Computing desk
< September 25	<< Aug \| September \| Oct >>	September 27 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Computing Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

September 26

Is it possible to transfer a hard drive to a new machine and still use it to boot?

A co-worker of mine is going to purchase a new PC, and has offered me his old one with everything minus the hard drives (a substantial upgrade from my current box). How difficult and what are the procedures for getting my hard drive (more specifically, my copy of XP) to boot the new machine? Thank you in advance for any insight you can provide. (Edit to say links to reputable guides on this sort of thing are just as good as answers and to remove redundant wording). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 161.222.160.8 (talk) 01:20, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I would expect it would be as simple as physically installing your hard drive in the new computer (most likely as the "primary master"). Do you know how to do that ? StuRat 01:43, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That I can do. For some reason I was thinking it would be a more involved process. Thank you, StuRat. Also, I remember reading somewhere that XP uses a "ticket" system for hardware changes; something like each XP install gets x number of hardware changes before invalidating itself. Does anyone know of this? 161.222.160.8 02:40, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You know, I tried this once and it didn't work. Although the hard drive was running OEM windows, so I'm not sure if that was causing a problem. The OEM windows wouldn't install on the new machine either, so you might have different luck using if your XP was store bought or "free." As for the ticket thing, I've been told XP can tell if the motherboard type magically changed, and OEM versions self invalidate when this happens. Not sure if that's the really case, but...maybe. Someguy1221 02:42, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

WGA generates a hash based on your hardware configuration. If it changes enough to be considered by microsoft to be a different computer (this can be as little as upgrading your graphics card and memory, or just your motherboard) then you will be unable to run windows. The program phones home every week or so to make sure your installation is still "genuine." This is clearly spyware behavior, and you should not be subject to microsoft's arbitrary licensing restrictions if you've purchased the software. Our article on WGA says that microsoft is being prosecuted for this unreasonable behavior, but I doubt it'll amount to much seeing as how microsoft's already bought legislation to defend itself- DMCA. --⁪froth^t 03:25, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm... Now I have some pondering to do. Even if I purchase a new copy of XP I think it will still be cheaper than upgrading my current box (about the only part I want to keep is the case :)) Thank you all for taking time to answer my question. 161.222.160.8 04:15, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You can call Microsoft and re-activate your Windows over the phone. You need to tell them that it is because you upgraded your computer and that you still only have Windows installed on one computer. --131.215.166.122 04:24, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You will probably have to reinstall Windows XP and call Microsoft to get a new reactivation code. Should be no problem as long as you back up the data on your hard drive prior to reininstalling Windows. --Hdt83 ^Chat 04:27, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You'll almost certainly have to re-install Windows, and nothing to do with licensing reasons. Your Windows simply won't have the correct drivers installed to talk to the new hardware. Your basic hardware (motherboard, controllers) are detected on installation, when the built-in Windows drivers are installed to interface with them. You'll have to run the setup again to go through this detection and installation phase. It will probably give you a blue screen at boot-up. Zun aid ©® 10:43, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And yes, as you know you should remember to back up your data before attempting to reinstall --Click me! write to me 07:29, 27 September 2007 (UTC)windows.[reply]

Game Maker 7.0 Pro

Does anybody have the registration key for Game Maker 7.0 Pro? --Dudforreal 06:46, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure they do, but I imagine sharing it here would be illegal, and Wikipedia does not encourage illegal activities. --jjron 09:32, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Check the interwebs. Wikipedia is located in the US (florida) so they have to have rules against posting content illegal in America.. which, because lobby groups have very deep pockets, includes license keys. Illegal number :o Ridiculous? yes. Illegal anyway? Unfortunately. We can't help you --⁪froth^t 11:00, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Speed cameras

what category of technology would speed cameras fall into? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.23.231.70 (talk) 10:55, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

visual image capture, velocity measurement, digital image processing. Plus the various technologies involved in converting a number plate number into a letter saying "your car was detected as speeding"87.102.32.155 12:48, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

also 'traffic control technology','road safety technologies' .. could be any number of technologies - could you be more specific87.102.32.155 14:38, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

According to the road safety camera wikipedia page, Law enforcement equipment, Traffic law, Cameras by type, Applications of computer vision, Road transport, Street furniture and Speed cameras --h2g2bob (talk) 17:47, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It depends on what you mean by "speed camera", and it depends on how you categorize technology. -- Diletante 00:30, 27 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Surveillance? --24.147.86.187 00:12, 3 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Changing Keyboard Shortcuts

For work I have to use Windows 2000, and my job requires me to ALT-TAB through thousands of documents. I am starting to get RSI and I want to know if there's a way of reassigning the shortcuts so I can change it to something a bit easier to get to. Can this be done?

Thanks 195.60.20.81 12:13, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What software are you using to view the documents ? If hitting the two keys simultaneously is the problem, perhaps you could use sticky keys. StuRat 15:20, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with StuRat. Just press [shift] key on your keyboard for some eight or nine times continuously to activate it. Let us know if that is not what you want. --Click me! write to me 07:26, 27 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, but I'm not sure that will work. With Sticky Keys, the keys only stay down for one use before reverting. I need to use ALT TAB or CTRL F6 for hours at a time, and being able to change one or either of these shortcuts to something a bit easier (or even to rotate them so I'm not wearing out the same muscles/keys) would be really handy. 195.60.20.81 10:47, 27 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A keyboard macro program such as AutoHotkey will let you redefine practically anything to mean practically anything. It does require a basic level of programming skill, but it's almost certainly worth the investment in a case like yours. (The investment of learning time, I mean; the software is free.) -- BenRG 11:15, 27 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

computing

--~about online leave management system,how to use it,its benefit to a company. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kathambi (talk • contribs) 15:07, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

1) People could request leaves online, without disturbing their supervisor.

2) A computer program can figure out if too many people are requesting leave simultaneously, such that the company will be shorthanded, and request that applicants for those leaves reschedule. If they refuse, the supervisors can be notified to make the decision about who will have their leave denied or if other actions, like hiring temps, are needed to provide adequate coverage.

3) Recording who has taken how much of their allocated leave becomes a simple matter. Those who fail to request leave before it expires can be notified in advance. This can avoid angering employees who later find out their leave has expired. StuRat 15:15, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Karioke Track

Hello! Is there any free software, like Audacity, that can remove the vocals from an MP3 file to produce a karioke (pardon my spelling) track? Thanks!--El aprendelenguas 15:57, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The only way to remove the vocals properly would be if they were on a separate track to begin with. I don't think the MP3 format gives you this, you only have the final mix. I suppose some software could try to recognize the human voice and remove it, but I'd be rather skeptical about this process working very well. StuRat 17:37, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Typically, music is engineered so that the lyrics are centered in the stereo stage, while all the backup sounds are spread across the stage. So, if you take the left channel, invert it, and sum it with the right channel, the identical things (lyrics) will cancel out, leaving just the differences between the two channels. This, honestly, doesn't work very well, though. You generally end up with a mono file with lessened lyrics and a really bizarre equalization. Some software -- Goldwave comes to mind -- has an automated lyric removal filter that will do this operation for you. --Mdwyer 21:48, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I tried it with GoldWave on Take Me Out (song) and uploaded the results. It's a little squealy at the beginning when there aren't even any vocals but it's still impressive. --⁪froth^t 09:32, 27 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wow. That was really impressive. I'd never gotten it to work that well! --Mdwyer 01:23, 28 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I know that XMMS has a voice-removal plugin. Sometimes it works ok, sometimes.... not so much. -- Diletante 00:09, 27 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Audacity has a voice-removal plugin that basically automates the splitting, reversing, and remerging. In general, tracks with a lot of echo and/or special effects don't de-lyric nicely. http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/faq?s=editing&i=remove-vocals might help. Kuronue | Talk 04:27, 28 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

ASP.NET and Linux

I have to write ASP.NET code on Windows for my job. Back at home, my computer is 100% Linux-only. My current distro, Fedora 7, comes with Mono pre-installed. Does this mean I could just take my ASP.NET code from work and have it work on my home Linux system as well? (Minus the Windows domain authentication of course.) JIP | Talk 18:11, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am assuming that you are developing ASP web pages. You will want to see Apache::ASP for running ASP pages on Apache (on Linux). -- kainaw ™ 18:42, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You assume correctly. From what I gather, ASP.NET web pages are just like JSP pages, only you don't have to code the HTML controls yourself. I'm glad this is supported on Linux as well, ASP.NET looks like too good a technology to waste on BillOS only. As for the Windows-only features, like the Windows domain authentication, I can live without them. JIP | Talk 19:18, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If by good you mean bloated, slow, cumbersome to write for, and completely inappropriate to the inherent statelessness of the web page, then I'd have to agree with you --⁪froth^t 09:04, 27 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

NTFC (NTFS?)

my computer uses FAT32 can I put NTFC software on its drive? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.176.109.201 (talk) 21:36, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean NTFS? Software generally doesn't care which filesystem you use. However, if the software requires the enhanced security of NTFS (permissions, etc) then, it might not work well under FAT32. --Mdwyer 21:45, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You seem to be confused. NTFS is essentially the same sort of thing as FAT32, they're both filesystems, you can have either one on your hard disk, but not both at the same time (technicalities such as partitioning aside). Imagine a hard disk as a long list of ones and zeroes, you need some sort of system that tells you where a file begins and ends. This is what a file system. In order to use use NTFS on your drive, you will need to reformat it (which means emptying it, and reinstalling windows). The clearest advantages are safety (files will be easier to retrieve in the event of problems), security (user based permissions are possible) and size (you can have files larger than 2 gb, which isn't possible with FAT32). risk 22:34, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Someone's confused, but I don't think it's Mdwyer; perhaps you were referring to the original questioner? In any case, it's entirely possible to upgrade a disk from FAT32 to NTFS in place. For example, the WIN2K installer will do it for you if you wish.

Atlant 11:29, 27 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You're right, I was resopnding to the original poster. I didn't know it was possible to convert disks to NTFS with data intact, though. risk 13:25, 27 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Just a point in the case, popular distros of GNU/Linux may not support NTFS writing properly out of the box. I am not sure if it pertains to you,but just wanted you to know of the pitfalls. --Click me! write to me 07:24, 27 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Also, last I knew (which may now be too long to be accurate), Mac OS X could read an NTFS disk but not write them; that is, they were mounted to the underlying Unix as read-only file systems.

Atlant 11:29, 27 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly not out of the box, but captivefs is very good at it if you just install it. Captive NTFS. Also NTFS-3G but that's not as good; only use it if you can't get your hands on NTFS.SYS (unlikely). --⁪froth^t 17:28, 27 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks!

Atlant 18:58, 27 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Under Windows 2000 and XP (and maybe Vista for all I know), the command-line argument CONVERT will change your FAT32 drive to an NTFS drive. I have done this. You don't need to do it unless you know of a reason to do it. The reason I did it was that NTFS has better file and folder permissions abilities than FAT32. Tempshill 19:31, 3 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Two-nots problem

I'm stuck on solving the two-nots problem. Does anyone know of a solution somewhere on the internet? Or maybe you could just help me here; I have it down to a very specific question.

KNOWING:
A      A'     <--Important
B
C      C'     <--Important
A+B    A*B    <--Somewhat important
A+C    A*C    <--Somewhat important
B+C    B*C    <--Somewhat important
(A+C)' (A*C)' <--Possibly important

NOTING:
(A+C)' = A'*C' per de morgan's laws
(A*C)' = A'+C' per de morgan's laws

FIND:
B'

I am totally stuck- I'm reasonably sure this is where I need to be but as far as I can tell there's no solution for B' that doesn't involve additional inverters.

To find A' and C' I went a really crazy roundabout way.. I found (A+C)' and (A*C)' first. I noted that:

For A:
If (A+C)' is true then A must be 0
If (A+C)' is false then either A must be 1 or C must be 1 or both must be 1 so
 AC
 01
 10
 11
 A is only 0 when C is 1 and (A' OR C')
A' = (A+C)' + C(A'+C')

For C:
If (A+C)' is true then C must be 0
If (A+C)' is false then either A must be 1 or C must be 1 or both must be 1 so
 AC
 01
 10
 11
 C is only 0 when A is 1 and (A' OR C')
C' = (A+C)' + A(A'+C')

So completely unnecessary since I could have just inverted A and C in the first place and easily had (A+C)' and (A*C)', rather than inverting (A+C) and (A*C) and going backward to A' and C'. But I'm hoping that something similar can be done for B'.. it doesn't work though, there's no definite solution :( pls? --⁪froth^t 22:17, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wireless Networks

What exactly is it that makes some wireless networks private, or security-enabled. And even if your network says it is security-enabled, how can you be sure that others don't tap into your network and view your pages? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.87.200.184 (talk) 22:56, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wireless networks are generally made "private" by using some type of encryption. As to the second question, I guess, there really is no way to be completely and absolutely sure. Even the highest security can be cracked. The best you can do is to be "as sure as you can", to do that you just have to keep up with the contemporary best security practices. That's things like using the latest security available to you, using strong passwords for the key, enabling more then one security measure on your network, also pro active things like monitoring your network usage, keeping backups of critical data, etc. There are a LOT of things you can do to be "more" safe, just HOW safe you want to be is entirely up to you and your requirements. Many people have made careers out of consulting on this type of question. Vespine 23:32, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.87.200.184 (talk) 23:48, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Note that if you want real security, it's possible to only let certain MAC IDs on your network - that's what I had to do in my apartment building. Only my 3 computers and wii can connect to our router - it automatically refuses anything else (so they'd have to be a decent hacker to get in, rather than just an ordinary leech) Kuronue | Talk 04:30, 28 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

MAC address access control is a great idea against active attacks (i.e. people trying to actually connect to your WAP). You also have to consider passive attacks (sniffing). This is when your data is simply "sniffed" out of the air without your knowledge. This is where encryption is most useful.

[WEP] is not secure. It be cracked in a matter of minutes by capturing encrypted frames and replaying them. This forces the router to broadcast ever more packets until you have sufficient packets to crack the key. I won't go into this in detail, but you're _much_ better off using [WPA2]. Wilymage

Credit card transaction processing

While tidying up credit card, I became rather curious how there can be multiple transaction processing networks, if any credit card number can be used to deposit money in any merchant account. Or is it that any merchant that advertises that they accept e.g. Visa, must be capable of using all of the networks that any Visa-affiliated card-issuing bank must use, and the various credit card associations have overlapping sets of networks that they require? Is there a canonical list of these networks which could be documented in Wikipedia somewhere? -- Beland 23:35, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Merchants get their card processing service from card processors; it is the card processors who need to be able to access the different networks. --71.175.68.224 12:47, 27 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That much was clear, but it's unclear how credit card numbers can work universally if there are multiple card processors whose systems are incompatible. -- Beland 15:55, 27 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Here's, roughly, how things work. First there's the "acquirer"; that's the bank that owns the terminal in the shop (usually they're leased to the merchant). They, incidentally, don't make the terminal (sorry, the "POS equipment" or "EPOS equipment"): it's made by Bull or Ingenico or NCR, and implements a bunch of industry standards (the acquirer generally customises them a bit to suit their network, but it's 95% generic stuff). When you swipe your card in the store the terminal sends the transaction data off to the acquirer's system. That talks to the CCP (the credit card processor, which is AMEX or VISA or Mastercard or a few others). The CCP's system in turn talks to the issuer - that's the bank that issued the credit card (remember that Visa and Mastercard don't issue credit cards - they're issued by HBOS or HSBC or BoA or Santander etc.). If the issuer approves the transaction then the CCP relays that to the acquirer, and in turn to the terminal. [Slight complication: sometimes smaller transactions are approved by the acquirer or the CCP when connections are down or are congested: they take the risk that the transaction is kosher onto themselves, rather than decline all transactions and lose the business - the circumstances under which they do or don't do this are a closely-guarded secret, lest fraudsters exploit it]. The system all works mainly because everyone implements strict industry standards (issued by trade bodies like APACS and sometimes adopted as ISO standards) for the card encoding and for all the inter-company communications. It also works because there are relatively few CCPs and because the CCPs are incredibly strict about enforcing their standards onto issuers and acquirers. The near duopoly that Visa/Mastercharge enjoy in much of the world means that they can force issuers and acquirers to implement exactly what they want. And in turn payment systems manufacturers (those who build the terminals, make the cards, or make the backoffice equipment that does all this) build to the industry standard (with any Visa/MC wrinkles). It's been a while since I last worked on this stuff, but then (and surely now) the packet that the terminal sends to the acquirer was essentially the same for Visa, MC, AMEX and the inevitable wacky local guys. 217.42.190.82 01:34, 29 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I thought that the acquirer does not actually contact "Visa" or "Mastercard", but a transaction processor, like First Data, Paymentech, Vital, etc. as listed in the reference I used for the credit card article. -- Beland 14:50, 2 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]