Well, my computer died on July 27th... RIP

[Steve A.]

The CPU cooler fan motor slowed way-y-y-y down and my computer shut off because the CPU had gotten too hot. Funny thing is that this had happened before and I was converting WAV files to FLAC with dbPower Release 12 both times. Yes, it is a very CPU intensive program and setting the priority low didn't seem to help. (Release 14 seems to be better behaved.)

I picked up a new CPU cooler at Fry's which mounted to the vintage 2002 mobo with 4 plastic clips that you twist. Only the clips were too cheap and kept coming undone. (The cooler I took out used nylon posts not cheap plastic.) I ended up using epoxy to secure the posts to the mobo but the damage was already done- I seem to have screwed up the AGP 8X socket so the video was dead (I had screwed up the on-board video during earlier "repairs" as I like to call them.)

So I unboxed the HP Pavillion P6240F I bought awhile back and have been trying to get used to Windows 7, which I guess is really Vista Version 2. Damn- I have 4 times as much RAM and a Quad CPU (not just a Dual), and this computer runs slower than my old Win XP machine.
I picked up a 1TB Caviar Black drive with the idea of plopping it into the HP and creating two partitions so that I could bott either WinXP or Ubuntu. Any suggestions on how I should partition the drive? I assume that Windows would like the first partition...

One of my biggest gripes about WinXP is Windows Explorer and its damn search engine. I like to find files by using filenames with or without *'s and ?'s. It looks like Windows 7 looks at the content of many files in its search and I haven't figured out how to turn that off. When I finally came up with a list of 1167 files that met the "file?.wav" search criteria when I clicked on the column to sort them by name it started the search all over again. WTF???

I looked into several alternate file managers and the one that looks the best is "xplorer2"- the $30 registered version includes a search module with the features I've been looking for. I was thinking of giving that a shot sticking with Windows 7 but the limitations of Home Premium drive me up the wall. I keep getting those damned dialog boxes saying that I don't have the administrative rights to do this or that- in most cases clicking OK allows me to do it anyway. But it is such a hassle! I was trying to rename 32 songs from a Leon McAuliff CD and it kept popping up a box with all of the details of each file. I checked Google to see if there was a way I could turn off that "not authorized" crap and I don't think it can be done with the Home versions.

I *knew* there was a reason I didn't want to unbox that HP computer until now- between HP and Microsoft they have managed to completely screw up the Windows platform...

Steve Ahola

[Jazz P Bass]

Yeah, Microsoft screwed the pooch on the Win 7 versions.
Home Premium sucks.
"Oh, you want it to work?"

[oc disorder]

Not exactly what you want but very handy check it out..it's free..and its small (334kb)and its fast!!!!!

Everything Search Engine

Everything search engine
Locate files and folders by name instantly.
Small installation file
Clean and simple user interface
Quick file indexing
Quick searching
Minimal resource usage
Share files with others easily
Real-time updating
Copyright © 2005-2010 David Carpenter

This guy deserves a medal !

[Steve A.]

Not exactly what you want but very handy check it out..it's free..and its small (334kb)and its fast!!!!!

Everything Search Engine



This guy deserves a medal !

That was one of the first alternate search engines I tried- much better than stock Windows 7/Vista- but not what I needed at the time (I had "lost" a bunch of digital recordings for vinyl rips and was trying to figure out which hard drive it was on since I had moved them around). Damn- I just uninstalled it last night, to keep keep my software hoarding tendencies in check. On your recommendation I think I will reinstall it. BTW Q-Dir looked pretty good as another alternate file manager- I almost uninstalled it as well but the interface owes much to my all time favorite, Norton Commander. I remember how disappointed I was when they came out with Norton Desktop for Windows "but it is nothing like NC!"

(Actually right now I am leaning towards the WinXP/Ubuntu dual boot scenario with the limitations in Home Premium leaving a bad taste in my mouth.)

[dai h.]

is this a search for your own PC? How about Google desktop? Don't have it in this PC at the moment but seemed to work pretty well on one I had it installed in.

[Steve A.]

is this a search for your own PC? How about Google desktop? Don't have it in this PC at the moment but seemed to work pretty well on one I had it installed in.

I haven't tried Google Desktop but I heard it was good (I think at first it only did your main hd but I assume that limitation is gone).
However I was looking for something like the search module in Win2K (and XP once you turned off the animated search assistant and the other bullshit). Where you could specify filename (or mask), file size, file date, particular drives to search- and optionally have it look for strings in text files although I rarely use that feature. I save files with names that make some sense to me- much easier now since we are not limited to the 8+3 format from DOS.
I can't relate at all to the way Microsoft has screwed up the search function in Vista and 7. I was trying to get used to Vista on a friend's computer 2 years ago and it was plain weird. I would download a file but Vista could not find it. So I would try to download it again only to see that the file was already there- do I want to overwrite it or rename it or what? A search by filename with wild cards should go pretty fast since I believe it only needs to access the file allocation table (or whatever they call it post-FAT). Or is that not the case anymore? In any case I usually do not want it searching the contents of files, or looking for the filename inside a ZIP file.

Thanks!

[dai h.]

not sure if Google desktop could do this:

specify filename (or mask), file size, file date, particular drives to search- and optionally have it look for strings in text files although I rarely use that feature

but I don't recall a limitation on the searchable hard drives (I had multiple HDs hooked up, and they seemed to all be indexable/searchable unless you set it not to search specific places). It would bring up caches of web pages browsed, where it was useful to find things again or to be reminded of where something was, and so on.

[Bill Moore]

Evidentally, I'm not as savy as all of you, and I use my computers for more mundane tasks. I picked up my friend's old machine for my wife, and I'm impressed with it. It is a quad core x86 machine running Windows 7, and it's speed is amazing compared to our 3 XP machines. It is her work, (bookeeping) computer, and when you open a program, it blinks once or twice, and it's running! I thought it was Win 7 that made it so fast, maybe it's the machine.

[Steve A.]

not sure if Google desktop could do this:



but I don't recall a limitation on the searchable hard drives (I had multiple HDs hooked up, and they seemed to all be indexable/searchable unless you set it not to search specific places). It would bring up caches of web pages browsed, where it was useful to find things again or to be reminded of where something was, and so on.

As I recall it was limited to just your main drive when it was first released to the public in 2005, but I'm sure it changed since then.

[Steve A.]

I picked up my friend's old machine for my wife, and I'm impressed with it. It is a quad core x86 machine running Windows 7, and it's speed is amazing compared to our 3 XP machines. It is her work, (bookkeeping) computer, and when you open a program, it blinks once or twice, and it's running! I thought it was Win 7 that made it so fast, maybe it's the machine.

I think that HP as one example puts less crap in their business computers so that they run faster. The computer itself can be very fast but if it is continually checking things to make sure that they are safe it is going to cut the speed in half or something like that since it is always second guessing itself. <g> It is the internet in particular that runs very sluggishly on my HP Pavillion.

[R.G.]

Hmmm. I think you have exposed another binary parasite. The ubiquity of criminal-intent viruses and malware has forced a "computing tax" on everyone. You need to buy 2-3 times as much computing speed/power as you need so you can use up the other half to two-thirds watching for hijacking. I'm sure the criminal computing industry and intel don't think of each other as they ply their trades, but they end up doing things which help each other.