HyperHacker

Got a couple more things I'd like to tweak, as long as I'm here. 1) Those shortcuts at the side of Open and Save dialogs, like Recent Documents and so on. I want to point them to locations I actually use. 2) Pre-programmed hotkeys. If I press one of the multimedia keys on my keyboard, it opens Calculator, another opens Notepad, etc... I want to disable that so I can write my own hotkey program. 3) If possible, treat shortcuts as directories rather than files. If I want to save something, by default it usually starts on the desktop. I have shortcuts to various places there but if I click them, it doesn't let me save in the directory they point to; instead it asks if I want to overwrite the shortcut file.

Uh... I bet the first one disables the FPU and has the CPU do math instead. (This was needed for some crappy Intel FPUs IIRC.)

That's with 512-byte sectors, though. If you used 1K sectors, you could have 4TB. Of course bigger sectors means more wasted space (no file can physically occupy less than one sector; try saving a one-byte file on a disk with 512-byte sectors, you'll see that Size On Disk is 512 bytes), but also faster access time.

Then it will install SP2 like it or not.

Neat. But you use a Quote tag which wrecks the line spacing and thus ruins the code.

Yes, and what really gets me is how ads keep getting worse and worse. Staples and Frank's Red Hot Sauce are two examples of things that simply should not be allowed on television. And yet they censor boobs and swears (even blur their mouth, wtf), big hairy deal. Kinda funny to see ads for other cable companies though.

I've heard you can buy keyboards with Tux in place of the Windows logo. But really, it's pretty easy to just put a sticker on it, sand it off, remove it entirely or *gasp* ignore it. Also, Win+R and Win+M are the 2 most useful shortcut keys in Windows EVER. (Also, tip for those without Windows keys: Ctrl+Esc. :-)) *drool* *shorts out keyboard* I have DREAMED of a keyboard like that first one. The only difference is it would be one big touch screen so the shape and size of buttons could be altered as well like on that second one (also awesome). Problem being touch screen keyboards/remotes/etc suck because they don't have tactile feedback; you can't feel the key being pressed, you're just poking at a flat surface. I can think of a possible solution but I don't think the technology exists yet. As far as keyboards I'll ever be able to afford, though, I have a Compaq which is quite nice. Good shape and colour, several useful multimedia keys, Sleep key placed VERY far from the Escape key, up in the top right where it can't be accidentally pressed (on my old board it was right above Escape, so I always accidentally pressed it ), works well. Though I did have to hack coloured LEDs in place of the boring green ones, because it's more fun that way. :-p Also unlike some crappy keyboards the ink doesn't wear off right away. I got it used and have used the hell out of it and it's still totally readable. The only part I don't like is that Windows recognizes some of the multimedia keys wrong, mostly not at all, so I can't assign them to custom stuff unless I make my own driver. :-( Also, emoticon limits blow. The lower the limit the more it blows. This board's reminds me of Katrina.

Yes, but if you set the partitions up every time you reinstall you're going to wipe out the one with all your files on it too.

Agreed. Radio is free because it's paid for by advertising. Same with TV over the air. Why do I still have a constant, annoying barrage of ads in the cable TV I pay 50 bucks a month for?

Yeah, I'd be a little uncomfortable if I went to a pool and all the lifeguards were just sitting there using computers. It's neat, but it'd be better if they had some kinda robot to pull people out. And of course you have to convince people to swim around in skimpy bathing suits with a bunch of cameras under the surface watching them.

I suppose you could automate partitioning, but that means wiping your entire HD every time you reinstall. Kinda beats the point of partitions. And what if you want to install it on a different computer? Maybe it has a different-sized HD or the owner just plain doesn't want your partition layout. That is unless you can make it prompt to create them or not. Kinda kills the 'unattended' idea but one little 'Create partition table, y/n' prompt when you start the installation isn't that horrible. (Though you'd want a 'This will wipe out everything' warning.)

Just because each Gmail account can have up to 2GB doesn't mean they have 2GB reserved on their server for every account made, that'd just be ridiculous. If you only use 10MB then you're only taking up 10MB of their disk space. Nobody actually uses 2GB. And I'll tell you where their money comes from - ADVERTISING. Google is one of the biggest ad companies and most of their products are adware. The thing is they know how to advertise. Simple, plain text ads with links, that blend into the web page, that people don't mind seeing. No flashy obnoxious banners, no 4MB flash movies with sound that follow your mouse around the screen, no viruses that worm their way into your HD, spawn craploads of ads and spyware and make your system unusable. Most ad-blockers don't even block Google ads because unlike most types of ads, people don't mind them. Google does things right and I would love to see them try their hand at an OS. Now I'm not saying Google is perfect and I wouldn't be surprised to find out they're spying on us like hell. But you must admit they're simply superior to at least 99% of their competition. Also: Hotmail is the worst email service ever. Period.

I'll admit I've pirated a decent amount of music (though most of my collection is public domain ), and a bit of software. Always for one of the following reasons: -I can't buy it. Nobody local sells it, I have no way to reach or even find someone that does it, and I don't have a credit card to buy it online (and most sites don't even have it... I listen to some very obscure music ) -I bought it, and it got stolen. -To try it out because the demo version demonstrated nothing more than their fancy 'buy the program' message boxes. -In a few cases, because I simply couldn't afford it and absolutely needed it. Of course I buy a legit copy once I can. -The author simply isn't selling it anymore. What am I supposed to do if they won't let me pay? (Somewhat rare, but it does happen.) And I bet there's a few in there that I think are PD but aren't. Heh. As for people who just pirate everything, I bet it's because they don't want to spend 20 bucks on a 1/3-full CD with only one good song on it, with some crappy copy protection that won't let them play it on their computer/high-tech stereo or copy it to their MP3 player. Or in the case of software, because the price is simply ridiculous ($5000 Gameboy emulator, anyone?) or because they need it for school or some such.

Hm, it worked rather well for me. I put in Earth and Water and it came up with things like Fire, Wind, Wood, etc... Then I tried MP3, WAV, MID, SPC and NSF and it spat out a buttload of file extensions, though few were audio-related, like JPG, BAK and MDB. It does Pokémon very well.

Waitwaitwait... These things showed up much less than 200,000 years ago, and the first article says that people who have damage to them (or, I assume, don't have them at all) end up with brains more like a chimp... so what were people like before that? Still chimps, I would think.

Ah, yes, I remember now. The undocumented switch is /s, for changing the service tag. But it only works if there isn't one already.

I just wanna add 2 things to this: 1) I had the same problem and there was simply NO WAY to get it to connect. I ended up re-installing anyway though. 2) What shell is that? It looks awesome! (Don't tell me that's Explorer with the big icons, file sizes, and command prompt on the desktop? o_O If so, how do I do that and what skin is it?)

I know this topic is a bit old, but I feel the need to mention 3 interesting pieces of technology: 1) Rollable screens. A full-colour LCD screen that can be rolled up. 2) Fold-up keyboards. A full, thin keyboard that folds up into about 1/3 its size. 3) Micro-drives. Same as an ordinary HD but about 1/10 the size. All of these do exist (but I think #1 is still pretty new and not very good yet). Imagine a laptop utilizing all of these... it could easily be about the size of an ordinary hard disk if it had a custom CPU and memory, possibly even without, especially if the power supply's transformer were external. Add a few buttons on the outside, possibly a small second screen, and you got one **** small laptop! Of course, something this small probably wouldn't have speakers (maybe one small flat one like the two on a Nintendo DS), but a headphone port would do just fine in their place.

I imagine it runs a lot slower in the emulator than it would in reality. The screen may display for a few minutes there, but maybe only a few seconds when really installing. But then again, given that it's an x86-on-x86 emulator it may be faster than I think.

Definitely. Just DON'T install it directly onto your existing installation; it'll cause nothing but problems. Slipstream it into an install CD (nLite can do this automatically), delete the old install (best format the partition, if you're like me and keep your OS and your files separate), and install from scratch. My old computer (which did have some weird CPU/motherboard defect which screwed up certain programs, mind you) wouldn't even boot when I installed it into an existing installation, but it worked fine (as well as it ever did anyway) slipstreamed. Though you will want to disable some of the added services, particularly the Security Center. It keeps popping up these messages saying things like your firewall is off and your AV definitions are out of date, because it's too dumb to know if you're using a 3rd-party firewall/AV that doesn't suck.

It wouldn't wipe it but a few system files could get corrupted so that the OS won't boot up. You don't have to format it to reinstall.

Dell has a utility for this. I forget exactly what all the tags are, but it has an undocmented function to set the one you're not supposed to be able to change as well.

Thanks! Didn't know Microsoft posted regtweaks...

If it uses less resources and won't cause a lot of problems/make things not work anymore, then sure. I've found a lot of tweaks meant to save resources also cause a lot of problems, like things won't install or run because they depend on some service or whatnot.

A hard shutdown can damage Windows (any OS really), if it were writing when it got shut off. Do you see anything on-screen before Windows starts? If not you probably have a hardware problem or corrupted BIOS. (Or you turned the brightness down too far.) Otherwise try going into the recovery console (boot from your Windows CD) and doing chkdisk and chkntfs. If you don't see anything, even before Windows starts, but everything else seems normal (speaker beeps, keyboard lights do whatever they usually do, drives spin up as the BIOS looks for boot records, and startup sounds play) then you probably just messed up your video card somehow.