Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2009 February 9

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.

February 9

Failed hdd, is there a way to salvage files?

Hello, my Samsung harddisk failed and it is no longer there under the BIOS. Is there a way to recover the files on it? I tried with it in vain as master on a system and then as a slave on another functional system. With this thing connected even Puppy Linux fails to boot. Any help? 59.91.253.181 (talk) 01:10, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi there, there are a couple of things that you could try, depending on how much you need those files you could go to a used computer parts store, buy a broken hard drive of the same model, take off the boards and but those boards on your broken hard drive, see if that works. another thing you can try is to take apart your hard drive, remove the disks and put those disks in a working hard drive(very risky as even opening the hard drive could corrupt the files) You might even be able to find a computer repair shop near you that can pull the files off of it (might get costly tho)– Elliott  01:18, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Do you hear the drive spinning up at all? (Disconnect other drives and things; listen or touch the drive when the computer is on and see if you sense the vibrations from spinning.) If it is not spinning up, it could be something simple like that the power connection is faulty; in that case try jiggling the power connector or apply pressure on it in various directions while the computer is on to see if you can hear it power up. This has happened to many of my drives.

Other pedantic suggestions: Check the cable and try another cable to see if it is a cable problem. Check the jumpers.

Is this problem sudden? or have you seen maybe lesser problems in the past?

What do you mean "With this thing connected even Puppy Linux fails to boot"? Do you mean that connecting it causes another drive on the same cable to not show up? That would usually indicate a jumper problem. --128.97.244.106 (talk) 01:47, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

You could try putting the drive in the freezer for an hour or two, then hooking to usb bay or as slave, and see if it show - if it does, quickly dump the data to another drive. — Ched (talk) 02:36, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Key phrase there is "for an hour or two." Don't keep it in there overnight, as HDD's have been known to crack and/or not work properly when exposed to coldness. flaminglawyer 05:46, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

If you really need the files, the best course of action is to contact a professional data recovery service *before* doing any more damage to the disk. If it is not essential to recover the contents, you might as well try the suggestions above. – 74  00:14, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

How much RAM is there in Microsoft Word/Office

How much RAM is there available in Microsoft Word or Office? I have been writing a book in Word and all has been going very well until recently Word has slowed down very considerably and I am wondering whether there may be a RAM issue in Word? Overall I have 130 GB available free space in the computer. Should I download Publisher? Can anyone give advice? Dieter Simon (talk) 01:46, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

There is absolutely no RAM in Word, Office, or Publisher. Your question is equivalent to asking how much chocolate milk is in Microsoft Word. Also, Word will not slow down suddenly if you write too much in it. It handles available RAM in the computer nicely. The slowdown is most likely something else - what have you downloaded/installed recently? Seriously - what? I know, nothing. OK - now what? Nothing? I'll only ask one more time, what - ANYTHING - did you click the "download" link on lately? (guess how often I have to ask that on a daily basis) -- kainaw™ 01:54, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, not giving you more info, yes, I have installed and uninstalled a few programs but am not sure at what stage this slowdown first started. At the time I thought it would be most likely just temporary. Is there a way I can check when I have uninstalled these programs? I can't think at this stage what they were. Trouble is once you have removed it from the Add/Remove menu it just disappears. I am slightly older than most people, so this doesn't come naturally to me. Thank you for showing an interest, I appreciate it. Dieter Simon (talk) 02:22, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Time is now 02:30 in the morning here in England, so I'll check later after some highly necessary shut-eye, thanks. Dieter Simon (talk) 02:27, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Uninstalling software should not slow down Word. Have you installed any anti-virus software? Often, they will do "virus scanning" while you are trying to work. For example, McAfee loves to scan your drive only when you are trying to do your most work. It shows up as a red target in the list of icons next to the clock. When it is doing that, it sucks practically all of the computer's resources. You would think that the McAfee programmers would have it do virus scanning when you aren't using the computer - but that would be an intelligent thing to do. What you can do, when your computer is very sluggish, is press ctrl-alt-del. You'll get a monitor that shows how much processer and ram resources are in use. You can also get a list of all programs running (most of which you specifically didn't ask to run). They also show the percentage of resources being used by each one. Do you see one in particular that is used far more percentage than the others? Knowing the name of that program will quickly narrow down specifically what is causing the problem. -- kainaw™ 02:31, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

What is the size of the document? Does it have a lot of images? How often do you close the document or restart the computer? Jay (talk) 08:50, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you both Kainaw and Jay. My original question was that about RAM which Kainaw has kindly answered. As to your second question about McAfee, yes, they do their scan every Friday and I am aware when they are doing it. You are right, it does slow the system down. However, I usuall bear that in mind. I think now the problem is the nature of the work I am doing in Word, as Jay has hinted at. There are no images, and I work for a couple of hours without closing and restarting Word. What I am doing is, compiling my own dictionary which entails bulletting and indents, and I think now that is where the problem is. The whole consists of a separate article for each dictionary letter A - Z and there are some discrepencies in the formatting, I noticed. Of course, it means going over from one letter section to another - bearing in mind, they are separate entities within Word. Perhaps I should get rid of all the bullets and just use indenting for each item. I shall have a go and try sort that out, with your good hints in mind. I shall let you know how I am getting on. Thank you. Dieter Simon (talk) 11:43, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Vista must die!

My XP machine died and I got one with Vista. What would happen if I replaced the hard drive with the one from my old PC? Clarityfiend (talk) 02:59, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, Windows XP does not like it when it's hardware suddenly changes. You could try but you might get a blue screen of death. If that does happen use your windows xp instalation disk to repair windows, you might still have to re enter you Product key. Try it out and let us know what happens. But first make a backkup of any inportant files / programs. – Elliott  03:24, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

At best, you'd get a working computer with a worn hard drive that's probably smaller than the new hard drive.

External hard drives are cheap. Burn a "Clonezilla Live" CD, and for each computer boot off it and use it to back up the hard drive to an image on the external drive. Then use Clonezilla to restore the XP system onto the new computer. If it works, good; and it's on a new and probably bigger hard drive. If it doesn't, then restore Vista onto it.

Before copying XP, it might be a good idea to reconfigure XP to be as boring as possible. E.g. tell it that you have a standard SVGA monitor. The result will look horrible but thereafter it might be easier to upgrade from mediocrity than to sidegrade from something else. However, I don't claim to know about this; I'm just guessing here.

You may also wish to consider some alternative to Windows. They're free of charge. Morenoodles (talk) 08:32, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

• If your old machine died, it could well be caused by a faulty harddrive. Putting it in the new machine wouldn't help. If you don't like Vista, there are several websites that explain how to remove it and install XP. - Mgm|^(talk) 13:13, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Judging by your user name, I assume that you're only interested in what you asked about, i.e. what would happen if you replaced the hard disk, and tried to boot, and not in alternative solutions to your predicament. (BTW, guessing what would happen would have been easier if you had provided a bit more info on the mode of death). There is an easy way to find out - try it - it won't blow up or anything, and it's not very difficult, if they're both SATA disks. If the old one is IDE and the new one is SATA, you'll need a special cable to make the connection. When booting, you should boot in safe mode (press F8 when booting), to reduce the likelihood of getting a BSOD. If it tries to boot, but crashes in the process, I would have tried booting it with a linux live CD (Knoppix is my favourite), and see whether you are able to access the old hard disk. As Mgm noted, the hard disk itself might be the root of the problem, for hardware reasons or because of data corruption. Several other hardware reasons are of course possible, such as a defective power supply, defective ram etc etc. If indeed it boots, you'll need to enter your product key, which only works if you have a full version of XP. If you have an OEM version, Microsoft's "genuine advantage" software will refuse to accept the old drive in the new machine as a legit copy. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 19:47, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Rats! It's OEM. Thanks anyway. Clarityfiend (talk) 08:26, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

If the two machines are not very similar, XP will likely get suspicious and require you to go through this again. 150.250.43.254 (talk) 04:12, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Maxima/gnuplot issue

I occasionally make use of the very nice software Maxima to do math related things. If you want to plot things, it uses gnuplot. The problem is, that the plots are really, really ugly. The graph isn't antialiased, the colors are all ugly, everything is basically as unpretty as you could make them. It looks like a graph produced by a computer in 1994. But if I plot it directly in gnuplot, it looks great! As pretty as you'd expect them to be.

For comparison, this is what I get if I open gnuplot in the terminal and type "plot [-10:10] x**2", and this is what I get if I type "plot2d([x^2],[x,-10,10]);" in maxima.

Can I fix this? I'd really like to have the nice graphs in maxima. I'm using Ubuntu, btw. 83.250.227.11 (talk) 03:58, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

The ugly one is the default "set term x11" gnuplot option, and the pretty one is the "set term wxt" option, which is a wxWidgets-based thing. You can set the gnuplot term option for a single plot with:

 plot2d(sin(x),[x,0,2*%pi],[gnuplot_term,wxt]);

or for the remainder of the Maxima session with:

 set_plot_option([gnuplot_term,wxt]);

and then just do:

 plot2d(sin(x),[x,0,2*%pi]);

as normal. --Sean 16:49, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Ahh, works perfectly! Thank you so much :) Is there any way you can set that to be the default option, so it's always on? It's not a huge deal, but it would be nice. 90.237.165.73 (talk) 16:58, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

There's a startup file where you can put arbitrary commands. On Linux/Unix you can do:

 mkdir ~/.maxima
 echo 'set_plot_option([gnuplot_term,wxt]);' >> ~/.maxima/maxima-init.mac

and then restart Maxima. FYI, I've never used this program before, and all this information is coming from the manual that I googled, here: [1]. --Sean 17:08, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Ubuntu Networking

Resolved

Hi all,

I have a couple of computers in our LAN running Ubuntu (8.04 - LTS version), and I was wondering how I could get them to appear in 'My Network'. What I mean is when I go to 'Places -> Network' in Ubuntu, it lists all the windows computers, but not the other ones running Ubuntu. I can verify though that they are on the network (I can access windows shares on our network file-server from all the Ubuntu boxes).

Also, am not sure if its related, I can access remote desktops (VNC, Ubuntu to Ubuntu) using the IP, but not the computername (I tried both ubuntu-box-1 and ubuntu-box-1:0, no dice).

Thanks in advance,

PrinzPH (talk) 07:14, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Not sure if it will help but with a windows network when i want a windows computer to show up on the network i would first have to configure the firewall to allow it to be seen on the network...– Elliott  07:20, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I believe what you do is this: right-click a folder you want to share in Nautilus (your home folder for instance), click "Sharing options", select "Share this folder" and "Guest access" and press ok. It should now show up on your windows boxes. I don't think you need to do anything else, it works fine for me 83.250.227.11 (talk) 07:42, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

BTW, your computer will show up under the network name of the computer, and under that the share name you selected for the folder. So, for instance, me, I name all my computers after characters from sitcoms. So if I open my windows computer (Martin, old and a little slow) shows my two Linux boxes, Niles and Frasier. (and before you ask, yes, my router is called Daphne, as it facilitates communication between Frasier, Niles and Martin) 83.250.227.11 (talk) 07:54, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedians never fail :). *227.11 above pointed me in the right direction, attempting to share a drive Ubuntu prompted me to install the Samba (software) package and everything is working now. Thanks :) PrinzPH (talk) 09:58, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Relationship between compilers and OSes

I know that compilers need to be made to compile in certain ways depending on the OS: for example, the executable etc created need to be of the appropriate format for the OS. But it also seems that it goes further than this because when an OS is created system calls which are used to allow programs ways of doing certain things, am i right? If so doesn't this mean that if a new OS was made by someone they'd also have o create a compiler that knows how to make use of these system calls? --RMFan1 (talk) 08:53, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I think the definition of which system calls are which are provided by the header files you include (e.g. unistd.h for POSIX system calls), and so the library implementation and the header files may differ across different OSs. But I don't think the compiler itself cares. --71.106.173.110 (talk) 09:52, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, much of the work is done by the OS's loader, which is mostly concerned with interpreting the various sections of the ELF, COFF, ECOFF, MZ, NE, or whatever format it expects executables to be in. There's no reason why a given OS loader can't load from a variety of different formats (for a while Linux kernels could load both the old a.out and the newer ELF format), athough most don't. For most binaries getting the right format is mostly done by the linker rather than the compiler. 71.106.173.110 is correct in noting that syscalls, like library calls, should be called from the library rather than done by the compiler itself. The only things I know of where the compiler of a regular application does stuff that's OS specific are weird corners that depend on how a given OS arranges memory, stacks, and occasionally register usage - trampolines, exception handlers, and debugging support spring to mind. Mimetic Polyalloy (talk) 14:21, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

In windows for example, there are certain function in C for creating windows. What is it that happens when such a function is compiled in C: does the function compile into binary instructions that directly create the windows, or is it more like a reference to functions already in the windows OS that are called when the program is run? —Preceding unsigned comment added by RMFan1 (talk • contribs) 20:05, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

The latter. If you look at the assembler output of your program, you'll see a function call like:

call SomeWindowDrawingRoutine

and not actual window-drawing stuff, unless you've written that yourself. --Sean 23:02, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. This brings me back to what I was trying to ask: since functions like these are already compiled in windows, how can an application access it when it is run. When a compiler for windows is created, it must need to specify where in windows a function like SomeWindowDrawingRoutine is stored because otherwise the function call is meaningless, am I right? For example if I created and compiled a simple hello world program that used a HelloWorld function to output "Hello World" I could not expect to call the same function in another program. Thus, to me, there seems to be a relationship between OSes and compilers where before programs can be created for an OS a compiler must be created specifically for the OS to allow programs to call such functions as the ones described. I'm sorry if this is confusing but explaining my question is proving quite hard. --RMFan1 (talk) 22:37, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

The program calls SomeWindowDrawingRoutine in a library which must be known to the linker (and to the compiler proper by means of header files). The SomeWindowDrawingRoutine then executes the actual system call which can be by interrupt or other means. See also Application Programming Interface and Application Binary Interface. Icek (talk) 09:15, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Laptop or netbook

I'm thinking of buying a laptop for school, what would offer the most ease of use a leptop or a netbook? I need it for web browsing, typing documents and playing the occasional game, such as Star Trek Armada. thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.80.240.66 (talk) 11:39, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

If it's "for school", consider how much replacing it would cost if it's stolen, and how you feel about carrying it around. The rest is rather a matter of taste. Me, I hate keyboards that are even slightly smaller than standard: my number of typos balloons. But maybe I'm unusual here. Morenoodles (talk) 12:22, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

In my experience, if you get something that weighs more than a textbook you will not take it around—it'll stay locked at your desk your entire time. If you get something that weighs comparable to a textbook, and is about the same size, then you can bring it anywhere. This means you can't get the one with the mondo huge display, for example—you'll just end up not using it as a laptop at all. Just my experience with this stuff, watching how other students in school used (or didn't) their laptops. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 14:32, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

If you're willing to forgo the playing games thing, personally I think that a tiny little netbook like an Asus Eee PC is great for this. It's very cheap (especially if you go with Linux) and it's very tiny, so you can take it with you anywhere. It's not perfect, it has some drawbacks. If you have big ape hands, it might be hard to type, but I've found that you get used to it pretty quickly (in fact, I'm typing this very response on an Eee PC, and I can type basically as fast on this as on any other keyboard, it's not really a big deal after a few days). It doesn't have stellar battery life, so you probably will have to find a way to recharge it between classes (this is more or less going to be an issue with most laptops). But it really is very useful for exactly what you want to do, pick it up from your bag, write some notes, check your email, etc. And if it does get stolen, it's not the huge monetary loss that it would be had you bought a MacBook Air. That is what I'd recommend (it's not going to be playing any fancy schmancy Star Trek games though) Belisarius (talk) 17:08, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Your best bet might be to buy a low end laptop (maybe off of ebay?) and upgrade that as you need it.– Vector Eng. Inc.  19:58, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

If moneys not an issue you can get some very small laptops these days, almost as small as netbooks but with full features you'd expect from standard sized laptops. You might also like to look into Tablet PCs which can be less unwieldy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.87 (talk) 20:13, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

If you are looking for a gaming laptop, all the ones I've seen are huge and heavy. The things that are left out to make laptops small and light, are the very things that make for a good gaming experience. You might find games will run on a small laptop, but they will run slowly with poor graphics and sound. I would go with the advice above, get something small and cheap to take to school. Astronaut (talk) 12:46, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

dwight cavendish

Does an STB manufacturer chip manufacturer, or cable/satellite service provider has to pay a license fee for using dwight cavendish copy protection system. Krisfriend (talk) 13:36, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I do not know for sure, but it seems very likely. It is not an open source package, so there is likely some kind of pay-to-use agreement... since, you know, business are there to make money after all. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 19:29, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

VRML editors

Hi,

I need to build a simple city in VRML, to be used with Matlab.

Which VRML editor would be the best? Matlab's one isn't so much appealing... What about Google SketchUp Pro (expensive) or Flux Studio?

Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.194.8.73 (talk) 15:38, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I used VrmlPad for a while when I did a lot of VRML, and found it worthwhile (but someone else paid for it). Nowadays I use Emacs for everything, and there is appropriately a VRML mode. It's old and not feature-rich, but it does the basics of indentation and commenting, which helps a lot. I find a version that seems to try to work with FSF Emacs, as well as a somewhat cleaned-up version specifically for XEmacs. I think I made my own version from one of those that had some improvement (at least to highlighting); if you're interested I can make it available, but I don't have it to hand just now. There is also an even simpler built-in vrml-generic-mode available in the generic-x package in FSF Emacs. The site I linked first there has a long page on tools for building VRML that you might find useful. --Tardis (talk) 00:05, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your help! I will have a look at it, and, thanks for the offer about your improvement, but finally I think I will use Flux Studio anyway... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.194.8.73 (talk) 10:30, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Seemingly random underlining of letters in computer programs

Resolved

 – Dendodge Talk^Contribs 16:42, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Various programs I use have seemingly random letters underlined - for example, Firefox uses:

File Edit View History ...

and I have seen a similar thing in Microsoft Word. Even websites are exhibiting this, such as our very own Bugzilla - what does this mean? It's not always the first letters of the words, and pressing the underlined letters on my keyboarddoesn't seem to do anything. Dendodge Talk^Contribs 16:34, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

They're keyboard shortcuts ... If you hit the alt key, then the underlined letter, it highlights that menu item. — Ched (talk) 16:40, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Ah, thanks! Dendodge Talk^Contribs 16:42, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Hiding my screen with VNC

Within Ubuntu, using VNC i can connect to my home computer, the problem is that anyone at home will be able to see whats on my screen, is there a way that i can remotely hide this? Thank you – Elliott  17:55, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Just to clarify, I have 2 computers, one at home, one at work, the one at home is running Ubuntu, i have already set that one up as a VNC server. And i can already connect using the computer at work (running XP). The thing i like about Remote Desktop Protocol is that i can access my home computer from my work computer and no one at home will see what i am doing, they will only see the log in screen indicating that a user is logged in. The only problem is that this is a Windows protocol and thus can not be implemented in Linux (that is, unless we want to start paying for Linux). Is there away that i can do this with VNC? Thank you – Elliott  18:22, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

To run an RDP client on linux use rdesktop and to run an RDP server on linux use XRDP. 87.113.74.22 (talk) 18:26, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Oh, thats spiffy! ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 18:29, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Actually, that's the RDP behavior only on certain versions of Windows as the server, e.g. Windows Server 2003. On others, like Windows XP Pro, you only get to connect to the console session by default. And even on Windows Server 2003 there are ways to connect to the console session too.

I am sure that there are ways to start a separate login session on your Linux. It appears that Tight VNC server can do this[2]; and I am sure that other VNC servers can be configured to do this also.

However, I prefer the NX protocol for connecting to Linux. It is inherently secure and much faster than VNC. --76.167.241.45 (talk) 19:59, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

You could take your computer screen with you, or even take it's power cord / vga cable. – Vector Eng. Inc.  20:12, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

You can tunnel X through SSH and launch KDE or Gnome. I have done this before, but I don't suggest it. It is terribly slow. Instead, tunnel X and launch the GUI apps you need from the command line. Only those windows will send traffic over SSH, not the whole desktop. This will give you the advantage of connecting to the remote computer without having the remote computer display anything about there being a connection. In fact, you can do this while someone is using the remote computer. -- kainaw™ 16:29, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

CPU test

Resolved

Hey guys, I'm looking for a portable application that can go on a USB drive and will benchmark the CPU speed of the computer it's on. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.87 (talk) 20:09, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

A quick google search turned up this, It sais it's a standalone program(meaning it can run off of a usb drive). But what i would do is install linux on that USB drive and install a CPU benmark program under linux, Then when i wanted to test a computer's cpu i would restart in to linux, that way linux has the CPU's full attention, as does the benchmark test. Hope this helps. – Elliott  20:16, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Oh, and heres the google search, if it helps.– Elliott  20:18, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

That's exactly the kind of thing I was looking for, thanks.

Verizon Phones

Hi, my 2 year Verizon Wireless contract expires in March and I am planning on getting a new phone. I was looking at the LG VX8350 and I was going to get it. Verizon just came out with what seems to be its replacement, the VX8360. I would still rather get the VX8350, but does anyone know if I would still be able to get it on March 1st if its replacement is already out? Thanks a lot! Grango242 (talk) 20:49, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't know about Verizon in particular, but here in the UK new phones are initially available only to contract customers. Their predecessors then move down one step in the "rankings" to become free to contract customers and available for the first time to pre-pay customers. For a Verizon specific answer, it might be better to contact the sales dept. directly. Astronaut (talk) 12:32, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Ok, thanks.71.172.225.224 (talk) 02:18, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

How to use Process Explorer and Logparser?

I have the file logfile.etl on my XP Home computer, which rapidly keeps getting bigger although sometimes it goes back to 0kb. I think the file was created when I tried to use Bootvis and some other similar boot log program to try to see why my computer will only boot in safe mode (I have done several antivirus/malware scans etc etc).

How can I use Process Explorer to find out which program is controlling it please? I have not been able to find any simple step-by-step instructions anywhere. (I have tried using unlocker1.8.7.exe but it seems to require downloading a 20MB file and doing complicated things to make it work. WhatLockMe did not work either).

I would like to use Logparser to look at logfile.etl, in the hope that I will be able to see what makes my computer freeze during the xp logo screen in a normal boot. What would I need to do in simple step-by-step instructions please? 89.243.214.67 (talk) 22:35, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I have still not been able to find any instructions for Process Explorer - the Help file did not help. But I was able to stop the process, whatever it was, and rename the file using the tracelog fix on this page: http://mike-devlin.com/windows/ I still want to use Logparser to view its contents, but I'm still mystified by how to use it. 78.149.216.108 (talk) 20:43, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Find > Find Handle or DLL... Type in logfile.etl and Search. --wj32 ^t/c 07:53, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I assume you mean: look in the menu of Process Explorer, etc. I have done that, and all the response I got was something called "System: 4" as far as I recall. Which told me nothing. I was expecting it would show an exe or com file, so "4" is notr very helpful. And, although I used Bootvis to turn off tracing, which means I could delete logfile.etl, and then I uninstalled Bootvis, I've just noticed that another logfile.etl has spontaneously appeared. Despite Bootvis having been uninstalled, it will not delete, so I'd still like to find out where it comes from. 78.146.105.198 (talk) 00:30, 14 February 2009 (UTC)