Jump to content

Idontwantspam

Member
  • Posts

    1,048
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Donations

    0.00 USD 
  • Country

    United States

About Idontwantspam

Contact Methods

  • Website URL
    http://

Recent Profile Visitors

2,959 profile views

Idontwantspam's Achievements

0

Reputation

  1. I've actually had a full experience with Windows 7's backup and restore feature, and really it's quite amazing I've got to say. I used the default backup settings to back up my lappy to an external 500 GB HDD. I had a 160 GB SATA drive inside the laptop, divided into two partitions. C: had windows, programs and user profiles; E: had all of my files essentially. Libraries were set up to correspond to folders on E:, so all of the data on that drive was in a library. The older versions feature of windows backup is super nifty. If you right-click on a file which has been backed up, you can see older versions of that file and restore the file to its previous versions if you want. This is great if a file gets corrupted or you make some change and save before you click undo. The number of previous versions retained varies depending on how big your hard drive and backup location are relative to eachother. For reference in terms of how long backing up took, it took overnight for it to do the full backup the first time, and the 160 GB drive wasn't even full. It took less time for subsequent backups, but still quite a while - everything gets compressed quite a bit, which I imagine slows things down. The full restore feature is what's totally awesome. Sadly, my internal HDD died (RIP), so I had to get a new one. The new one was a different manufacturer, different speed and different size - 320 GB. All I had to do was plug in the external drive, boot of the the Win 7 installation disk, and choose the restore option. It found the image backup easily, and asked me how long ago I wanted to restore it to. I restored it to the most recent version. When I booted up - again, a completely new hdd, never before touched - everything was back almost exactly as I had left it. It recreated both partitions, gave them the same drive letters as before, etc. The partitions were kept at the same size and put at the front of the disk, so there were about 160 GB of unused, unpartitoned space, but it was easy enough to expand the data partition to fill that using the disk manager (diskmgmt.msc). Libraries did get slightly confused after the restore, and I had to tell them again where all their components were, but that was all I had to do, and it was all working fine!
  2. Well, technically that's true, because it's a folder and there's already a "folder" in the taskbar (Windows Explorer), which would be used anyway to open said folder. I understand what you mean (a direct link to a folder), but technically it's behaving as expected. Whether or not that's good, is probably up to the beholder. But for the sake of consistency, it is at least expected behavior. Plus, you can pin certain folders to the jumplist for windows explorer, which I find quite useful. Agreed.
  3. This is correct. I know that the Intel graphics drivers for their integrated graphics chips do this. People at school are always going around flipping the screens upside down and the teachers can never seem to figure it out. I don't know if other graphics drivers do this or not though.
  4. While I think there's potential for them to gain some ground in the netbook market and possibly the old grannies market, there is absolutely no way a Google OS is going to get anywhere in the area where Windows dominates: the corporate world. It sounds like the Google OS will be moving users almost entirely toward web services. Many companies are hesitant to use externally handled services (like google apps) in the first place, and not very many are willing to even consider desktop linux. So, moving to an OS which is essentially a portal to the web isn't going to fly. Windows will be around for quite some time... I doubt Google's going to come up with any good alternative to AD, Exchange, Sharepoint, etc, that integrates so well.
  5. The question should not be "which is better", but "which do you need?". If you need a computer that you can take places, then get a laptop. If you need a computer that has raw power, but portability doesn't matter, get a desktop. Modern PC's, both desktops and laptops, don't draw much power when they aren't actually doing things. Laptops will tend to be more power efficient, but when idling, a PC doesn't draw much either. Choose based on your needs.
  6. I've taken a rather unique approach to UAC, which I'm actually quite proud of. As some of you may know, there's an option buried deep within secpol.msc to require even administrators to authenticate with their password when presented with a UAC prompt, the same as how unprivileged users are usually required to. I looked around a bit, and saw that the UAC response is determined by a registry variable: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System] "ConsentPromptBehaviorAdmin"=dword:(value) Setting it to 00000005 puts it to the default, secure desktop, prompt for consent for applications that need elevation only setting. Setting it to 00000001 puts it into "paranoid" mode, where it prompts for any and all system changes, and requires the user's password. I have two registry files, one to set it to default mode, and one to set it to paranoid mode. I then have two scheduled tasks. One detects the eventlog event for disconnecting from a network, and it sets the system to paranoid mode. This way, when I'm away from my home network, if someone walks up to my computer when I didn't lock it, they can't do any major changes without my password, or by sticking a USB flash drive with a virus in, etc. The 2nd task runs when connecting to a network, but is set to only run when connecting to my home network. It sets it to normal mode, so that at home everything is simple and un-annoying. It works great and is secure both in the way UAC intended and in the additional protection of password protected elevation.
  7. I'm doing an internship at a software development company, so here's the specs on my work machine: Dell Dimension 5150 Intel Pentium D Dual Core 2.8 GHz 1 GB DDR2 RAM ATI Radeon Xpress 3150 (?) It has dual displays (not dells), a 20" DVI SXGA and a 19" VGA SXGA, and a Microsoft IntelliMouse Not super-speedy, but works pretty well, and I love having dual displays
  8. There are a few options here. Basically, you want to look at group policy settings. There is a setting to set the Shell to something other than explorer.exe. Group policy can also disable the task manager, disable the run dialog, etc. Do some googling. The user must still be a member of a group, but you can restrict the heck out of that user. There is also a firefox extension called Rkiosk, which can impose restrictions on the firefox window.
  9. Dark chocolate all the way I was also in Vancouver BC recently for some dragonboat races... they have good candybars in Canada.
  10. Note: msgina.dll only controls the logon screen. Shell32.dll has the image for the "about" box, etc. The run box never shows that image and you shouldn't really bother trying to get it to
  11. Open secpol.msc from the run menu. Browse to Security Settings\Local Policies\User Rights Assignment, and find "Force shutdown from a remote system". If you add the secretary to this policy, then she will be allowed to shut down the computer. You need to make the policy change on desk1 and desk2, not the computer which the batch file is being run from. Also, make sure that her username and password are the same on the target computers as on the computer launching the shutdown. If you are on an active directory domain, then this isn't a problem and you can just change it in the default policy, or add the policy on those specific machines for her domain account. If you aren't on an AD domain, then you'll have to make sure her username and password are consistent.
  12. Bolded addons are ones which I find particularly useful/majorly recommend to others. Adblock Plus DownloadHelper DownThemAll Firebug Google Gears Live HTTP Headers Logmein Plugin Redirector ReloadEvery Screengrab Stealther StumbleUpon (disabled due to procrastination problems) Tab Preview Tamper Data User Agent Switcher Web Developer's Toolbar Zotero (excellent for students) When people ask me why I don't use [other browser], I tell them that until it has all these capabilities or addons to do the same thing as these, I'm not interested
  13. They both need to be HKCU or HKLM for it to work. Possibly both need to be HKCU - group policy settings in the registry get strange sometimes when dealing with trying to apply it to all users simultaneously.
  14. The registry entry ought to be the same as in any other version of vista... are you sure you put in the registry entries right? Don't forget that you need a Dword value DisallowRun set to 1 as well as the list...
×
×
  • Create New...