A thread for boring computer questions.

I wish I remembered how all of the pieces fit together (the make file, etc.), but I never did it for a job, only for an audited course. Maybe they will have artisan coders (again?) one day who do everything from scratch. I am experimenting with the filters now on my own data instead of using the online interface. Thank you!

I got discouraged and distracted with other projects but went back to it yesterday and made good progress today. I have all the output in delimited format now that can be opened in Excel and transformed to comply with a metadata standard. Still have to figure out how to get rid of extraneous spaces and am sure that there is a more elegant way to do it with jq only instead of iterating over a file of ids but this works and I'm happy because I'm pretty sure I'll be able to meet my self-imposed deadline next Friday, which is already an extension, but my excuse is that I had to wait for the data before reminding the owner in order to seem affable.

I've had this problem since the '90s . . .

In Windows, when you click on an email address hyperlinked on a web page, Windows will launch Outlook or whatever else email client. How do I get Windows to take me to Gmail, instead, in this circumstance? Thanks, anyone.

If you go to default programs in the control panel, you can change the protocol "mailto" so that it doesn't open Outlook, but I couldn't get it to open Gmail. But NOT launching Outlook is a big improvement!

I think you have to install a new thingy to get it to like open a web browser and load Gmail. Let me investigate.

What's yr default browser? if it's Chrome, try this:

http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/set-gmail-as-browser-default-email-client-ht

wait that link works for all browsers so there try that!

worked! thanks, Stevie.

I generally browse on Chrome on my laptop (a Compaq Presario i've had since '09). It runs Windows Vista, and i'm getting a message that it won't be supported/install updates come April. Realistically, what do i need to do? I'd rather not spend $400 on a new machine if i don't have to, but if it's inevitable...

is the "it won't be supported" chrome or windows vista?

http://www.computerworld.com/article/3004014/web-browsers/google-cuts-off-chrome-updates-on-windows-xp-and-vista.html

upgrade operating system to windows 10? if possible (some hardware won't handle it)

my laptop, this one, is in the same boat, vista, 2009 vintage. but then i use linux...

firefox is snappier than it used to be

yeah i use Firefox sometimes but never really warmed up to it.

i'm guessing i can't get Windows 10 to run on a 7-year-old laptop, tho?

as long as you have 2GB RAM it should run I'd think

so, re the above, do i have to de-install Windows Vista? and buy Windows 10 in, like, a STORE?

see, i know NOTHING

(LIKE, how do i quickly find out how much ram i gots)

Start -> Right Click on Computer -> Properties. Windows 10 is free upgrade I believe

Only Windows 7 and later have the free-upgrade option. (there do seem to be a few workarounds for XP or Vista users who don't want to pay for Windows 10, google "upgrade windows vista to windows 10"), as well as finding someone with a legit copy of Windows 7 or 8 they're not using to do and intermediary upgrade before upgrading again to 10.

Windows 10 can run on most computers that can run Windows 7. Microsoft has a free utility for checking in you can run Windows 7 on your Vista PC.

Right-clicking on the desktop Computer icon and selecting Properties will show how much RAM you have and other basic info.

ok thx

i upgraded to windows 10 on my laptop about a month ago. everything worked fine, my old laptop felt quicker, i was quite happy with it. yesterday, it restarted after installing a new update. it took a while, with a few screens with one sentence messages that i couldn't skip and finally it started. but something's happened: it went back to what it was like a month ago. i still have windows 10 installed but when i launched chrome it launched the tabs that were open about a month ago, when i launch utorrent it doesn't show anything i've downloaded in the past month and only has the torrents from a month ago, my main desktop screen is the same as a month back, same background image and files and it looks like anything that's happened in the month since has disappeared. i had a cracked copy of office that didn't work after i installed windows 10, but now it does. i have absolutely no clue what the hell happened and it's impossible to google for help since all i can find are tutorials on how to go back to windows 7/8 if you're unhappy about windows 10.

so uh what the hell happened? any clue on sorting it out?

The only thing I can think of is that an old restore point was restored. It shouldn't just do that by itself though.

is there a way i can disable the "upgrade to windows 10" thing that wants to schedule an appointment for an upgrade?

Upgraded my laptop to Windows 10 last month but since then my wifi keeps disconnecting. Anyone else had this problem?

Similar thing definitely happened to the family PC. Windows 10 put itself on, seemed fine for a while, got much slower within a few months.

Yeah seems like that's what happened. I'm looking to restore to a previous point to see if it works. Thanks silverfish

i see at least 3 people at week who have upgraded to windows 10 and cannot stay connected to wifi. sometimes there's a driver update for the wireless adapter which tends to help.

I've tried Windows 10 on a couple of machines and there are no bloody drivers for anything so I just had to downgrade again. But it still bugs me to upgrade back again constantly. Grumble.

http://www.myce.com/news/how-to-uninstall-kb3035583-the-windows-10-downloader-for-windows-7-and-8-1-75681/

I've not once been hassled to update to Win10 on my 8.1 machine. I can only assume this is due to my strict rule of completely disabling auto updates and reminders when I get a new PC.

Can you use curl or python to retrieve emails?

from where/what?

retrieve body of email from email account (such as a mailman account) set up to receive the emails

there are imap and pop libraries for python if you can access the server like that.

offlineimap is an example. it's python2 only fwiw.

curl is for http requests which is not email (unless you are a sadomasochist and want to scrap gmail or whatever)

soooo what is the deal with power cords? i inherited an old desktop from work but it's just a tower (everything inside but HD) so i need a replacement cord. can i just get any old cheapo cord from amazon or does it have to align with the PSU/wattage? will it blow up? i can't even figure out what the PSU is but i'm pretty sure it's dell brand.

can i just get this? https://www.amazon.com/Power-Cable-Desktop-Computer-Warranty/dp/B004RIL2WQ

does work not have a spare power cord? if it's anything like here there's a rack of the things just lying there getting tangled up.

but, yes, tower pc cords are much of a muchness, they are all the same.

we have so many dozens and dozens extra lying around. your work might have spares! But yes, any old one will do; the only difference will be in the materials and the build quality.

thx i will ask at work !

Hello. I've had so many computer issues in the last year. I'm determined to try everything before shelling out on a new laptop.

It's a K53e Asus, not the newest machine but up until last year it ran pretty well. I moved house and shortly afterwards the HDD failed and it wouldn't boot up. I managed to transfer everything to a new SSD, expecting everything to be a lot better. There was no got the computer working again, but no noticeable difference in speed despite the better hard drive. In fact I noticed it operated a little slower.

Since then it's got worse and worse Memory/RAM was maxed out, as was CPU so I upgraded to 8GB RAM. Still just as slow. Still got noticeable audio dropouts when playing music and browsing through Google Chrome etc. Propellerhead Reason (a music package I use) was rendered basically useless and unable to handle much more than a couple of tracks before conking out. Memory is down, but CPU is still maxed simply using Chrome. Otherwise there are peaks that occur frequently but in no pattern.

I cleaned the fan (had to take the whole laptop to pieces cos the fan is located right inside the thing) last night, but no difference.

Thinking I'm gonna try reinstalling Windows once again. My only guess is that this is a virus and it's eating up my CPU.
If that doesn't work, I don't know what will. Any suggestions?

What cpu

as in what spec? I'm not technical enough to know. it's an i5 processor. https://www.asus.com/Notebooks/K53E/specifications/

What's using all the CPU? What does task manager say?

SVCHost and Google Chrome (when I boot it up)

you can try ProcessExplorer to figure out what is actually using all the CPU (SVCHost is basically just what is used to run windows services, a bunch of which are running that you probably don't need). I found what looks like a pretty good guide to tracking down what is causing SVCHost high CPU usage here: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-performance/abnormally-high-cpu-usage-from-svchostexe-solved/eb38d25d-6bb2-47cd-80f2-5389c62337be?auth=1

As for chrome, there is a chrome task manager (just hit shift + escape, when in Chrome) that should tell is actually using all the CPU. It could be just some random extension that you installed, which is slowing everything down.

thanks silverfish

Does restoring my hard drive from my Time Machine drive in Disk Utility work the same as doing it from Recovery Mode?

Or am I just making an unbootable clone of my Time Machine disc?

Been tearing my hair out with a computer problem. It's a long shot, but I've looked everywhere and I wonder if ILX can help?
Basically I reloaded Windows 7 a few weeks back and I can't install updates. Windows Defender just starts and hangs and takes forever. Same as Windows Update, just keeps going and never gets anywhere. If I try to manually install an update, guess what? Windows Update Standalone Installer just goes round and round and round.

It's driving me nuts. Any clues? I've looked everywhere but nothing I read seems straightforward or knowledgeable of this particular issue.

Not a regular poster here but I've seen something like this before - sometimes that issue can happen if your hard drive is over 700gb. If that is the case then try updating the 'Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver', reboot and see if the problem persists. Not a guaranteed fix but worth a punt.

also possibly worth clearing out the update cache and trying again?

http://ccm.net/faq/2471-how-to-purge-the-windows-update-cache

WmC from what I know of Disk Utility Restore, it just creates a duplicate of the source drive -- so yeah, I'd think you'd end up with an unbootable clone. Is there some reason you can't do it from Recovery Mode?