Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2012 November 8

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November 8

Isolating Windows installations

I have two internal HDDs mounted on my computer with one Win 7 installation on each. I'm using one to play poker professionally and the other one for stuff like surfing the web, making DVDs, playing computer games etc. I'm wondering whether it would be possible to make each hard drive invisible to another, so that neither installation can tamper with the other one's files, in case I get a virus on the leisure HDD. Thanks! 64.94.77.175 (talk) 01:01, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

I can't think of an easy way to do that with two internal hard drives on the same computer. (With external hard drives, you could just turn one off when you use the other.) One particular problem I've run into is things which insist on installing in the C drive, rather than asking. So, I'd make the leisure HDD the C drive, so it will be more likely to be contaminated than your more important hard drive. You could also get a third hard drive, and use that as the C drive, so hopefully neither of your other hard drives will be contaminated. This wouldn't protect you from malicious code, though. StuRat (talk) 01:07, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Actually, you can assign different drive letters to the same drive in different installations. I've made it so that the HDD that's currently running is always C and the other one is always D :) 64.94.77.175 (talk) 01:27, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

OK, that should help somewhat. StuRat (talk) 01:38, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

For a homemade solution, how about adding a power switch to the wires leading from the power supply to each hard drive ? You could route the wires out a vent, and mount the switches externally. I wouldn't suggest flipping the switches while the PC is on, so turn one on and one off before you boot the PC. You could even have a single switch which only allows one hard drive to be powered at a time, although this might be a negative if one drive won't boot and you want to boot from the other to try to fix it. StuRat (talk) 01:42, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

You can disable the drive in Device Manager. Go to the Control Panel, open Device Manager (under System & Security), find the appropriate drive under Disk Drives, right-click on it and choose "Disable". The disk will now not be available through the filesystem (i.e. there will be no "D drive"). It's still technically possible for a virus to re-enable the drive and infect it's files, but I've never heard of one that actually does this. 59.108.42.46 (talk) 02:19, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

But you have to boot up before you can do this, and the virus might jump over to the other drive during the boot process. StuRat (talk) 18:55, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

They stay disabled after you disable them, even after restarting the computer, so a virus won't cause problems unless it's already on the computer when you disable the drive 59.108.42.46 (talk) 06:42, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

If both drives are physically connected while one's operating, it's possible for it to modify the other and possibly insert a virus. The only real protection against this would be if you encrypted the drive you're looking to protect, and never accessed it from within the vulnerable installation. That might be a practical way of doing things. However, note if you do that, the boot sector will have to be unencrypted, and that could be infected (not unheard of), so to be safe you'd need an unwriteable boot media, preferably a CD-R, to boot the protected installation.

The other option is to physically disconnect drives, just the power would be enough, and to pick which OS you'll use this way. That would be relatively secure. Another practical solution is to use a live cd (which would probably be linux but could be Windows in some cases) for your secure computing, on either a CD or a USB key. Just keep in mind that if you use the USB key on any other device, it's possible it could get infected too.

Note that none of this would protect you against a virus that somehow infected your BIOS, or sometimes various writeable flash roms on hardware, although these viruses, while hypothetically possible, are extremely rare from what I've heard. These are good precautions, but nothing will 100% guarantee your security, of course. Shadowjams (talk) 22:07, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Mooched?

A message popped up saying another device was using the wifi. There's only me, and the printer. The box disappeared and I went to the net to find out how to work this out. I'm no nerd so even though eHow and others (mooch hunter dot com) had steps to deal with it I can't find my way through. On the usual list of who's on wifi networks around here, there's a couple of new ones: Virgin Mobile Hotspot (+numbers) and VodafonePocketWifi(+). How can I tell who's mooching & how can I find that message again? I'm on a MacBookPro OSX 10.6.8. Thanks in advance Manytexts (talk) 06:38, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Instead of looking for a notification box again, see if you can login to the AP (access point) by using the default gateway address that your computer connects to. In a browser, usually you need to type in the default gateway address (192.168.1.1 or 10.0.0.1 or other), refer to your router or modem's manual for help in determining the default gateway address.

Usually there will be a list of devices that have connected to the modem recently, they will list something called a MAC (Media Access Control) address. All devices have a MAC number that usually can be found on a regulatory sticker and is usually in this hexadecimal format: 12:0f:xx:xx:xx:xx. Your printer and computer should have one. If you see a third one, and you cannot locate that device in your house, that would be the offender.

Generally, you should password protect your AP with a WPA or WEP key. Check your AP's manual for more information. Phearson (talk) 12:29, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

I entered my ID but the browser says it can't find that. Not sure if I'm following your instructs properly but I'll turn everything off and try to get hold of the netgear people in the morning (over here). And meanwhile dig out the manuals. Thanks so much, Manytexts (talk) 12:42, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

If you have a Netgear router, you should be able to go to either http://192.168.1.1 or http://192.168.0.1 or http://www.routerlogin.net or http://www.routerlogin.com to view the router settings. The login details are Username = admin, Password = password (For older devices, password = 1234). (Info gathered from here). You should now see a control screen for your router. There should be a menu option called 'attached devices' - clicking this will show you all users of the network, listed by MAC address. Depending on your router, there may also be an option to block certain MAC addresses (blacklisting), or even to only allow certain MAC addresses to connect (whitelisting). This could get technical, so I suggest you first do the steps I listed above, then post back here and we'll help you analyse the results. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 13:52, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Okey dokey. Manytexts (talk) 22:19, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Currently there are two: the laptop & the printer. I have to go out now but will check in again tomorrow. Manytexts (talk) 05:35, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

That's good. That means we know that if anyone was on your network, they're not any more. If you want to set up a whitelist, write down the MAC addresses for your laptop and printer, then follow these instructions. Remember what you've done, though, since you'll need to do it again each time you get a new computer, mobile phone, printer etc. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 08:13, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

I'll do that. It's been demystifying. Thanks for all your help with this. Manytexts (talk) 02:39, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Help getting Jquery on my computer

I want to use JQuery, but when I install it from the website, where do I put it on my computer so the html files can access it? 169.231.15.122 (talk) 07:41, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

You put it on the same webserver that hosts your html files, and link to it in the headers of those html files as described in the tutorial. Alternatively people don't put the jQuery jar file(s) on their own servers, but have their html files fetch jQuery from jQuery's own content management system or another (like Google's or Yahoo's). People who get used to developing html files locally (that is, just having the browser load the files from a file:// url, not using a development webserver) are sometimes caught out when their browser prevents locally-sourced javascript (like jQuery) from running. While there are ways to avoid this, it's usually a better idea to actually start running a local webserver and fetch all your development files over http. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 13:41, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Small thing — they are not .jar files, but .js files, as I'm sure you meant. --Mr.98 (talk) 02:18, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

I would recommend loading it from a content delivery network like Google or Yahoo rather than hosting it yourself. When you deploy your app a lot of people will already have a cached copy from those locations, making things faster for them, and you will reduce your server load and downloaded bytes. -- Q Chris (talk) 13:58, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

windows 98

Anyone know where I can get hold of a copy of windows 98? I looked online and as far as I can tell, there are no legal downloads (and apparently no illegal ones, only sites that say they offer that and then don't for various reasons) and I can't find anyone selling copies properly any more, other than one person offering an old CD of it, but shipping only to america.

86.15.83.223 (talk) 13:16, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Amazon has it, with 2 'new' copies available in the UK. It's a tad pricey though. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 13:42, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

It's been a long time since Microsoft stopped selling it to consumers, and a pretty long time since they stopped selling it to OEMs. For a while it was still available to sysadmins and developers in the various paid MSDN/Technet subscriptions - I don't have one of those any more, so I don't know if it still does - you might ask someone who does over on the Technet forums. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 13:50, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

If you google "windows 98 torrent" you'll find plenty of illegal downloads. My local secondhand computerstore also has a few copies left. Trio The Punch (talk) 03:01, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Microsoft Word wrap

Is there is a way to make Microsoft Word 2010 wrap on certain characters? I would like Word to wrap when it sees either the : or . characters. I would like to do this so that when I am pasting code into Word for presentation to my team and boss, it doesn't word-wrap in the middle of the function-name. (Anonymous) 17:38, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, for readable code in Word you really need more than just wrap-control. You might find this page helpful. Looie496 (talk) 18:22, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

I thought what qualified as a word-break character in Word or Windows was a setting somewhere, but I can't find it now. Maybe it was in an older version of Office (maybe much older). As an alternative, why not use the replace functionality to put spaces after the : and . characters so word-wrap works properly. However, for best results, maybe include your code segments with a smaller point-size, fixed space font (8-point, courier new, works for me). Like suggested in the link Looie provides above, that setting can be configured as a style - in my opinion, styles are the secret to good documents in Word. For really wide stuff, put that on landscape oriented pages. If your function names are still too wide, maybe a shorter function name is in order. Astronaut (talk) 18:28, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Instead of normal spaces like Astronaut suggested, you could use the Zero-width space character. It isn't ideal, because you will have to find/replace to add it, and if you copy from word to a source file the ZWS will probably make your compiler pretty mad at you. 209.131.76.183 (talk) 20:16, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Word is the wrong software to display code. Why don't you use something else? Notepad++ supports syntax highlighting and code folding for over 50 programming, scripting, and markup languages. Trio The Punch (talk) 03:05, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

I think it is safe to assume the OP has tools that they like and use for coding. They use Word "for presentation to my team and boss". 209.131.76.183 (talk) 16:22, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

They could still use Notepad++ (or similar) to format the code, then paste into Word, or if that doesn't work, just use a screenshot. Dbfirs 21:15, 12 November 2012 (UTC)