Replies

This morning my keyboard was able to wake the computer from sleep mode. So I guess all I had to do was ok the power management boxes. Thanks,.

Good for you. Glad we could help. As Chet mentioned above, there is a slight risk of losing data due to power failures when using sleep mode or any other time that your computer is on. You may want to consider a UPS (if you don’t already have one) and switch to Hybrid sleep or Hibernate.

My position has been, and continues to be, that there is little risk to attempting an in place upgrade and my experience is that every example that I personally know of supports the idea that the success rate is very good. A clean install starts from the position that there will be a significant post upgrade effort required.

Chet, it is not clear to me exactly what aspect of in-place upgrades you are defending. If your position is that in-place upgrades will complete successfully, I totally agree with you. However, I must disagree with your assertion that “there is little risk”.

There are a number of reasons an in-place upgrade is risky. With an in-place upgrade all the corrupt and orphaned entries and other nasties present in your current registry will transfer to your new installation. Any issues with installed applications will be inherited by the new system. Many of the ‘annoyances’ experienced on your old system will probably show up in your new one. And that’s just a few off the top of my head.

Will an in-place upgrade work? Of course it will. Should you make an in-place upgrade? Only you can make that determination based on your needs. I think of it as an opportunity for a fresh start free of any old baggage.

I tend not to use gagets at all, that’s why creating the desktop shortcuts works best for me. It saves a couple of clicks each time I do any of these 4 operations (sleep, logoff,shutdown or restart) For some reason I am of the mind that the gadgets consume some resources that I prefer using elsewhere. Maybe I’m just paranoid, or soft between the ears!!!

Using gadgets is a personal choice based on individual needs so no, I don’t think you’re paranoid. While some gadgets may be resource hogs, I find that the few I have installed are not of that variety. Back when I had XP installed I used your method (shortcuts) to shutdown and restart my computer.

I checked my devices and I do not have a power management tab on either the keyboard or the mouse.

You must access the keyboard and mouse properties through Device Manager in order to get at the Power Management tab. Accessing properties through their individual control panel applets won’t do it. If your system does not have the power management feature, I don’t think I can help.

Another poster counsels not using Sleep mode because losing power could potentially result in the loss of data. True, but losing power at any time the computer is in use will potentially result in the loss of data. That is why people buy UPS units. You state that you chose not to use hibernate mode. That, of course, is your choice to make. I personally use the Hybrid Sleep mode. It has all the advantages of Sleep mode (speed) and the security of Hibernate mode (safety), even though I do have a UPS.

Good luck!

BTW, do you not find that 2 hours of inactivity before going to sleep is a really long time? I set my computer to turn off the display after 10 minutes of inactivity and put it to sleep after 20.

I have switched keyboards from the cheap Compaq keyboard that came with my computer to the Microsoft comfort curve 3000 keyboard. My question is that the Microsoft keyboard doesn’t have the sleep key on it like the compaq did. So when I take my computer out of sleep I have to press the power button on the computer. Is there a way to set a hotkey or shortcut key on the MS keyboard to do the same function as the compag sleep key (the little moon symbol)??? I would like another option as I believe it is easier on the computer using a keyboard key rather then the power button on the Computer. Thanks.

Check the ‘Power Management’ tab of your keyboard’s properties in Device Manager. Ensure that ‘Allow this device to wake the computer’ is checked. This way, pressing any key on the keyboard will bring the computer out of sleep mode. The ‘sleep’ button is meant to put the computer to sleep when pressed. You may also want to check if your mouse is set to wake your computer. I turn this off as it’s very easy to inadvertently wake the computer by nudging the mouse.

The first. It’s essentially the same solution as “wizmo”.

Glad you found a solution. Personally, I use the Shutdown desktop gadget available from the Microsoft Windows Live site to shut down, restart or lock my computer. It’s the bottom gadget in the attached graphic. I downloaded it for Vista and found it works equally as well for Windows 7.

Let me throw out this question to Gerald and to Bigaldoc, and to you, PaulB–

Based on your own experience, how long would it take to do a from-scratch (not incremental) backup of 46 Gb onto an external HD? I’m thinking that maybe I want to do a full backup, then do incremental backups for the next two months, then wipe everything off the external HD and start over. But that plan isn’t workable if it means that on that first day, I’m idling my computer for a long time.

I just completed a full backup of my system. The C (system) disk (37.3 GB of data) took 4 minutes 57 seconds at an average of 74 MB/s. The D (data) disk (118.7 GB of data) took 40 minutes 35 seconds at an average of 49.9 MB/s. The difference in average I/O I attribute to the types of data on each partition. The difference between my stats and Rebel’s I attribute to the performance characteristics of eSATA disks vs. USB 2.0 disks. I used standard compression, no verification.

Strange: Post #7 in this thread shows it was edited by a ‘Gerald’ (This post has been edited by Gerald: 2010-01-19 08:22). My post (#8) shows it was edited by ‘Gerald’ at the same time!!?? Who is ‘Gerald’?

ANATHEMA to the idea of file compression. That’s my big problem with Windows Backup — not only is the program buggy, but they insist on compressing tens of gigabytes’ worth of files, and so their first backup took _hours_ (before it hung).

Right now I do weekly backups onto three DVD-RWs, and then for the next six days I backup onto a CD-RW. But that’s for what is in the various USERS “My Xxxx” folders; I haven’t attempted to do hard-drive imaging since Windows Backup burned me.

If compression and timing are an issue, let me share some of my stats with you. I use ShadowProtect to take weekly images of two partitions. The system partition has about 40 GB of files, the data partition has about 120 GB of data. Using standard compression, ShadowProtect images the system partition to a 1 TB eSATA disk in 5 minutes and the data partition in about 35 minutes. I am planning to implement daily incrementals. Preliminary tests show that this can be done for both partitions in less than 10 minutes.

The nice thing is I do not have to stick around while this is being done and I don’t have to worry that I may have forgotten to back up any given file or folder as I back up everything.

Forget it. I just fixed the problem and can now view all of the picture’s.

Posting your solution is a common courtesy. It might provide someone with a similar issue the answer to the problem.

… a music video in More musical nostalgia…

I think I found it at this Russian site. Quality may not be as good as the original.

Many thanks to Ted: exactly what I was looking for.

Just out of curiosity: Which of Ted’s two solutions did you use?

… necessary to have the external hard drive to be connected and powered up at the time of boot, otherwise it is not operable.

I have an external drive (with USB, eSATA and FireWire connectors) hooked up to an eSATA port. The drive is connected all of the time but is usually powered off unless I am doing a backup. This has no impact on the boot process. The drive is ‘operable’ (available for use) whenever I power it up. Unless you have a ‘special’ hardware configuration, I see no reason why your external drive would function any differently when using eSATA than when using USB (except for transfer speed).

What does your documentation say?

… necessary to have the external hard drive to be connected and powered up at the time of boot, otherwise it is not operable.

I have an external drive (with USB, eSATA and FireWire connectors) hooked up to an eSATA port. The drive is connected all of the time but is usually powered off unless I am doing a backup. This has no impact on the boot process. The drive is ‘operable’ (available for use) whenever I power it up. Unless you have a ‘special’ hardware configuration, I see no reason why your external drive would function any differently when using eSATA than when using USB (except for transfer speed).

What does your documentation say?

… necessary to have the external hard drive to be connected and powered up at the time of boot, otherwise it is not operable.

I have an external drive (with USB, eSATA and FireWire connectors) hooked up to an eSATA port. The drive is connected all of the time but is usually powered off unless I am doing a backup. This has no impact on the boot process. The drive is ‘operable’ (available for use) whenever I power it up. Unless you have a ‘special’ hardware configuration, I see no reason why your external drive would function any differently when using eSATA than when using USB (except for transfer speed).

What does your documentation say?

… necessary to have the external hard drive to be connected and powered up at the time of boot, otherwise it is not operable.

I have an external drive (with USB, eSATA and FireWire connectors) hooked up to an eSATA port. The drive is connected all of the time but is usually powered off unless I am doing a backup. This has no impact on the boot process. The drive is ‘operable’ (available for use) whenever I power it up. Unless you have a ‘special’ hardware configuration, I see no reason why your external drive would function any differently when using eSATA than when using USB (except for transfer speed).

What does your documentation say?