Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2010 February 18

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February 18

Stop Google searching for wrong spelling

Google searches include results for different spellings of words you enter. Sometimes this is helpful (for example, if you are bad at spelling), but sometimes it's a pain in the neck (for example, you are good at spelling, and the term you are searching for is similar to a common but unrelated word). How do I make google only search for the spelling I want it to? DuncanHill (talk) 13:08, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Usually quotation marks are sufficient to restrict a search. If I search for doughnuts, I get results that include donuts. If I search for "doughnuts", I get a different set of results. Note that the second set of results might still include donuts (e.g. our own Doughnuts article), so to further refine the results, I might want to search "doughnuts" -"donuts". In my experience, I sometimes find it takes me multiple searches to get the input string just right. --LarryMac | Talk 13:21, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Also, The Google Guide is a valuable reference for learning many search tricks. --LarryMac | Talk 13:24, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Add a + sign to what you're looking for. For example: +definately --Belchman (talk) 14:01, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

That's excellent, thank you both. DuncanHill (talk) 14:02, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Sine wave

Why when I stop playing a sine wave sound on my computer, I hear a "pub" sound?--Mikespedia (talk) 13:43, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

What program are you using, and on what operating system, to play this sine wave? -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 14:36, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Quite anything, including youtube and anyplace that can play a sine wave. The "pub" sound is heard when I pause the video or even when I turn off the sound from my computer. I use XP.--Mikespedia (talk) 14:44, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Some computer audio devices sometimes emit a slight "click" when they're muted; they really shouldn't (to my mind its a defect) but some do. If it happens for you in everything, I'd make sure your audio device driver is up to date. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 14:50, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

hard drive connectors

I'm going to be soon trying to get the contents of one PC hard drive and put them mostly verbatim on the contents of another. One uses IDE and the other is SATA. What's the easiest way to do this? I don't need to straight clone the drives, I don't think, so skipping out on a not-cheap IDE-SATA convertor (that I will never use again) is preferable. I have lots of USB and ethernet cables if there is some easy way to use those for this. The size of the files to be moved is large enough that I'd prefer not to try to do it over an internet connection (I just think it will take forever, and I'm not sure what the max up/down caps on the connection will be). Any thoughts? --Mr.98 (talk) 14:15, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Are both machines in (different) working PCs? If so what OSes do they run? If the PCs don't work, I'd dig around for an external USB hard disk, open it, and use it as a temporary host for the old drive in the new machine. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 14:29, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

If the drive is in an operating PC, then connect it via Ethernet, share the drive and move the contents. With Windows XP you can do a direct cable connection with a special USB cable. Vista and Windows 7 have Windows Easy Transfer. If the drive is not installed, you can get a USB to SATA/IDE adapter cheap on eBay; they come from Hong Kong so it may take a few weeks for shipping. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 14:36, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

If both PCs are working then direct-connect them with an ethernet cable, fix the IPs (192.168.0.1 and .2), and copy the files across with a failure-tolerant copy program e.g. robocopy(over samba) or rsync (over its own network layer or ssh). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 14:43, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

You would need a Ethernet crossover cable for that. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 15:26, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Maybe, maybe not. Lots of ports have automatic crossover these days. If you don't have a crossover cable on hand, it's worth trying a straight-through cable. -- Coneslayer (talk) 15:39, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

They both work. One will be running XP, another Windows 7. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:56, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Are you sure the Win7 machine doesn't have an IDE connector somewhere? Most desktops still do (languishing unconnected somewhere in a corner of the motherboard); only laptops tend not to. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 14:59, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, I'm not sure that it doesn't. I just don't want to count on it (I will be traveling far and having only a limited amount of time to transfer things, so surprises are not desired). --Mr.98 (talk) 16:09, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

You should bear in mind a SATA-PATA or reverse cable would only be something like US$10, probably closer to US$6 shipped from a place like DealExtreme or Ebay [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] although shipping would be from HK and take 2 weeks or so, so may not be feasible if you need to do this soon. Although it may still not be something you'll ever use again (although IMHO could be useful with the eventual demise of IDE), I wouldn't exactly call this 'not cheap' but to each their own I guess... SATA+IDE to USB adapters are also not that much more and may or may not be more useful. As others have mentioned, if both computers have ethernet (a key point, you mentioned you have lots of spare ethernet cables, but not that I noticed whether both had ethernet, the XP one in particular since it lacks SATA may not have it built in to the mobo) ethernet would probably be a good option, as has been discussed you may need a crossover cable but probably not since the Windows 7 computer probably has GbE and these usually (although as our article mentions it isn't compulsory) have automatic crossover. Someone mentioned USB but in the unlikely event both have IEEE1394, you can use that without any special cable (but you do need an IEEE1394 cable with the right plugs of course). As with all situation where you have a limited amount of time, will be travelling far and surprises are not desired, having two options ready may be advisable, perhaps take an ethernet cable or two (in case one is broken) and get a SATA-PATA adapter. Nil Einne (talk) 19:26, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Windows appearance

Hi

I like changing the appearance of Windows everyday for example the color of the windows and the fonts, but there's this guy who has quite an amount of authority and who's office I'm occupying. Basically this guy doesn't like that I change the appearance everyday (don't know why and it doesn't affect my work whatsoever, because it takes less than a minute)and said that he's going to let the I.T. manager disable that function so as to prevent me from changing the colors everytime.

Q: Is it possible to disable that feature?

Thanks, NirocFX 41.193.16.234 (talk) 15:34, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Is it possible for them to disable the feature on your machine? Yes very easily, take a look at our article Group Policy. Is it possible for you to disable them doing that? No, if you're on a corporate domain (and you probably are) then you can't override a group policy and even if you were to bypass it somehow it'd revert back then next time the policy was applied (it updates periodically whilst Windows is running). ZX81 ^talk 15:56, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Ignoring the technical question, I'm going to focus on the social element (though ZX81 is right, Group Policy exists to allow this sort of control). Is this a shared computer? If so, common courtesy dictates you leave it in close to default configuration (with allowances for font size for those with poor vision and the like). Many people are uncomfortable messing with these settings, and unless you are resetting it back after you use it, you're creating more work for other people. On the other hand, if he just dislikes seeing your screen, he's got a serious chip on his shoulder and should probably be ignored (unless you're going with neon orange or green so bright it causes retina damage out of the corner of your eye, in which case he might have a small point, and perhaps a compromise is in order). —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 17:02, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks guys,

Compromising I don't know... It's my name that appears on the screen when you try to access this particular pc, so no one else works on it besides me.

Thanks, NirocFX 41.193.16.234 (talk) 05:27, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

To me, it depends on how far you want to pursue this, and what it's worth to you. Is this person in your managerial line? That is to say, does he have a say in the review process, whether you continue working there or not, etc.? If he doesn't, I might consider mentioning it to your supervisor/manager/director. Not call a sit-down and make a big deal of it, just a drop-in "Quick question for you...." If it doesn't bother him/her, the issue has been broached and (at least mentally) recorded, and you should be OK to continue. However, if your office mate IS in your managerial line, I would probably drop it immediately. (I'm assuming he isn't, though, or you probably would have written "my supervisor" instead of "this guy.") Sounds like he's kind of a jerk. I've had similar experiences, and it's not fun. Sorry. Kingsfold (talk) 14:17, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

If there is a reason (and there may not be - some people are just jerks), it could be the perception (not the reality) that you are wasting time endlessly fiddling with your machine's setup when you should be getting on with work. I've known people who surf the web endlessly (on company time) looking for nicer wallpaper designs and downloading loads and loads of obscure fonts and icons and desktop 'toys' like clocks and such. But if it really does take you only a minute or two, you might want to emphasise that to whoever is in charge - and make a point of sitting at your desk a few minutes before the "official" start time - so you are shifting the settings on your own time. Better still, reset the colors before you go home at the end of the day. If I were your manager, I'd be more concerned about why you are almost unique amongst big-time computer users in wanting to do this. Changing the colors every day means that you can't possibly be using anything like optimal settings. The kinds of professional programmers and artists that I work with are extremely picky about choosing their backdrops, fonts and colors - but never wish to change them EVER again once they have them set up how they like. I might suspect that you are having trouble keeping interested in the work or something. But none of these things would justify shutting off the feature on a non-shared computer. Weird. SteveBaker (talk) 04:35, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

I've been thinking this for a while but dismissed it at first since it's said this was an office but have now reconsidered... You say this is a shared office. Does this colleague regularly get visitors to the office? If so, it occurs to me he may find your computer settings make your computer look unprofessional or odd and he may not like visitors seeing that. Also another thought, is your computer within line of sight of where he works? If so, perhaps he finds your settings keep distracting. Also I'm surprised now one mentioned this, have you tried asking him in a non-confrontational way why he doesn't like you changing your settings? There could also bee things like him being somewhat OC or having other psychological issues which could make the continually changing settings hard to deal with. In such a situation you may expect him to automatically explain why he has problems but it could be he's not that comfortable having to explain his issues all the time. Nil Einne (talk) 02:34, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Noise of LCD screen when scrolling mouse

How come when I scroll my mouse a small 'buzzing'/'humming' noise is heard from my monitor? It doesn't appear to be volume-specific (i.e. if my volume is up louder it isn't louder) but presumably comes from the speakers. I can't figure out what sort of interference it would be - it seems to be dependent on the window being scrolled within a web-browser mostly (and more so on content-heavy sites). 194.221.133.226 (talk) 16:27, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

I also have a faint recollection of having observed the very same phenomenon. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 16:48, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Are your speakers hooked up with standard analog cables or via digital audio cables? And is the monitor connected with VGA or DVI cables? If you're using either DVI cables or digital audio cables, then the problem isn't caused by interference between them (to be honest, I'm not sure if VGA creates more EM noise during screen changes, so this might be totally wrong). That leaves a problem on the monitor side or the computer side. On the monitor side, there is little you can do aside from replacing it; I'd suggest testing with a different monitor to see if the problem goes away. On the computer side, you might have some EM crosstalk between your graphics card and the motherboard/soundcard/audio out port. If you've got multiple PCI-Express slots, you might try moving the graphics card to see if it fixes the problem.

All that said, I'm mostly guessing here. I've had similar issues (not dependent on the mouse, just crosstalk between multiple analog audio cables causing hiss on some lines), and the number of sources of EM interference are beyond counting. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 16:56, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

It is very doubtful that the noise is coming from your monitor signaling itself; it is likely a red herring for noise generated by the motherboard. The simple reason is that monitors don't use activity based signaling, so the signal is still there, in a near identical form, whether the mouse is moving or not. I have observed activity based noise generation on a number of computers with poorly shielded internal sound cards. I have a PC at home that inducts noise through the PC speaker so activity literally causes faint beeps, boops, whistles, and clicks as if I were using some sort of steam powered computer. Anyhow, you have a few options. First, try using a mixer tool to mute any unused audio sources like line-in, mic, or cdrom. You can then try to outpace the SNR by tweaking the output volume up or down and adjusting the speakers accordingly, this will have varying degrees of success depending on where in the audio system the noise is being introduced. Aside from that, if your sound card supports digital output get a set of SPDIF capable speakers, or simply get an offboard sound card such as an external USB sound device. --144.191.148.3 (talk) 19:39, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

I seem to recall having a similar problem with my headphones that was fixed by plugging them in to a different jack (the computer had two headphone jacks; one in the front and one in the back). Paul Stansifer 21:24, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

How to interrogate a website?

I would like to daily and automatically do the same search on this website http://www.rightmove.co.uk/ and then, within the results of my search, look for words like "garage" for example in the text. If "garage" is found, then my computer tells me, otherwise the program/script/whatever just silently closes down until the next day. What would be the easiest no-cost way of doing this please? Thanks 89.243.151.96 (talk) 16:33, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

You would typically web scrape the site and then search the retrieved pages, often with a program written in a language like Perl or Python. But notice section 3.3 of their terms of use and the corresponding robots.txt file. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 16:42, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

I would go to the Start → Control Panel → Scheduled Tasks → Add a scheduled task → Next → Browse and select the script you wish to run. I would then examine that script I e-mailed you for clues on how to create one. Lines like this should get you started:

var ie = new ActiveXObject("InternetExplorer.Application");
ie.Application.Visible = true;
ie.Navigate("http://www.rightmove.co.uk/");
WScript.Sleep(2000);
var html = ie.Document.getElementsByTagName("html")[0].innerHTML;

Then, search for the term using indexOf. If you wanted to look for the word test, you would type this:

if (html.indexOf("test") != -1)
{
    WScript.Echo("Match found.");
}

--Drknkn (talk) 17:32, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Customize autoconf script options in apt-get

In Ubuntu, can I set apt-get to always build a particular package from source, with specific arguments added to or removed from the ./configure invocation, and still have updates and dependencies handled automatically (unlike when I download a source package and manually run the configure and make scripts)? The only example I can name right now is --enable-nonfree for ffmpeg, but I know I've faced the dilemma before. NeonMerlin 18:33, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

• Build the software from source and then use checkinstall to create a .deb that you can install using dpkg. --Alterego (talk) 06:17, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

ITunes and External Hard drive

Forgive my simple question, but I want to be extremely cautious that I in no way jeopardize my 8,000 song Itunes library in any way. I currently have an old Compaq computer from around 2003 and the 60G memory is basically full due in most part to my music library. My simple question is this: Is it possible for me to transfer the entire Itunes program and music library to my external 125G hard drive and run it from that? This would include updating and syncing my Ipod as well as playing the music through my computer sound system. Is this possible and if so, what are any concerns? I really do not want to lose all or part of my library as it has taken countless hours to rip my huge compact disc collection. Thanks! 10draftsdeep (talk) 18:49, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

I think this link on the Apple website will help as it gives a step by step guide to moving your files. From what you've said though it sounds like you only have the single copy of your music and I'd really recommend you take at least another copy somehow (burn over multiple DVD - 60Gb = 7 dual-layer DVDs). It's not a matter of IF a hard drive will fail, but rather WHEN. :( ZX81 ^talk 19:12, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it's possible. This is exactly what I do, and I was delighted at the recovered hard disk space. You just need to always remember to have your external drive plugged in and turned on when you try to sync your iPod. Otherwise, the iPod will have no source data to sync. (Think exclamation points in little gray circles.) Also, the other drawback is that to play your music from your computer, you'll (obviously) need to connect the external drive. (Not sure if it's a laptop or desktop, and if portability is an issue.) ZX81 is absolutely right, though. I got burned by this process once and lost a 10,000 song library because both my iPod and my external drive crashed within a month of each other. Blank DVDs are so inexpensive now that there's really no excuse for not backing up. (I still have the crashed drive wrapped up and in my closet, trying to save up for the data recovery. Yikes.) Kingsfold (talk) 13:26, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

flatironbuildingnewyork

(Question moved to Humanities Desk) --LarryMac | Talk 20:36, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Ubuntu installer issue

I have a Ubuntu live cd and I have installed it successfully on 2 computers, yet it won't install on this one. When I get to the cd boot menu I have "try without installing", "install" etc. Clicking enter on any option causes the cd to whirr for a second and the harddrive to light up momentarily. Then...nothing. I can move up and down the menu again and enter still does nothing. I have puppy linux running on this (from a cd) fine. Any tips? 83.147.142.48 (talk) 21:57, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Can you verify that the system has successfully identified the installed hard disk? Boot into "try with installing" mode and run gparted, and make sure it reports the disk is present. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:52, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

The problem is that "try without installing" does nothing when I hit enter. Nor does any other other option. :/ 83.147.142.48 (talk) 23:07, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Does pressing alt + function keys take you anywhere? --194.197.235.240 (talk) 00:02, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Check your BIOS for SATA options. ¦ Reisio (talk) 10:10, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

OP here. Turns out the ISO failed to burn correctly. :p A second burn worked perfectly. 83.147.142.48 (talk) 18:48, 19 February 2010 (UTC)