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

November 9

SD Card doesn't read as having memory on my laptop

My camera is nearly full. I had hoped to copy the files to the computer itself, but after the PNY SD card was read as "Drive G," it gave indications that it couldn't find / read any memory in there, and it offered for me to format the disk in order to make it usable.

I wasn't about to erase nearly 1,000 pictures and many minutes of video, so I had to decline to format it.

I was somewhat afraid that placing it in my laptop's SD reader may have wiped the contents automatically, so I placed the card back in the Olympus camera. All of the data remained.

I'm sure I'm missing something that would enable me to safely and smoothly copy all of the data to the laptop from the 4 GB SD card. I look forward to the solution(s). Thanks kindly. --70.179.167.78 (talk) 03:18, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

If you're going to ask a question like this you should give the model number of the SD card, the model of your computer, and your Windows version, and you should give the exact error message you received rather than some vague approximation of it. Debugging depends on details. Looie496 (talk) 04:13, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, Looie. I don't know the "model #" of the SD card yet, but that it was a PNY 4GB. Here are the specs of my PC though: http://pastebin.com/WXy8btM0 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.179.167.78 (talk) 06:33, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

If your camera can be connected to your computers USB port try doing that with the card still in it. Another option is to get a friend with a different operating system to yours to try and read the card. I had success using Ubuntu to read our work SD card after Windows wanted to format it. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 05:36, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

That reminds me of an (unrelated) issue I've seen with USB drives. I used to work in a university computer lab and occaisionally someone's USB drive would show up as an "unrecognized device" in Windows. After that happened, it wouldn't work on any Windows PC they tried such as personal laptops. We would have them plug it into one of our Linux computers which would mount it just fine, and it would invariably start working with Windows again. We never did figure out what was going on, and it has been too long for me to remember details such as what it looked like in Device Manager. 209.131.76.183 (talk) 15:11, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

You didn't mention what OS you are running. The card is probably formatted as VFAT. I've had trouble with the built-in SD card readers in laptops. Using a USB cable to the camera as CBW suggests also sometimes has problems but is probably worth a try. You should flip the little write protect switch on the card to prevent accidental erasure. The most reliable way to read cards in my experience is a USB card reader, and you can get those pretty cheap. 4GB cards are also almost free these days, so there's really not much need to erase it. Just put a new card in the camera and save the old one as yet another backup. Can you still see the pictures when you put the card back in the camera? If not, you may have to pursue file recovery, but there's lots of downloadable programs for that. 67.119.3.105 (talk) 09:14, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

The pastebin says Windows 7 Home Premium Service Pack 1. Trio The Punch (talk) 01:30, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Going in a different direction... have you *ever* managed to read that card on your laptop? The reason I ask is because the card is more than likely SDHC (SD High Capacity - Nearly all cards 4GB or bigger are) and your laptop card reader might only support standard SD cards, not the high capacity ones. In fact searching Google for "Inspiron 1720 SDHC" returned back quite a few results with other people having problems reading 4GB SDHC cards on their Inspiron 1720. If this is indeed the problem then you'll need to follow the advice others have mentioned above and plug your camera in direct via USB or obtain a different card reader that supports SDHC (should be everything these days).  ZX81  ^talk 04:55, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Adding to my own post, it looks like there might be a Dell software patch available here or at least it claims to "fix SDHC detection issue" on 1720's and a few other models.  ZX81  ^talk 04:58, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Privacy when using a work issued laptop

My job requires me to often work from home or on the road. My company issues me a laptop. I do not sign any agreements when accepting a new laptop. I am responsible for providing my own Internet connectivity (except when I am in the office, and then, of course, I use the office wireless connection.) As far as I can tell, my laptop is configured the same as a personal laptop, aside from a few installed programs that specific to my company. I use my laptop for business, but it is also my personal computer. I check my personal email, fantasy football, Wikipedia, etc, on a regular basis. This is the accepted practice in my company (in that there is no "rule" against using the work issued computer as a personal computer). Basically, I get a "free" laptop every 2 years as part of my job. My question is: how much information about my personal Internet activities is accessible by my company's I.T. person when I am at home or on the road? Can he/she see the websites I've visited...history...times/dates? Could they see that I accessed Wikipedia to ask this question? Opinions vary from my peers. Some say that the I.T. person knows everything you are doing...others say that it is possible for them to access your browsing history, but that most I.T. people don't bother to check on a regular basis...and others say it is bullshit, and unless you sign a disclosure agreement that your work computer is as private as your personal computer. So, what's up? What can they see...or rather, what to they have the capability to see, theoretically? Thanks, Ditch ∝ 03:58, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

You likely didn't sign any agreement when you got the laptop but you did when you got your job. It was probably titled something to do with "company assets". The company may have some sort of key logger or something but maybe not. IT probably doesn't check what you read/access unless there's a problem with the quality of your work or some other business reason for them to investigate you. Some bosses/companies are more sensitive about these things than others. Dismas|^(talk) 04:07, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Theoretically they have the capability to see every single thing you do with the computer. Whether they are actually doing so is a completely different question, and the legalities of the situation are yet another question. But technically, anybody who has physical access to a computer can install monitoring software on it. Looie496 (talk) 04:08, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

They can see everything in principle, but they are probably up to their eyeballs in more important work, especially in the somewhat loose atmosphere you're describing. Still on organizational principles, I think it's best to use separate computers for work and for personal stuff. There is a "private browsing" feature in Firefox and IE(?) that stops recording of cookies and history, that might help a little bit further, plus clear your browser cache. But it's hard to remove all traces, such as flash cookies and various other cached data that can be hard to find. 67.119.3.105 (talk) 09:17, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

It's certainly easier if you make an entirely separate user/profile on the OS for personal use. ¦ Reisio (talk) 16:41, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Presumably the IT people have the administrator password, which gives them access to all user accounts. One safer method is to use a boot USB flash drive, and have it store everything there. Thus, all your work data is on the laptop, and all your personal data is on the flash drive. To boot up in personal mode, insert the flash drive, and then remove it and reboot for work mode. StuRat (talk) 18:02, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

But not to the user account you were using for non-work stuff that you deleted before coming into the office. :) ¦ Reisio (talk) 04:16, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

It's just like most modern surveillance systems. Nobody looks unless something triggers them to look, but IT Admins will have the ability to do so. HiLo48 (talk) 20:04, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Automatic backup and imaging is a problem for you. It'd be quite a reasonable thing for the IT department to set up a system where your windows profile is backed up when you connect back at the office (or maybe when you connect over the corporate VPN). They'd then just chuck those images onto a big disk, which would get thrown in with the usual corporate backup. Copies of that would reasonably be held offline, hopefully offsite. And as disks just get cheaper and cheaper, those backups just pile up (because it's not worth someone's time to recycle them). Looie496 and HiLo48 are quite right in that no-one is going to bother to just look for their own jollies. But the problem arises if some reason to actively look comes up. A new manager is hired who is looking for people to fire (because it's cheaper than layoffs) so they task IT to pull everyone's browser histories and scan for forbidden stuff (ebay, WoW, pr0n). Or your company is sued by another, and the litigants' lawyers subpoena the backups - lawyers have special forensic systems which look for juicy stuff that can make you and the company look bad in court. Or in a few years you're getting divorced, and you want joint custody of your kid - your spouse's lawyer may succeed in subpoenaing the backups too - which they can then use to construct a jaundiced caricature of you. In your position, if I wasn't willing to lug around a device I personally owned (say an iPad) on the road, I'd boot the company laptop off a USB flash drive (into linux, in practice, although some people can get Windows do work like this) and do my personal stuff there (with my personal files only on the flash drive). Although they probably won't help you do this, your IT department will probably (tacitly) love the idea, as it means they don't have to back up a bunch of junk unrelated to the business, and won't have to encounter stuff they'd rather not. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 13:00, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Read our articles on Multi booting and/or TrueCrypt. Trio The Punch (talk) 02:01, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Oracle 11g for Mac

I am trying to install the above software on my Mac so that I can begin to learn Oracle SQL but I have no idea which download I wish to select from the following link. [1] Can someone please advise me? Thanks. 78.146.68.203 (talk) 21:42, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

None of those listed will run on Mac OS X. You would need to install Windows or Linux via Boot Camp in order to run on your Mac hardware. RudolfRed (talk) 02:15, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

That's what I thought but surely there is /some/ way of running Oracle 11g directly on Mac? 78.146.66.64 (talk) 09:04, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

I can't find you a reliable source (as every link about Oracle on Mac I find seems to dead end in Oracle's site), but this forum discussion talks about how Oracle 10 worked on OS-X but that no version of 11 has come out (and that the Oracle 10 XE binaries won't work on the latest OS-X). I can't find an official announcement from Oracle, or a news story about, them dropping OS-X support. This convoluted procedure gets the tools working on OS-X (but I think the DB server itself is running on Linux in the VM). You might as well just install Linux in a VM (in say VirtualBox), and install the Linux version of Oracle 11 XE there, and do everything on the Linux version. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 12:15, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

You could also install WineForMac [2]. This will allow /most/ MS-Windows applications to run on a Mac computer (it was originally developed to allow Linux computers to run MS-Windows applications). However, there is always the risk that WINE won't support Oracle; you probably won't get a refund for your purchase of Oracle in that case. CS Miller (talk) 18:36, 10 November 2012 (UTC)