Computer Questions (formally Your Desktop)

No question, just a report.

I saved some high quality TrueType font libraries from applications that I don't use anymore or that won't even run on Windows 10: Corel WordPerfect 8 and X3 and Micrografx Designer 7.

I have relatively few fonts installed on my PC and laptops today. But I remember in the early 90s, when TTF became generally available, it was like a mania. I would create incredibly noisy layouts back then that look just ridiculous today.

Any such memories anyone?

Volker

The other day I had to restore my laptop to before I did a MediaMonkey update that wiped my music library and my customised MediaMonkey skin when the update was applied.

I don't know whether it's a coincidence but at around the same time a new command has showed up in my Windows start up and I am wondering what it is:

Key: HKLM:RunOnce
Program: *Restore
File: c;|windowsSystem32rstrui.exe /runonce

Anyone know what it is and whether I can disable it from start up?

Cheers Jim and thanks for the comment.

I'd realised that it was part of System Restore but was wondering if it was a remnant of the Restore I'd recently done. The unusual thing was was that I hadn't seen it in my Windows start up list before and I was wondering why it would appear in my start up list.

It doesn't really matter anyway: it's gone from my start up. Either it's resolved itself (if it was, in fact, a problem) or may have been a temporary thing and was removed safely by CCleaner during my daily clean-up.

Jesus. No idea. Maybe a Sagan quote will rub some salt in the wound....

http://i.imgur.com/2BSA2tf.gif

Using Windows 10, Alan? It seems a habit of W10 to still show items that have already been deleted and can hence not be located any more. Refreshing the file explorer using the curved arrow at the right end of the command line should help.

Volker

Well, I have no idea what I did that messed up some of my files. But what has happened is really weird. It seems that a lot of the files in my Music folder have just gone. In some cases music files have been deleted from several folders but the folder structure has been retained, in other cases there's been the disappearance of different file types: *.txt, *.jpg (including folder structures), and files associated with the OrangeCD database (original database and all the backups - which were unfortunately kept in the same folder as the original database...not very smart).

I did find the original OrangeCD database (but no backups) in the long list of files found by Recuva, but the large file could not be recovered since some of it had been overwritten during the attempt to repair what had happened.

I think that I have been able to recover most of the music files - the retention of the folder structure let me know what was missing and I have been able to get a backup version of the OrangeCD database but that's from way back from August 2015 (I hadn't been able to work out how to use my old backup software with my new computer after the previous laptop died last July). I just need to work out what albums I need to import from my music backup (500-600 albums probably). I am sure there's a number of additional surprises awaiting me from files I don't remember that I may have lost - I've already come across some desktop shortcuts that lead to dead ends.

It's been a crappy sort of a day today.

It is the latter.

Anyone here gone from Windows 7 to Windows 10 (using the free upgrade)? Is it worth it? Any big improvements? I'm a little worried that some things that work flawlessly now suddenly won't anymore, or some other annoyances that come when using a new OS, or that the visual look of it is radically different.

Yes. Looks like those "inp" files are Dell's proprietary compact format. So I guess it's likely you will not be able tor eda it with anything else than Dell's program(s).
Making a future mirror copy of your files would require a (robocopy) script or a specific program.



You would have to make sure that the hard drive on the failed computer that contains the "inp" files is still readable.
Then connect ("slave"" ) that drive to the new computer.
Then use whatever that Dell program is called on the new computer to recover the files.
So it depends on a still working hard drive and the availability of that backup program.



I would assume not, but I do not know. I would assume it's a standalone program, but you'd better check whether you can download it/install it as a standalone application.



May well be, but to be honest, I have no idea, sorry. It looks indeed like a Dell-proprietary thing, and I'm not so well versed in brand-specific things.

Does anyone know of any issues with downloading files originating from Mac computers onto PCs?

Sometimes I get legitimate soundtrack promos that I download to my PC. I then uncompress them and this generates two folders: one is the folder with the mp3 files and the other is a folder called "_MACOSX". Sometimes when I try and delete this latter folder (sometimes even the former folder too) I get a window showing

"Item not found

Could not find this item.
This is no longer located in C:Users[username][folder structure]. Verify the item's location and try again"

I don't understand this because the file is there - I right-clicked on it to delete. A lot of the files that are difficult to delete have names that are preceded by "._" and, looking round, this seems to be associated with the Mac OS X operating system.

Does anyone know why I am having problems deleting these files? I tried to delete similar files using command prompt the last time I had this problem but I think that this led to the loss of files I had recently so I am reluctant to try this again.

Any help would be appreciated.

Bingo! Your a star Edmund.

(But I will have a tentative few hours waiting to see if something else weird has happened also.)

Does anyone know how I would go about backing up my blog? It's a WordPress.com blog and I've been trying to see if there's any obvious option to back things up but I can't seem to find anything.

Cheers.

Thanks.