Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2012 April 12

= April 12 =

Windows Vista Defragment
I  HATE  Windows Vista. (Have I made that clear?)

Been dabbling with PCs since 1989, so I know a bit about performance enhancement. A friend asked me to look at her Vista machine, which was running very slowly.

I've already made her smile some more by turning off a mass of unnecessary startup processes. It's made a big difference.

I cleaned up the hard disk drive too, and thought I'd defragment the disk. (It wasn't set up to run automatically.) And I have never encountered a less informative dialog from Windows! (Well, maybe I have, but this is top of my mind right now.)

All I've had now, for over 24 hours, is the little spinny thing on the screen, and a helpful(?) message telling me "This may take from a few minutes to a few hours". No idea how far it's progressed. No graphical indication. No nothing. I have a "Cancel" button, which will be the next thing I'll press.

Is there a better way? HiLo48 (talk) 07:08, 12 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't think so. Has the computer frozen, or the application? Mr  little  irish  08:26, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
 * If you stop it and start it again. You might lose minutes at most. Kittybrewster  &#9742;  09:07, 12 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Not tried this on Vista but on old Windows 95-era systems if there was something running while you did the defrag it would keep restarting and never get to the end. Have you tried looking for any logs, maybe in the system event logs? --Colapeninsula (talk) 13:42, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

comparison of defragmentation software ¦ Reisio (talk) 15:45, 12 April 2012 (UTC)


 * No, the computer hadn't frozen. It happily stopped defragmenting (if that's what it was really doing) when I clicked the Cancel button. And no, nothing else running. I'll have a look at the logs next time I'm at that computer. My big complaint here is really about the totally uninformative interface. I simply cannot tell what it's really doing. At least in Win 95 (and all other Windows versions I'm aware of) you got a picture of what it was doing. HiLo48 (talk) 21:11, 12 April 2012 (UTC)


 * You might want to use a free (of charge) defragger. The Vista defragger IS craptacular, and there are even some quite reliable sources who criticized it for its uselessness, slowness, and inadjustability (wow, "Vista" and "stability" in the same paragraph).
 * I used MyDefrag with good results -- to a degree where friends think I upgraded their hardware, when all I've done was merely to run the "Data Disk Weekly" script on all their partitions. It is free of charge and comes with that script, and it has its own article here on en.wp.
 * Many newer defraggers aren't exactly informative, probably to hide what a crappy job they do at ordering the files. But the Vista thing really jumps the shark... 217.251.167.192 (talk) 16:51, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
 * P.S. It is safe to cancel a defrag job, at least with all XP-compliant defraggers I know.


 * Cool. I'll check out MyDefrag. Thanks. HiLo48 (talk) 03:01, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Yep. MyDefrag worked a treat. Showed that the Vista defrag had achieved nothing. Much tidier HDD now. I'll await the user's response when she next fires it up. HiLo48 (talk) 11:27, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

windows explorer
i am looking for a file on my computer. Type whatsit.htm in search box. It finds it but also finds a lot of other files. Why? Kittybrewster  &#9742;  09:12, 12 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi, it will look for similar files with the simlar name, type or location to extend your search results. Mr  little  irish  09:17, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

"whatsit.htm" (in quotes) might make a difference, I forget. ¦ Reisio (talk) 15:49, 12 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Alas, I long for the old XP search function. It seems Microsoft would have us learn "Advanced Query Syntax", but the part that you need is the "filename:" or "file:" attribute qualifier.  In your case, try searching for "file:whatsit.htm" (without quotes).   --  Tom N (tcncv) talk/contrib 03:19, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

8b/10b encoding
I am trying to understand 8b/10b encoding.The very first line D.00 is encoded as 100111 or 011000. D.00 	00000 	100111 	011000 How is this achieved.Something is missing in my thoughts.I would like to know how 00000 is encoded to 100111 and 011000. Many Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hansmah (talk • contribs) 14:09, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
 * In 8b/10b encoding you pick one or the other encoding depending if there is an excess or a deficiency of 1 bits previously. If there is too few, then the code with more 1 bits is picked to restore the average number of 1's and 0's.  For 00000 the disparity will change sign +/- 1. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:22, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

2bone link checker
when i check kittybrewster.com/table_03.htm using http://www.2bone.com/links/linkchecker.shtml part 2a, 2b, 2c  and 2d  get overlooked. Why please? Kittybrewster  &#9742;  14:26, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
 * The ones you listed all have target="_blank" before the href attribute. Perhaps the link-checker only sees the links when href is the first attribute? 98.103.60.35 (talk) 16:40, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
 * thank you. Kittybrewster  &#9742;  20:07, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Risks of using Stiki
Does Stiki crash your computer. I am too nervous to run it in case it crashes my computer.--Deathlaser (talk) 14:55, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
 * It has never crashed my computer. It runs through a Java virtual machine so I would have thought that crashing would be pretty unlikely.
 * That said, how much experience do you have of Wikipedia? I wouldn't recommend using STiki if you haven't already been around the block a few times.
 * Yaris678 (talk) 15:28, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Ancient 3d engine
i'm not a programmer but would like to run an ancient tiny "game" engine on this crappy netbook, the requiremen is that I can create my own level map and put bitmaps on the wall. it should be wolfstein 3d era (I.e. Like a few Megan, dos mode, no installation, and a few kb "level editor". This is for a proof of concept and I wan to spend no more time on this than finding and running the binary and level editor.  Any old-timers know of abandonware that fits the bill? (sorry, I don't program and can't compile. It has to be tiny, all CPU and 640x480 or 320x240 is fine). Thanks. 84.1.177.43 (talk) 18:05, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Firefox: quit with warning
about:config shows browser.showQuitWarning and browser.warnOnQuit both True; yet, every time my finger slips and I hit Q rather than W, Firefox quits immediately. How can I bring back the confirmation dialog? (It's FF 11.0 on MacOS 10.6, but this quirk has bugged me for a year or two.) —Tamfang (talk) 18:38, 12 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Some info: http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/869468#answer-240137 --Sean 15:48, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Hide a font
On Windows 7, how can I make a font that is installed on my computer not show up in Microsoft Word? That is, without uninstalling the font. Inter change  able  19:06, 12 April 2012 (UTC)


 * http://www.zhacks.com/disable-fonts-without-deleting-it-from-windows-7/ - Cucumber Mike (talk) 19:12, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
 * The fonts in question are required in another program, so that would not work. I just want them to be invisible to Microsoft Word. Inter  change  able  22:26, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Squint. ¦ Reisio (talk) 23:46, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't get it and I want a serious answer. Inter  change  able  03:10, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, if you want the fonts available to all programs except Word, you're out of luck. The fonts are either available to everything, or unavailable to everything. However, if your reason for disabling some fonts is so that you don't need to scroll through endless Comic Sans variants to get to the two or three fonts you actually use, I suggest using 'styles'. You can define any number of your own styles, including the font to use, paragraph formatting and much besides. Here's a guide to the basics, there are many more advanced guides out there once you have the basics. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 18:42, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Pastebin
I want to make my own version of pastebin.com. An exact copy of what it does (but without all the mobile applications and the like). I don't know how to code, and I don't have enough money for a website developer. They make their API publicle available, if that helps. How do I do it? Is there code already available? Thanks. 134.83.207.178 (talk) 20:37, 12 April 2012 (UTC)


 * You're going to have a very hard time trying to create a website if you do not know how to program. I suggest you try learning PHP, which is often used for website-related work. → Σ  τ  c . 21:04, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Need to convert raw avi to MJPEG or with similar intraframe compression only codec
It absolutely cannot have any interframe compression-- I'm tracking fruitflies using Ctrax. ImageJ has issues dealing with files that are over 2 GB and will only load the first few thousand frames. Is there another free utility that compresses avi to Motion JPEG? 137.54.33.69 (talk) 22:47, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
 * AVI is just a container format, is it a series of BMPs? In any case CS Miller (talk) 23:02, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Why bother when you can just use an image viewer that displays it just as it would if it were video? ¦ Reisio (talk) 23:45, 12 April 2012 (UTC)