Replies

My thoughts exactly!

It worked. 🙂 I still had to scrape up some drivers, but got there in the end.

Thanks Paul, apologies for the delay in replying. The sun has been shining here, and this strange phenomenon distracted me from my tinkering. 🙂

The mother board is as close as I could get to the original, with the same chipset, so I don’t foresee any driver problems. If anything it’s slightly higher spec so I may have to find an additional driver or two to unlock all its features.

When I examined the graphics card candidates more closely, I saw that one was dusty and one was bright and shiny, so I’d lay bets that the dusty one is the one I removed from the machine originally. I’ll let you know how it goes, and as you say I have a backup if it goes wrong.

Plenty of useful information in this thread, thanks to all!

1. What Linux Distro are you using?
2. Are you dual-booting with Windows (which one?) or another OS?

Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS dual-booted with Windows 7, although I very rarely use Windows on this machine any longer. I used Ubuntu 16.04 prior to this and I have to say I liked it better than 18. It seems I’m not alone in this.

I have Windows 7 on a workstation PC that I need to keep running thanks to a big collection of computer graphics and music programs, not all of which will work under Wine. Eventually I want to take that off-line most of the time, and Linux will be my main ‘front end’. A distro that minimises the gnashing of teeth on my part will be crucial – it’s not that I’m a computer dunce, I just don’t want to be distracted too much from what I actually want to use the computer for.

The opinions in this thread will be very helpful in sorting this out. So far I’m hearing ‘Mint’ quite a lot… I had a version on an old laptop (not sure which version, it was around ten years ago) but didn’t get on with it. Judging by the praise I’m reading above I should check Mint out again.

PKCano wrote:

I suppose that means you can reinstall .NET 4.6.2 if you want to.

Indeed. I don’t know what programs were using it offhand, so it would save time to do that now and not wait for an error message to pop up.

PKCano wrote:

Have you tried running the utility as Administrator or in Compatibility mode for, say, XP SP3? I don’t know how old it is but that might work. Right click on the executable to get to the properties that let you try that.

I hadn’t thought of that. :facepalm: Now I have. Neither of those helped. I had also tried running it in XP Mode, but so far it won’t even run there. More investigation is needed. I feel it should work, and that would be my back-up plan if all else fails. I already have two or three old programs which only work in XP Mode.

The utility dates from 2007. I’ve not had any reply from the developer, but it is the holiday season I guess.

PKCano wrote:

To determine if it is one of the updates to .NET 4.6.2 causing the problem, you could uninstall them one by one in reverse order (newest first), reboot, then try your utility again.

I uninstalled the updates, and eventually .NET 4.6.2 itself, but the problem remains. I would go back to the drawing board, if I had one.

(Interesting, but probably ultimately irrelevant: although I still have .NET 2 through 3.5, they don’t appear in the list of installed programs.)

Thanks! dotNETInspector confirms that framework 2.0 is installed with service pack 2.

I’ll try uninstalling the updates later today (UK time): I’m on my work PC at the moment.

This article, although Linux-oriented, seems to offer a good assessment:

http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/48429.html

Kirsty wrote:

This vulnerability does not exist on Intel-based consumer PCs.

Some of us – myself included – run professional-grade hardware at home, such as ex-corporate workstations. I’m assuming that we may be vulnerable. I’ll be scanning for open ports on my home network as soon as I get the opportunity.

Thanks Doctor! It’s not every day you get advice from a Time Lord. 🙂

Thanks for the informative post! Like Roderunner, I use OpenDNS in place of TalkTalk’s offering, but now you have me thinking that I don’t know as much about DNS as I thought I did (and that wasn’t a lot…). I’m going to have a play around tonight and see if I can avoid breaking anything. 🙂 Our rural broadband is slow and unreliable anyway, at least until Openreach finish installing fibre to the cabinet, so I tend to blame any problems on that.

Thanks to all. I intend to stick to LibreOffice for now.

While it’s a good thing that OpenOffice is still alive, it does muddy the waters somewhat when trying to choose. 🙂

This is how I did it – seems to have worked, although I now rarely use my XP boot.

http://windowssecrets.com/newsletter/securing-xp-pcs-after-microsoft-drops-support/#story2

(Scroll down to “More ways to secure Windows XP systems” where you set up a dummy proxy with a local bypass)

When importing, click the ‘detect special numbers’ field; this converts the currency column correctly (at least it did when I tried it!).

A-ha! That does get me most of the way there, thanks. One small niggle remains: although the import preview correctly shows the GBP symbol that’s in my CSV, the imported spreadsheet renders currency fields as USD until I re-format them. No biggie, I can do that easily enough.

I believe Open Office classic is being supported again, now called Apache OpenOffice v.4.1.0.

Thanks, I had seen that Apache had taken up the baton. I’ll wait to see what happens with it. I should maybe have said that I’m using the PortableApps versions of these suites, and Apache OpenOffice hasn’t made it to full release status as a portable app yet.

I used to use Nero; but the version I liked (6, I think it was) wouldn’t work since I upgraded to Windows 7.

When I recently had to duplicate a video DVD and burn a few audio CDs, I found InfraRecorder was straightforward and did the job without fuss. I use the PortableApps version which means you can carry it around on a USB stick or drive and use it on any Windows machine that’s handy.

I hardly ever use optical media for data any more, except occasionally writing a Linux ISO to CD for use on a machine that won’t boot from a USB stick, but InfraRecorder can do that too.

What model are the speakers?

If the subwoofer is the only connection point (via the usual 3.5mm jack) then it shouldn’t matter what the computer settings are. You would get something out of the system, although it might not be optimum.