Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2014 April 26

= April 26 =

Restore Previous Versions do not work.
Hi there,

I have this set up: Windows 7==>Oracle Virtual Box==>Ubuntu VM. About a week ago I turned the machine on and found that the moment I start the VM the whole host system freezes. I posted at a Linux forum but got no resolution.

Then I decided to "Restore previous versions." I clicked on the VirtualBox folder (Oracle subdirectory) and got a list of dates some of them certainly go back far enough and I would like to restore to one of those date. However, the Restore button is dimmed. So I cannot use it.

I do backups fairly regularly and wanted to use one of the previous system images to restore the whole system to its previous state. In particular I did a complete backup last time on Apr 12, 2014 and I do have a System Repair Disk but when I tried to use the whole system restore I got only one option: Apr 23 which is just 3 days ago. I do not need that.

What is wrong with the system?

Thanks, --AboutFace 22 (talk) 15:23, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

P.S. My apology. I just clicked on a checkbox "Show More Restore Points" and got a slew of them. It is in the System Restore from Control Panel. So this problem has been canceled, however I would feel much better if I could restore only a particular folder, not the whole system. Thus the first part of the post is still valid. --AboutFace 22 (talk) 15:33, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

P.P.S. I restored the system to a date I considered well beyond the first occurrence of the freezing problem-it did not help. I reinstalled the VirtualBox (repaired it)-it did not help. So, logically the problem must be in Ubuntu. I will have to reinstall it also. --AboutFace 22 (talk) 18:42, 26 April 2014 (UTC)


 * OK, let us know if that works, please. StuRat (talk) 23:30, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Notepad++ help
I have a CSS file which appears horizontal (all of it's content is written in one row, instead of breaks). is there anyway to automatically fix such a problem? thanks. Ben-Natan (talk) 23:14, 26 April 2014 (UTC)


 * I believe that's a problem between a line feed and carriage return. Some programs use one as the end of line character, and some use the other.  I suggest you try Wordpad, I seem to recall it using the other character. StuRat (talk) 23:28, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
 * It's a CSS file, Wordpad can't help here... anything else you could suggest? Ben-Natan (talk) 01:14, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't have Notepad handy right now, so I can't test it but wouldn't Notepad's soft wrap work to make it more legible? Dismas |(talk) 01:23, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
 * http://www.styleneat.com/ --  Gadget850talk 01:39, 27 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Notepad++ (not to be confused with Notepad) automatically detects LF, CRLF and CR line endings, so that isn't the problem. CSS files are often optimized/obfuscated by removing unnecessary white space including line breaks. -- BenRG (talk) 07:46, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree, it's more likely that the CSS file was minimised to reduce the size by removing extra spaces and line breaks. There are numerous websites which you can paste the CSS text in (such as Styleneat suggested by Gadget850 above) and have it reformatted in a multiline format, and then you can paste the output back into Notepad++. --Canley (talk) 11:41, 27 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Quite honestly, if you have significant and technical need for editing raw text documents, then Notepad (in any revision) is a horribly poor choice. I don't know any professional web worker or programmer who'd remotely consider using it.  You might want to check out Comparison of text editors.  You'll see that there are more "red" entries (indicating features that aren't supported).  There are lots of superb tools out there that cost $0 and run on every kind of computer under the sun - there is absolutely no reason to continue to suffer with Notepad in any of it's various incarnations.  SteveBaker (talk) 00:04, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I think you must have been looking at the wrong line in Comparison of text editors, since Notepad++ actually supports most of the features listed there. It's not an incarnation of (Windows?) Notepad, it just happens to have "Notepad" in its name. -- BenRG (talk) 02:59, 28 April 2014 (UTC)