Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2010 December 6

= December 6 =

Transferring files from PC to iMac
My brand spanking new iMac will be arriving in a few days (I can't wait) (27" Intel Core i7 4gb). My piece of shit Dell Dimension 2400 has a lot of files on it I am going to want to transfer before setting it on fire. The Dell has an ethernet port and two USB ports (I think). Can anyone walk me through how and what I will need for the transfer? Any special cables? Any special adaptors for the cables the iMac will come with? I would do it all by emailing the files to myself, but first I have many video files that are too large for my free email services to attach, and anyway, it would take a huge amount of time even if the Dell worked right, but its internet connection is screwed up and its upload speed... it would take about an hour to attach even a 20 MB files (though more likely I would get an error about halfway through the upload). I know you get a lot of questions from IPs who don't bother to check back but I will be watching for responses. Thanks so much.--162.84.137.228 (talk) 05:59, 6 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I think this is the link you want: PC to Mac Migration. If you have any questions, post them here or email me.  You will be so much happier with a mac I can't even begin to tell you.  congratulations!. Lugwigs, please sign, thanks, User:General Rommel
 * Thanks for the link. Looks perfect.--162.84.137.228 (talk) 13:16, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Download
For downloading millions of links in a site, what is the best program? Wget and httrack both crash past about 200,000 links. I'm on Windows 7 82.44.55.25 (talk) 12:04, 6 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Offline Explorer Enterprise? 118.96.162.25 (talk) 14:24, 6 December 2010 (UTC)


 * P.S. They also have Portable Offline Browser, in case you want to download a site in a restricted computer :-) 118.96.162.25 (talk) 14:49, 6 December 2010 (UTC)


 * When you say "wget and httrack both crash", are you sure that you don't mean that your computer ran out of memory? If so, it won't matter what program you use; you will have to implement a staged download, where you only download a few tens of thousands of items at a time, and then start downloading the next batch.  Nimur (talk) 20:42, 6 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Surely it matters what program the original poster uses; the programs he or she mentioned might use RAM very inefficiently, while a more defensively-written program might write stuff out to hard disk a lot, minimize the use of RAM, and handle far larger websites. Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:53, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Dell Studio 1555 Only sometimes start up now
I had a one-year old Dell Studio 1555 laptop with Windows 7 running.

Recently, I've been having troubles starting up the computer. Usually, I just hold the "power" button on the side for about a second and the computer starts up. But now, I could be pressing the button many times and for various lengths of time and it wouldn't start up and then, all of a sudden, I press power again and it starts up and runs as usual.

EDIT: When it won't turn on, I mean that when I press the power button, there is no reaction whatsoever from the computer, it won't even go to the BIOS or anything, screen doesn't change, makes no sounds, etc... The battery is fully charged and the power cord works.

Furthermore, recently, it's been making these really loud sounds reminiscent of a 1990's computer processing sound. It's like that tick-tick sound that the computer makes when it's processing a heavy load.

I don't think it's an overheating problem because the fan isn't stressed and I successfully de-dusted. What could be the problem? Is this likely a sign of imminent all-out failure? Could a jumper switch have been dislodged from the circuit board? If so, how difficult is it to replace it myself?Acceptable (talk) 21:53, 6 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure, but is it a faulty connection at the power button? General Rommel (talk) 06:46, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Number of characters in file path limit?
The entry on filename mentions specific character length limits on individual filenames. But what are the limits (if any) on a file's entire absolute path? --70.167.58.6 (talk) 23:05, 6 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Which OS are you interested in? The answer will vary depending on your answer.  Comet Tuttle (talk) 23:07, 6 December 2010 (UTC)


 * It's not quite standard:
 * In the Windows API, MAX_PATH.
 * In POSIX, PATH_MAX (which is in limits.h)
 * In BSD and Solaris, MAXPATHLEN
 * These are all in these platforms' respective C language APIs; they may not be available (or perhaps even meaningful) in non-C wrappers of the same functionality. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 23:18, 6 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Note that, for Windows, it's a bit more complex than just MAX_PATH. As the docs for CreateFile note, MAX_PATH is for ANSI filenames. To get Unicode filenames (which NTFS limits at 32,767 unicode chars) you need to prepend the path with a UNC "\\?\ prefix. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 00:06, 7 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Further, posix defines a function pathconf which (if I understand what it's supposed to do) allows you to get the max path length for files on a given filesystem (as some filesystems impose very different limits). But, on my Linux system, it returns the same for every filesystem I try it on (ext3, iso9660, udf, fat32, procfs, sysfs, tmpfs), a value that's == PATH_MAX (4096). I'd be interested in what folks get on OS-X and in particular on a system with ZFS.


 * -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 23:52, 6 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Above are the operating system's limits. As I alluded to, the relevant file system also sets limits - these are shown in a column of the table at Comparison of file systems. Many file systems have theoretically unlimited path lengths, as subdirectories are just a link, and sub-sub directories can be linked essentially forever (until the storage is exhausted). In practice you have to work with the lower of the OS' limit and the FS' limit. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 00:18, 7 December 2010 (UTC)


 * The NT kernel (the actual OS of modern versions of Windows) works with length-prefixed UTF-16 strings. They are limited to 32,767 UTF-16 words because the length is 16 bits and counts bytes rather than words. It's not a limit of NTFS as such, just a limit of the NT driver, though that does make it a de facto limitation of NTFS. The MAX_PATH (=260) limit comes from the user-mode Win32 library, which you aren't obliged to use (though nearly everyone does). One application/system that bypasses it is Cygwin 1.7, which lets you use path lengths up to the NT limit (and also filenames containing some of the characters that the filesystem article currently claims, incorrectly, are forbidden). -- BenRG (talk) 00:34, 7 December 2010 (UTC)


 * So 260 characters is the most common max limit of Windows paths. (I'm assuming most app developers stick with this to ensure compatibility with other apps?)  How about Mac OS X's max limit? --70.167.58.6 (talk) 17:00, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Unlimited at the filesystem level, apparently, but the above caveats apply. --Sean 20:13, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

installation of windows98 on oracle vm virtual .box
I have windows xp and core2 due process.i have installed recently windows 98 on Oracle VM virtual box.But when I have tried to play some games on it, they donot work prperly,for example character in dave 1  moves very fast .How can i fix this problem. —Preceding unsigned comment added by True path finder (talk • contribs) 23:38, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Do the games require DirectX? VirtualBox DirectX support isn't great, I suspect that is probably the problem. 82.44.55.25 (talk) 23:56, 6 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Take a look at DOSBox and see if that fixes the problem. I tried playing X-COM on a Pentium 4 at one point and all went well except the scrolling was so fast the game was unplayable.  Comet Tuttle (talk) 01:34, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

fifa 98
I have installed Fifa 1998 on windows xp .which works only when i m online .otherwise a message appears as ," insufficient memory ..............", what should be the reason. —Preceding unsigned comment added by True path finder (talk • contribs) 23:52, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Is is designed for Windows XP? If not, try to put it under compatability mode. General Rommel (talk) 21:23, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Problems with sound card in Linux: no sound
When I type lspci I get, among other things:

00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 03)

So, the sound card is there, but it's not being used. How can I tell the computer to use it? Or what can I do to make it work? Mr.K. (talk) 23:57, 6 December 2010 (UTC)


 * If your distribution uses PulseAudio, open the PulseAudio Volume Control (in Ubuntu it's in the applications->sound_and_video menu; I do not mean the little sound slider in the Gnome panel beside the clock) and make sure all the volume sliders are up, and that the output for the program you're trying to play sound from (e.g. VLC) is sent to the correct audio output (so start VLC playing a movie first, so it appears in the Volume Control application). -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 00:23, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

You should seek real-time help: irc://irc.freenode.net/linux ¦ Reisio (talk) 07:39, 7 December 2010 (UTC)