-
If your filing cabinet, safe, and Rolodex solution is still satisfactory to you, then it sounds like the only extra benefit a dedicated machine would be providing is “a browser bookmarked with the necessary sites all setup for the admin”. That’s easily achieved with a portable browser on a USB stick — which I’d hazard to guess your administrator would probably prefer to hassling with an unfamiliar, dedicated machine.
There are portable versions of Chrome and Firefox, as well as an assortment of some of the browser forks. These simply download and extract to a folder, which could be stored on a USB stick. Then just plug in the USB stick, open the folder and double-click the .exe to start the browser in a self-contained instance with its own bookmarks. You can even do this on a machine that already has non-portable versions of the same browsers installed (though I wouldn’t recommend trying to launch both the portable and non-portable at the same time).
And if you’re not storing any of your passwords in the browser, then the USB stick doesn’t even need to be encrypted, so you can skip Veracrypt.
If the stick will hold any sensitive info, though, you’ll want to encrypt it … and note there’s even a portable version of Veracrypt, which you can store right on the USB stick so the user won’t be required to install it on their personal machine.
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
-
You don’t say where you are, but I’ll assume in the US.
I doubt you’re getting any interference from the nearby cell tower — the frequencies are way too far apart. OTA TV (both VHF and UHF) are well below 1GHz, while cell phones are typically 2.4/5/6 GHz. If it’s a multi-purpose tower, though, it may also have antennas (or be adding new antennas) for other services (such as police or emergency services), some of which might use frequencies closer to the OTA-TV range.
As for antenna choice, there are a lot of variables to consider — such as indoor or outdoor? Condo or single-family home? VHF or UHF channels? City, suburbs, or rural? How far away are you from the TV transmitters (this can have an impact on signal strength and directional vs omnidirectional needs)? What type of surrounding terrain/environment (hills, tall buildings, etc)?
Try looking at AntennaWeb or Antennas Direct to help with your research. Both of these sites let you enter an address or zipcode and will tell you how far away the TV stations are, and in which direction, and give you recommendations. Don’t rely on it too literally because you have to make adjustments for your own local environment, but it’s a good starting point.
-
Count me as another long-time user of the Notepad++ portable version. I use portable versions for everything when they’re available — including browsers. (The only browsers “installed” are what came with Windows, but I never use them. I only use portable browsers.) A side benefit is this also makes imaging/restoring the OS so much simpler and less frequent, since many of the apps I use are kept separate from the OS.
I use mostly portable apps. Doesn’t contaminate the OS.
I like that characterization. That’s precisely why I’ve long preferred using portable apps whenever possible, but I never summarized it as well.
-
I’ve got archives of data files going back 40 years, and buried in there I have some old .wks files from Works 2.0, and some .wks/.xls/.wps files from Works 4.0. I tested them in LibreOffice 7.6, and all seem to open perfectly well.
My suggestion would be to skip trying to reinstall your old copy of Works and just switch to LibreOffice. That would also give you the option of resaving your old Works files in more modern formats, if you want.
Note LibreOffice has a portable version, so you can test run LibreOffice to confirm how it handles your own Works files before fully committing. The portable version doesn’t get “installed” on your computer. It downloads to a folder (perhaps even to just a folder on your desktop), and when you’re done testing you just toss the folder and don’t have to uninstall anything.
2 users thanked author for this post.
-
Google Calendar exports in standard .ics format, so there isn’t anything unique or special about it. In your web browser, go to your Google Calendar settings, and click the “Export” button. It should export as a .zip file containing your .ics file.
The .ics file is an ordinary text file, so drag it into a text editor (Windows Notepad will do) and you should be able to examine the contents. Your calendar events will be shown as a series of “VEVENT” entries, such as this example (with PII removed):
BEGIN:VCALENDAR PRODID:-//Google Inc//Google Calendar 70.9054//EN VERSION:2.0 CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH X-WR-CALNAME: X-WR-TIMEZONE: BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART: DTEND: DTSTAMP: UID: CREATED: LAST-MODIFIED: SEQUENCE: STATUS: SUMMARY: TRANSP: END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR
Note: if you have multiple calendars (my Google acct has 5 calendars), you need to export each calendar separately.
Note: if you want to import a calendar, I believe it has to be in .ics format, so don’t try to import the .zip file. Extract the .ics file and import that.
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
LHiggins,
To help bring a bit of focus to the suggestions you’re getting from others, let’s make sure you understand there are two ways to tackle your problem. For discussion, here’s a diagram from the new G4SE gateway’s manual:
As you know, the power brick in the middle converts the AC current/voltage from the wall to the requisite DC current/voltage the gateway needs. But of course, that power brick doesn’t stay on if the AC power goes out — hence your quest.
It sounds like the solution you think you need is to replace the power brick with some type of UPS device that will match the AC requirements on one end and the DC requirements on the other end.
But a different solution is to keep the power brick and add a UPS between it and the wall outlet. That’s the solution Dana suggested upthread. That way, the UPS does not need to match the DC volts/amps required by the gateway, it merely needs to provide uninterruptable AC power to the gateway’s power brick and let the power brick do the converting. Those can be much more cost effective than the first option.
-
Really? The office was closed to the public and no telephone calls were taken on Fridays?
Like the comment I was responding to, you’re jumping to conclusions.
If you really must know, all phone and in-office visits, if you needed to do more than just pick up or drop off a form, were by appt only. The office was open Mon-Fri to walk-in or phone-in and setup an appt. Those appts would be for a future Mon-Thu call-back or in-office visit for personalized help.
But you’re missing the point. The point is just because Elon isn’t aware what every single employee is doing doesn’t mean they aren’t working or that they aren’t being tracked or monitored or reporting to someone.
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
Oh the horrors of reporting one’s work efforts. Incredible this wasn’t expected/standard practice
And what makes you think it wasn’t?
I worked for the federal govt for 15 years, and fully 20% of our time was devoted to reporting. That’s no exaggeration. Monday through Thursday was devoted to serving the public, both in office and telephone traffic. All 8 hours of each and every Friday were spent tallying and reporting what we did the other four days of the week, right down to how long each task took.
We were reporting to our supervisors and office manager, though. POTUS had no idea what I or any of my coworkers did individually.
-
Actually, I forgot that gmail (as well as outlook.com, I believe) still support “app passwords“. I just checked and I still have a laptop with an old version of Thunderbird — with no OAuth2 support — that still accesses my gmail via an app password.
That might be something Chris B might want to explore. I think it should work if you create an app password and use that with Outlook 2010.
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
-
Unless the 25.46GB partition contains something useful that can’t be replaced, I’m thinking that the most expedient approach will be to delete the partition and extend the OS drive into both that and the unallocated space.
I suspect that’s where you’ll ultimately end up.
There’s something very definitely odd about the partition layout currently on the original 120GB SSD (screenshot in #2742158). I would have a hard time believing it came from the factory that way — and whatever may have happened to them since could have left them corrupted. (You haven’t had occasion to boot those partitions, so you don’t really know.) Cutting your losses now may be the most expedient path forward.
Here are some of the oddities I see.
The three “Logical” volumes will be inside a single “Extended” partition — IOW, the 120GB’s primary partition table will still show only 4 partitions: “System”, “OS”, “Extended”, and “HP_Recovery”. (In Windows Disk Management, the “Extended” will be designated by a green border surrounding the three Logical volumes, as illustrated in EricB’s example in #2741145.
That’s not odd, but what is odd is having a Primary partition following the Extended partition.
Technically that’s not illegal, but it is seen rarely enough that, IMHE, a lot of third-party imaging/cloning utilities have been coded to expect an Extended partition only at the end of a disk, and not embedded amidst Primary partitions. All sorts of havoc can ensue if the utility misinterprets the partitions, and that becomes more likely if some of the Primaries or Logical volumes are of ID types “unknown” to Windows. (See here for one example I wrote about 15 years ago.)
Second, you said two partitions have 0x83 IDs, which denotes linux “ext3/4” partitions. (That’s likely the source of Macrium’s confusion.) I can’t see any reason HP would ship it from the factory like that, so I wonder if someone tinkered with linux on this drive? That might also explain the odd transformation of partition 3 from a (most probably) single Primary partition into three Logical partitions. Microsoft OSes have always had a love/hate relationship with Logical partitions, but linux has no problem and will blissfully boot from Logicals.
Third, I have no idea what a partition type 0xEF represents. I’ve been mucking around inside disk sectors and MBR partition tables for 40 years now, but I haven’t come across that one before.
TLDR; I think your screenshot is probably not the partition layout HP originally shipped with the machine. That leaves the possibility that whatever subsequently happened in the past may have left some partitions no longer viable. You could continue trying to troubleshoot them, but what’s to be gained? They probably have little or no value this long after the original shipping date anyway, so perhaps it’s more practical to ditch them and reclaim the disk space for your C: partition.
4 users thanked author for this post.
-
PKCano & PaulT, Disk Management will identify a Microsoft Recovery partition in its display. I showed this in post #2741267
@EricB, not to sound too dismissive, but it’s well known that Windows Disk Management is not the sharpest tool in the shed. That’s why better tools like Mini-Tool and Aomei are so popular — and so much more flexible.As you correctly pointed out in #2741267, the usual partition descriptor for a MS Recovery partition is type 0x27, but I believe that is the one and only criterion DM uses to make its determination, and not by looking at the actual contents of the partition. It’s plausible partition 3 could still be a WinRE partition but mislabeled as other than 0x27.
According to the results Cybertooth posted in #2741471, it’s evident to me that PKCano’s assessment is right. The WinRE partition is partition 3, and accessible at boot time via F11 (scan code 0x85, or decimal 133).
So why is Cybertooth’s DM not showing partition 3 as a MS Recovery partition, as EricB’s post #2741267 suggests it should? And secondarily, why is it showing the “HP_Recovery” partition with a drive letter, as Paul T noticed? I suspect Macrium mishandling might be responsible for both issues. It’s been many years since I’ve studied a HP-style MBR partition table, but ISTR HP used non-standard type descriptors for those extra partitions. Perhaps that has confused Macrium. Macrium can backup and restore the contents because it has the sophistication to look inside the partitions and determine the actual file system, but if it’s getting confused by the type codes in the original partition table it might be reconfiguring the new disk’s partition table incorrectly.
It might be useful to look at and compare the actual partition tables on both the original and clone disks, but that would depend on how much more exploration Cybertooth wants to do.
Meanwhile, I’d be interested to see if PKCano’s remedy in #2741962 works. Logically, it sounds to me like it should work.
And if it doesn’t, my Plan B would be to boot from the Partition Wizard boot media and finish the repartitioning work from there, since WinRE should not be active when booting from external media.
A third alternative would be to wipe the new disk and start the restore process over again, as PL1 suggested in #2741140 and #2741969. I can’t imagine that not working.
But PKCano’s remedy seems comparatively easy, so I’d try that first.
-
I do have some experience with Partition Wizard, mainly from creating Windows/Linux dual-boot systems
here’s a screenshot of the backup image partitions when I go to “Explore” the backup image in Macrium Reflect. The mystery partition is highlighted in blue
Hmm, more food for thought …
That screenshot shows Macrium thinks partition 3 is of type “ext”, which normally implies a linux partition. Any chance you experimented with a Windows/Linux dual-boot on this particular system? If so, partition 3 might be a leftover you forgot to delete from those days.
1 user thanked author for this post.
Author
