Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2009 March 8

= March 8 =

How do I update OpenOffice2.4 to version 3?
I cannot find anything about this on the OO website. Do I have to uninstal OO2.4 beforehand or what? I'm worried abut losing my documents. Thanks. 89.240.206.60 (talk) 02:08, 8 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Your documents are not in openoffice. They are files on your harddrive - wherever you saved them (likely on your desktop or in My Documents).  You can uninstall OO, which will only uninstall the actual word processor program, spreadsheet program, etc...  I suggest just installing OO3.  If you like it, you can uninstall OO2.  If you don't like it, you can uninstall OO3 and keep OO2. --  k a i n a w &trade; 02:12, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

What's that computer virus called that pops up "you have a virus" messages?
They are really realistic but i know it's a scam, and that its a major phisher/spyware etc. More importantly how can I get rid of it? I had it on a laptop i used to have and lost the battle that lappy is dead now and I don't want this desktop to die. What can I do?Troyster87 (talk) 08:13, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Dead? I don't know of any virus that outright kills a computer. The most common malware that gives this type of message as far as I know is antivirus 2009, which can be a pain to remove. Last I checked, Malwarebytes tends to do a good job of killing it, and there's a guide to using it for this purpose at . -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 08:22, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

i saw an article about it on yahoo, isn't there a wikipedia article about it? do you know if the free version works against it?Troyster87 (talk) 09:55, 8 March 2009 (UTC)


 * The free version does just as good a job as the pro version, it only lacks the scheduled and real-time scanning. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 20:52, 8 March 2009 (UTC)


 * oh sweet dude, thank you so much. and it did kill my laptop, it has the blue screen of death now. what is real time scanning?Troyster87 (talk) 00:21, 9 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Our article on the virus is MS Antivirus, and Malwarebytes can get rid of it if one hasn't done the install/Upgrade now thing. The BSOD thing though sounds more like one of the Smitfraud/Winfixer strains - if you move your mouse to the very top of the screen, does it show a title bar that allows you to close it? .. (tricky little full-screen graphic thing they did).  If you have files you want to save, but can't get it back to running condition (meaning you have to format - reinstall Windows) try ERD Commander, or one of the Bart PE LiveCD disks - (UBCD for Windows I think) - or even a Knoppix or Ubuntu disk if your comfortable with Linux.  Good luck. — Ched ~  (yes?) 04:57, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

rename files
I need a free Windows program that can rename loads of files easily from "Word2008 T77th.doc" to "Word2008 77.doc" where the number "77" would be different for each file. Thank you for your' help


 * Try looking through the appropriate section in freewarefiles dot com, for example. 89.243.46.238 (talk) 13:10, 8 March 2009 (UTC)


 * You can also hack something together yourself. Pull a directory listing into a word processor, delete all the cruft other than the filename, make it into a table, duplicate the column, do a "change every" on the second column to get rid of the T and th, remove the table structure, use "change every" to put rename at the beginning of each line, and save it as a batch file in text format.  You'd also have to add some quotes because there are spaces in the filenames. Matchups 15:26, 8 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Or, from the command line, enter

for %d in (0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9) do ren "Word2008 T7%dth.doc" "Word2008 T7%d.doc"
 * to rename all the 7* files, then change the 7's in the command to 6,5,4,3,2,1 and repeat. %d acts as a variable, that is substituted with the numbers within the parentheses before the command is executed. --NorwegianBluetalk 15:47, 8 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I've found Lupas Rename and Oscar's Renamer to be pretty powerful. Lupas is quite good, you can replace patterns in the filename, crop any amount of characters from any point in the filename, and many more. Oscar's lists all your your filenames in a directory as if it were a text document so you can literally edit the filenames, copy/paste just as if you're typing in Word. Zunaid 09:59, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Touch pad turned off
I have a Panasonic CF-T5 notebook. I like to use a tap on the touch pad instead of left-clicking the botton. How do I turn on the touch pad so that I can use a tap?68.237.250.249 (talk) 19:47, 8 March 2009 (UTC)


 * That is generally an option provided by your touchpad driver. On Windows the option might be available in Control Panel (Start → Control Panel) under either a touchpad-specific icon, or a touchpad tab under the "mouse" icon. If neither location has that option, you may need to download and install updated touchpad drivers for your computer, then check Control Panel again. –  7 4   00:38, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Motorola KRZR K1 Custom Ringtone
One of my friends has a Motorola KRZR K1 cell phone, but has no idea how to do anything except phone people. I have downloaded a song for her, and have transferred it to the phone, via the USB cable that came with it. I am wondering how to set it as her ring tone. The instructions here don't work, as she don't have on of the options in the options menu. She live in Canada, and uses Rogers, if that helps. Thanks,  Genius  101 Guestbook  23:52, 8 March 2009 (UTC)