Help me with those annoying things in Windows XP 12

[raygg]

A. You know how sometimes a program gives you that annoying 'not responding' message when you check out why a pgm seems to be running too slow using Windows Task Manager - and then you get that even more annoying message asking you if you want the error information sent to Microsoft?

How do you kill the message to MS from ever popping up? Is it a service you can turn off?

B. Those incessant windows updates.... A few years ago you hardly ever got a msg that there are windows updates available. Personally I would like to get this msg only on months with an R on the 30th. But I knoiw it's a security thing. So now when I look in C:\Windows and see a ton of hidden folders with names like $NtUninstallKB887472$ that occupy 733mb and 4214 files in hundreds of folders. These have accumulated since I bought my laptop 24 months ago. When can I get rid of these deadbeat folders that MS puts on my box and never sends me a friendly love note to tell me "we have placed 733 mb of crap on your harddrive sucker - how's your drive holding up? Fragmented or what?". Is there some sort of rule - get rid of everything older than 3 months? etc

C. Why isn't there some kind of utility to review all your folders and tell you there are all these temporary files (*.TMP) and TMP folders sprinkled throughout your system folders occupying dead space. Look at C:\WINDOWS\system32\*.tmp, C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\temp

D. What are these folders that keep appearing with gobbledygook folder names like C:\ebfe45403e30599050946ae4 or C:\fa06f703033785a2a0a8b8\update? If these are files that do an update and then have no future purpose why don't they get placed in some appropriately named folder like c:\windows\somemorecrapwedumpedonyou?

E. Those REALLY annoying Bing Vibrant popups - especially prevalent on this website - how to premanently stop them? (I know this is not XP stuff but it really fills the bill as ANNOYING.

 

[raygg]

I find it really annoying that when I want to do a copy and paste out of a pdf in XP it does not do the copy - that is - the pdf somehow acts like a bit image and not a text document. I know I can do this sometimes, but not others. Is there a setting to control whether you can copy text from a pdf in XP?

 

[strongm]

Well, sometimes a PDF is a bit image, typically just a TIFF

 

[mscallisto]

I believe it won't work in the basic FREE version, you will need to pay to copy paste

sam

 

[guitarzan]

mcallisto: no, every PDF reader I have used (including the free Acrobat Reader) lets you can copy from a PDF and paste to another document (unless security settings are applied to the PDF). Text can be copied as text, images as images. You typically need the pay versions for features like creating / editing PDF's, applying security settings, etc.

 

[kjv1611]

Yup, it depends upon whether the file was saved as selectable text or not. Typically, if it's a scanned document, it's as a TIFF - not selectable text, and if it's generated from say MS Word or some such application, it generally is saved as selectable text. What program "reads" the document doesn't really matter - in most cases. I suppose there can always be exceptions. For instance, some may handle selecting the text better than others.

 

[mscallisto]

OK so beat me with sticks !!!

Thanks for the correction.

sam

 

[raygg]

I noticed that some pdf's have the 'T' tool and when selected text is selectable - while the pdf that prompted this question kept that tool grayed out - how this is done when creating a pdf I am not sure

 

[stduc]

The author can grant or deny permissions, that includes "allow/deny text selection" When authoring a pdf you can go from allow nothing but display (i.e. no printing either) at one extreme to allowing copying of text and images, modifications etc at the other.

 

[JPJeffery]

That annoying 'Send Eror Report/Don't Send' dialogue might be annoying BUT, the more often you click on 'Send Error Report' the more likely it is MS will deal with it...

JJ
[small][purple]Variables won't. Constants aren't[/purple]
There is no apostrophe in the plural of PC (or PST, or CPU, or HDD, or FDD, or photo, or breakfast...and so on)[/small]

 

[goombawaho]

Especially in Windows XP where Microsoft is ACTIVELY developing fix and improvements at a feverish rate.......... er not.

 

[raygg]

DO you know what is really annoying? I tried using my older Dell Latitude X1 laptop which runs XPSP3 with a VGA connect to a projector on a screen but the projected image is 90 degrees off. In the Control Panel > Display > Display Properties > Settings there are two rectangles with the numbers 1 and 2 representing the laptop (1) and the monitor or projected image (2). In this graphic normally you would see each box as a rectangle with the botom and top having longer dimensions than the two sides of each rectangle. Instead the #2 box has a botom and top shorter than the two sides giving a metaphor for the 90 degree rotation. Unable to figure how to rotate this back. THis PC has been trouble free and never had OS problems with it. Hardware specs: !.25GB, 60GB HD, 20GB free Here is data captured by the Intel software
Report Date: 07/09/2011
Report Time[hr:mm:ss]: 17:52:57
Driver Version: 6.14.10.4396
Operating System: Windows XP* Professional, Service Pack 3 (5.1.2600)
Default Language: English
DirectX* Version: 9.0
Physical Memory: 1271 MB
Minimum Graphics Memory: 8 MB
Maximum Graphics Memory: 128 MB
Graphics Memory in Use: 9 MB
Processor: x86 family 6 Model 13 Stepping 8
Processor Speed: 453 MHZ
Vendor ID: 8086
Device ID: 2592
Device Revision: 03
I can drag the two boxes around in the display windows but I cannot alter their orientation - if that would help.

Ideas?

 

[mscallisto]

Instead of:

Control Panel > Display > Display Properties > Settings

Have you tried Control Panel > Intel Extreme Graphics 2 for mobile icon?

If so it offers rotation of 0,90,180 and 270 degrees in the Display Settings tab.

My Dell Latitude D400 running XPsp3has the Intel Extreme Graphics icon (I have not tried it)

sam

 

[raygg]

The only entry I have starting with "Intel" in the control panel is "Intel GMA Display Driver For Mobile ". I connected the vga to my TV to try to rotate the monitor. I do not have a projector at home. The boxes in control panel display look like this

+----------+ +------+
| | | |
| 1 | | |
| | | 2 |
+----------+ | |
| |
+------+

The Intel window required me to connect to the wnd device before it would allow opening another window where I found the rotation option. Once I connected my TV with the VGA I found the orientation of the tv monitor was correct! Now the reason I came to make this posting was that I had to switch notebook com\puteres last week that I used with the projector because my regular notebook - a 3 yr old Lenovo was unavailable to use. Previously I never had encountered a problem with rotation orientation with the Lenovo. I also have used the Lenovo to connect to the same TV mentioned above with no problem.

The conclusion is that there is some sort of disparity in the communication only between the Dell and the projector. I am stumped.

 

[raygg]

Oops it looks like my carefully worked out space did not translate very well in my attempt to draw the two boxes in the translation from text to html.

 

[guitarzan]

Oops it looks like my carefully worked out space did not translate very well in my attempt to draw the two boxes in the translation from text to html.

[ignore]Use the [tt] and [/tt] tags for [/ignore][tt]MonoSpaced Text[/tt].

 

[kjv1611]

[ROFL2] Well, if you're monitor settings REALLY look like that, then I'd say you've got worse issues.

And now that I think about it, this would be labeled as "hijacking" a thread. I'd suggest to get the best results - of course, you've already started getting answers - post a separate/individual thread on your problem. Just b/c it's an issue you're having, doesn't make it fit the other scenario necessarily. I guess the main thread started out too vague as well, when you really think about it.