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I find that sometimes after a major update the icons end up stacked against the left side point the screen. I am a normal person. I have yet to see anyone who uses Windows who has a blank screen!
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Those are not your icons Chris.
They belong to Microsoft...didn't you read the license.
Considering the number of tools available to undo this (I have one on my machine) it obviously happens to a great number of users.
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Why anyone would ever have icons on their desktop terrifies and disgusts me.
I wish my 4k screen didn't flicker when I turn it on from standby, requiring me to unplug and replug the DisplayPort, then move the start bar back off to the left screen, then resize the start bar to fit the day name in the clock. THAT'S a real annoyance. :/
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That's a fairly harsh reaction.
Just to amuse you then:
- I have shortcuts to common sites I use. It saves me a couple of clicks
- I often need to work on multiple documents and I store shortcuts to the folders those documents are in on the desktop
- I have the bin and a shortcut to "This PC"
- I have shortcuts to Dropbox because it saves a couple of clicks
- I'll often have a few temp files lying around. Not many, but maybe half a dozen
- I have shortcuts to some important maintenance scripts
All this could absolutely be replaced by QuickLinks in Explorer, or pinning them to the taskbar, or using the Start Menu, but I like to just double click and go.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Harsh but fair. 
- Bookmarks bar in chrome; a single click, and I always have my browser open;
- My applications know where my documents are, because I've been working on them;
- Disabled the recycle bin, WinKey+E for explorer;
- Don't use dropbox, but can't you doubleclick on the icon in the systray?
- D:\temp;
- My scripts are in
PATH.
Look at that, it's almost like we can use an operating system in different ways. 
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Next we're going to see cats and dogs sleeping together, C developers embracing garbage collection and browsers using consistent rendering models.
OK, the last one was a joke.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Yup, creators update and the left column of icons keeps getting moved. Sometimes things move out of the left column and sometimes into the left column. I tried to remove everything from the left column so as not to cause too much change, but Windows kept putting new items into the left column and them moving them.
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I was assisting a colleague while she was on a conference call and remote with a client troubleshooting a problem with a .csv file. I recommended to open the file with Notepad and look for an empty row which shows as just a bunch of commas. When she finds the offensive line, she brings it to the client's attention so that they may be able to correct the problem themselves in the future and says 'you will need to remove the line here...comma comma comma comma comma'....[fill in the blank]
I couldn't resist! All parties attending got a good chuckle! 
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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Comma chameleon? 
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Winner! I detested the song but it was on heavy rotation back in the early to mid '80s...the only time I ever watched it. (or before I got a life!) 
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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He also released "Do you really want to hurt me?" to which my answer was always "Yes. Yes, I do. You made us suffer 'Karma Chameleon' so I want to tie you to the railway tracks, and beat you with a big stick until the train comes".
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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You should have gone for "comma comedian". Bonus points for subtlety.
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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Reminds me of the old days of minicomputers; those I worked on were from Norsk Data. They had some low-level test/maintenance functions microcoded; you could set up the system console to communicatie directly with these functions when the CPU was halted. To restart the CPU, you typed the initial PC register value, followed by an exclamation mark.
One of our support guys had, over the phone, guided a customer through a fixup, and instructed the customer:
- Then restart the machine by typing '20 exclamation mark'
20 was the reboot address for the OS. There was a long silence, and then:
- Does it have to be exactly twenty of them?
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Last week my external HD died. We used it for backup. All our family pics, tax docs, project work, etc, is on there.
I tried using this to get everything back. it sees the and seems to find files & folders, but in the end says it can't find anything.
1) Anyone know of any other good HD recovery software?
2) What are my options for backup? I keep hearing everyone say "backup to the cloud", but I feel weary of it for some reason. What are my options, cloud included?
If it's not broken, fix it until it is.
Everything makes sense in someone's mind.
Ya can't fix stupid.
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1) yes, but dang if I can remember it off the top of my head. I used it to recover a hard drive that had been badly mauled. Got back 95% of the files. I'll see if I can find the name. Depending on the type of drive failure, it might help.
Ha! Found it. I used R-Studio Data Recovery.
2) Cloud - well, if it's a big drive, then cloud can get pricey. If you only have some files than MS one drive and other options are useful. The useful thing about the cloud is that the data is elsewhere - so you are sort of disaster proof.
For me? I normally backup to an external drive and take it to my safety deposit box.
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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1, See Data recovery[^]. Restored almost everything from a corrupted hard drive.
2. Online Cloud Backup | IDrive®[^]. Use for a couple of years now. Very easy to use and restored everything that was lost when another system got destroyed.
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If your backup drive contains the only copy of a given set of files, you don't have a backup at all.
I buy my drives in sets of 3: The live instance my systems access all the time, an offline backup that gets updated regularly, and an off-site backup that gets replaced with the other drive once a month or so.
Depending on the application, the live instance drive may be mirrored through RAID, but that's keeping in mind that this is for redundancy - it's not a backup.
As for recovery software: Some people swear by GRC's Spin-Rite. Others are skeptical, but essentially this is their only for-sale product, and they've been living off of it for over 20 years, so if it was total snake oil, I have to believe someone would've called them out on it by now.
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dandy72 wrote: If your backup drive contains the only copy of a given set of files, you don't have a backup at all.
I buy my drives in sets of 3: The live instance my systems access all the time, an offline backup that gets updated regularly, and an off-site backup that gets replaced with the other drive once a month or so.
Word.
And don't overlook off-site backup! I have come across too many stories of 'The fire took both my PC and all the backup disks'. Or the flood did. Or the thief. Or the power surge. Or the new puppy who chews up everything...
Another schedule for using double backup disks is to do regular backups regularly (say, every Sunday night) and bring the disk with the new backup to the offsite location (typically: your office) Monday morning, and take the previous generation back home Monday evening, to become the backup for the following week. (Note: Do NOT bring the old backup home first! Always keep one copy strictly off-site!)
In the worst case, damage to both the PC disk and all on-site backup, you may still loose one week of changes/additions, so you may want to (read: should) back up all changed files daily to an external disk. If you unplug that disk once the copying is done, and store it apart from the PC; that will protect it somewhat from theft, puppies and power surges. Some people don't want that bother every time they leave the PC (or they have a scheduled incremental bakcup every night at 04:00 which requires the incremental-backup disk to be on-line). That of course reduces the protection of the changes made this week, but some people will trade that protection for convenience.
Unplugging the backup disk is essential, both the power supply and the network. If you catch a ransomware virus that locks all you files and all of your disks, you may sit with completely useless backups, locked just like the original. (The same goes for malware that doesn't lock your files but erases them or destroys them.)
I think it is a good habit to set all file backups as read-only. For incremental backups still available on-line, it gives some (but certainly not full) protection against malware that could overwrite/delete it, but most of all: It keeps me from accidentally overwrite it, say, by overwriting the backup with a destroyed file rather than the other way around.
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Pics and videos are usually the high ticket items when it comes to space. If you have a Google account you can store unlimited pics & videos on Google Photos. Pretty sure Amazon and a few others do the same.
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But then: What is the cost of disks nowadays in cents per hour of video? Depending on your quality requirements, MPEG-4 video requires from less than 1 GByte/hour up to 3 GB/h. So a 6 TB disk can hold two to six thousand hours of video, and you can find those diske for 200 USD.
That is a low price to pay for protecting your privacy, and for avoiding the time it takes to transfer gigabyte by gigabyte across the network connection. Not everyone has fiber to the home.
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Buy two and remember to put one in your sibling's/friend's/whoever's garage. In the past, I've "traded" drives with someone. They backup and store their drive with me; I do the same with them.
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I use a NAS that automatically backs up everything from my work computer even while I'm out of the office (given I have Internet access of course).
This NAS has two HDD's in RAID 1.
I have a physical external USB HDD connected to the NAS to back it's contents up.
I still have to buy another HDD to be able to cycle between them, but I'm still trying to figure out how to be able to ask the super back up application that runs in the NAS to cycle using more than one HDD.
I'm afraid of using remote cloud backup systems... Sensitive data...
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I just recently ... nearly bought a NAS system, but in the end opted for a much cheaper DIY solution: I bought 3 x 6TB HD's and installed them in my old computer (Win7) and have them as shared drives on my hone network. I can just drag and drop into them, and/or set up my own backup s/w routines. So far so good
Like you, I don't trust the cloud. Possession is ownership.
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