Kathy's PC Notes

Moving Picasa DB

2010-01-10T16:30:00.015-07:00

I love Picasa, but last night it ate up all the available disk space on drive C while rebuilding its database after I moved my portable tablet PC out of range of the server where most of my photos are. Picasa should know better, but online I saw other people complaining of Picasa rebuilding its database for photos stored externally. Sigh.

Now I'm trying to scrounge up more space on drive C yet again. I have a Toshiba M200 tablet PC running Windows XP.

hiberfil.sys

While backing up some files (using TeraCopy) before working on the Picasa DB, I decided to disable hibernation, hoping that the hiberfil.sys on drive C, about 1.6 GB, would be freed up.

We reimaged my PC recently, so I had the default settings. I went to the Control Panel, selected TOSHIBA Power Saver, and on the Basic Setup tab for each profile I looked to see if hibernation was checked. It was not. However, on the Setup Action tab, the "When I close the lid" option was set to Hibernate. I changed that to Standby.

While I was there, I enabled "Prompt for password when resuming from Standby or Hibernation" to be more secure.

Also on the Setup Action tab, the "Critical battery" "Action after alarm" was Hibernate, so I set that to Standby.

I decided to click "Setup Options" and "Change the Power Saver Profile automatically when the power source changes." I changed the option for Battery power source from Normal to Long Life.

I rebooted, but the hiberfil.sys was still there, so I also used the following instructions from the TOSHIBA Power Saver Help to disable hibernation.

Open [Control Panel], click [Performance and Maintenance]
Click [Power Options]
Select the [Hibernate] tab and check [Enable hibernation]
Click [OK]

After I disabled hibernation and rebooted, the hiberfil.sys was gone.

Picasa DB

I backed up C:\Documents and Settings first, in case anything went wrong with creating an NTFS junction point.

Update: Things did not go well. Do a Picasa backup, too!

Backup

Some of the files didn't copy since they were in use, so I stopped all applications and used Beyond Compare 2 to find and copy the missed files, although 12 UsrClass and NTUSER files still couldn’t copy. After a cursory glance at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/811151 and http://support.microsoft.com/kb/911682, I decided not to worry about backing up those files.

NTFS Junction Point

I downloaded the Junction tool from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896768.aspx. I couldn’t decide where to put it, so I just put it in the "C:\" directory. I opened a command prompt (pressed Windows logo key+R and then entered "cmd") and entered the following to see if I already had any junctions on either drive.

C:\junction -s c:\

C:\junction -s g:\

I did find some but not anywhere that worried me, so I exited all applications to prepare for the next step. (Junction points only work for local drives.)

On my LOCAL G drive, I then created a "G:\Documents and Settings\Kathy\Local Settings\Application Data\" directory and used Beyond Compare 2 to move the Google subdirectory there from the "C:\Documents and Settings\Kathy\Local Settings\Application Data\" directory. Some files in the Google\Chrome\User Data\Default directory didn’t copy, so I renamed the C:\Documents and Settings\Kathy\Local Settings\Application Data\Google directory to get rid of it.

Then I entered the following four commands for Junction to create the symbolic link. Enter the commands on one line each, even if below they wrap. I couldn’t get the fourth command to work with the full path spec, even with quotes, so that’s why the first two commands were necessary.

cd /d "G:\Documents and Settings\Kathy\Local Settings\Application Data\"

cd /d "C:\Documents and Settings\Kathy\Local Settings\Application Data\"

md Google

c:\junction c:google g:google

NTFS ACLs

Tim had been experimenting with a different tool on his PC while I was still doing my backup. I sent him the following text from http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=205524.

Usage Recommendations
NOTE: Microsoft recommends that you follow these recommendations closely when you use junction points:
Use NTFS ACLs to protect junction points from inadvertent deletion.
Use NTFS ACLs to protect files and directories that are targeted by junction points from inadvertent deletion or other file system operations.
Never delete a junction point by using Explorer, a del /s command, or other file system utilities that walk recursively into directory trees. These utilities affect the target directory and all subdirectories.
Use caution when you apply ACLs or change file compression in a directory tree that includes NTFS junction points.
Do not create namespace cycles with NTFS or DFS junction points.
Put all your junction points in a secure location in a namespace where you can test them out in safety, and where other users will not mistakenly delete them or walk through them.

And Tim found http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/57489-45-setup-list-windows, which had the following required steps.

If you have Windows XP Professional, disable simple file sharing to get access to the Security tab and ACLs:
Open My Computer and click Tools | Folder Options | View.
Scroll to the end of the advanced settings.
Un-check "Use simple file sharing (recommended)".

So I did the above once.

Then I did the following twice: once each for the Google directory on BOTH local drives. I’m not sure the steps to add the user “Everyone” are necessary, but I believe that making “Everyone” unable to delete the source and target directory is key.

Right-click on the Google directory, select Properties, and go to the Security tab.
If “Everyone” is not a user name already, click on Add, enter “Everyone” for the object name to select, and click OK.
Click on Advanced, click on Add, enter “Everyone” for the object name to select, and click OK.
For “Apply onto,” select “This folder only.”
Click the Clear All button.
Click to put a checkmark in the Deny box for “Delete.”
Click OK until all the dialog boxes are closed. (Click Yes for the warning, too.)

I hope I got all this last stuff—the scary, important stuff—right. As usual, this all took way longer than I expected.

Trial Run Failed

Google Chrome ran fine.

I tried running Picasa, but nothing happened. I logged off and on and tried running Picasa, but still nothing happened. I tried rebooting and still had no luck. I have to give up for tonight.

SpaceMonger shows .temp files in C:\Documents and Settings\Kathy\Local Settings\Temp\Picasa3. Maybe tomorrow I’ll see if I need to do something about those.

Later Experimentation

I renamed the "C:\Documents and Settings\Kathy\Local Settings\Temp\Picasa3" directory, but Picasa still wouldn't start.

After several experiments, I noticed a new file created in the "G:\Documents and Settings\Kathy\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Picasa2\temp\LifescapeUpdater" directory. So I renamed the Picasa2 directory.

Then Picasa started! However, it behaved as if it had no database. Tim suggested I stop Picasa and copy my database from my backup. I decided to copy the contacts and buttons directory, too, so I wouldn't have to reconfigure all that. So I copied the following directories to "C:\Documents and Settings\Kathy\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Picasa2":

buttons
contacts
db3

The database directory took forever to copy. When it was done, Picasa wouldn't start again. (Like before, I'd click on the Picasa icon, and nothing would happen. I didn't even see a Picasa splash window.)

So copying the good database from the backup was a waste of time.

I deleted "G:\Documents and Settings\Kathy\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Picasa2\db3" and then Picasa 3 started, and I planned to let it scan for photos.

However, I happened to notice that a recently edited favorite photo didn't have all my edits. I nearly had a heart attack, since I have tens of thousands of edited photos.

I stopped Picasa, in case that might help reduce the amount of lost editing. I have started a backup of all my photos directories (local and external). That looks like it's going to take about 18 hours. Then I plan to cross my fingers and follow the directions to rebuild the Picasa database.

Toshiba Graphics Adapter Drivers Make PCs Obsolete

2009-12-19T00:26:00.003-07:00

Today my brother gave me an early Christmas present when he saw that I was going to start working on some digital photos. He gave me a big wide screen monitor! Yay!

However, my Toshiba M200 will not support the new monitor’s 1920x1080 resolution. Sigh.

So I thought I’d document my research tonight.

The M200 display adapter is an NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5200 32M/64M (driver version 46.44, dated 2004-04-15), and 1920x1080 is not one of the supported resolutions. I looked for a newer driver, but the NVIDIA website says, “The manufacturer of this system requires that you download the driver for your GPU from their support site.”

Looking on the Toshiba website, I only found that other people were also looking for an updated driver with wide screen resolutions--and failing. Apparently Toshiba makes driver changes specific to their notebooks but doesn’t bother to keep updating the drivers to keep them from becoming obsolete.

This NVIDIA link (http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_32667.html) says that the 173.14.xx driver supports GeForce FX Go5200 32M/64M, but I can’t find any Windows or XP downloads for 173.14.xx. (The downloads appear to be for Unix/Linux.)

Gave up on Using HP 6980 Wirelessly

2009-11-12T22:47:00.002-07:00

The printer no longer has an IP address, and I'm not willing to string an Ethernet cable across the house again, and Steve and I have wasted enough time on this printer again, so I'm giving up on using it wirelessly again.

Reconnect HP DeskJet 6980 Wireless

2009-10-11T16:48:00.003-07:00

My HP Deskjet 6980 printer would no longer connect wirelessly after we changed routers recently. After much floundering, we finally got it working again. I hope--but am not sure--that I recorded all the pertinent steps for Windows XP here, in case I need to do this again in the future.

Connect a network cable to the printer.
Print a test page to make sure the printer has an IP address other than 0.0.0.0. (Press the second button from the right on the front of the printer.)
If the PC can't connect to the network, right-click the network icon in the system tray and choose View Available Wireless Networks, Change advanced settings, and Wireless Networks tab. Remove the network and add it back. Hopefully then the PC will successfully connect.
Select View Available Wireless Networks, Set up a wireless network for a home or small office, Add new computers or devices to the network, and Use a USB flash drive.
After the wizard says, "Your network settings are saved to the flash drive," I click on the Safely Remove Hardware icon in the system tray twice for the flash drive, since it's not successful the first time.
Then remove the flash drive from the PC and plug it into the front of the printer and wait for the printer to flash all its lights.
Remove the flash drive from the printer but do NOT plug it back into the PC and do NOT click Next in the wireless network setup wizard. (Otherwise, I had to delete the network and add it back to get network connectivity.)
In a browser window, go to the wired IP address for the printer (specified on the printed test page), run the wireless wizard, and print another test page to find the wireless IP address.
From Windows, open the properties for the printer and go to the Ports tab. Take a look at the port the wizard added (with the checked checkbox). Add a new port like that one but use the wireless IP address.

It sure seems like it should have been easier than this. Does anyone know a shorter procedure? The HP printer software has caused me so many nightmares that I only want to run it as a last resort. I'm glad I didn't have to reinstall HP software for this.

An HP web page helped, though.

Reimaging, Again

2009-08-09T19:30:00.002-07:00

As I blogged before, the external CD/DVD drive that I originally bought with the tablet PC bit the dust and we replaced it with a different brand. The next time I needed to use a bootable CD, I found out that my PC can only boot with a select few CD/DVD drives, and my replacement was not one of them.

Tim and I were going to install BootIt™ Next Generation on my PC but ran into problems and decided to just reimage the PC again. Fortunately, our friend Bruce let us borrow his external CD drive that works as a bootable drive for my PC. However, after trying several different bootable disks and getting varying results—sometimes a successful boot but usually not—we are thinking that Bruce’s drive may be getting flakey. Also, Tim read online that both USB plugs have to be connected to a powered USB port for the Targus PADVW010, the drive Bruce loaned us, to work properly.

That was not the fatal problem, though. After spending quite a bit of time researching creating a bootable SD for my PC (again), I happened to look at the contents of the recovery disk that came with my PC. I was browsing around in files, and when I looked in RECOVERY.TXT, I saw this: “THIS UTILITY WILL NOT WORK IF YOU HAVE FORMATTED OR CONVERTED YOUR C: DRIVE AS NTFS!!!!”

My boot partition was NTFS. Sigh.

WARNING: The following notes may not be completely accurate because we tried so many different things.

Today, Tim ran the Western Digital (WD) tools from a CD to reformat my new WD 320 GB hard drive as FAT32 so that we could use the Toshiba M200 tablet PC recovery CD to put an image onto the drive. He specified just a 10 GB boot partition so that the format would go quickly. For this part of the procedure, Tim had installed the 320 GB drive into the second hard drive slot in his Dell PC because we couldn’t get the WD tools to work on my PC.

Then Tim put the WD drive back in my PC. However, the USB cables and my PC’s power cords interfered with each other, so we had to attach a powered USB hub to connect them all.

We booted up with the Toshiba recovery CD that came with the M200 and we saw the prompts to start the recovery. We had previously been able to get this far. After the initial warning screen and our acceptance of the installation, a pause (a couple minutes?) had us a bit worried. But then a Norton Ghost screen appeared. Yippee! We had reformatted with a 10 GB boot partition, but the recovery disk overwrote that with an image size of about 38154 MB, of which 2545 MB was used.

After the recovery disk finished its work, we booted the recovered hard drive in my PC and got past the initial Windows startup questions. Then Tim removed the hard drive and put it back in his Dell PC. He ran Image for DOS to create an image of this clean recover configuration. That image is on an external hard drive as a small, nice, clean backup that I can use even without Bruce's CD/DVD drive.

Once we had the 10 GB baseline partition, we then made a copy of it, and began updating Windows (e.g., got Service Pack 3). That took at least three reboots and update steps.

Normally we would want BootIt Next Generation to be the partition manager, but due to my PC's apparent BIOS limit of 137 GB, we can’t make partitions above that point, so over half the drive is unused.

We found that we could see the unallocated space with Image for Windows, but we couldn’t do anything with the space. Image for Windows sees all four primary partitions being used and no extended partitions. One possible solution might be to make one primary partition into an extended partition. Then Windows might allow us to get to the rest of the space.

We had hoped to get farther along today, but once again we’re giving up for this weekend. We still hope to find a way to create a partition for me to store my data separate from my programs.

NOTE: The WD tools will not boot from CD on my PC.

Converting .ISO to .IMG... Maybe

2009-08-02T19:55:00.003-07:00

I don’t know if this really worked, but I want to save my notes since I had such a hard time figuring out how to use WinImage. I had already seen what looked like a complicated process for creating a bootable SD, so when I realized that my PC came with an “SD Memory Boot Utility,” I decided to try it.

However, it wanted a floppy disk .img file, and I had a .iso file for a CD. I read online that sometimes just changing the file extension would work, but the utility still didn’t recognize the file after I changed the .iso extension to .img.

Here’s the procedure I followed that failed but appeared to have promise.

From WinImage, open the ISO file and extract the contents to a local directory.
From WinImage, choose New, File. Since I wanted a size bigger than any listed, I chose a DMF option.
Choose Image, Inject a Folder, and select the folder containing the extracted files.
Chose File, Save As, and select .ima. Something I read online made me think that .ima and .img files are equivalent.

The above procedure didn’t work, though, since the root directory I wanted to create contained more than 16 entries. The WinImage help says, “DMF format has only 16 entries in the root directory…” I couldn’t find enough entries that I thought might not be needed, so I went on to another path… probably another dead end.

Automatic Backup, Finally

2009-08-02T19:49:00.001-07:00

Tim started playing with FreeNAS and installed a terabyte FreeNAS server at my place. Maybe someday I’ll be able to get all my photos, including thousands that I haven’t been able to access for years, there! But we haven’t gotten that far yet.

Tim and I both started using CrashPlan as a free backup service, so I had my local PC data backed up when we decided to work on my PC again—in a way that might require reformatting.

Last night I copied about 50 GB from my PC to the FreeNAS server, and there was one delayed write failure. Uh oh—don’t know what caused that.

Hooray for Tim, SpinRite, and Image for DOS!

2009-08-02T19:43:00.002-07:00

I am once again regretting that I have not been taking notes, thus requiring that I re-learn how to do things I’ve done before, now that I’m trying to re-image my PC again. It’s a Toshiba Portege M200 tablet PC.

Recently, I had a hard disk failure that made my PC unbootable. Horror of horrors! I started having withdrawal symptoms just thinking about my PC-less prospects. My magnificent hero, Tim, used SpinRite to recover my disk, the 80 GB drive that I’d had in the computer since I bought it in 2005. However, SpinRite reported some unrecoverable errors, and we weren’t quite sure of the full integrity of the hard drive.

Then we went to Fry’s Electronics and bought a WD Scorpio Blue 320 GB EIDE notebook hard drive, and Tim used Image for DOS to put the 80 GB hard drive image onto the 320 GB drive—in a partition that was a bit bigger than 80 GB (90 or 100?). I didn’t even know that putting an image onto something a different size was even possible. (Weeks later, we found out that using an NTFS partition for that would be a problem.)

Somewhere in this process, which took most of a weekend, the file system lost track of the rest of the 320 GB, so I have not been able to use the extra space on the notebook hard drive. Tim and I decided to address that problem on a different weekend. I used the PC for a couple weeks like that, but I planned to take Tim’s advice and install BootIt™ Next Generation to set up a clean partition that I could fall back on in the future.

Bonjour Error when Connecting to a Mac Printer via XP

2008-08-10T16:28:00.001-07:00

I reimaged my PC recently, and I have gradually been reinstalling everything I need. Before the reimaging, I had used Apple’s Bonjour for Windows to quickly and easily connect wirelessly to the Brother printer connected to my brother’s Mac.

However, today I spent hours trying to get the printer connected and then surfing for troubleshooting information. The error message Bonjour displayed was, “You do not have sufficient access to your computer to connect to the selected printer.” This error message is apparently normally caused by the PC local security policy for “Devices: Prevent users from installing printer drivers.” My policy was set correctly set to “Disabled,” though.

My brother couldn’t find anything to try changing on his Mac, and it didn’t make sense that the problem was there since we had this working before I reimaged my PC.

However, we decided to try something I found on the web anyway, and it worked. My brother said that step 6 was the key: ‘6) Mac: Set firewall to "Set access for specific services and applications."’

Automatically end processes when shutting down

2008-08-07T11:48:00.002-07:00

My PC was running really slow this morning, so I decided to restart it. Shutting down took forever because I was prompted to end each task one by one. Before I reimaged the hard disk on my PC, I had edited the registry to automatically end tasks at shutdown. Today it took me so long to find what to edit again that I decided this needed to be in my PC notes.

You should know what you’re doing before you edit the registry, since you can really mess things up if you make a mistake. I backed up my registry and then changed HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\AutoEndTasks to 1.

Below are some related Microsoft links.

Updated AutoRun to Open USB Drive Folder

2008-07-18T21:52:00.009-07:00

My solution from yesterday (AutoRun to Deal with USB External Drive "Delayed Write Failed" Problem) was too irritating. I'd double-click on the drive in the Windows Explorer and the power saver utility would run instead of opening a folder of the drive contents.

So I changed the AUTORUN.INF file to run a batch file that opens the folder and runs the power saver. Here are the new contents of the AUTORUN.INF file.

[autorun]
;open=Kathys_Autorun.bat
ShellExecute=Kathys_Autorun.bat
Label=Tim's 500 GB USB External Drive

Here are the contents of the called batch file, Kathys_Autorun.bat. (In the first "paragraph," each line begins with "echo." I'm not going to bother dealing with the word wrap that is happening on the blog page.)

echo off
echo Turn off standby (e.g., switch to the PRESENTATION mode of POWER SAVER)
echo while using an external USB drive to prevent going into standby and
echo thus causing DELAYED WRITE FAILURES.
echo .
echo Better yet, remember to EJECT the USB drive when you are done with it.

REM Bring up an Explorer window for the USB drive.
echo .
echo (1 of 2) Ready to open an Explorer window.
pause
start explorer.exe /select,Kathys_Autorun.bat

REM First try running the Toshiba Power Saver.
REM If that fails, try the Windows Power Saver.
echo .
echo (2 of 2) Ready to run Power Saver.
pause
control.exe TPwrSave.cpl
if %errorlevel% 1 start powercfg.exe /setactive presentation

The batch file displays a message, opens the USB drive folder in explorer, and starts the power saver utility.

I added something to run the Windows power saver if the Toshiba one fails to start. Hopefully someone will let me know if that works.

AutoRun to Deal with USB External Drive "Delayed Write Failed" Problem

2008-07-17T20:49:00.000-07:00

Some time ago, I got a 500 GB USB external drive. At last I could put all my photos in one place. I invested a considerable amount of time using Beyond Compare (which I love) and its Picture Viewer plug-in to get the best version of all my digital photos in one place. Yippee!

That joy was not long-lived, though. I started seeing file error pop-ups from the system tray, and when I saw one that mentioned the MFT, I became alarmed. The Event Viewer showed delayed write failures.

I ran many, many chkdsks before I got a clean one on my C drive. It didn't take many runs to get a clean one on the USB drive. I surfed for a solution to the delayed write problem. The solution that looked best to me--connecting by some means other than the USB cable--wasn't an option. I stopped using the USB drive.

Time passed, and my PC needed to be reimaged. (I'll have to do another post about that.) I copied all the data I wanted to save to my friend Tim's 500 GB USB external drive. After recovering the factory image to my PC's hard drive, I copied certain files from the USB drive back to my C drive, and things looked good.

That is, things looked good until one night I left the external USB hard drive attached, restarted my computer, and let it go into standby. The next morning, I saw two delayed write failure messages for files on the USB drive. The Event Viewer showed that the errors occurred before I logged into Windows.

To my surprise, the Event Viewer showed that the delayed write failures occurred not during the night but when I brought the computer out of standby. (Previously I had seen failures when I was doing large file transfers--moving lots of high-resolution photos.)

I decided that I would no longer allow the PC to go into standby with the USB drive attached. Tim had already come to the conclusion that it's best to eject external firewire drives whenever they are not in use, after he had similar problems with a firewire connection while working on videos. I wanted to prevent accidentally letting my PC go into standby with the USB drive attached.

The first job was to find out how to detect that the external USB drive was attached. After looking at an MSDN article, I decided to use the AUTORUN.INF file. Wikipedia Autorun information also helped.

Next up was to figure out how to disable standby mode, which I normally want enabled. I think most PC users could use the powercfg.exe command line options to disable standby.

However, I have a Toshiba Portege M200, so that didn't work. I have to use the Toshiba Power Saver utility, which is a Control Panel applet. Some surfing revealed how to run a Control Panel applet from the command line. Searching in C:\WINDOWS\system32, I found TPwrSave.cpl, which had the same icon as the Toshiba Power Saver utility.

(I installed TweakUI, but I don't think it meets my needs for this.)

Putting these all together resulted in an AUTORUN.INF text file, containing the following, saved in the top-level directory of the external USB drive. (I hope you don't mind me tailoring to my PC, Tim!)

[autorun]
;open=control.exe /TPwrSave.cpl
ShellExecute=control.exe /TPwrSave.cpl
Label=Tim's 500 GB USB External Drive
UseAutoPlay=1

I would have preferred that the power saver utility come up without having to cancel autoplay and select from the autoplay menu. I also wish I could have used a command line program rather than a GUI applet. I know there's more I could do, but I think I've spent enough time on this today.

If you have a better solution, or have something to add, please comment!