The Windows and Windows Software Megathread

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Buck Turgidson: Feb 6, 2011; 𓀬𓀠𓀟𓀡𓀢𓀣𓀤𓀥𓀞𓀬

I have to use Windows for work and lately I've noticed a couple of really distracting things in word and onenote.

When I type in word the mouse cursor rapidly changes between the vertical bar, the normal pointer, and the wait cursor. It does this for every character input. Anyone else had this and how did you fix it?

Also typing in onenote while in dark mode causes screen flickering. I haven't been able to replicate this in other programs

# ? Aug 5, 2021 03:03

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# ? Jun 4, 2024 07:54

VelociBacon: Dec 8, 2009

codo27 posted:

Whats the go to torrent client today? I always used qbittorrent for some years now (for how often I even download torrents) but it just got flagged by defender as having something malicious when I downloaded the latest version.

e: Deluge gave the same warning and apparently the cited threat is a false positive, also given by nicehash which is a mining program apparently which I find a tad concerning

I use deluge, a month ago Windows defender decided silently it's a BAD REPUTATION SOFTWARE and shadow banned the executable and I had to go in there to undo all that, turn that feature off, and reinstall deluge (on all three of my machines that have it).

I find it really great, I just wish it had a speed graph so I could take a look at it.

# ? Aug 5, 2021 03:29

OgNar: Oct 26, 2002; They tapdance not, neither do they fart

I've used Free Download Manager for a few years now for just regular file downloading, handy because it remembers sites and the folders I download to from each site.
Also handles magnets/torrents and the occasional Youtube video.
May not have as many options as a full fledged BT program but fine for me.
https://www.freedownloadmanager.org/

# ? Aug 5, 2021 16:36

Hipster_Doofus: Dec 20, 2003; Lovin' every minute of it.

Yah dat's a gud progrum.

# ? Aug 5, 2021 17:35

spincube: Jan 31, 2006; I spent so I could say that I finally figured out what this god damned cube is doing. Get well Lowtax.; Grimey Drawer

My mother has an ancient copy of Publisher 2007 on a dying laptop; she's unwilling to subscribe to Office 365 as it's way, way above her WYSIWYG '(clipart) bake sale next Sunday (clipart)' needs for the price. My first thought was Libreoffice but, LO Draw seems to be more about flowcharts and diagrams. Second thought was using either Word or Powerpoint in the one-time-purchase Office suite, but neither work as simply and intuitively as Publisher does when playing around with text and images on a sheet of paper.

Any suggestions for Publisher replacements?

# ? Aug 7, 2021 09:55

Thanks Ants: May 21, 2004; #essereFerrari

Why do you need to replace Publisher? It won�t be supported but it should run fine in modern versions of Windows.

If you want a new app then look at Affinity Publisher.

# ? Aug 7, 2021 10:36

spincube: Jan 31, 2006; I spent so I could say that I finally figured out what this god damned cube is doing. Get well Lowtax.; Grimey Drawer

The laptop is a dying hand-me-down, and though I know it's supported, i'm doubtful the Office installation is legitimate - so, reinstallation onto a new machine isn't possible. Just looking for other options for producing simple '(clipart) bake sale next Sunday (clipart)' documents, outside of a MS Office sub.

(thanks for the Affinity Publisher recommendation though)

# ? Aug 7, 2021 11:07

Thanks Ants: May 21, 2004; #essereFerrari

I'm pretty sure I have a Home & Student version of Office 2007 at home with a key, I'll PM you it when I get back

# ? Aug 7, 2021 11:45

DerekSmartymans: Feb 14, 2005; The
Copacetic
Ascetic

I have LibraOffice on my �new� (to me) laptop and a fully-extensions-blingged Open on my desktop. The OO is better and the tools for everything are pretty good MS Office substitutes. Never ran Publisher or it�s OO/LO equivalents, but most of my writing projects can be saved/converted between every type of word processing availabile formats so maybe the Publisher-type will too? It�s just a guess, but they�re free so idk.

# ? Aug 7, 2021 17:45

Klyith: Aug 3, 2007; GBS Pledge Week

spincube posted:

The laptop is a dying hand-me-down, and though I know it's supported, i'm doubtful the Office installation is legitimate - so, reinstallation onto a new machine isn't possible. Just looking for other options for producing simple '(clipart) bake sale next Sunday (clipart)' documents, outside of a MS Office sub.

A cheap key from the goon SAmart key reseller for MS Office 2019 is $20, no subscription needed.

There really is no substitute for Publisher for the little old lady making newsletters for their knitting club. You could do the same thing equally well in Word, LibreOffice Writer, or half a dozen other programs. But something about the Publisher UI speaks to the bake sale flyer designer in ways that other programs don't. I have no doubt that MS's main user testing lab for Publisher is entirely composed of fussy grandmothers.

# ? Aug 7, 2021 18:33

doctorfrog: Mar 14, 2007; Great.

OgNar posted:

I've used Free Download Manager for a few years now for just regular file downloading, handy because it remembers sites and the folders I download to from each site.
Also handles magnets/torrents and the occasional Youtube video.
May not have as many options as a full fledged BT program but fine for me.
https://www.freedownloadmanager.org/

This thing's changed my dang life, or at least a small portion of it. Great software.

# ? Aug 11, 2021 08:17

Quaint Quail Quilt: Jun 19, 2006; Ask me about that time I told people mixing bleach and vinegar is okay

Klyith posted:

d. If you want another torrent app to try, I just recently saw this one called LIII that's very lightweight and minimal. Like if you're one-off downloading an actual linux iso or libreoffice, rather than have torrents running all the time, it might be a good choice.

Tixati is 5mb more but has some cool unique features.

Such as Decentralized sharing channels it's kind of like soulseek for torrents or you can view/share audio/video streams.

Sometimes you get more seeds from the channels you are in.

# ? Aug 11, 2021 12:13

Ynglaur: Oct 9, 2013; The Malta Conference, anyone?

FDM always seemed sketchy to me, perhaps due to my own ignorance. How is its development funded? It says its open source, but I can't seem to find a link to its source code anywhere. I've seen for years it says how it splits files into multiple parts to download them faster, but if this technique were that impactful, wouldn't major OSes do that already? (Or maybe they already do?)

# ? Aug 11, 2021 13:41

kliras: Mar 27, 2021

Ynglaur posted:

FDM always seemed sketchy to me, perhaps due to my own ignorance. How is its development funded? It says its open source, but I can't seem to find a link to its source code anywhere. I've seen for years it says how it splits files into multiple parts to download them faster, but if this technique were that impactful, wouldn't major OSes do that already? (Or maybe they already do?)

If you have a terminal, you can use UNIX's aria2 (aria2c is the command) and do multiple threads for one download. The problem with these types of things that are very efficient is that you can end up getting flagged by the website for doing something weird which might get you temporarily locked out. Low download speeds are usually happening for a reason, so going against what's basically a rate limit is obviously going to trip some protective measures for many sites.

I wouldn't be surprised if this app were just built around it, much the same way most video editors and apps are just a glorified ffmpeg wrappers.

# ? Aug 11, 2021 13:54

Butterfly Valley: Apr 19, 2007; I am a spectacularly bad poster and everyone in the Schadenfreude thread hates my guts.

I've just swapped out the HDD in an old laptop for an SSD and done a clean install of Windows from a USB stick. I was going through the setup process without issue then during one of last questions cortana asks you the screen went blank for a bit and then when it came back, the mouse cursor was lagging every few seconds. Now I'm on the desktop and I can see its the whole system - a half a second hitch, every two or three seconds, making it absolutely unusable. It's the whole system lagging rather than any issue with the cursor. Resetting it and it boots incredibly quickly like I'd hoped, but the hitching still remains. What gives?

I've checked task manager and it's pretty weird. The "service host: connected devices platform user service" process is taking up 30% - 40% of the CPU and then I've just seen it spike to 100% with a bunch of other services while doing absolutely nothing but staring at the desktop.

Actually looking at the cpu utilisation graph there are perfectly regular spikes every couple of seconds, coinciding with the hitching.

Butterfly Valley fucked around with this message at 17:33 on Aug 11, 2021

# ? Aug 11, 2021 17:28

OgNar: Oct 26, 2002; They tapdance not, neither do they fart

Ynglaur posted:

FDM always seemed sketchy to me, perhaps due to my own ignorance. How is its development funded? It says its open source, but I can't seem to find a link to its source code anywhere. I've seen for years it says how it splits files into multiple parts to download them faster, but if this technique were that impactful, wouldn't major OSes do that already? (Or maybe they already do?)

I thought it was kinda sketchy at first also. But did a little looking into a few years back and then just chose to install it and have been fairly happy with it.
It has a chrome plugin also that allows me to download videos from sites that either dont allow it or make it difficult.
Doesnt always work though or may give me a string of 10sec .ts files (drat you pornhub).
Copy/paste a YT url in and you can DL the video in any of its resolutions as MP4 or convert it to webm or M4a audio file.
I have never noticed any spyware and it has never crashed on me even once.

I have no clue how its funded.
I can say that I am on an older version though. Just haven't downloaded anything from the past 2 years.
So don't know if it has any major/bad changes.

e: wikipedia actually links to an older version of its sourceforge
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Download_Manager
https://sourceforge.net/p/freedownload/code/HEAD/tree/trunc/
But its on 6.14.2 and the sourceforge is 3.9.7 i think

OgNar fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Aug 11, 2021

# ? Aug 11, 2021 18:14

Klyith: Aug 3, 2007; GBS Pledge Week

Butterfly Valley posted:

I've just swapped out the HDD in an old laptop for an SSD and done a clean install of Windows from a USB stick. I was going through the setup process without issue then during one of last questions cortana asks you the screen went blank for a bit and then when it came back, the mouse cursor was lagging every few seconds. Now I'm on the desktop and I can see its the whole system - a half a second hitch, every two or three seconds, making it absolutely unusable. It's the whole system lagging rather than any issue with the cursor. Resetting it and it boots incredibly quickly like I'd hoped, but the hitching still remains. What gives?

I've checked task manager and it's pretty weird. The "service host: connected devices platform user service" process is taking up 30% - 40% of the CPU and then I've just seen it spike to 100% with a bunch of other services while doing absolutely nothing but staring at the desktop.

Actually looking at the cpu utilisation graph there are perfectly regular spikes every couple of seconds, coinciding with the hitching.

Sounds like a device could be connecting & disconnecting repeatedly? I would first re-check everything you did while changing out the drive, to make sure everything is firmly connected and you didn't unseat or muck up everything else.

After that, software:
a) you can stop / disable that service and the OS is still functional, try that and see if the system is more usable for further troubleshooting

b) check device manager, look at updating drivers, especially for stuff like bluetooth/wifi.

# ? Aug 11, 2021 18:14

Worf: Sep 12, 2017; If only Seth would love me like I love him!

Nthing the wireless driver. I had a prebuilt that if the default drivers loaded the computer did the exact same thing

That was fun to diagnose

# ? Aug 11, 2021 18:17

doctorfrog: Mar 14, 2007; Great.

Ynglaur posted:

FDM always seemed sketchy to me, perhaps due to my own ignorance. How is its development funded? It says its open source, but I can't seem to find a link to its source code anywhere. I've seen for years it says how it splits files into multiple parts to download them faster, but if this technique were that impactful, wouldn't major OSes do that already? (Or maybe they already do?)

Your post made me curious, so here's what a few searches told me:

I don't know how its development is funded. Their website seems to want to be a download.com, though, so maybe the site is intended to generate revenue through being a software pseudostore with ads?
It's not open source currently, but it once was.
I don't know technical info about it, but yeah that's kinda interesting how it breaks files down or whatever, but to me "it works."
I did some other casual searching for it on reddit and a few other sites and there's the occasional "who are these guys," or "is this software ok," but no actual reports of anything weird, just other know-nothings like me going "i dunno but i have no problems with it."
overall I don't get any bad vibes from it, but again, I'm not an expert.

# ? Aug 11, 2021 19:16

Butterfly Valley: Apr 19, 2007; I am a spectacularly bad poster and everyone in the Schadenfreude thread hates my guts.

Klyith posted:

b) check device manager, look at updating drivers, especially for stuff like bluetooth/wifi.

Statutory Ape posted:

Nthing the wireless driver. I had a prebuilt that if the default drivers loaded the computer did the exact same thing

So I tried disabling various things and downloading new Intel wireless and Bluetooth drivers and that didn't change anything. Then I tried downloading new AMD drivers for the APU and really weirdly, while it was downloading and installing the problem totally resolved itself even the CPU was actually under load at that point. Then after resetting and finishing the installation, the problem recurs. This is infuriating.

# ? Aug 11, 2021 20:36

Furnok Dorn: Mar 30, 2004; SOCIALLY WORTHLESS SHUT-IN NERD

this may be a non-starter of a question but, is there *any* way to view the 'data usage' panel on a win10 device remotely?

i've scoured the internet to the best of my ability and i've seen a pile of people asking the same question but zero responses, every single response is something about using net-statistics in pshell which is somewhat less than helpful

# ? Aug 11, 2021 21:29

Khanstant: Apr 5, 2007

What's wrong with screen-snip? It used to work every time, exactly how you'd expect. Now though, it randomly decides to not work and instead just randomly puts a yellow border around one or more of your monitors and you have to click the screen snip button 2-4 more times to actually get i to work. why did they add RNG to windows and how do we turn it off?

# ? Aug 11, 2021 21:50

Worf: Sep 12, 2017; If only Seth would love me like I love him!

windows 11, codename: snakeyes

# ? Aug 11, 2021 22:39

VelociBacon: Dec 8, 2009

Khanstant posted:

What's wrong with screen-snip? It used to work every time, exactly how you'd expect. Now though, it randomly decides to not work and instead just randomly puts a yellow border around one or more of your monitors and you have to click the screen snip button 2-4 more times to actually get i to work. why did they add RNG to windows and how do we turn it off?

IMO ShareX is the best solution for this, it's incredible. If you're looking to try a replacement.

# ? Aug 11, 2021 23:42

Khanstant: Apr 5, 2007

None of the screenshots show it being integrated into whatever the side-windows menu is called, which is what I liked best about screensnip, would rather not have to have some program always running or go opening it whenever i need to take a quick screengrab of some stream before it's gone.

I also just kind of want to know wtf it's doing, feels truly randomized when it does what you click it for and when it does... nothing?

# ? Aug 12, 2021 00:19

Ynglaur: Oct 9, 2013; The Malta Conference, anyone?

+1 for ShareX. It's better than SnagIt , imo, and SnagIt is very good.

# ? Aug 12, 2021 01:30

VelociBacon: Dec 8, 2009

Khanstant posted:

None of the screenshots show it being integrated into whatever the side-windows menu is called, which is what I liked best about screensnip, would rather not have to have some program always running or go opening it whenever i need to take a quick screengrab of some stream before it's gone.

I also just kind of want to know wtf it's doing, feels truly randomized when it does what you click it for and when it does... nothing?

I totally get why you'd feel that way but sharex has been SO GOOD at what it does that I've had it running in my taskbar for several years now - it's earned it's place.

It also automatically uploads to imgur and puts a link on your clipboard so it's super good for sharing stuff with someone else. It also keeps a 'history' of stuff you've screenshot to some extent which I've found useful.

# ? Aug 12, 2021 01:37

Ynglaur: Oct 9, 2013; The Malta Conference, anyone?

More about ShareX: it can upload to various other services, and it's all optional and easy to setup. Basically: what workflow(s) do you want for screen capture? ShareX does it.

# ? Aug 12, 2021 02:13

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

Khanstant posted:

What's wrong with screen-snip? It used to work every time, exactly how you'd expect. Now though, it randomly decides to not work and instead just randomly puts a yellow border around one or more of your monitors and you have to click the screen snip button 2-4 more times to actually get i to work. why did they add RNG to windows and how do we turn it off?

What does win-shift-s do for you?

# ? Aug 12, 2021 03:22

Khanstant: Apr 5, 2007

tuyop posted:

What does win-shift-s do for you?

it solves my problem and saves me an annoying click and i love you

# ? Aug 12, 2021 03:55

Sad Panda: Sep 22, 2004; I'm a Sad Panda.

Khanstant posted:

it solves my problem and saves me an annoying click and i love you

https://winaero.com/print-screen-screen-snipping-windows-10 can save a couple of button presses too by making Print Screen do that.

# ? Aug 12, 2021 04:29

Internet Explorer: Jun 1, 2005

I like Greenshot. That's my contribution.

# ? Aug 12, 2021 05:10

Khanstant: Apr 5, 2007

Sad Panda posted:

https://winaero.com/print-screen-screen-snipping-windows-10 can save a couple of button presses too by making Print Screen do that.

This is neat too, thanks y'all, wish I'd just asked the first time this issue annoyed me rather than wait months

# ? Aug 12, 2021 16:50

c0burn: Sep 2, 2003; The KKKing

Yeah remapped to print screen is one windows 10 feature that doesn't suck

# ? Aug 12, 2021 17:08

DerekSmartymans: Feb 14, 2005; The
Copacetic
Ascetic

I loaded up Naraka: Bladepoint last night and according to Steam I �played� for 3.5 hours.

I never even finished my character creation. Not because it was a problem, it was because I was literally enjoying myself customizing my avatar because it looks amazing with my 3070 on high/ultra settings and I was having fun putting celebrities� faces on my combatant from photos (Oprah�s face on a 90l lb white girl is hilarious!) but noped out at 3:00 am and I�m planning to actually get into the tutorial and get stomped for the next couple of months until I learn/remap the keyboard & mouse enough to play at higher than �stupid noob� level.
Games are Windows software, too, right? :spergin:

Edit:
Are there any Win10 programs/apps/browser extensions to put everything into Dark Mode? Most stuff is easily configurable with the system settings, but some webpages in Edge and Chrome show up with a white background and something other than just plain black for the font. I do have trouble seeing things like in-game text or chat without the ability to mod the UI, which was not a problem playing WoW and Skyrim on my old rig. Some of the websites and themes occasionally work when I force them in settings (Google, MS resource pages, YouTube, etc), but there are a lot of MS Store apps and websites that I have to put my reading glasses on and lean into about 10� to read the text. It�s been ok, but my game last night had no choices I could make out or display by highlighting (mouse selection) and system font fixes don�t help.
I have Display Fusion to try, but I literally cannot read any of the choices to see what I�m clicking (I�m scheduled for a 2x corneal transplant in some vague future (nonessential my rear end), because COVID canceled everything.

Opera browser works fine if you select to force Dark Mode, and I don�t know if DF has that ability or if I�m stuck with readable but ugly-rear end High Contrast mode or something drastic like dropping my resolution down to 640x480 or registry editing. I can do some of those, but I hate how ugly the entire experience is visually is in High Contrast mode (like a 1998 Packard Bell) and I�m not blind yet (I just thought of changing Registry settings as I was editing now!). Dedicated software or patches or Accessibility settings or walkthrough of regedit would be amazing!

DerekSmartymans fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Aug 12, 2021

# ? Aug 12, 2021 18:18

CerealKilla420: Jan 3, 2014; "I need a handle man..."

spincube posted:

My mother has an ancient copy of Publisher 2007 on a dying laptop; she's unwilling to subscribe to Office 365 as it's way, way above her WYSIWYG '(clipart) bake sale next Sunday (clipart)' needs for the price. My first thought was Libreoffice but, LO Draw seems to be more about flowcharts and diagrams. Second thought was using either Word or Powerpoint in the one-time-purchase Office suite, but neither work as simply and intuitively as Publisher does when playing around with text and images on a sheet of paper.

Any suggestions for Publisher replacements?

You can get office 2019 gray market keys that are questionably ethical on sites like ebay and g2a that'll only run you like $50.

There's no "as a service" fee so it's perfect for mom. I bought one for my mom at least if I'm being honest.

She used the Mac word clone pages for awhile when she had a mac a few years ago but she ran into a bunch of compatibility issues.

# ? Aug 12, 2021 22:32