Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2012 July 3

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Computing desk
< July 2 << Jun | July | Aug >> July 4 >
Welcome to the Wikipedia Computing Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.


July 3[edit]

What's the best Android phone rooting & data-transferring app?[edit]

Hello, listen: I have a big issue with my Xperia Play only having 380 MB of internal space. I was told that to move EVERYTHING to the SD card (Yes, every last byte, including phone OS information), I would first have to root the phone.

It would void a warranty, but the standard phone warranty (at least through Verizon and Best Bought phones, is just one year, and I obtained it in May 2011.

Now, I need to find out what phone-rooting and data-transferring app (both functions in one app, preferably) you would most recommend. How well has it helped you? Moreover, I may pay for it if no other app does it better, but free ones take precedence. Thanks. --70.179.170.114 (talk) 03:48, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Who will be the winner and runner-up of UEFA Euro 2016?[edit]

Euro 2012 has ended brilliantly, it is time to focus on France. What are tbe winning chance and probability of each participating team? 117.5.8.224 (talk) 04:12, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"The reference desk does not answer requests for opinions or predictions about future events". AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:16, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
We can provide facts, though. I'm going to move this to the Entertainment Desk, and provide some there. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 11:03, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

recovery data from hard disk[edit]

I formatted my hard disk contained 90% data. After i save 60% data to this hard disk. But now i want formatted data( 90% data). is it possible? please help me — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.207.233.244 (talk) 07:10, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It is possible, but unlikely. The process will be expensive, time consuming, or both. I would recommend that you first try to restore your data from the backup you took before formatting (because you did take a backup, didn't you?)
If you are going to go ahead with recovery, firstly stop using the hard drive NOW.
Then, decide if you want to get someone else to do the recovery for you (expensive), or to do it yourself (time consuming).
If someone else will do it, simply search Google for 'hard drive data recovery', or something similar, and select a company in your area from the list of results. Get two or three quotes, and ask them how confident they would be of success. If they say '100%' put the phone down because they are liars.
If you want to do it yourself, you will need a working PC, some Data recovery software, some way of connecting the hard drive in question to the working PC, patience and crossed fingers. There are instructions you may find useful here, though these are specific to one particular recovery package. You will find other instructions, using different packages, by Googling 'recover data from formatted drive' or similar. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 09:55, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

can one damage a laser printer by specifiying the wrong paper type?[edit]

I accidentally printed some 40 pages before realizing that the paper type was set to "thick" when in fact it was ordinary plain paper (80 g/cm²) I noticed because the pages were unusually wavy. How bad is this? Уга-уга12 (talk) 09:34, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Simply setting the wrong thickness of the paper should not cause any lasting damage. The waviness of the printout is likely because the rollers and stuff inside the printer were moved further apart (expecting a thicker piece of paper), and so didn't properly grip onto your paper. If you put the paper setting back to normal you should find it goes away. If you continue to see waviness, try running some maintenance - sometimes this is called 'alignment', but will vary between models and manufacturers. It's usually found in the printer utilities on your PC - details will be found in the printer manual.
Note that damage could be caused if you use coated paper that's not specifically designed for laser printers - the heat of the printing process could melt the coating, causing damage to the printer's mechanism. See here. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 10:08, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you so much Уга-уга12 (talk) 12:25, 4 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sign-in problems, Apple pop-ups and disabled cookies[edit]

Cannot sign in!! Trying to get rid of Apple pop-ups, disabled cookeies. If possible advise how to enable cookies for Wikipedia page.60.228.201.64 (talk) 11:17, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I added a section header to help find your question.
Can you tell us a little more about your problem? Is this on a PC, a phone or a tablet? Windows (operating system), Mac or Linux? Which internet browser? All these will affect the steps to resolve the issue. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 11:59, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Google Analytics reports visits to a site that no longer exists[edit]

I have a number of websites, and have been monitoring them with Google Analytics. Some time ago I decided to change suppliers (and URLs) for some of the accounts, so the URLs in question are no longer in use and if I try to access the pages in qeustion I get a 404 File Not Found error as expected. However I note that Google Analytics is still showing results for these sites. What does this mean? --rossb (talk) 12:07, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Questions:
  1. how long ago was the switch (hours, days, weeks)?
  2. was the original host a large provider, especially Yahoo! or Google?
-- Finlay McWalterTalk 12:48, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The switch was about four months ago. The provider is Demon Internet. If it's relevant, I didn't actually bother to delete any of the pages on the old sites, on the assumption that they would be disappearing anyway. --rossb (talk) 15:57, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

font type[edit]


What font type is this?--Jsjsjs1111 (talk) 12:49, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If you have an example with more letters, you can feed it to WhatTheFont which often gets it either right or finds a fairly close match. But it won't work with just two letters. -- Finlay McWalterTalk 12:52, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I tried feeding it into WhatTheFont, and it didn't even detect any letters. Interchangeable 15:13, 6 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Where did you find it? It looks like amateur work. —Tamfang (talk) 02:28, 7 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Unknown device not working - how do I find out what it is?[edit]

I have Window 7 PC. When I go to Control Panel, Hardware and Sound, Devices and Printers, there is an exclamation mark in a yellow triangle on the "<my computer's name>" picture, indicating a problem of some description. When I right-click and select Troubleshoot, I get a dialog saying "Install a driver for this device. The driver for Unknown device is not installed. Install the latest driver for this device." I have auto-updates turned off, because and I don't particularly want to install a driver without even knowing what device it is for. If I run Device Manager and show hidden devices, I can see under "other devices" an "unknown device" with a warning symbol and its properties say "The drivers for this device are not installed. (Code 28) There is no driver selected for the device information set or element." How do I tell what device it actually is?

It has the following properties: Hardware Ids

*PNP0C0F
ACPI\PNP0C0F

Parent

ACPI_HAL\PNP0C08\0

(plus too many others to list here, but none of which have a recognizable name.)

Any clues as to what it might be, or how I might find out?

Everything on the PC appears to be working normally. I could just ignore the warning, but it annoys me. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:09, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I just rebooted the PC (without changing any hardware or disconnecting any peripherals) and the warning and the "unknown other device" have disappeared! I'm still curious as to what it was. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:13, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The list of Plug and Play manufacturer identifier can be downloaded (in an Excel format XML spreadsheet) from this page. I don't think the info you've provided above is enough (PNP just stands for Plug and Play, ACPI just indicates ACPI, and HAL is Hardware Abstraction Layer - all generic Windows subsystems and related technologies). -- Finlay McWalterTalk 13:25, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Creating lots of empty rows in Access[edit]

Some time back, I needed to get a lot of consecutive numbers (1, 2, 3, etc., up to nearly 200,000) and didn't want to type all of them, so I ended up copying and pasting in Excel. I know that it's possible to get Access give you numbers simply by typing 1, pressing the down arrow, typing 2, pressing the down arrow, typing 3, and holding down the down arrow for a while, but when you have nearly 200,000 entries, it takes forever because you have to create each row separately before the down arrow produces anything. Is there any way to tell Access to create a lot of empty rows with no information? I was using Access 2003, but I'm able to use other computers with later editions (I simply prefer 2003 to 2007 and 2010) if necessary. Already checked the program's help files and online help sites, but I can't find what I need. Nyttend backup (talk) 14:28, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I could be wrong, but I think Access is limited to 65,536 rows. Certainly if I try to use the fill handle to generate the numbers it stops there (Excel 2007). If these numbers are completely contiguous, can't you just use the ROW function instead? Rojomoke (talk) 14:52, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It depends on what version of Access you have, I believe. With Access 2003 I have no problem creating very large tables (e.g. 200,000 rows). --Mr.98 (talk) 15:05, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Here's a VBA macro that should more or less do what you want based on what youve described within the boundaries of Access's table limitations:
Public Sub AddEmptyRows(tableName As String, idColumn As String, startNumber As Long, stopNumber As Long)
'tableName = name of the table you want this to run on
'idColumn = name of the ID/key column you want to have updated
'startNumber = first ID number to add
'stopNumber = last ID number to add

Dim rst As DAO.Recordset 'create database recordset object
Dim current As Long 'because you are dealing with large numbers, we set these as Longs 

Set rst = CurrentDb.OpenRecordset(tableName) 'open the table
For current = startNumber To stopNumber 'from the start to the stop number...
    rst.AddNew 'add new record 
    rst(idColumn) = current 'set the id column to the current number
    rst.Update 'save
    'DoEvents 
Next 'repeat

rst.Close 'close recordset object

Set rst = Nothing 'clear object from memory
Msgbox "Done"
End Sub
Let me know if you have any questions about how to use this or how to run it. Note that this will more or less monopolize all system resources while running. If you'd like it to be a bit more generous (e.g. not just lock everything up while it runs) at the expense of it taking considerably longer to run, uncomment the "DoEvents" command that I've added. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:05, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I will say, though, that this seems like a very strange way to use Access — and a strange way to get lots of numbers. If you have a more specific need (e.g. generating a random number between 1 and 200,000), there are likely more direct ways to it than this. But I don't really understand what you're doing based on the description you've given. Also, if you don't want that code to add numbers to an id field, just comment out the line labeled as "set the id column to the current number" and it'll just be creating truly empty rows. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:07, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

MS Word Documents - trouble editing?[edit]

Hi. Recently I encountered some trouble saving to MS Word documents on my computer. (by the way, the laptop battery problem seems resolved - for now) Often, the program would freeze while I'm trying to save, or the progress bar would stand still, or the document itself would respond very slowly to my edits. I tried this with various types of documents:

  • An older 26-page document (2003 compatible) from a year ago refuses to save new edits.
  • Saving onto a new short 2007 document on Desktop works without error.
  • Saving a new document (2003 compatible) after changing the font freezes the computer.
  • Saving onto an older one-page document (2003 compatible) from a year ago works fine.
  • Saving onto a two-page (2003 compatible) document from half a year ago seems to work properly.

Anyone know what might be the problem with the computer? I could try saving these documents onto a USB, and editing it from an external computer. However, I'd really like to know whether it is possible to resolve this ongoing problem. Thanks! ~AH1 (discuss!) 15:09, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure if this will work but it seems like maybe the program installation is goofed up. Consider reinstalling, or perhaps try OpenOffice, which is free and edits microsoft formats.

172.163.134.132 (talk) 21:36, 6 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Are you using formulae and advanced formatting? In my experience, Microsoft Word is very buggy since the introduction of the new file format. I had to fight a lot against Word while writing a physics textbook in Word, as explained on pages 16-19. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 19:54, 8 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

left,right shift operators in c[edit]

Hi !my doubt is below programme.the actual out put is contradicting with my out put. I have given my analysation too.you please tell how the out put comes.

#include<stdio.h>
#include<conio.h>
void main()
{
int p=10,q=10,r=10;
clrscr();
p<<2>>1;
r<<=2>>1;
printf("%d %d %d \n",p,q<<2>>1,r);
getch();
}

actual out put: 10 20 20 My analysation: <<,>> have same priority and left to right precedence.so I did below analysation. 1)p<<2>>1 executes as follows: (p<<2)>>1 -->(40>>1) -->20: therefore p=20 2) r<<=2>>1 -->r=r<<(2>>1) -->r<<1 -->20.so r=20 3)q<<2>>1 -->(q<<2)>>1 -->40>>1 -->20.so q=20. According to me out put should be 20,20,20.but actual out put is different.please tell me sir! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Phanihup (talkcontribs) 15:27, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The code p<<2>>1 does not change p - you probably meant p<<=2>>1 -- Finlay McWalterTalk 15:35, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"Find" function in Apple's Preview suddenly became case-sensitive[edit]

Hello,

I have been using Preview on my Macbook for quite some time, and I often use the Find function (Command + f) to look for certain words in the text. All of a sudden, I stopped finding a lot of obvious parts of the text, simply because Preview suddenly became case-sensitive. I have been looking in "Help", "Preferences",... but I can't figure out how to reset this.

Can anyone help?

Kind regards, Evilbu (talk) 16:10, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Next to the place where you enter the text to search for, there is a magnifying glass icon with a down arrow. If you click the arrow, you can turn on the "ignore case" option. RudolfRed (talk) 21:08, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Firefox blanks cookie exceptions[edit]

I'm running Firefox 13.0.1 (current release), although I think this has been happening before, and it seems to sporadically blank my cookie exceptions. That is, I have it set to clear cookies at the end of the session, however I have exceptions for some sites. Usually this setting works fine, but on occasion, I'll find those settings are gone. I don't know what triggers it either.

I've searched but haven't found others complaining of the same thing. The settings are stored in a particular file that I could backup and reapply each time, which is what I may do, but I'd rather fix the problem itself. I also thought it might be related to Firefox updating itself, but that doesn't seem to be it as it's done it twice now within the same version.

Any thoughts are appreciated. Shadowjams (talk) 22:07, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]