
Posted: June 15th, 2011, 10:55 AM
Oh, and does anyone know a way to prevent Win7 from NOT saving data when a program is not run in Administrator mode? Or at least a way to run all programs in Admin mode automatically? Or at the very least, a way for Win7 to actually tell me it won't save the data I just wanted to save? There's nothing more frustration than realizing nothing was saved when I didn't get any error messages...
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Whenever I install a new program, it will spend literally *minutes* (the bigger the program, the longer) in the initial install phase (sometimes it says "gathering size data" or something, sometimes it just says "installing"),
I get crashes in Chrome. Yes, in Chrome. Global program crash, not just a single tab... Fun. I installed the dev channel version, so far it's more stable.
Oh, and does anyone know a way to prevent Win7 from NOT saving data when a program is not run in Administrator mode?
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I always format windows if I get it pre-built or a laptop, and install everything myself. And also slap in a decent anti-virus to make sure I don't screw up.
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So... I took a break to enjoy the power of my new machine -- played Fable III to the end, great mainstream game BTW (enjoyed the first one a lot, but this one was even better.)
In the meantime I did various tweaks to the setup. Overall, I'm pretty satisfied. Although I lost so many things, at least Explorer is usable now. I realized very quickly that Segoe UI, while okay for a web font, is not suitable at all for desktop use. I replaced it with PT Sans and guess what...? It's absolutely beautiful now.
I just can't figure out where to change the font in the taskbar... I guess I'll have to do without it. Everywhere else is a PT Sans party for me. By far the best everyday font I've ever used. It has a MacOS Chicago feel (mostly in the numbers and elegance), but is much more usable.
I still have several issues with the machine...
- Still getting long delays when it calculates the free space at the beginning of an install process,
- It doesn't refresh the explorer panes when I unzip a file somewhere. I either have to hit F5, or change folder and then come back to the previous one... Ouch.
- ClearType: can't get the exact setup I used to have... Possibly due to my XP install being run alongside Powerstrip with a higher alpha setting, while here I'm at the default alpha.
- And... That's pretty much all I can think of right now. So, overall I'm satisfied and I doubt I'll reinstall the machine... :)
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- It doesn't refresh the explorer panes when I unzip a file somewhere. I either have to hit F5, or change folder and then come back to the previous one... Ouch.
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I have yet to encounter that. But it's probably because I use 7-zip to handle the unzipping.
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I normally use Ark on Linux and WinRar on Windows and I've never seen that
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I have yet to encounter that. But it's probably because I use 7-zip to handle the unzipping.
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Winrar here.
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7zip is awesome. It unzips rar too :>
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I doubt the issue Is it.
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Oh yeah I never meant to imply it was. :)
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The Winrar problem seems to be gone... Or at least doesn't happen all the time.
Also, the installer problem on 'calculating...' is gone, too. Don't know why or when. As long as it's gone, I'm fine with it...
I'm not finished setting up my machine, but at least now I'm working in a situation where I don't feel too bad with the Explorer. Actually-- I absolutely love overusing PT Sans for most fonts on my system. (No kidding, I'm using it in Wedge as well... :whistle:)
Here's a screenshot just for fun!
(http://wedge.org/my_win7.jpg)(http://wedge.org/my_win7.jpg)
(Click for full size.)
Posted: June 22nd, 2011, 08:07 AM
Of note:
- no longer selecting full rows. I can safely click anywhere on the right side (Taille/size, Modifié/Modified, Type) to unselect something.
- Sort bar is no longer transparent
- the font!
- taskbar looks okay (I actually built my own background for the taskbar and used it on a Kaamelott background I like :P)
- quick launch bar is back
- Classic Shell is used for both the Explorer and the Start menu
I'll be gettting rid of the Organize bar eventually. And if I can find out how to change the line-height on folder listings, that'll be nice. Otherwise I'll just switch the font to Tahoma eventually... (like on good ol' XP.)
Posted: June 22nd, 2011, 08:11 AM
Oh, and setting up ClearType is quite hard... I still haven't got around to getting the exact same settings as in my XP. Too bad I can't import from it... Eheh. (Even if I could -- my HD is dead anyway.)
Still, I don't know if it's a font change in W7 or ClearType settings, but Verdana looks way better in W7 than in XP for me. And Lucida Sans Unicode Bold looks awful, while it looked great in XP.
I used to have PowerStrip running, enabling me to change the gamma for my screen, and would always lower the gamma because I found my interface to be too bright. This is no longer the case in W7, and I'd rather have a setting that's more faithful to what everyone else will be seeing, so I don't create distorted color schemes ;)
So overall it's all for the better... I guess!
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The ClearType on Windows 7 is different to the one on Vista and XP.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2009/06/23/engineering-changes-to-cleartype-in-windows-7.aspx
Anyway there is a trick that allows you to use your own font in the command prompt, but it requires registry editing.
(http://cj-jackson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/22-06-2011_12-23-08.png)(http://cj-jackson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/22-06-2011_12-23-08.png)
As you can see. I'm using Droid Sans Mono.
Speaking of PT Sans did you look at my blog lately?
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I've installed XP Mode on my Win7 and I'm upset... Supposedly this was to be a simulation of any WinXP program in Win7, but the graphic drivers supplied to XP are for a standard S3 Trio card... Meaning I can't run any 3D games on it!
And *of course*, the program I really need to run on XP Mode is a 3D one... <_<
And isn't XP Mode supposed to provide shortcuts to its programs within the Win7 start menu? I don't see any shortcut to IE6 there...
Also, I don't get why it's taking up 3GB of my hard drive space... The ISO is only 500MB and it's using only a few MB of disk space for now... Tss.
Oh, and that stock XP install... I didn't remember it sucked so much!
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The ISO is only 500 MB but the install profile is physically bigger; I remember it taking over 1GB when I first installed WinXP (pre SP1) way back in the day.
It wasn't designed for playing games, but for emulating apps that didn't work properly otherwise.
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Yeah, but what when my games fail... :P
Will I have to go and look into VirtualBox again? And what do I do to install XP Mode on it? :lol:
Oh, while I'm at it... Win7 has a beautiful bug. If you put an admin program into the Startup folder, it will never run it. I have to manually launch them from the startup folder, and confirm the dialog box to run it in admin mode. If I don't run my apps in admin mode (in the shortcut), then they launch... Albeit with reduced permissions that make them completely useless.
Isn't that swell?
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Will I have to go and look into VirtualBox again? And what do I do to install XP Mode on it?
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Will I have to go and look into VirtualBox again? And what do I do to install XP Mode on it? :lol:
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Will I have to go and look into VirtualBox again? And what do I do to install XP Mode on it?
Apparently it can be installed but not activated. Uh.
Anyway, I've tried an (unactivated) original XP ISO in VirtualBox and it's way better. It's faster, and it's faster to load too... XP Mode takes about 20-30 seconds to launch, while VirtualBox+XP takes about 5 seconds! Yay! Now that's some loading time worthy of my computer! (Especially in an emulator state!)Very, but at the same time, anything that needs to be run at startup as an admin permission probably should be running as a system service instead anyway (which means it automatically gets higher permissions). Unfortunately it's not the sort of thing you can just magically make work, stuff needs to be able to be run as a service to work properly.
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Again... It's very ironic.
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I have something of a problem that is having a definite impact on Wedge...
As a reminder: I have Windows 7 Ultimate on a brand new PC, Core i7 (4 cores + hyper-threading so that's 8), 8GB Ram, SSD HD, and so on.
When a core is running 100% CPU time, that's 100/8 = 12.66% = 13% in my task manager. So when a program is running a thread at 100%, there's a 13% for it in the task manager. Meaning there are still 7 cores available and under-used. All right?
Enter a recent issue. Well, about a few weeks ago I think...
When I boot my PC and use it, for the first day it'll be okay.
Then after some time, it'll develop a problem. On SOME actions, not ALL of them, the current program will suddenly jump to 13%, for a few seconds. It's not that important, but what matters to me is that it *effectively* slows down the entire computer, most notably the mouse cursor gets jerky, sometimes VERY jerky (i.e. it's only updated a few times every second.)
This happens systematically in these cases for instance:
- clicking the Start button (well, what replaced it...) -- not severe, though. But I see it's jerky for half a second.
- launching a program (whether it's stored on my SSD or regular HD...)
- launching my diff tool from within TortoiseSVN (which is pretty much needed for writing my changelog...) will take about 2 to 4 seconds with a jerky mouse, while when I first launch my PC, it takes much less than a second.
- sometimes -- just opening a *window* from inside a program (like the Settings window) will be jerky (like in my diff tool) or not (like in Opera). It's not related to Aero (I tried disabling it). The jerkiness appears during the time between my menu mouse click and the moment the window animation starts (i.e. the animation itself is very smooth and the mouse is only jerky before that).
All in all, with these, it feels a bit like my computer is slower than my old PC (XP + 2GB ram)...
Last time I rebooted, my problems were fixed but they started again the following day. I tried hibernating (= saving memory state and rebooting), and the problems were still there, so I'd like to suspect it's not a hardware problem, but...? What could it be! Everytime I search about this online, I find people saying to "upgrade video card drivers" (first thing I did of course...), or similar. Like, "upgrade your mouse drivers", lol. That one's funny.
I figured maybe someone around here already had a similar problem and they managed to fix it...? It's really making my changelogging life a hell right now!
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I haven't experienced that, but I don't have that many cores, or hyperthreading, and I turn my PC off at the end of the day.
I'm guessing it's related to having a lot of uptime and something leaking memory causing Windows to thrash and have to swap.
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I haven't experienced that, but I don't have that many cores, or hyperthreading, and I turn my PC off at the end of the day.
How do you keep track of your logo history, do you save every single version of the logo after you made a change? Oh no you're not dealing with the logo :P (And I'm not done with it... :lol:)
How do you keep track of your Notepad2 windows? Oh now you're using Notepad++ for that :P
Well I have too many tools I like that don't really appreciate being turned off... So basically I'm a bit stuck, unless I change my tools to things that are less... volatile. Not going to happen for now.I'm guessing it's related to having a lot of uptime
I regularly had 1-month uptimes for my XP, one time I think I even spent 2 or 3 months without rebooting... And that was even before I had my UPS :P
I should think that Win7 improves on uptime, instead of the opposite...and something leaking memory causing Windows to thrash and have to swap.
For instance, Opera uses its file cache a lot. Never have a problem...
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How do you keep track of your code search history for later investigations?
How do you keep track of your logo history, do you save every single version of the logo after you made a change? Oh no you're not dealing with the logo
I don't know that it is W7 doing what I think it is. I don't know that it isn't. What I know for certain is that the same behaviour has been exhibited before on earlier Windows versions for that reason.
Also, be sure to sweep for nasties, just in case.
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Well generally apps tend to use the first core for their work, as well as windows which uses the first core to handle its basic tasks(Including mouse movement). If you have some specific apps that use the first core entire time, you can set its affinity to use the last 2 cores so that it leaves the first cores free for other tasks. Or you can try disabling hyper threading and maintaining 4 cores.
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@Pete> I don't have any viruses. I have the MS antivirus running in active mode, so it basically checks all of my files for viruses when I launch them (I enabled it because, well, it's the first time this doesn't slow down my PC at all...), but even if I disable it, it stays the same.
@Shitiz> I don't think it'd change anything to disable HT. I'd just see a usage peak of 25% (it's really the case, even with HT on...), and that's all. As for core affinity, it's reset once I quit the program so it's not going to be helpful when launching it... :(
As an ex-Win32 developer, I remember that it wasn't possible to choose a core to work with -- you just created your thread and Windows would pick the core for you. I don't know if this has changed, though.
PS: why did I say 12.66% in my previous post when it was 12.5%? :^^;:
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I have an uptime of a week and things go fine.