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I like FreeCommander which has been at v2009.02b for a couple of years now which tells you how stable it is. Twin multi-tabbed (if you want them to be) windows and a very useful ‘quick pick’ box at the bottom right of each window which isolates matching files (and turns the pane a choosable colour to remind you that it is active). I have tried xplorer2 in the past but went back to FreeCommander for this feature alone. From what I can see on the TotalCommander page, FreeCommander has lots of the same features as well for free. There seems to be some future development underway (‘XE’) but I am more than happy with 2009.02b.

This is all good stuff but for searching in Windows, there is simply no better program than ‘Find Everything’ – download it from http://www.voidtools.com/ – it’s free, it’s fast, and you don’t need to index your drive. This is on my top-5 essential software list Works with Win XP and Win 7 for sure, maybe others too.

I came to the forum to say exactly the same thing (except that the app is just called “Everything”). There’s also a portable version if you don’t want to install it. It’s one of the first apps I install on a new PC.

I did something similar to this as well (some time ago now) except I left XP on drive C: then installed Win7 beside it (but on a different physical drive) which took drive F:

When I decided that “Win7 is the way to go” I had to use EasyBCD to mess around with my MBR on the F: drive and prevent the dual boot option but this left me with F: as my system drive rather than C:

This is not usually a problem apart from badly-behaved software installers that specify C: rather than looking up the drive from the ‘%’ system variable but I would like to go back to C: as my system drive if it was possible to do so. So, my question is, if I used some kind of ‘image backup’ tool such as Paragon or Acronis True Image, would I be able to take an image, reformat the current F: drive, then restore the image as C: (which now only gets assigned when I plug in a USB key) or am I stuck with F: until a major melt-down forces a reinstall from scratch?

I have LiberKey on a USB key and it keeps itself up to date quite nicely — I used to use portableapps.com but I like Liberkey better because I like the way the self-updater works

I notice that you are using 64-bit — are you sure you have the right printer driver installed? I think that this kind of stuff is related to the capabilities built into the driver as well as the browser so I would consider checking the forums of the printer manufacturer to see if anyone else has been having similar issues.

Regards,

Jim.

RetiredGeek is spot on with his advice… I had to do something similar some time ago using a reporting tool that was not capable of presenting the output in the required format so I started with a standard Windows “FileOpen” box to load in the CSV file then finished with the “SaveAs” function that saved the modified file and therby automatically left the one with the macros in it untouched.

HOWEVER as you seem to be saving the file out as a CSV file as well it seems that formatting is not part of the taskset you want to perform, so I also would suggest looking at a different tool but my one of choice is (open sourse) AutoIT which I have used in the past to extract specific lines of text from a raw logfile and generate SQL statements ready to insert into an Oracle table. It has quite a big set of string mmanipulation functions in it and all the maths operators you need and lots of GUI stuff if you want to make it look pretty as well. I’d be happy to send you the source for the logfile manipulator to look through (assuming that like me — and from your comments about recording macros it sounds like it — you find it useful to learn programming languages by example). As an added bonus you can compile your efforts into a standalone exe file so your colleague would only need the executable to be able to process the CSV file.

Good luck with whatever you decide to use!

Regards,

Jim.

I f you hanker after the good ol’ days of Widows 3.1 (!!!) then Stardock Fences can give you a reasonable facsimile of the old interface but if you want something more up-to-date then go for ObjectDock from the same company (also free) which gives you an Apple-style docking bar at the bottom of your screen which you can use either instead of or as well as the standard Windows 7 toolbar.

I have also tried a similar offering from aqua-soft called XWindows Dock but they broke it with their last “upgrade” so I had to find an alternative and Stardock’s ObjectDock was it — I wouldn’t be without some kind of “group docking” bar now as it cleans up your desktop really well.

For those who might ask “why do I need this”, I have groups for Games, Sound Apps, Video apps, Image Apps and PDF User Manuals for all our domestic and electrical devices just to name a few and it makes finding stuff quickly really easy without the need for some huge new interface or menuing system.

Regards,

Jim.

Hum…. I find it odd that no-one ever seems to mention the Nuance free PDF reader (they are the company that make the OmniPage OCR application)

I think it;’s a nice clean interface and it lets you switch between “hand” mode and “text select” mode really easily (which I do a lot).

Regards,

Jim.

Yet another slightly off-the-wall cause of random cursor movements or, more often, random characters appearing while typing, is that the built-in voice recognition applet has somehow got switched on (usually by an inadvertent hotkey combination because you have to look at the keys while typing like all us non-touch-typists do and missed the pop-up asking if you want to use it!)

Doesn’t happen often but I came across it once during a stint as a helpdesk person and it caused quite a bit of head-scratching to figure out!!