Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2013 February 26

= February 26 =

Changing memory timings in windows
I got some new RAM. 8 Gigs DDR3 at 1600Mhz. I have CPUID CPU-Z and it seems my comp recognizes all 8 gigs, but the clock speed is recognized at only 1066MHz. My friend told me I can edit the CPU timings to certain values that CPUID gives me to get it up to 1600MHz, but I tried to look in my BIOS and I can't seem to edit memory timings there. How can I change them??? ScienceApe (talk) 02:32, 26 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Do they still do them with jumpers on the motherboard or is that clockspeed?--Canoe1967 (talk) 03:23, 26 February 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm not entirely sure I understand, but this is the computer I have, Computer ScienceApe (talk) 15:12, 26 February 2013 (UTC)


 * If you have more than one DDR board in there, it may default to he speed of the slowest one. Is that the case ? StuRat (talk) 03:45, 26 February 2013 (UTC)


 * I have two slots for ram. 4 gigs in each slot. This is what I bought, RAM ScienceApe (talk) 15:10, 26 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Did you inspect them to ensure that you really got what you ordered ? StuRat (talk) 16:41, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes it is. ScienceApe (talk) 04:32, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Your motherboard may only allow 1066MHz max judging by the numbers in the upgrade options. "PC3-10600 (DDR3-1333)" in the memory upgrade section. If you can adjust in the bios or jumpers then you make break something and void the warranty. You could try emailing the techs at HP to check though.--Canoe1967 (talk) 15:48, 26 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Since your motherboard is for an AMD AM3 system, you should be able to adjust frequencies, multipliers and timings via software however this would complicate testing. Nil Einne (talk) 04:26, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Where can I get this software? ScienceApe (talk) 04:32, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Various places, they aren't hard to find and aren't that hard to use but I wouldn't suggest them unless you have some idea what you're doing. Particularly considering that for your system I doubt the higher bandwidth will make a significant difference for most applications. Nil Einne (talk) 04:34, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I pretty much know what to do. I know what to change the timings to, I just need something that allows me to change them in the first place. ScienceApe (talk) 03:22, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
 * With respect, if you're changing settings manually, particularly to those not supported by the motherboard by default, even if the RAM is supposed to support the settings and your system uses an IMC, there's much more to do then simply knowing what the timings or settings you want are if you don't want to run the risk of crashes or weird errors. Have you even looked in to what multipliers are supported by your CPU for the memory to ascertain whether 1600 is possible without fooling around with other stuff? Nil Einne (talk) 14:48, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Multiple registrations from one email account
What is the reason that many websites don't allow registering multiple user accounts from one email? I understand if the login consists of the user's email that this gives trouble, but what about those cases where one can only log in with a user name and not an email address? bamse (talk) 09:03, 26 February 2013 (UTC)


 * It could be several things. The most likely is that they index accounts using the email address and there is one field for username. Another could be they are trying to minimise sockpuppets. -- SGBailey (talk) 10:24, 26 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the reply. Basically I am trying to figure out for my own site (which is a buyer only auction site) whether there is any danger of allowing accounts with identical emails. I can exclude the first point you mention and as for sockpuppets I can't imagine why somebody would create such. bamse (talk) 20:34, 26 February 2013 (UTC)


 * allowing multiples might have some unintended complications - if you send email to a user, do you send duplicates? also, how do you want to handle password recovery, if they type in email address, do you reset passwords for all those accounts? worth thinking through some use cases that involve emails if not already done --nonsense ferret  21:26, 26 February 2013 (UTC)


 * How many legitimate uses are there for allowing more than one username per email address? On an auction site, I can only think of one.  If the human wants to keep track of what they purchase and sort those purchases by username.  For instance, if they're buying for different third party clients or if they want to keep their painting purchases separate from their fine china purchases.  On the other hand, I can think of several illegitimate reasons for having multiple usernames.  Probably the worst of which for an auction site would be price manipulation.  Dismas |(talk) 06:17, 27 February 2013 (UTC)


 * The only other legitimate use I can think of would be for people who share an email account, but that only leads one to wonder what good reason people would have for doing this nowadays. I've only known a handful of people who shared an email address, and that was back in the mid-late 90s when Internet and email were still relative novelties.  AJ Cham  01:50, 28 February 2013 (UTC)


 * I know a couple who share a Facebook account. I've always found it rather odd and don't know how they handle the logistics of it.  If they both only ever went on FB occasionally, I might be able to understand it better but they both post a few times a week.  (They sign their posts, if you're wondering)  I don't know if they share an e-mail address though since I've never had a reason to e-mail them.  Dismas |(talk) 02:13, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

chkdsk - WinXP 32 160GB SATA
When I run chkdsk I get an error message along the lines of "errors in the volume bitmap blah blah..." So I run chkdsk /f from the command line and chkdsk runs at the next restart. I then run it again from the command line and the same error comes up. I run chkdsk /r and restart. Chkdsk runs at startup. Run it again from the command line - error still there. By this time I'm pulling my hair out. I removed the drive from the laptop and put it in a standard USB2 hdd enclosure (mains powered). I run chkdsk and NO ERRORS! I run chkdsk /r and although it takes a while (because it's checking the whole disk) it completes with NO ERRORS. I put the drive back in the laptop and run chkdsk - the volume bitmap error is back. I've even run Spinrite at Level 4 (takes several hours) and no problems. Any ideas? 196.214.78.114 (talk) 10:11, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Chkdsk is quite outdated, so I'm not surprised it may be making a few mistakes. Did you run Spinrite on the drive when it was in the laptop, the enclosure, or both? If it wasn't run on the laptop, try it. The issue looks, at present, to be the laptop, and not the HDD. Luke no 94  (talk) 11:13, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I ran Spinrite on the laptop. Any suggestions for a newer (free) alternative to chkdsk? 196.214.78.114 (talk) 11:50, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Your hard drive's manufacturer should have a free disk checking utility on their website. Luke no 94  (talk) 14:31, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Chkdsk is not outdated; it is the right tool for this job. The reason it reported errors is that the volume being checked was modified while chkdsk was reading it, so what it read later was inconsistent with what it read earlier. You can ignore these errors. NTFS volumes normally don't need to be repaired at all (because of journaling). If you have some reason to suspect a problem and you want to avoid the spurious errors, you can run chkdsk at boot (as you did) or on a shadow copy of the volume. -- BenRG (talk) 02:59, 27 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Your answer makes perfect sense. I booted the laptop in safe mode and ran chkdsk - no problems detected. This would seem to support what you said since there are almost no programs running that may affect or alter the volume during the check. Resolved! 196.214.78.114 (talk) 06:22, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Inkscape align/group question
I was just playing around with Inkscape (version 0.48.2 under X on MacOS) and I noticed something odd. I was creating some rectangles and some text fragments, then using the alignment tool to center the text on the rectangles. Although this worked, it seems to have had the side effect of cementing the text and the rectangle inseparably together. I can't ungroup them, and I can't edit the text. Anybody know what happened, or how to undo it?

(And if there's a good way to manipulate text-on-rectangles -- or rectangles-around-text -- as a built-in object type, that'd be good to know, too.) —Steve Summit (talk) 12:00, 26 February 2013 (UTC)


 * I don't understand how you got that inseparable fusion; have you perhaps, at some point, turned the text into a path? To put centred text into a box I'd:
 * draw the box
 * create the text - by clicking the text button, clicking (not dragging) where I wanted the text to go, and typing the text
 * select both, then align-and-distribute -> centre
 * If the text isn't editable, it's because it's not a text object any more - it's become a path (you can manually achieve this by selecting a text object, then path->object_to_path); once it's a path it's irrevocably a bunch of splines, and not editable text any more. You can tell it's a path because you can use the point editor to manipulate its individual vertices, which you can't if it's a real text object. You can implicitly path-ify a text object by doing an operation like path->difference, so perhaps you did that?  The alignment operation itself doesn't group and doesn't path-ify. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 12:14, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
 * We are on exactly the same page. I had, in fact, followed more or less exactly the three steps you outlined (and no more).  I don't understand how I ended up with inseparable fusion, either.  —Steve Summit (talk) 16:58, 26 February 2013 (UTC) Ah, addendum: I did do one extra thing: I region-selected both the rectangle and the (now-centered) text, copied to the clipboard, and pasted.  That's where the cementing seems to occur. 17:03, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes! It is the pasting! You can either paste between OSX apps, or have copy/paste retain Inkscape object structure. But (AFAIK) not both! Open your X11 preferences (command-comma) and go to the "pasteboard" tab. You want "enable syncing" to be UNchecked. Otherwise, when you cut and paste within inkscape, everything gets rasterized, losing all vector info. SemanticMantis (talk) 17:37, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Oh! Thanks.  I'll look at that.  (Although if what you say is true, and if leaving "enable syncing" unchecked has as many other undesirable side effects as that dialog box suggests, this is gonna be one more big reason to loathe X-apps-on-Mac, as if I needed any more...) —Steve Summit (talk) 18:25, 26 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Okay, I tried it, and it did work. Thank you!
 * (Although, just as you said, it's evidently not possible to both paste between OS X apps and have copy/paste retain Inkscape object structure -- but of course I do need to be able to do both, so I've already find myself checking "enable syncing" on and off, just as if it were some even-less-convenient variation on "paste special". What a nuisance!  There has got to be a better way.  But this is not the place for a gratuitous diatribe, so I'll thank you again for your advice, and leave it at that.) —Steve Summit (talk) 04:11, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Rewiring halogen torchieres for CFLs
I have several nice floor lamps which are currently wired for 300 watt/120 volt halogen lights. They have dimmer switches on them. I'd like to rewire them for CFLs, to save on electricity. Some issues I've already thought of:

1) You need special CFLs to handle use on a dimmer switch. My plan is to leave the dimmer switches in the circuit, but fully on, and add a simple toggle switch to the circuit, just using that.  (The dimmer switches are rather inaccessible, so not easy to remove.)

2) Getting the equivalent amount of light to a 300 watt halogen bulb would either require a quite expensive high-wattage CFL, or multiple sockets. I choose the multiple sockets route.  With 4 sockets, I only need 75 watt equivalent bulbs, although I'll probably put 100 watt equivalent bulbs in, giving me the equivalent of 400 watts of light, for less than 100 actual watts.

So, does this sound like a practical solution ? Are there any other considerations I need to make ? StuRat (talk) 17:42, 26 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Still trying to get light for your camera? The dimmer left on high should work. CFLs are high inductive loads so they may fry the dimmer if you adjust it. Light output is measured in lumens now, I think. It used to be candle power, foot candles etc. If you compare the lumen output that may be easier than the wattage input. You may also wish to put fresh batteries in your smoke detector.--Canoe1967 (talk) 19:35, 26 February 2013 (UTC)


 * In the US, the "incandescent light watt equivalent" is so widely used, that CFL bulbs have that listed in large letters, like " 100 ", with the actual wattage in smaller print below (like " 23 ").


 * This isn't for my camera, as these floor lamps point at the ceiling, and I need bright light pointing downward, for using the camera on small objects on a table. StuRat (talk) 21:40, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

PDF previews instead of opening online docs
It very well may be that it's some setting I clicked by accident (in Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional or Firefox or whatever), but as of a few days ago, every pdf I open does not download but opens up in a preview. I can then download it if I want, but I'd much prefer if it just automatically downloaded, as it always did before. Anyone have any idea of what I did or if it's some new default in Firefox or something, and how to go back to the status quo? Many thanks in advance.--108.27.62.131 (talk) 21:36, 26 February 2013 (UTC)


 * I've noticed this, too, and just assumed it came with some update of Firefox. StuRat (talk) 21:41, 26 February 2013 (UTC)


 * For a while Firefox has had a PDF renderer (as does Chrome) which translates a PDF document into HTML5 (so it works a lot like an HTML or SVG document, rather than a blob in a plugin). This wasn't enabled by default until Firefox 19, which was pushed last week. Info about this feature is described here, which also explains how to disable this feature and return to using a plugin based on an external PDF reader like Adobe's. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 21:58, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks to both of you. Unfortunately, following the instructions on the Mozilla page this takes one to does not resolve the issue. Specifically, in the plugin panel in the Add-ons manager, there is no "PDF reader plugin" that can be disabled. In fact, I checked and each plug-in listed was last modified months ago, long before this "feature" was enabled. So Mozilla's own instructions for disabling this are not working:-(--108.27.62.131 (talk) 16:40, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I think you are misreading the instructions. They tell you how to disable third-party PDF plugins so as to enable the built-in PDF reader. As far as I can see, the page contains no instructions how to disable the built-in reader without replacing it with another PDF plugin.—Emil J. 17:11, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I don’t have the new Firefox to test it, but I suppose you could try asking PDFs to be saved using http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/set-how-firefox-handles-different-file-types .—Emil J. 17:15, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I haven't tried it myself, but I believe you need to actually install Adobe's plugin to get this functionality back. The plugin should override Firefox's own system. Like I say, though, I've not tried it, so no promises! &mdash;  The Hand That Feeds You :Bite 19:22, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Aha! EmilJ has the answer. Worked perfectly; just go to preferences, applications tab, scroll to "Portable Document Format (PDF)", and get a drop down menu where you can choose to open using adobe.--108.27.62.131 (talk) 21:24, 27 February 2013 (UTC)