Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2012 December 3

= December 3 =

Removing old printers from config
I'm now on my 4th printer on this system, every one of which has installed a surprisingly large number of entries in the Firefox config system. Is there any way to REMOVE, not just reset, all that obsolete crap?
 * If you are using Windows and referring to the list of printers within the "Print" dialog, open My computer-->Printers (or Control Panel-->Printers), right-click the obsolete printer, and delete. Then open Control Panel-->Software, look for an entry resembling "(printer model) drivers", click it, and click "remove".
 * That'll remove the printer clutter from your other applications as well.
 * If I misunderstood you, tell us, the better the chances that someone else will help you. - ¡Ouch! (hurt me / more pain) 08:43, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

I am talking about the Firefox config system. Open a new tab, type about:config in the address bar, then type print into the search bar.

In my case, there are FIVE SCREENS of configuration parameters that start print.printer or just printer_ -- 75% of which are obsolete because they're for printers I no longer have.

Can this be cleaned up? --DaHorsesMouth (talk) 22:20, 3 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Ahem, *facepalm*, now I see.
 * Take the following with a grain of salt:
 * I found one named print.print_printer, value (foobar) on mine, and several named
 * print.printer_(foobar).whatever and I think it would be safe to remove those where the (foobar) part is not the value of print.print_printer. However, I doubt that a mere page and a half (out of 40) has any significant effect on performance.
 * Your amount of config settings seems to be comparable to mine (one screen per printer, or a bit more). I wouldn't touch it, esp. since I'd have to delete one setting at a time. - ¡Ouch! (hurt me / more pain) 08:04, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Help with help
Trying to search the Firefox help system myself, I entered remove config in the search box. This got me 1000 results, NONE of which (in the first couple-hundred entries) contained both remove and config -- apparently the default search is "OR".

But, remove +config did the same thing, as did "remove config". Any suggestions as to how I could have searched more effectively myself? --DaHorsesMouth (talk) 20:45, 2 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Not sure, but I've had almost no luck using the search facility in online help like this. What they need is a proper index, where, you might find, say:

Resize: Disk partition Paging space Window: Frame Scroll buffer


 * Without this, a search for "resize" gives you all of the above, and, if the place you actually want happens to call it "adjusting the size" instead of "resize", you won't find it (you might not even find the word "resizing"). So, a search is a terrible substitute for a proper index.  StuRat (talk) 20:55, 2 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Horse: Did you try ? Not sure if it works, tho.
 * StuRat: It's not a "search vs. index" thing, but most search features stink. For starters, a decent search feature could work with wildcards reserved words like and and plus (A plus B to be used to return only the topics containing "A B", not "B A" or "A blah B").
 * If you want to search for "resizing Microsoft Plus DriveSpace files", you could search for
 * (resiz* or adjust*) and drivespace and "plus"
 * (resiz* will find "resizing", and "plus" will, due to the double-quotes, not be seen as a reserved word.)
 * Of course, an index (or merely a keyword list attached to each article) is always superior, as there is always a risk of ambiguity; a search for "substitute" would return this very topic. Keyword lists can cut down on that kind of returns which are syntactically correct but still useless. - ¡Ouch! (hurt me / more pain) 08:43, 3 December 2012 (UTC)


 * There's a problem with having to list every possible synonym for the words in your search. Even if you can list them all, you're likely to get too many matches.  For example, "adjust" might also return info about how you should adjust the brightness of your monitor to avoid eyestrain.  And I wouldn't expect the average Windows user to know how to perform Boolean search operations, while using an index is quite simple.  StuRat (talk) 20:27, 3 December 2012 (UTC)


 * "And I wouldn't expect the average Windows user to know how to perform Boolean search operations" It would have to be documented, of course. But if it is, the average user can do it too. Well, maybe not the kind who got suckered into buying Vista, then 7, and now 8. But you cannot make people smarter with an index either. Unless you WP:WHACK! them with one. ;)
 * Your example is somewhat flawed, too. I don't see why the help page on display adjustment would mention DriveSpace. (It could mention Plus!, though.) - ¡Ouch! (hurt me / more pain) 08:04, 4 December 2012 (UTC)


 * My example assumes they can't successfully use Boolean searches. A proper, cross-referenced index is pretty much idiot-proof.  StuRat (talk) 20:52, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Until evolution comes up with an iDiot 2.0... - ¡Ouch! (hurt me / more pain) 09:35, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

I Download Videos, but only some shows Video Preview thumbnail
Windows 7 home premium, VLC 2.0.1.

i download many videos. some show a video preview in the File icon\Thumbnail.

most of the videos show a VLC orange cone. the cone is nice but i'm sorry, i need to see video preview. how i get that all videos will show a video-preview?

because the problem is very frustrating, i send the largest thanks to any helper, may you be blessed ! :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.64.163.33 (talk) 01:48, 3 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Some possibilities:


 * 1) Are the ones that didn't give thumbnails a different format (AVI vs MPEG, etc.) ? Perhaps VLC is only the default viewer for some formats.


 * 2) Or perhaps a different codec ? Maybe it can't build thumbs for certain codecs.


 * 3) It might just time out after spending a certain amount of time building thumbnails. You can try to regenerate the thumbs by closing and reopening the window.


 * 4) Your computer might be low on resources, like memory. Try rebooting, then run just that app.


 * Also, unlike with pics, video thumbnails aren't all that useful. The chances that whatever random frames it uses for the thumbnails will be recognizable are quite low.  (I wonder if they now have the ability to designate the thumbnail image in a video, to fix this problem ?)  StuRat (talk) 02:23, 3 December 2012 (UTC)


 * 1) The file types that does show thumbs are AVI and MP4. all other files who does not show it are FLV (Flash video file). i believe this is a direction for solving the problem, anything you could add?


 * 3)trust me, it's not time.


 * 4)trust me, i have enough computerlish power to show all in a sec.


 * sincerely. 109.64.163.33 (talk) 03:19, 3 December 2012 (UTC)


 * 1) OK, this is likely the problem. I can think of two possible solutions, one easy, one painful:


 * A) Please pick "open" on the ones that work, to see what opens them up. Then pick "open" on the ones that don't work, to see what opens those up.  If a different program is opening each up, then you may just need to change your file extension mapping to allow the one which gives previews to open them all.


 * B) If that doesn't work, then it looks like FLV format just isn't supported for thumbnails. In that case, you'd either need to find some program that can give you thumbnails for those, or convert them all to supported video formats.


 * 3 & 4) It may not just be displaying those thumbnails, but extracting and generating them from the videos at the time. That takes considerably more resources than you might think. StuRat (talk) 06:01, 3 December 2012 (UTC)


 * It's definitely the FLV format. Windows doesn't support FLV thumbnails by default. The thumbnail system in Explorer is extensible (that's how e.g. PDFs can have thumbnails when you have Adobe Reader installed), but I don't know of any specific program that installs an Explorer extension for FLV files. « Aaron Rotenberg « Talk « 20:16, 3 December 2012 (UTC)


 * VLC would be my first stop. ¦ Reisio (talk) 23:18, 3 December 2012 (UTC)


 * is probably far simpler. A number codec mega packs also support thumbnail generation but they are IMO a bad idea, they tend to screw up stuff. Nil Einne (talk) 15:42, 5 December 2012 (UTC)