Archive for August, 2006
Easy Fixes
In a previous rant I posted about a chronic freezing and crashing problem with my computer. I had long suspected that this was a heat issue, and that for some reason my computer couldn’t handle running around 50 degrees Centigrade, and that the only real solution would be to invest in a new, loud, potentially not-that-effective fan.
I wanted to put this off as long as possible, of course. But the issue of turning on my computer and having to hard reboot it just a couple hours later didn’t work for me, nor did it work for my buddy list and index of e-mail messages, both of which suffered from the OS suddenly crashing while they were being accessed. But first, just in case, I decided to try a somewhat less intensive solution–say, updating the BIOS for my motherboard.
Well, that was a few days ago, and I’m pleased to report that since then, I haven’t had a single sudden freeze. Either my fortune has coincidentally turned on a dime, the BIOS update did its job and solved my issue, or the new CPU driver I installed held the secret to success. In any event, I’m not questioning it, but will be pleased that I’ll be able to get my homework done without fearing for my sleep should I forget to save every 30 seconds.
Other technological issues continue to evade solution, however; I sent an e-mail to the company that made my GPS device about the fact that the device, well, doesn’t work, and after about a week and a half there’s been no response. I’ll have to look into other means of contacting them.
And I thought I had a serious partisan around here after looking at the poll results, but a check of the site logs reveals that there haven’t been nearly enough votes to account for that kind of lead. So I’ll have to look into that, too.
Uh, and by the way, school starts in less than a week. I’m kind of behind.
Cleaning House
Recently I’ve come across a few lists from people listing the software that they find essential to their lives. While I could probably put together a list of the go-to programs I use on a routine basis, my experience trying to free a bit of disk space on my computer has prompted me to take a slightly different course.
In the course of migrating from computer to computer, hard drive to hard drive semi-regularly over the past few years, I’ve found it most important to ensure the longetivity of my data. The result, of course, is a lot of waste: leftover program files, Windows installations, duplicated documents, and the like all gather up. Ultimately, so long as there is no way to ensure that I will not lose anything of my creation, I am unwilling to delete things.
I’ve also been trying to keep track of a budding collection of digital pictures. Yet, again, I can never seem to keep things in the same place, and with my tendency to copy new pictures whereever I can fit them, sorting them later, and then not knowing whether the pictures were ever copied in the first place, a number of copies have built up on my various hard drives.
Enter Duplicate File Finder. A quick adjustment of default search filters and it’s off, and less than an hour later I have a list of a bunch of copies of files I don’t need. What’s left is to check off the files I don’t want kept. DFF, as it happens, lists smaller files first, so the running tally of space you’re freeing up grows exponentially as you progress. (I don’t think that was intentional, but still.)
Unfortunately, DFF isn’t a perfect solution. The big snag I hit was that once you’ve selected all the files you want to delete, there’s actually no way to just delete those files–you have to move them to either the Recycle Bin or a folder of your choosing. As it so happened I didn’t have any drive with the ~20 gigs free that I needed (all stuff I was deleting, and there were about 10 more gigs of stuff I could have wiped) to move my files, so I just chose my biggest drive and deleted the first round of files before the drive could fill up. Problem solved.
There were some other issues I encountered, too, though. While it’s convenient to mark an entire folder as a duplicate, it would be truly incredible to be able to include subfolders in that–that alone probably would have saved me a fair bit of time. And I’m not sure that there’s any check to see if you’re mistakenly deleting all instances of a file–I probably would have felt a bit more confident had I known that, even if my copies were being left in different places, that at least one copy of each file was left somewhere. There are a number of things that could be changed to make DFF a more friendly, more effective application, but as it is it seems to get the job done.
Of course, the next step for me is probably to start duplicating files again–but hopefully in a controlled setting, in order to keep separate, automatically-synchronized backups on separate physical disk drives. (The magic of home networking will hopefully extend this to separate computers, as well.) It was nice to free up some needed space, though, and to identify some of the unnecessary and redundant backups I had lying around.
MSN Remote Record: for when you didn’t really care, anyway
Awhile ago I downloaded MSN Remote Record, a little utility that essentially promises you the ability to set up recordings on a Media Center PC via the Internet, even when you don’t have direct access to the computer (hence, “Remote Record”). Seems straightforward. I guess.
When I first installed it–or, tried to, anyway–I had some issues getting through the whole process. You need to authenticate yourself with your Passport/Live ID (whatever you want to call it) so that the system can contact your PC, but it seemed I was having issues completing the online setup: I would finish it, but my system would tell me I still had to complete setup, and the web setup was more than happy to forget about the first time it told me I was done.
Eventually, however, the rouge setup plan conceded defeat, and the Remote Record service finally decided it would try to work for me. The only real recurring issue was that, at times, I would start my computer and receive a message bubble (those bubbles need to die, by the way) that the service had stopped, and to click the bubble to restart the service. A bit puzzling, but okay.
Then a few days ago I notice not only is the service stopped, but I’m getting messages that my version is out of date, and I should upgrade. In case I didn’t get it the first time, I get one of those bubble that demands you click them to visit the site, and at least one dialog box that essentially says the same thing. I download the installer, but then forget about it.
Then comes today, and when I start my computer I’m reminded again that I need to download the update. Of course, in truth I just haven’t run the installer yet, but I notice the service still refuses to run. All the same, I’m bombarded with demands to update, and even trying to restart the service via the bubble (as it says should be done) fails. The only result is a reminder (or two) that I’m old school and need to get with the times, or else.
Hmm. Now, what exactly would happen if I were away from home, didn’t know Remote Record had suddenly refused to work, and had no capacity to perform Microsoft’s required update (which probably also installed any necessary security updates that I’ve yet to retrieve)? Would any shows I desperately needed to record (not that there’s much in today’s society) be lost forever? Best I can tell, they would. What use is a “life saving” service like this if it’s prone to suddenly quit on you, and when there’s nothing you can do to fix it?
There has been one instance of remote recording that I have been involved in, and it was fairly successful. Once, away from home, it was decided that no one in the family recorded a certain show that would be airing that night (don’t ask what it was, because honestly I don’t remember). Remote Record didn’t offer me the ability to delete a show I no longer needed stored, but another program did: Orb. It came with my router, and from what little I’ve actually used it (Cablevision has this thing against using their precious cable for anything that might be remotely considered a server, i.e. anything that needs any sort of upload capability, i.e. any game ever created, VOIP that isn’t Optimum Voice, and streaming media) it seems to be more fully featured than Remote Record.
Oh, and it won’t stop working at Microsoft’s say-so. So I guess next time I need to record something from afar, I’ll probably be using Orb to do it.
(Side note: in searching for a link to something WGA-related, I came across this message on Microsoft’s site:
This page requires Macromedia Flash Player 5 or greater to be viewed properly.
Click the button below to upgrade flash to the most current version.
Shame, I only have Adobe Flash Player 9.)
