Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2018 December 8

= December 8 =

Path to Microsoft Word Autosaves
Can someone please tell me what the path of directories is (with any fill-ins) where Microsoft Word saves its autosave information every N (default 10) minutes? I would like to see if I can find a work in progress that wasn't picked up by autorecovery. Thank you in advance. By the way, I am using Microsoft Office 365 (there goes Microsoft changing the numbers in a non-sequential fashion) and Windows 10. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:55, 8 December 2018 (UTC)


 * This can vary with the installation, but try C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Word\
 * or C:\Users\Your_username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Word
 * or C:\Users\Your_username\AppData\Local\Temp


 * Alternatively, search your home drive (assumed to be C: above) for file names beginning with "Backup of " or with extension .wbk  Dbfirs  12:18, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:41, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Xubuntu: Find and remove conflicting keyboard shortcuts that aren't in Settings
On my PC running Xubuntu 18.04, IntelliJ IDEA isn't responding to Shift-F6, which it uses as the Rename shortcut. (No idea what Shift-F6 does, except that I can't detect any effect on my typical usage. The symptom is what Shift-F6 isn't doing: it's not reaching IntelliJ and activating the Rename command.) But nothing is listed for Shift-F6 under Settings > Keyboard > Application Shortcuts or Settings > Window Manager > Keyboard. I've checked that Shift-F6 is indeed Rename in IntelliJ, so something at the desktop-environment level or lower must be intercepting it. How do I find what component of my system is intercepting Shift-F6, and how do I turn it off so that IntelliJ can receive Shift-F6? Also, are there any tools that can help me answer this question about other keyboard-shortcut conflicts, in case I encounter more that aren't in either menu? Neon Merlin  03:02, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Note that this involves using a terminal. Step one: xev. Run it, press, and see if the window receives it. If not, something in the windowing environment is grabbing that key combo. In that case, the next step is process of elimination. You could just start killing processes, retrying the xev test after each time. Make sure you close any other applications first of course.
 * If a bare xev window does receive the key combo, your next step should be to run IntelliJ, and then run xev and attach it to the IntelliJ window. This will show you whether IntelliJ is getting the key combo. To get the window ID of the IntelliJ window, use xwininfo. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 09:54, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I should have asked this first: does work in other programs? If you don't have another GUI program to try it in easily, the best thing to do is exit X to a terminal, run showkey, and see if  works in the terminal. If the keypress isn't detected in the terminal, it's either a hardware or OS problem. I have no experience with Xubuntu, but it looks like you can use the standard virtual console switch method:  will switch you to a terminal. Enter your username and password to log in. If the keypress doesn't work in a terminal, see if you can get another keyboard to try. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 10:12, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

Is Driverwhiz.exe safe software?
I am trying to download and install TWAIN for image manipulation. One way to do it is via TWAIN and that in tern led me to the above exec.

Thanks AboutFace 22 (talk) 23:54, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
 * TWAIN is not, itself, a thing you install. It's an API that programmers write software to use. What exactly are you trying to do? Details such as your platform, operating system, and whatever hardware (e.g., scanner, digital camera) you're trying to work with would help. If trying to use something like a scanner, did you install whatever drivers and software were provided by the manufacturer, and are you following the manufacturer's instructions? If you don't have an installation disk, go to the manufacturer's website and see if the software is available there.
 * Randomly Googling for software is generally not a great idea. Symantec says that DriverWhiz is "scamware": it tells you things are wrong with your computer and tries to get you to pay money to "fix" it. Paying money won't actually accomplish anything. If you've installed it, try to uninstall it normally. Then run a full system scan with an antivirus program. If you're not using a third-party program, Microsoft provides Windows Defender or Microsoft Security Essentials with Windows (depending on version). (This is assuming you're using Windows and the "DriverWhiz" program is the same thing as in that Symantec bulletin.) --47.146.63.87 (talk) 09:32, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for the answer. Mine is a visual recognition application that I am trying to implement. My hardware now is HP Pavilion With Windows 10 OS 64 bit. The plan for this application is to take images directly off the webcam and transform them into some other derivatives and the latter will be stored in SQL Server. That will not be the end of the process but a very important ingredient. From what I've read about TWAIN it seems it provides a user interface, a GUI which I would prefer to avoid. I downloaded driverwhiz but haven't installed it yet.

In lieu pf what you've said about the driverwhiz what other options exist for me? In principle I can write a totally independent C++ application that will read the webcam images one by one, it is what I need. I need 10 such images per second. Any suggestion will be appreciated.

Thank you, AboutFace 22 (talk) 15:27, 9 December 2018 (UTC)


 * On new versions of Windows, including Windows 10, you should learn and use the MediaCapture interface to retrieve images from your web-camera. Here is the official introductory documentation: Basic Photo and Video Capture... from Microsoft.
 * Don't waste time learning obsolete technologies; don't install third-party software; image capture is a standard task that can be done using standard tools built in to the default Windows development environment - as long as you carefully follow Microsoft's documentation.
 * Nimur (talk) 16:05, 10 December 2018 (UTC)