Official Computer Help Thread

incubusfox · Sep 8, 2008

Megaolix said:

That -s, in that command at least, is a part of the shutdown command it's attempting to perform. Without it, it wouldn't actually shutdown the computer, it would run command 'shutdown' at 10pm, which would give back this:

Code:

C:\>shutdown /?
Usage: shutdown [-i | -l | -s | -r | -a] [-f] [-m \\computername] [-t xx] [-c "c
omment"] [-d up:xx:yy]

 ? ? ? ?No args ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Display this message (same as -?)
 ? ? ? ?-i ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?Display GUI interface, must be the first option
 ? ? ? ?-l ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?Log off (cannot be used with -m option)
 ? ? ? ?-s ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?Shutdown the computer
 ? ? ? ?-r ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?Shutdown and restart the computer
 ? ? ? ?-a ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?Abort a system shutdown
 ? ? ? ?-m \\computername ? ? ? Remote computer to shutdown/restart/abort
 ? ? ? ?-t xx ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Set timeout for shutdown to xx seconds
 ? ? ? ?-c "comment" ? ? ? ? ? ?Shutdown comment (maximum of 127 characters)
 ? ? ? ?-f ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?Forces running applications to close without warning
 ? ? ? ?-d [u][p]:xx:yy ? ? ? ? The reason code for the shutdown
 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?u is the user code
 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?p is a planned shutdown code
 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?xx is the major reason code (positive integer less than 256)
 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?yy is the minor reason code (positive integer less than 65536)

I'm specifically referring to the 'No args' line. AFAIK, -s is simply an argument used in the running of commands, each time defined differently by the command being processed.

I doubt that was what you were hoping for, but at least in this particular case, that's all it is.

PCHeintz72 · Sep 8, 2008

Megaolix said:

We (both mine and incubus fox's posts) actually ansered the question.

The confusion to me was I never knew of or had reason to use the 'AT' command. I thought from the wording of your request 'AT' was the shutdown command you were using. With the bulb from Wiki, I see now what you were attempting.

Keep in mind, while a bunch of us have a lot of computer knowledge, and give advice. This is not a tech forum. We don't know it all.

Megaolix · Sep 8, 2008

Thanks for the answer.

I have a small presentation to do tomorrow and part of it is about at commands. the command I gave was the exemple I would use, but the -s bothered me.

thezorch · Sep 8, 2008

ThreadWeaver said:

Ummmm... Windows Xp and later should be able to open zip files without any assistance from an outside program. It will open the zip file in an explorer window just like any other folder. Use the "Compressed (zipped) folders" option to open it. To use the files, you should drag them out of that window or copypasta to another location so that they're uncompressed. If you try to open a file in an application directly from the "Zipped (compressed) folders" window, some programs will fail saying the file is unavailable or nonexistant- not all, but some will.

To set windows (XP) to always open zip files automatically, right click your zipped file, then select "Open with >". The select "Choose program". The screen that opens should say "Open With" as the title bar. In the selection pane, probably under recommended programs, should have "Compressed (Zipped) Folders". If not there, it should be listed under "Other Programs". If it's not in either, then click "Cancel" use 7-zip. If it is listed there, you should select it and then make sure the box below that says "Always use selected program to open this type of file." is checked. Click "OK". Your icons on your desktop may blink or change briefly when you click "OK" and the window closes. From then on, whenever you double click a zip file, it should automatically open in a standard window. Just remember they still need to be copypasta'd out to decompress them.

But if it can't support zip for some reason... Use 7-zip. Like was said, it's free and full-functioned.

XP and Viista's zip file support has too many limitations. For one thing it can only handle standard zip compression but can't handle more exotic and better compression methods like the native zip format for 7Zip and it can't handle RAR format files either. I've also had trouble getting XP and Vista to work with password protected zip files.

thezorch · Sep 8, 2008

Windows Notepad has a file size limitation. At least it did in Win98/ME/2000.

There are people who swear by Emac and VIM for text editing in Unix and Linux. I used VIM when I was learning Unix shell scripting. It was far more advanced than Windows Notepad. Actually it was VI I was using, later on I used VIM and improved version for when I was learning PERL on Linux. Emacs has been around for ages, it was first on Unix and on Linux and the majority of Unix programmers still use it. Emacs was made specifically for programmers. Different parts of a line of code show up in different colors making programming code easier to read. Emacs, unlike a lot of similar Windows programs, recognizes more than just one or two different programming languages. From what I've read it supports several dozen, and that's only just the beginning of its capabilities.

For writing fan fiction I use OpenOffice.org 2.4 and save my files in .odt OpenDocument Text format. FF.net can convert .odt files to HTML and preserve most of the formatting. I found the sites .doc Word format support to be lacking and writing in Notepad is a non-option because you don't have a spell-checker. In fact, I don't know of any fellow fan fic writers who write in Notepad or in plain text. Everyone I know does it in OpenOffice.org or Word. Its just not smart doing it in Notepad because of the lack of a spell-checker. When I find new words I check out their spelling with Google, which can do spell checking BTW, and then put them into a document and add the word to my spell checker's dictionary. This way I can type something like Kage Bushin no Jutsu and OpenOffice.org will fill in the rest allowing me to advance in the sentence.

PCHeintz72 · Sep 8, 2008

thezorch said:

I think for XP and Vista (maybe 2000 as well) I remember coming across somewhere a comment that the maximum size in Notepad is 64kb, prior to that, it was 32kb.

Which of course is completely unacceptable for anything other than simple tasks.

I know for Textpad, I've personally had opened files of 600+mb (programmer debugging files), and had multiple mid size files open for data manipulation of around that. It is admittably slow on loading and working with such extremely large files, but that is more a system limitation, than a program limit.

Spell checker in it is acceptable as well. There is of course no grammar checking, and it is worthless to run a spell checker on program code.

Zanzopan · Sep 9, 2008

anyone know of a free video editor and/or gif creator (usually 2 separate programs) that does not leave annoying enlaid tags all over the images?

PCHeintz72 · Sep 10, 2008

Grrr...

I figured, FireFox 3 has been out a bit, and heard positive things on it, and I was doing a maintenance cycle to each of my systems, so thought I would update it, since apparently they are no longer suppoorting updates for 2 (tried, wanted to push 3.0 on me). So, instead of using the updater, I actually went to the Firefox site, and grabed the full copy.

Installation itself went smooth on all three systems. Pity I can't say that about how it runs. FireFox 3 is junkier than 2, which I thought not possible. Wish I knew that before upgrading.

First, it disabled one of my plugins, which is not a big deal, considering it was RealPlayer, and it is not like I use Firefox much anyway. It also was nice enough to at least warn it did it.

Second, upon startup, it force enabled tabs to show me that yes, it updated and welcome to 3.0. I immediately redisabled tab browsing.

Third, I go to Manage Bookmarks, as I on a regular basis flush my IE favorites from FireFox and reimport them fresh. It used to be, it took some 5 seconds to delete the "From Internet Explorer Import folder (way more than reasonable, I have some 4300 favorites imported under that folder). Now, on 2 computers, it took some 2 minutes, and on a third, took some 15 minutes, and two browser crashes (each stealing some speed and system resources, sigh).

Fourth, go to import the current ones form IE. Grrr, they moved the menu options around, finally found it under import HTML. I should note, IE favorites are *NOT* HTML. The URL files are for all intents INI files with a different extension.

Fifth, actually Importing those Favorites was a lesson in patience, as it used to take some 30 seconds, now it took some 3-4 minutes on 2 systems, and more like 10 on another (the one the crashed). Good thing I only have to look forward to that once a month.

Sixth, (this one MAY be Yahoo, but I doubt it) went to update the Yahoo Toolbar, so go to Yahoo's site, and tell it to download... it starts in each system the plug in downloader for FireFox. However, on two of them, the downloader stated it could not find the download at the location and then crashed. I had to repeatedly on those two systems reclick download. On the one, it was the third try, on the other, the fourth, and they finally downloaded.

What a pain. I'll admit though... it at least looks nicer, not that one should consider that much of an endorsement when factoring the rest of the experience.

ThreadWeaver · Sep 10, 2008

I never had that much trouble with FF3 honestly. It's been more stable than FF2 ever was for me. I will admit on my machine it uses more memory than FF2 did, which was supposed to be exactly the opposite. But I like tabbed browsing and don't have near the bookmarks you do.

To import favorites/bookmarks, you can try the "Import..." wizard listed under the File menu. It will automatically import all the stuff from IE.

Although I would like to learn about their profile manager tool that I keep hearing about so I can backup the info for Firefox and Thunderbird in case my system crashes again. Gawd that was painful.

I'm looking forward to 3.1 and it's porn... ah.. private mode.

PCHeintz72 · Sep 10, 2008

ThreadWeaver said:

While I did not check it in 3.0, in 1.x and 2.x, that imported *everything*, I only needed the Favorites themselves. Though, at that point in my maintenance cycle, history, cookies, and what not else were cleared out , so it would matter little.

Maybe next maintenace cycle, I'll try that instead.

Sighs...

I've never had much luck with FireFox. My own bad experiences in the past taints my views of it, which is why I am always dismayed at how others can like, enjoy, and [gasp] recommend using it. Thus it has always seemed more trouble than it was worth to me, and why I use it strickly as a backup browser. But even having stated all that, I can honestly state I've never had an experience quite like this before.

decibels · Sep 10, 2008

I went to a... *ahem* rather less than reputable site recently and contracted a trojan. Well after spending 2 and a half hours waiting for the AVG scan to finish it's been quarantined.

But, I still have a problem.

I tried to use task manager while waiting as I kept getting false popups generally wanting me to download some phoney virus scanner or other. However whenever I tried to use it it gave me the message that it had been disabled by the system admin.

Which is completely bogus as I AM the system admin and I think I would remember if I did something like that, plus I have absolutely no clue how to even do that.

So if I could get instructions on where to go to turn it back on or some other solution on how to fix this I would appreciate it greatly.

T.L · Sep 10, 2008

If it is the XP 2008 problem

Check this thread

rdde · Sep 10, 2008

decibels, sounds like your system has been compromised badly. If you're familiar with messing with the hardware and have a second computer available, you could take out the harddisk with the problem, install it in your second computer, boot up with the second computer's Windows and tell it to scan your problem harddisk. That will trap most dangerous and persistent viruses because they should be sleeping.

Also, you don't really have to declare where you got the trojan from. Thanks to DNS poisoning, I wouldn't be surprised if you got your trojan from Yahoo!, Google, Live, Disney or others. Although that would be quite a bit of work for the bad guys to pull off.

PCHeintz72, good luck. ^^;

Window's Notepad's limit definitely isn't 64 kB. I've just opened a 6 MB file with XP's. Win2k's should be the same.

decibels · Sep 10, 2008

Unfortunately I'm not sure that will work. The problem I have is with my hard drive that is housing my OS system and I only have my old computer that I ripped my hard drive out of and put it into a new system.

And yea, my computers' been fucked up for years. Multiple reformats and OS reinstalls as well as some virus's/trojans as well as partial OS reinstalls and screwing with my registry when I reformatted once and didn't feel like reinstalling all my games.

What I really need to to is just copy everything over I want to keep to my second hdd and get some money and buy another copy of XP and completely wipe the drive clean and start over.

Really I'm just beating myself over the head because I've run into this particular situation before. It was a vid sight and said I was missing a codec. I was a bit desperate to watch the video's hosted on it and figured maybe it was different from others similar to it I'd run into before. I could have even scanned the file after I dl'd it with AVG but I didn't.

:headbanger: :headbanger: :headbanger: :sweat:

InternetLOL · Sep 10, 2008

rdde said:

Confirm, I am looking at 15 megabytes of lorem ipsum in a .txt file created with Notepad, running Vista. Seems to be the upper limit.

incubusfox · Sep 10, 2008

decibels said:

A basic google search of "task manager disabled" turned up instructions for me on how to fix this, but I'll go ahead and copy/paste them here.

Click Start, then click Run and type in gpedit.msc. Once in the Group Policy Editor, expand in turn:

User Configuration

Administrative Templates

System

Ctrl+Alt+Del Options

If Remove Task Manager is enabled, double-click on it and set it to 'Not Configured.'

That should fix it, but if it doesn't, and you're comfortable using your registry (or you're not running XP Pro), in regedit expand these:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER

Software

Microsoft

Windows

CurrentVersion

Policies

System

If the DisableTaskMgr key is set to 0x00000001 (1), delete it.

PCHeintz72 · Sep 10, 2008

InternetLOL said:

I looked it up, before I was just going by something I remembered.

Here is what I found.

ArchfiendRai · Sep 12, 2008

Fuck you APPLE.

Fuck you.

My Itunes won't open. In Task Manager, it is clearly one of the processes being run, but it won't open or display in 'Applications.'

Google has failed to help.

Edit: Oh, and when I try to end the process, it doesn't end.

decibels · Sep 12, 2008

first way didn't work said it couldn't find the file. Probably because of my royally screwed up OS.

Second way: bingo.

Thanks, your help is much appreciated.

toraneko · Sep 12, 2008

ThreadWeaver said:

Mozilla knowledge base article on the Profile Manager.

By default, the location of your user profile (assuming you're using WinXP) is \Documents and Settings\(your user name here)\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\(profile folder). You can back it up simply by copying it and pasting it elsewhere; this saves all your plugins, bookmarks, and other user-specific settings.

Andy2kk · Sep 12, 2008

Regarding the Internet explorer history links.... instead of having to bookmark each and every one do anyone know any way to save them as files (or where they're located folder wise?) I have tried searching for it in the windows folder but no luck!

incubusfox · Sep 12, 2008

Andy2kk said:

I'm not totally sure what you're asking about here, but your History is saved at C:\Documents and Settings\~name~\Local Settings\History.

If you don't see the Local Settings folder, while in Explore open Tools -> Folder Options, View tab, and in the Advanced Settings, under the folder "Hidden files and folders" select "Show hidden files and folders" for it to show up.

thezorch · Sep 12, 2008

The Archfiend of Lightning said:

Have you tried running a CHKDSK and Defrag? This often helps when iTunes starts to act up. If iTunes won't start properly then that means something has corrupted one of its files and you need to uninstall it and reinstall it.

Backup your music collection before doing this to another folder. Reinstalling iTunes DOES NOT take away your purchased music collection. You only need to reauthorize your copy of iTunes and that's it, and that's very easy to do.

thezorch · Sep 12, 2008

Megaolix said:

Looks like "AT.exe" for Windows is similar to Cron in Unix/Linux. Cron is a task scheduler for Unix and Linux and is VERY powerful.

thezorch · Sep 12, 2008

Zanzopan said:

Check this site out.

Its the BEST website for finding all kinds of specialized software. Most of it doesn't need to be installed because they are designed to run from on multiple machines from Flash drives.

Here is a very good free Video Editor.

Its called Jashaka, and its the world's first Open Source video accelerated video editor. It has special effects and animation features too and its freeware.

The VERY best tool for converting image files to icons and other formats is with this freeware tool ...

Format Factory
It can convert video files into different formats and does it really good.
It can convert image files to different formats including the icon format.
It can convert music files to different formats.
It can rip DVD into several different file formats and preserve subtitles.
This is the best file format converter available that isn't Mac only.

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