Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2009 December 23

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December 23

Accessing another computer's DVD drive

I'm trying to free the Q drive on my Lenovo T400. For those who don't know, the Q drive is a recovery drive. Lenovo has made it so that you can burn the Q drive data onto CDs and DVDs and then delete it, freeing up more space. Unfortunately my laptop does not have a DVD burner and I'd rather not burn 12 CDs. Is there a way to connect it to my desktop (which has a DVD burner) and use that optical drive? --The Dark Side (talk) 02:18, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't know the specific limitations of the application you're using to burn your discs - is it proprietary Lenovo crap or are you using a third party app to simply dump the Q drive contents? If you're using a third party app, all you need to do is "Burn to ISO" which pretty much everyone supports and then copy that file (via USB or whatever) to another burn-capable PC and make your disc. If you're stuck with some assy proprietary Lenovo app, you may not have such a breathtakingly simple option as that, unfortunately. (sign me: guy who hates proprietary crApps) 218.25.32.210 (talk) 02:28, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Adding onto my original post - it is possible to use a optical drive over a LAN, but I've made an inordinate amount of coasters that way in the past. Burning "locally" always seems to be the best bet, at least on consumer-grade hardware. 218.25.32.210 (talk) 02:30, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes you can just share the q drive over the network but I second the above; I've never successfully burned a disk over LAN. Often it "seems" to work, and the finished disk might even have the correct directory structure, but the files are unreadable, every time I've tried at least. I'd go with the suggestion above, burn the whole disk to an ISO locally then copy it across to burn it to a disk on your pc. Vespine (talk) 23:32, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

reduction algorithm

moved to math desk...

Editing game on YouTube

i saw video on youtube where there was kinda like a editing game but it had zombies with crab heads and it was able to use a gun and you could be a person and you could have awsome weps and contraptions and make other people i just wondered what the games name was and how i could get it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sithmorack (talk • contribs) 05:10, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Well zombies with crab heads sounds a lot like the Half-Life series, so maybe it had something to do with that? --Mr.98 (talk) 15:44, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

is it Garry's Mod? 207.58.235.243 (talk) 17:32, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Broken wi´fi card?

I have an old centrino laptop and from one day to the next, the wireless stopped working. I tested it with two OS (Puppy and ubuntu). In both, the result was the same. The laptop is not longer able to find any wirelss net. Can it be that only wireless portion is broken, even if the rest is perfectly working?--Quest09 (talk) 13:57, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

It certainly could be, the WiFi part of the system has a bunch of components that are not used by any other part of the system - so if it failed, there might not be any other adverse consequences. But a lot of laptops have a switch that lets you turn off the WiFi (eg if you're on an airplane or something) - perhaps the switch got inadvertantly set to the OFF position? SteveBaker (talk) 18:15, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, my laptop doesn´t have any hardware switch to turn off the WiFi. However, I found that certain combination of tastes will turn the WiFi off. But would the WiFi still be off if you reboot the laptop with a new OS?--Quest09 (talk) 13:04, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

If you go into the system setup (normally one of the F buttons at the manufacturer screen), you should be able to choose if you want the Wi-Fi to start in either of the following positions: on, off, or (I believe it was) "adapt", where it selects the same state it was in when the computer shut down. So I'd make sure it's turned on there (in the on position) just to make sure.

Using briefcase

I use briefcase for backing up my files.Whenever i try to synchronize, a message comes after which it stops synchronization.It occurs whenever a database file starts synchronization.How can this problem be resolved? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 113.199.165.67 (talk) 14:12, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

What is the error message you receive? This will help in determining the problem. Thanks. JW..[ T..C ] 17:06, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

The error message is: "Briefcase can directly work with Access 2000 or Access 2002-2003 format databases.Use conversion feature in your application to convert the database to the proper format" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 116.90.224.116 (talk) 06:20, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Auto-hibernating when battery is low (Windows XP)

My computer (Windows XP)used to auto-hibernate when the battery was going down to 3%. For some reason it stopped... Now I changed the options in the power management. And suddenly it only goes on Stand-by (not hibernation) even though the option I chose clearly says "Action: Hibernate" (as oppposed to "Action: Stand by," which I have *not* chosen). Almost equally annoying, I messed with "scale" for the power level ("Activate critical battery alarm when power level reaches: ..."). It used to be on 3%, and out of curiosity (#$^&*=#*& on me!) I switched to 6%. Now I can't switch it back: You can drag the switch below 6 or above 10% while keeping the mouse button pressed, but as soon as you release your mouse button, the switch won't stay but go to 6 (or 10, resp.)! Which means that I have 3% less of battery time available, which I find extremely annoying.

Please, anyone any ideas? Thanks a lot, Thanks for answering (talk) 14:43, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't know why the slider isn't working, but one reason for a computer refusing to hibernate is lack of hard drive space. You need enough free space on your hard drive to contain everything in the memory. Check your hard drive free space - if it is less than the amount of RAM you have, then that is probably your problem. Free up some hard drive space and it should start hibernating again. --Tango (talk) 15:54, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

So far as I know, when hiberation is enabled in XP, a fixed size file (\hiberfil.sys) is created. Thus disk space should be pre-allocated, and running low on space should not cause hibernation to fail. Mitch Ames (talk) 00:45, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

The OP mentioned changing the power options - perhaps hibernation was disabled, the space filled by something, and then it was re-enabled and now doesn't have the space to work. Or perhaps it is something else entirely! --Tango (talk) 14:15, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Ghost banning

Does wikipedia have an article on the concept of a site banning a user while allowing them to maintain the illusion that they are not banned, allegedly used by StumbleUpon and Reddit and certain blogs? Felis cheshiri (talk) 15:14, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, I don't know. We barely have a mentioning of computer banning at all, much less a discussion of different types. Something Awful uses/used this, though. It was called "hell banning"—you could post and think you were participating, but nobody would ever reply, because they couldn't actually see you.--Mr.98 (talk) 15:43, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

I hadn't heard the term before - and a google search turns up at least three or four variations in meaning. That makes the term a neologism - and an insignificant one at that...so probably no article should be written about it until the meaning settles down and becomes more mainstream. FWIW, there seems to be several variations - all using the same terminology:

1. They simply cut you off from the site - but without telling you. You thing the site no longer exists or has gone down or something because all you get is a 404.
2. They let you make posts and such - but they never show up on the site - or, perhaps, are long delayed.
3. They let you make posts and reply to message - but only you ever see them. So you THINK you're still using the site perfectly - but nobody seems to ever respond to you (which is because they aren't seeing you!)

The last one is pretty evil - they are getting your page hits - and you're being advertised at - so they're still making money from you being there - but all of your efforts at typing messages are just wasted. Nasty! The second version is also pretty nasty - but one site uses it because (they claim) you are on probation and they are monitoring what you post to see if you're going to continue to misbehave. SteveBaker (talk) 19:26, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

I can confirm the first one exists, f1y.net does that as part of their auto ban system, which occurs if you fail login more than 3 times. Extremely annoying, and I would never recommend it with how much trouble it causes.

It's similar to the idea of a Honeypot (computing) in the sense that you are allowed to log in and (perhaps) do stuff, but no real effect occurs. If that helps at all. APL (talk) 01:22, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Web services --> legacy code

We are starting to develop our first web services using .NET on MS Windows to develop the external-facing interface but would like to use our existing legacy code (written in PowerBuilder, which can't act as a web service until we do a major conversion in a few years) to hold the business logic needed to service the request. Our .NET developers tell me that it’s hard to “break out” of the web services environment to talk to traditional code and we were wondering what solutions others might be willing to share. We considered talking through the database, but that is more asynchronous than we’d like. Any suggestions for fast, reliable appraches, particularly that don't require expenditures of money? It would be adequate if the .NET code could trigger a message on a window. Sox1918 (talk) 20:22, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

You mostly can't. I think there is an ActiveX object which essentially runs your windows app in a box in the browser (either as a remote desktop, or the actual windows program, but it would need remote access to the database, and that's a security nightmare). That is a bad way to do it, but might work for you. This was commonly done about 10 years ago, when the web was new(ish). I don't think any of the methods worked well. Ariel. (talk) 08:49, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

That sounds like you're answering a different question, if we wanted to run something on a browser. We don't. This is for a web service running on the back end. Sox1918 (talk) 16:09, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

html

is there either a website that you can show me or a Wikipedia article that you can show me that will tell me how to host HTML? I tried WWW.pastehtml.com, but i want one where i can sign in. If you could at least point me to WWW.pastehtml.com's Wikipedia site, that would be great. Basically, i am asking for a website that i can host HTML code for free. Any answers would be helpful!:) Thanks,

MAS100 (talk) 20:40, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Googling "free html hosting" turns up many results. On the first page was http://www.freehtmlhosting.com/. I hope this helps. JW..[ T..C ] 22:30, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Additionally, nearly any free web hosting would work in your case. Google some of those keywords as well if you want a more permanent residence for your HTML documents. --EpicCyndaquil (talk) 20:46, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

WGET question

I am having some trouble with wget and Googling for examples and the man pages does not seem to clarify much. Perhaps someone can help.

I am trying to make a full download of a given domain -- say, http://mydomain.com. I get get all of the mydomain.com files quite easily using, e.g., wget -r -l 5 http://mydomain.com/.

The problem is, some of the pages on mydomain.com contain links to files on other domains, e.g. http://anotherdomain.com/afileiwant.pdf.

What I need to do is grab all of those other files as well. The recursive link specification that I put up above will not get them. What am I doing wrong? --Mr.98 (talk) 21:59, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Ah, nevermind, I finally found it. What I want is the "All hosts" designation, I believe -- -H. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:03, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, -H (span domains). You might also be interested in -nd to stop the massive directory trees it'll create, and also -k to convert links to relative local files, in the event you're wgetting for offline access. Shadowjams (talk) 01:49, 24 December 2009 (UTC)