Techy/computer-related problems are no longer welcome on this forum. Please ask elsewhere.

[Neil]

Let's give this another bash.  In order to clear the GD forum of all the techy threads can people please post them in here instead.  Any new techy threads will be locked, so please don't post them, stick your puter problems in here instead so they can all be kept to one thread.  

This should also be used for other (boring) computer-related questions.  EG: advice on buying a new puter, what software is best for a particular purpose, etc.

*** EDIT: ***

As people are repeatedly putting the entire forum at risk by asking how to crack software - or giving advice on how to crack software - this thread is now closed.  This means that techy queries are not welcome here for the foreseeable future, please take them elsewhere.

[weekender]

I'd definitely make it sticky.

[Big Jack McBastard]

Well I've got a possible solution to the Casino Palazzo browser hijacking thing, clean out the Prefetch folder, turn off the prefetch function and stick the site's address in Ad-Shield.

Seems to have worked.

[Bill Oddie]

Anyone know how to define the command prompt window size in a C++ programme?

Cheers.

[sproggy]

Every time I turn on my beige box, there's this annoying whirring fan thing that makes a damned awful noise.

Puts one off one's stroke... if you get my drift...


Any ideas?

[Big Jack McBastard]

Sounds like the extractor fan, it may need cleaning out .

Look for the grate on the back of the machine, open the computer up and unscrew the housing (a big silver box) from the body of the computer, take the whole thing out as far as possible (it will be connected with many wires so be careful) take the top off the housing and get the hoover, a small un-used paint brush and some damp cloths out and clean the body of the fan as much as you can (you'll be astounded by the amount of non-virtual filth your computer has within it), replace it and test it out, if it still makes a racket give the computer a firm whack on the grated section.

Failing that either put up with it or get a new one.

[Garfield And Friends]

Any new techy threads will be locked, so please don't post them, stick your puter problems in here instead so they can all be kept to one thread.

Neil, it might be better to change the title of this thread from Computer Probs to Techy/Computer probs.

[Goldentony]

Well I've got a possible solution to the Casino Palazzo browser hijacking thing, clean out the Prefetch folder, turn off the prefetch function and stick the site's address in Ad-Shield.

Seems to have worked.

ive cleared out the prefetch folder, how do i turn the function off?

[sproggy]

...a firm whack on the grated section.

Ahoy there me matey!

I'll just reel you in from here shall I?

[Big Jack McBastard]

Golden there is a proggie here: Prefetch Clean And Control The option is on the front screen.

And Ad-Shield is here : Ah-Shield

Once Ad-shield is intergrated into your right click menu you'll be able to select the address of any site you don't like (or just their ads) and then block them from appearing on your computer.

Sproglette - Why I oughta!

[Goldentony]

right, cheers for all that, now i play the waiting game to see if its worked

[Big Jack McBastard]

Reboot and then open a few seperate windows, Google, Yahoo and here parhaps, if it doesn't show it probably won't pop up again.

<hides in the corner waiting for it to go all wrong>
Don't quote me on that.

[Goldentony]

nah didnt work

the search continues

[freecheese]

Anyone know how to define the command prompt window size in a C++ programme?

Cheers.

Try something along these lines (assuming Win32):

Code Select Expand

   /*...*/
   CONSOLE_SCREEN_BUFFER_INFO buf_info;
   COORD buf_size = {GetSystemMetrics(SM_CXMIN), GetSystemMetrics(SM_CYMIN)}; // The smallest console buffer size.

   HANDLE hConsole = GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE);
   SetConsoleScreenBufferSize(hConsole, buf_size);
   GetConsoleScreenBufferInfo(hConsole, &buf_info);

   SMALL_RECT rect;
   rect.Left = 0;
   rect.Top = 0;
   rect.Right = 19; //buf_info.dwMaximumWindowSize.X - 1;
   rect.Bottom = 0; //buf_info.dwMaximumWindowSize.Y - 1;
   SetConsoleWindowInfo(hConsole, TRUE, &rect);
   /*...*/


It appears that what you're setting are the number of columns and rows visible from the console buffer (which you can resize). This is set in rect.Right and rect.Top. You cannot make the console window larger than the buffer size, but smaller is OK. The values of rect.Right and rect.Bottom should be 1 less than the desired number of columns/rows. Here the console will be resized to show a single row containing 20 characters (uncomment the other stuff to set it to show the whole buffer).

Hope that helps.

mr freecheese.

[Bill Oddie]

Freecheese:

Wow thanks!

I'll have a stab at that tomorrow when my brain's less fried.

Here's a virtual pint of foaming nut brown ale that I've leeched for your troubles:





Thanks again!

[freecheese]

No probs there. Let me know if you have any trouble getting it going.

[untitled_london]

i'd second a sticky, but i'd say a quiet little sub-forum would probably work better ,as five techy threads in one will cause problems in the long run. that said, i appreciate that the amount of techy threads atm, dont really warrant a whole forum yet, so i see the bind....

but yeah, i noticed the amount has been on the increase lately too.

lets hope a sticky/ perma thread. sort it out.

either way - its nice to be able to chip in and help where poss, and its nice for those with stick to be able to shout for help...the header labelling goes along way toward helping those avoid them that want to too.

</2p>

[Still Not George]

Edit: Damn you freecheese, you quick off the mark cunt...

Edit again: Um, this line's broken:

Code Select Expand

COORD buf_size = {GetSystemMetrics(SM_CXMIN), GetSystemMetrics(SM_CYMIN)}; // The smallest console buffer size.

GetSystemMetrics(SM_CYMIN) or it's X equivalent both return the smallest window size in pixels, but you're setting screen buffers in characters. It'll probably work in practice, but it's still messy. Maybe a multiplication by GetConsoleFontSize?

Otherwise that's a pretty way of doing it. Was that yours or is it borrowed?
Thanks by the way Bill Oddie, I haven't thought about console functions in years and you've just made me look them up. Never know when it's gonna come in useful.

[Big Jack McBastard]

(Migrated from my other ill advised thread)

What in your humble folks opinion is the best internet browser available?

Now bare in mind I've been an IE fiend all my days but I'm sick to the back fucking teeth of how full of holes it is and how utterly useless Microsoft has proven themselves to be with their supposed 'updates'. Install the first service pack and suddenly Shockwave sites automatically shut down the browser entirely, taking all open windows with it and dragging a downloadable object into a download manager does the same, GREAT! JUST WHAT I WANTED! Don't install 15 sodding programs to keep dodgy sites from hijacking your browser or adding stuff to your favourites list and see what happens. Even if you do you're still going to get more specific problems that can cause trouble and you'll end up needing someone more capable than you to clean up the mess for you.

Despite my best efforts (and they are pretty good to have contained my patience this long) nothing can save this sack of shit from the thresher now.

Ideally, (obviously) I'm after something reasonably secure, easy enough to use (I don't mind tweaking and poking to get it as I want it) and free as the air that I'm filling with curses over this overrated crock of shit called Internet Explorer.

I want to defect!. Someone please get me across the boarder!

[David Qunt]

(Migrated from my other ill advised thread)

What in your humble folks opinion is the best internet browser available?

Now bare in mind I've been an IE fiend all my days but I'm sick to the back fucking teeth of how full of holes it is and how utterly useless Microsoft has proven themselves to be with their supposed 'updates'. Install the first service pack and suddenly Shockwave sites automatically shut down the browser entirely, taking all open windows with it and dragging a downloadable object into a download manager does the same, GREAT! JUST WHAT I WANTED! Don't install 15 sodding programs to keep dodgy sites from hijacking your browser or adding stuff to your favourites list and see what happens. Even if you do you're still going to get more specific problems that can cause trouble and you'll end up needing someone more capable than you to clean up the mess for you.

Despite my best efforts (and they are pretty good to have contained my patience this long) nothing can save this sack of shit from the thresher now.

Ideally, (obviously) I'm after something reasonably secure, easy enough to use (I don't mind tweaking and poking to get it as I want it) and free as the air that I'm filling with curses over this overrated crock of shit called Internet Explorer.

I want to defect!. Someone please get me across the boarder!

Easy peasy. Mozilla Firefox or Opera,

//www.google.com

[Rats]

Avant Browser is class, use that, it rides internet explorer but keeps a firm hold with two fists full of hair.

http://www.qwerks.com/download/5337/absetup.exe
http://www.avantbrowser.com/

[Still Not George]

Firefox, firefox, firefox.

You know you want to.

[Marcus Or Relius]

I just migrated to Firefox last week and I jolly well recommended it.

[mook]

Firefox, firefox, firefox.

You know you want to.

Well, I've finally taken the plunge and downloaded fiirefox and pretty damn good it seems too.  One nice little touch is that you can add other search engines to the google one, for example IMDB. (You watch some techy come along and say I could've done that in IE).  Also it seems to load graphic heavy pages quicker than IE. Now all I've got to do now  is sort out  a new e-mail thingy. Is Thunderbird any good?

Installing Firefox has fixed something else that has been driving me mad.  Whenever I scrolled up and down  in IE I could hear nasty little static clicks coming out of my speakers, it was really pissing me off seeing as I had just shelled out a good few quid on surround sound ones, anyways Firefox seems to have cured it.  Christ what a boring story,...ah well at least I wasn't wanking on about  my A-level results....Winkity wink  .'-)

[Doctor Stamen]

I want to defect!. Someone please get me across the boarder!

Hop onboard the Firefox train then and don't look back.  I can't believe people still use IE6.  We still have to use it at work (if i started installing Firefox on everyone's PCs then the network manager would probably have me sent to Siberia or something) and it's a big bag of baby's bollocks.

[gazzyk1ns]

At the risk of sounding repetitive, Firefox gets my vote. Internet Explorer is banned from using the net by my firewall, it was completely unnecessary to do that but it made me feel good.

Something to consider after ditching IE is that you can't access Windows Update with any other browser, so check here for your updates every so often instead.

[Timmay]

Unfortunately a lot of other sites simply won't work with anything other than IE, although this is changing. Natwest online banking only ever used to work with IE - it would tell you to fuck off with anything else - but it does now work with Firefox. Albeit slightly clunkily.

[freecheese]

Edit: Damn you freecheese, you quick off the mark cunt...

Edit again: Um, this line's broken:

Code Select Expand

COORD buf_size = {GetSystemMetrics(SM_CXMIN), GetSystemMetrics(SM_CYMIN)}; // The smallest console buffer size.

... Was that yours or is it borrowed?

T'was my own, after a quick session with the console SDK docs. Not really used them much before, beyond Alloc/FreeConsole, so I got to learn something too! I see the prob. with GetSystemMetrics and guess it wouldn't be too hard to fix.

Also, in a quick bit of defense of IE ('cos I've been programming extensions to it all summer for non-evil purposes). The API is quite nicely done and designed (though not necessarily documented) and it's quite powerful what you can do (I've made it into an editor), though the browser still has some minor security "issues"...

[Purple Tentacle]

I don't have the stomach to argue with the multitude of Firefox evangelists here, but I've been using Opera for a year, tried Firefox and found that it didn't do the things that Opera can do.  So I stuck with Opera.

[Still Not George]

T'was my own, after a quick session with the console SDK docs. Not really used them much before, beyond Alloc/FreeConsole, so I got to learn something too! I see the prob. with GetSystemMetrics and guess it wouldn't be too hard to fix.

I've fixed the code and clarified it a little, and made it a function for Bill Oddie's convenience:

http://www.chalicier.dsl.pipex.com/ceryspix/console.rar

You're still unnecessarily quick of the mark, though. (insert smiley here)