Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2008 September 23

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September 23

Getting three installed OS's to boot correctly

Okay, so I have 4 partitions in my hard drive. I installed three operating systems in three different partitions (Ubuntu in one, a modded version of XP for gaming in another, and my regular Vista in the last one). Using KGRUBeditor I'm trying to get a menu to pop up before anything boots, where I can select the operating system I want to boot. Right now, with the current settings, it offers me 3 Ubuntu options (regular, safe mode, mem test) and it says under "other operating systems" I can boot windows vista.

When I try to boot Ubuntu, it works fine. When I try to boot Windows vista, it says "Error 22 -- No parition" or something similar to that. There is no third option on the menu to boot the XP. I'm so lost because I'm a noob at this stuff and I was wondering if you could please help me.

Any info you need I will provide, I'm not really sure what information is useful to solve this. Please be patient and thanks for helping me! --71.98.8.179 (talk) 00:43, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Just try editing the /boot/grub/menu.lst file by hand if KGRUBeditor doesn't work. Make a backup by sudo cp /boot/grub/menu.lst /boot/grub/menu.lst.backup. Open the file with gksudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst and at the bottom of the file you'll see entries in the menu, similar to this one for Ubuntu (I'm using Intrepid Ibex) which is installed on the second partition of the first hard drive (numbers start with 0 in the world of computing):

title		Ubuntu intrepid (development branch), kernel 2.6.27-3-generic
root		(hd0,1)
kernel		/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-3-generic root=UUID=3c65e3ba-0507-4454-a1c6-556ba8fac134 ro quiet splash 
initrd		/boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-3-generic
quiet

and a few more entries like that, but for recovery mode and things like that. At the bottom you should see something like this for your Windows:

title		Microsoft Windows Vista
root		(hd0,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader	+1

You want to make sure that the root for Vista is correct: correct partition and correct hard drive. You can view the mapping between /dev/sd* or /dev/hd* to (hd*) with this command in terminal: cat /boot/grub/device.map. Once you got that right you can copy and paste those 5 linees to make a new entry, adapting the first two lines for XP, and you should have a working GRUB. If you can't figure this out you could always post your whole menu.lst file, your device.map file and your system locations and we will change it for you. --antilived^{T | C | G} 08:23, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh wow! Thank you so much antilived! This is really helpful...I'm gonna go give it a shot, and if I can't get it to work I'll post the necessary files. Thanks again! --71.98.24.10 (talk) 12:05, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

So using the instructions you gave me above, I figured out how to get Vista to boot fine. Thank you for that. But I still cannot get XP to boot. It always tells me "Error 22: No such Partition". Does anyone know how to fix that? Here is a picture (I missed one of the Max's :P) that has my menu.lst file, my device.map, and my parition locations. --71.98.24.10 (talk) 14:07, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

EDIT: I got the correct partition, but it says NTLDR is missing. From what I gathered with a quick lookup, its basically the XP bootloader...

So I've decided I'm gonna try to install a NEW and different version of XP. I know that it'll make it so it automatically boots up right away and doesn't allow Ubuntu to boot. How can I change that from Windows XP with my configuration as I have it now? --71.98.24.10 (talk) 20:47, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Canonical has a good tutorial for that: [1]. You only need to do section 1 for most cases (you'll need a Ubuntu LiveCD). --antilived^{T | C | G} 09:11, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks antilived, you've been a big help. --71.98.3.250 (talk) 12:33, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

?

Hey y'all. I'm back! :P. Now I'm asking for some recommendations. I have used Windows XP for a very long time, so when Vista first came out, I was very skeptical. My brother decided he loved Vista and ultimately persuaded my dad to buy him a new computer with Vista Home Premium(That is so messed up, if anything, I deserve a new computer, but this was several months ago[Or last year, I forgot]). Over time, as I tried out Vista, I loved its user interface(same thing with Microsoft Office 2007) but I felt a lot of the CPU and RAM was being taken up by all this. As such it didn't "snap" to my command like XP did.:P But I love that interface(Flip 3D can be fun but is not really needed, unless you're one of those people who open up like 50 windows[Ever heard of tabs?] especially Windows Aero. IMO it's the best theme yet for Windows and is the only thing I decided was worth trading out speed for. So, I decided, "People tend to be very creative, I should just Google 'Aero for XP' or something like that". I did, with multiple key terms for all sorts of things but mostly in pursuit of that Aero look. (I already have the Vista-Aero theme addon for Firefox :P I ultimately found a few things that look promising but years with Windows had taught me caution.:P I then Googled 'problems with [program]' or 'how to uninstall [program], the results shocked me. I discovered that quite a few of these programs messed with system files(Very bad idea obviously, many of the errors reported required in some cases a complete reinstallation of Windows, I should note the latop I'm on is property of UCSB and it's best to not cause such problems :P) and were uninstallable except by manual search and destroy. So I decided to compromise. I got the cool Vista default wallpaper to help get part of the look and I decided to narrow my search to just the Vista start menu. I like the Vista start menu as it's much more compact than the XP menu but I often have trouble finding files(Thank goodness for that search feature). Again, Google searches revealed most of the programs available could cause serious problems and were not uninstallable. Ultimately Google searches eventually found this which claims to not mess with the system files and be easily uninstallable(By easily uninstallable I want to be able to uninstall something from the start menu or Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel). Can anybody confirm this before I download it? Or are there other programs out there that meet the conditions I've mentioned? In addition if you know a program that can change the theme that I can reverse in 30 seconds without side-effects, feel free to mention it.:P--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 00:50, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

From what the website is saying, all that app does is makes the start menu on XP or Vista look horrible and cluttered, it doesn't do anything else. The route you'll probably want to take is to use either WindowBlinds or a Uxtheme.dll patcher (the former has far more options/features, but is commercial software), and couple that with a suitable theme from Deviantart or Wincustomize or one of a thousand other sites. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 01:11, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Okay, now if I want to uninstall any themes I added or get rid of it all completely, how do I do that?--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 01:16, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

There's nothing complicated with either. With Windowblinds, you uninstall the app, or just delete the individual themes from within the configuration window (or the folder directly). With a Uxtheme patcher, just delete the themes from the Themes folder, and if desired replace the patched uxtheme.dll with a backed up unpatched one. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 01:18, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Okay then, thank you.:D--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 01:53, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

OMG! I love WindowBlinds! It came with Diamond which looks quite like Aero!:D--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 02:07, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Firefox download warning

By default, Firefox warns you when you try to close the program while a download is still in progress. Sometime after I updated to version 3, that warning was either lost or I accidentally turned it off without realizing it. I've gone through the options windows but can't seem to find a way to get that warning back. Any help? I'm on XP SP3, if that makes any difference. Matt Deres (talk) 16:39, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Firefox 3 no longer defaults to this behaviour, and I'm not sure it can be turned on. The reason is that, while Firefox 2 abandoned downloads if you quit in the middle of them, FF3 just pauses the download and resumes when you next launch FF. Algebraist 16:51, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

...which is fine unless you're using rapidshare, which never resumes. What I do is I leave the download window open when I've got downloads going, so that even if you click close on the main browser the download window remains open and continues. JessicaThunderbolt 19:32, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

FWIW, for long downloads I always use 'wget' (a command-line tool that downloads HTTP and FTP files without a browser). It can retry and restart and is generally very determined to get your file EVENTUALLY! SteveBaker (talk) 02:35, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

PCs used only few days every month

If I use a PC only for 3 to 5 days a month and leave it switched off rest of the days, will it work normal? Is it okay to do that? or is it not recommended to do like that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.122.61 (talk) 17:18, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes. This will be perfectly fine and should have no adverse effects. Gunrun (talk) 17:20, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

??? Why on earth shouldn't it be fine? The crazy idea of leaving computers on forever wastes energy, and it should also decrease the life time of your computer. --Ibn Battuta (talk) 19:19, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Computers wear out in two ways:

1. Turning the computer off and on causes thermal fatigue, leading to the growth of microscopic cracks in the chips. Eventually, a crack will cross something important and the chip will fail.
2. Leaving the computer on causes gradual erosion of the wiring inside the chips through electron wind. Eventually a wire will get too thin and the chip will fail.

A computer that's used normally and turned on and off once a day has about a 50% chance of failing from each, typically after five to ten years. --Carnildo (talk) 21:34, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Your answer is too good for me not to ask for a source =) --mboverload@ 04:38, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Um. If it's only about thermal factors, that should also be true for hibernation (instead of shutting down & booting). If that's true, my computer will very likely die from thermal fatigue one day. On the other hand, shouldn't also things like room-temperature/outdoor temperature (if you take a laptop with you) etc. matter? --Ibn Battuta (talk) 15:12, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

In the case of a laptop, it is not likely to die of either of these things, it is likely to die of *owner fatigue* ;-) --66.195.232.121 (talk) 15:39, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I haven't heard of the "electron wind" thing - but there is no doubt that powering a machine on and off does impose more stress than leaving it turned on for some amount of time. However, the precise balance between the wear due to things running all the time versus the wear due to starting and stopping is hard to determine.

The effect I have personal experience with is called "thermal creep". It applies mostly to chips that are plugged into sockets. What happens is that when the computer powers up, the pins on the chip warm up and expand by a microscopic amount - this pushes the chip up a little bit. When the computer is turned off, the pins cool off and shrink - but depending on the geometry of the socket and the pins - the chip may not get pulled back down again - instead it may stay still and the pins pull a tiny distance out of the socket. Do this a thousand times and eventually the chip simply falls out of it's socket! (Well, more often, one pin starts to fail to make contact and the computer fails). Simply pushing the chip back in again usually works just fine - but most people don't know to try that. The same thing can happen with connectors incidentally. Keeping your computer at constant temperature avoids this problem.

Things like disk drives (with moving parts) used to suffer more from being powered up and down because the motor needs to apply more torque to accellerate the drive up and down than to spin it at uniform speed. That additional torque causes extra load on the bearings - so they wear out faster. However, these days, almost all computers stop the disk drive automatically after a few seconds whenever you're not using it - so this is a negligable effect compared to the speeding up and slowing down that the system does all the time anyway.

However, if you only use the computer quite rarely - you should certainly turn it off when it's not in use - you WILL cause a little more stress on it as you power it up and power it down - but that's unlikely to be as much as leaving it on for days at a time...and you really should try to use less electricity.

SteveBaker (talk) 02:30, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Steve, check out electromigration. It's a real and major concern for chip designers (because it constrains how small they can make those incredibly small runs of aluminium metal and the like), but if they've done their work correctly, it's usually no concern for the end users. Ion migration is much more likely to cause the death of a hot (powered-on) chip, especially via the omnipresent sodium ions that contaminate everything touched by humans.

Atlant (talk) 12:09, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Thermal creep isn't a problem with modern computers: the only chips that are socketed are the BIOS ROM (which stays cool) and the CPU (which is clamped solidly in place by the heatsink). --Carnildo (talk) 22:59, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Firefox bookmarks

For years I've had my browser open with bookmarks.html — but now I notice that it hasn't changed since I got Firefox version 3. Evidently Ff3 stores its bookmarks somewhere else. Where? (I'm on MacOS.) —Tamfang (talk) 17:42, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

"Starting in Firefox 3, bookmarks are stored in the places.sqlite file and bookmarks*.html files are only used for importing and exporting. As of Firefox 3 Beta 5 bookmarkbackup files are stored in JSON format.) " This page might be useful in determining how to export your current bookmarks to an HTML file, which you could then use as a starting page. You'd have to re-export any time you want to update your list though. There is probably an extension out there to do this automatically. --LarryMac | Talk 18:04, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Hotmail's secret question and answer

I'm wondering why Hotmail does not allow you to choose you own secret question and answer when you forgot your password. Most of their questions they give are not that hard to guess. The ones they presently offer can be answered by some people around or strangers, especially if you have a profile on a blog or a social networking profile. I mean 'Mother birthplace', 'Best childhood friend', 'Name of first pet', 'Favourite teacher', 'Favourite historical person' or 'Grandfather's occupation' are not that tough and strangers can easily find their answers through social engineering or on your profile. Why is Hotmail so dumb to put those kind of secret questions and don't allow you to choose a tough one? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.206.22.13 (talk) 18:33, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I assume they're trying to use questions which everyone has an answer to (unlike, e.g., prefered college professor--not everyone attends college) and that are easy enough to answer so people don't always get stranded trying unsuccessfully to remember the answer (e.g., brand of first bike--uh, what was that again?). That being said, I do believe that many of their questions are too easy, and they (not just Hotmail) tend to expect that you have a typical US life, asking for pets, vacation homes (!), grandfathers, birthplaces, etc., some of which may either not apply or be self-evident if you go to other places. --Ibn Battuta (talk) 19:17, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

You know, there's no right answers for these questions :->. 'Grandfather's occupation'? Tellafonepole (sic). Hard to guess, dictionary search fails, etc. Just remember to remember it. Saintrain (talk) 19:26, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I read a survey on Slashdot that stated that most people use the same answer for all those questions. Mother's maiden name? Chewbacca. Name of first pet? Chewbacca. Make of first car? Chewbacca. Grandfather's occupation? Chewbacca. Youth in Asia (talk) 02:57, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Probably explains why that kid in Tennessee was able to hack his way through Sarah Palin's Yahoo mail account by answering her "secret questions". Anyone who knows you would be able to simply answer those questions and basically get full access to your web mail account. AreJay (talk) 03:18, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

People who use Hotmail (or Yahoo mail or Gmail) really shouldn't have much expectation of secrecy - you're using a service on a big anonymous company with who-knows-how-many employees with who-knows-what access to your data. It's hard to believe that someone like Sarah Palin doesn't have a decent email account in some kind of secure place - she shouldn't be in the slightest bit surprised that she'd get hacked. These security questions balance the quality of security against what your expectation of security should be. I don't believe a casual hacker would spend the effort to figure out your grandfather's occupation...the return on the effort is simply not worth their time...that's really not a trivial thing to find out. Go ahead - try to figure out my grandfather's occupation (and I'm not telling you which of my two grandfathers I'm thinking of - so you may need to figure out both of them)...I bet you $100 you can't figure it out within the next week. However - when the return on that investment of effort is large (Getting the dirt on the vice-presidential candidate could be worth a lot of money to the right buyer!), for sure those questions aren't secure enough...but who in their right mind (oh...wait) would believe that a Yahoo account would be secure against a few thousand determined hackers?! I have my own mail server - it's WAY more secure - and I get whatever email address I fancy (steve at sjbaker dot org)...it costs me $9 a month with (literally) terabytes of storage space, a web site, a wiki...you name it...I don't get gratuitous adverts tacked onto the ends of my messages. Anyone who really cares about the security of their mail can afford to do that rather than having to find a free email service. SteveBaker (talk) 02:18, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Free video editing program

Which free video editing program would you recommend? While I'm still in my early days of editing, I appreciate the options I can get even if it takes a bit more time to learn to use the pgroam. All things being equal, I'd go for open-source; but if other free software is better, well, so be it. Thanks, Ibn Battuta (talk) 19:17, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

• On which system ? Equendil Talk 19:25, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

The choices are pretty sparse, last time I checked, for free non-linear editors, which I'm interpreting you to be asking about (e.g. more than just splicing together files in a linear way). It would help if you specified what your OS was, as some (e.g. Cinelerra) are only available on Linux/OS X (not Windows), many are Linux-only. Category:Free video software only has a couple NLEs in it. --140.247.253.44 (talk) 19:36, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, yes, I forgot: I'm using Windows. And I looked at the category, but of course there's not a direct comparison (which wouldn't be very NPOV). --Ibn Battuta (talk) 15:10, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

You can have NPOV comparisons of features. The problem is here is that almost none of those in that category are actually NLEs. Most of them are not even the same kind of software (it's a pretty stupid category—having NLEs mixed in with media players mixed in with coding libraries? Totally useless if you don't already know the programs). Basically for Windows there is Jahshaka which doesn't sound like it even works and hasn't been updated in two years? Fact is most NLEs are not free. Some are relatively cheap (e.g. iMovie or Windows Movie Maker can do some basic stuff that is similar to a NLE) but if you want more power than that you're talking about very expensive software (e.g. Premiere or Final Cut Pro or etc.). Unless apparently you have Linux in which case there are maybe one or two options. Sucks, no? yes.--98.217.8.46 (talk) 00:30, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

How to add on wireless as an extra to an existing computer with an external modem

I have a computer that has an external broadband modem (ADSL I think). There is a red cable running from the modem to the computer. Only I use or have access to the computer. I personally am happy with this set up. (And note, there is only one telephone line to the flat).

However my flatmates want to get access to broadband somehow. Perhaps the easiest way of doing this would be to have a wireless modem in addition to the existing modem. How could I do this please? What would I need to buy? I want something that can be used even when my modem and computer are turned off. Does such a thing exist?

I do not want to use wireless myself as the security is not very good, and I don't want the next door teenagers or flatmates decoding my traffic for fun. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.243.82.72 (talk) 20:44, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

You want a wireless router. this will have 'wired' connections so you can still use the network on your non-wireless PC. Some come with a modem built in (in which case your current modem will be unneeded in the setup), some don't. A wireless-router modem will let you have the setup you want - your internet connection will be maintained (and kept secure if you enable security) by the router itself, your PC needn't be on at all. Most PC shops (independent on chain) will have staff adequately trained to explain the basic setup of these - they aren't overly difficult these days to be honest. ny156uk (talk) 22:38, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Making MSN and Outlook contacts merge in WM6

Hi all,

how do I merge MSN and Outlook contacts in Windows Mobile 6's contact manager? I know about the delete-dupe option, but it's useless in my case, as my classmates think they have to show "funny" names as their display names and not their real names :(

Thanks, HardDisk (talk) 20:45, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

typing tabs in textareas?

In most graphical user interface dialog boxes or dialog-boxy-like things, the tab key jumps you from one input field to another. And indeed this pattern is followed in most web browsers when they're displaying an HTML form for you. But of course this leads to an annoying limitation: if the particular HTML form you're on has a text box into which you're trying to type significant test, what if you want a tab?

Me, I have to hunt down (or create) some other window in which I can type a tab, copy it to the clipboard, and paste it into the text area. But that's obviously a nuisance. Are there any standardish, supported techniques for typing tabs in textareas? Or more specifically, is there a good way in Firefox? —Steve Summit (talk) 22:05, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

There's [2] and the tabinta extension (which may not be maintained) and an eight year old mozilla bug. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:14, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Hey! Thanks for those! —Steve Summit (talk) 23:58, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

You usually don't type tabs into HTML forms. In media where tabs cannot easily be implement you separate paragraphs by two hard returned (so there is a space between them). This is nearly always perfectly acceptable in such situations. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 22:28, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

True, but "usually don't" isn't "never", and "nearly always" isn't "universally". :-) (In particular, the reason I was asking had nothing to do with separating paragraphs, but rather, indenting them in a plain-text web-accessed bug database, where a tab -- if you can manage to insert one -- ends up acting more or less like a left-margin ':' does in Wikitext.) —Steve Summit (talk) 23:58, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, I sort of think that places where indentation is necessary should provide other ways to do it. Because not everyone is going to use your hacky method. E.g. Wikipedia has its nice : indents. If the forum supports HTML, use <blockquote>. etc. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 00:26, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I shouldn't have said "in particular", because that was just one example.

The plain text stream is a lone bastion of near-universal, least-common-denominator compatibility and fungibility in a computing landscape of everincreasing specialization and Balkanization. Now, tabs are admittedly on the edge of what a plain text stream can legitimately contain, but to the extent that a web browser is a generic user interface, and an HTML textarea is a generic text editor, I'd certainly like to be able to manipulate tabs in one. —Steve Summit (talk) 02:31, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

In MS Excel if you want to 'add' a tab-space you hold control and then tab (ctrl+tab). This means that you don't move to the next cell but rather it adds a 'tab space' in the cell you are writing. The same is true for MS Word when working in the tables. I don't have a windows PC at home so can't test but i would suspect that on IE you'd probably get the same result - perhaps in Firefox it will work too? Having said all that in Safari my policy doesn't work... ny156uk (talk) 22:31, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Nice suggestion, but no, it doesn't work in Firefox, either (at least, not on this Mac). —Steve Summit (talk) 23:58, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I use the mozex extension to accomplish this. It basically allows you to right click the textarea to open it in a text-editor of your choice. It copies the content of the textarea in a temporary file and opens it in the editor. When you save that file in the editor, it copies the data back to the textarea, with tabs intact. Perhaps not exactly what you want though. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.241.133.176 (talk) 16:13, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Ah yes. I was using a "view source with" extension (I forget its name) for a while, and that's certainly another option.

The good news is that the "tabinta" extension which Finlay McWalter mentioned seems to work perfectly (despite its age). Thanks again. —Steve Summit (talk) 02:31, 25 September 2008 (UTC)