Computing desk
< November 16	<< Oct \| November \| Dec >>	November 18 >

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.

November 17

Autorun problem in Windows 7

The following is saved under autorun.inf in my flash drive's root directory. It successfully changes the flash drive's name, but the READ ME option doesn't show up on the autorun menu when I insert the flash drive. What's the problem?

[autorun]

Open=READ ME.bat

Action=READ ME

Label=[my name]

--75.33.217.61 (talk) 02:38, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not entirely sure that this will fix the problem, but you could try enclosing the values in quotation marks, like this

[autorun]
Open="READ ME.bat"
Action="READ ME"
Label=[my name]

Rocketshiporion ♫ 02:45, 21 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think the problem is that Microsoft disabled autorun for USB drives and other re-writeable media as it was often used to spread viruses. See this: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/connect/usb/usbfaq.mspx

Wireless network for a Verizon phone

A friend of mine asked me:

I have a Verizon Wireless Aircard, I have a wireless printer but apparently it does not connect to aircards... I have read about something called a Cradlepoint that you plug the aircard into and it creates a wireless network that I could connect my computer, printer and Wii to... Know anything about it.

What we mainly are interested in is the best way to create a wireless network by buying hardware and not paying a monthly fee. What's the best way? Thanks --Wonderley (talk) 02:52, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, bizarre. I see my friend posted something here. I did a search on several keywords before adding this post with no hits. Feel free to answer either of us. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wonderley (talk • contribs) 03:03, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You've got two different kinds of wireless going on here. The Verizon Wireless aircard is providing access to their EV-DO mobile broadband over cellular networks. The rest of the wireless technology you described is for local networking - a wireless LAN, or "Wi-Fi". This will network your devices, but you will still need a source of Internet access provided by either a regular DSL or cable modem, or via cellular networks like the Aircard you already have. If you want to continue using the Aircard to provide Internet access to all of your devices, then you need a cellular router. A modular cellular router will take the Aircard and create a new, local wireless network that your other devices (such as your wireless printer and your Wii) will be able to connect to.

Personally, I'd recommend getting a dedicated connection via DSL or cable - speed and reliability will be greatly improved. They're not dependent on cellular coverage. coreycubed / talk 19:06, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How do I restore all extensions and tabs on my Google Chrome?

After restarting from my computer freezing up, all my Chrome extensions and tabs were gone. The bookmarks were there, but the History was erased as well, so I can't reload the 38 tabs manually either.

My SessionBuddy has a saved session of all my tabs, but first I need to figure out how to put SessionBuddy back on there. (I downloaded it, so the folder is someplace.) Then I'd also appreciate putting back all the other extensions I've had. Please help me get them all back. Thanks. --Let Us Update Wikipedia: Dusty Articles 08:42, 14 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What disk formats can PS3 mount through USB port?

I know FAT32 works with everything. But FAT32's 2GB file size restricts the PS3 as a non-networked media playback device. Are there any other disk formats that the PS3 will recognize through the USB port? --70.167.58.6 (talk) 13:33, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

From the PS3 manual: "Note however that the disk must be formatted in the FAT32 file system to be recognized by the PS3™ system." -- kainaw ™ 14:18, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

FAT32 doesn't have a 2GiB file size limit. As our article mentions, the limit is 4GiB-1B Nil Einne (talk) 15:56, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How old is that manual? Does it cover the latest 3.50 update? --70.167.58.6 (talk) 16:42, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. For a question about using PS3, I would go directly to the manual. -- kainaw ™ 17:15, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Clock in RISC OS 3.7

I found this screenshot of the clock in RISC OS 3.7. What happens if you scroll down? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 15:06, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Below the clock, it also shows the time as numbers, ie: 11:25:32. That is being cut off by the window, which is why there is a scrollbar. -- kainaw ™ 19:41, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

High capacity text editor?

I routinely need to hand edit some large (500MB) Maya ASCII files. Are there any text editors that are still nimble with such a heavy load? Ideally, I'd like a Mac OS X editor, but I can run Windows 7 in boot camp. --70.167.58.6 (talk) 16:40, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Here and here are pretty good discussion of this for primarily Windows programs. Basically the consensus seems to be that the "best" way for editing such files is to use something like vim (gVim) or emacs, neither of which are very user friendly (which is code for me saying "they require you to do a lot of work to learn how to use them, like many Unix-y programs"), but can handle arbitrarily large files without a real performance hit. Standard "notepad replacement" programs like Notepad++ and TextWrangler or BBEdit either have real difficulties with files that size or simply cannot handle them because of RAM buffer limitations. VEDIT gets high marks from one poster. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:06, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

emacs should do it. Note that if you just need to search and examine a very large file, less is brilliant, and if you need to make some routing change (like search-and-replace some text to another) then sed can allow you to automate a lot of such tasks. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 17:09, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I use EditPadPro [1] for a variety of text editing applications and am very happy with the facilities it provides. It's not free, but does some good stuff. I've just created a 1.4 Gig text file using it, and it takes a while to open and save it, but otherwise seems to handle it pretty well (with the odd out-of-memory error while doing all the copy-paste to get a file of that size). --Phil Holmes (talk) 18:14, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There's a stackoverflow question on this. Topgun, written in MASM should be able to handle large files...I've tested it on 2gb file in Win7. Just be aware that for most editors, topgun included, you'll need have enough free ram to open the file(the file is loaded into ram).Smallman12q (talk) 15:15, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sorting by date modified

Working on an iMac G5, OSX, version 10.5.8. I have a ton of Word documents in various files. When I open a file directly in a window, the documents can be listed by the fields: "Name", Date Modified", "Size" and "Kind". However, when I perform a search, the list of Word documents that match the search entry only have the fields: "Name", "Kind and "Last Opened". I want to be able to see and sort by Date Modified here too, which is much more useful to me than is "last opened". Can anyone explain to me, step-by-step, how I would add this function? Thanks.--108.27.105.73 (talk) 18:53, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Step-by-step:

1. Search for the files (in Spotlight > Show All, or just in the Finder window).

2. While the "Searching 'This Mac'" window is highlighted, go to View > Show View Options (Apple+J).

3. Select "Date Modified".

Should do it? Works on mine, though I'm using 10.6. It seems to make any columns added that way permanent features to Spotlight searches.--Mr.98 (talk) 19:14, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks much for the explanation! I was able to follow perfectly. However, when I go to show view option, the menu that appears says "There are no view options for the "searching "this Mac"" window." Any ideas?--108.27.105.73 (talk) 19:32, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A further update. There are multiple macs in the office. I just tried your instructions with a different mac and it worked beautifully. Still stuck on mine though.--108.27.105.73 (talk) 19:37, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You might look at the version (Apple > About This Mac) on the one it works with. It might be a 10.6 (Snow Leopard) only addition and not present in 10.5 (Leopard). --Mr.98 (talk)

I Am Still SoapFiend

Okay, so, I am still SoapFiend, but some &^%$#@# genius decide to hack into my ^%$#@!@! user account on this website and I can't even read the *&^%$## watchlist like I always do because of the motherz*&^^%$% "session hijacking" bull*&^%. --64.123.104.83 (talk) 20:58, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

All I want to do is to check into my user page and look at my watchlist and see if there are some changes in my articles related to television and television actors and actresses. How do I get my user account back in order for me to do that again? --64.123.104.83 (talk) 20:58, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You need to be more clear. Are you complaining that you forgot your password, or are you complaining that your account was blocked? Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:42, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think he means that he wants to trick an administrator into naively removing SoapFiend's indef-block. APL (talk) 03:52, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"How to get your user account back" is pretty well explained here. Arakunem^Talk 15:22, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You don't need to be unblocked to look at your watchlist AFAIK. You do need to know the password, without a committed identity, unless you are able to reset your password (in which case you don't need to ask anyone) you're SOL AFAIK if you don't. Nil Einne (talk) 21:24, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Coding help

Hi there. The following is a dreadful piece of code, but it works:

void SplitNumber(double dValue, double* dMantissa, double* dExponent)
{
    char szValue[32];
    char* pTemp;

    sprintf(szValue, "%e", dValue);
    pTemp = strchr(szValue, 'e');
    *pTemp = '\0';
    pTemp++;
    *dMantissa = atof(szValue);
    *dExponent = atof(pTemp);
}

Does anyone have any suggestions for a less-dreadful piece of code that still works? 80.254.147.84 (talk) 21:51, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We need to ask - how portable do you want this code to be? The C language does not specify what format a float or double should take; but if we can assume you're running on a "normal" computer that supports Single precision floating-point format and double precision floating-point format according to IEEE 754, then we can use a bit of bit-masking. Do you need help writing code to apply a bitmask for the exponent and mantissa as illustrated in our articles? Be sure to take note of the special-cases of exponents. Nimur (talk) 22:27, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Check out frexp(). It's standard. Example usage (in C++, but it's the same)..--Sean 22:34, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(That's much easier than my system!) But note that frexp() returns results in power-of-two - whereas the original code returned results as power-of-ten - so a bit of intermediate conversion will be required. Nimur (talk) 22:56, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How about:

void SplitNumber(double Value, double* Mantissa, double* Exponent)
{
    if (Value == 0) {
      *Exponent = 0;
      *Mantissa = 0;
    } else {
      *Exponent = floor(log10(fabs(Value)));
      *Mantissa = Value / exp10(*Exponent);
    }
}

(I have removed the "d" prefixes, which in a modern system accomplish nothing except to make the code less readable.) Looie496 (talk) 00:03, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your help. If Nimur's intermediate conversion will need logs anyway, Looie496's solution looks good. One more question - is it OK just to check if dValue equals zero, or should I check that fabs(dValue) is greater than some critical figure? It won't be much less than about 1E-12 in reality, but it's quite likely to be zero. For portability, it just needs to run on Windows 2K and XP - not Vista or anything newer, or W98 or anything older. 80.254.147.84 (talk) 20:29, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In this case checking against 0 is all you need. All other (finite) values have representable logarithms. --Tardis (talk) 22:01, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Note that using Looie's function with an input of 99.99999999999998 will probably yield an exponent of two and a mantissa that's less than 1, while the original function will probably (correctly) yield an exponent of 1. This happens because the result of log10 (which is very slightly less than 2) is rounded to the nearest double (which is 2) before being passed to floor (which returns 2, since its argument is exactly 2). Unless you need speed at the expense of accuracy, I would actually suggest using the original function, except replacing "%e" with "%.18e" or something of that sort so that all input precision is preserved. Solving this problem correctly for all inputs is surprisingly difficult, and using the C library's implementation may be your best bet. (Unfortunately, I think that my suggested solution with "%.18e" will sometimes yield an improperly rounded value for the mantissa, and I see no easy way to fix that. For nonzero input it should never yield a mantissa outside the range [1,10], but it may yield a mantissa exactly equal to 10.) -- BenRG (talk) 01:00, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks again. Speed isn't important and for what I want six digits of precision will be more than enough, but I can add a precision parameter to make the routine more general. (That makes it

    sprintf(szValue, "%.*e", iPrecision, dValue);

doesn't it?) 80.254.147.84 (talk) 20:17, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Why lose any precision? Rounding is for output, never for processing. --Tardis (talk) 23:17, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We can fix that by just testing: if(*Mantissa<1) {*Mantissa*=10; --*Exponent;} else if(*Mantissa>=10) {*Mantissa/=10; ++*Exponent;}. --Tardis (talk) 16:24, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Downloading Silverlight Video?

What's a good way to download embedded silverlight video (preferably free of crappy adware-laden software packages)

Thanks in advance,

PerfectProposal 23:01, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You will have to make sure the video is DRM free, otherwise you will not be able to play it. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 05:42, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]