The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Question & Answer George Skarbek gskarbek@melbpc.org.au |
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George Skarbek answers common but niggling questions about your PC and computing in general |
Where is my disk
space being used?
Question
Do you know of any way I can Wget a list of the folders of a drive which shows
the size of the folder? I know I can right-click on each folder and use
properties
to find out the information; but I'd really like to see the list of
folders showing the sizes, so that when I'm doing a cleanup I can focus on the
big ones first. I'm sure that back in DOS there were utilities that provided
this list.
Answer
There were many DOS
programs and I still have one that works, but there are Windows based ones that
are even better. Try Treesize from www.jam-software.corn that integrates into
Windows Explorer. Another good free
disk manager program is VisDir from www.sb-software.com
Another interesting but tiny program which was developed by a German university
is Sequoiaview that gives an interesting graphical display of almost every file
on
the hard disk. It is available
via www.tinyurl.com/yvczcg.
Capturing
streaming audio
Question
As a lover of "older" music, I was taken in by this email that I received
recently referring me to: a web site called Tropicalglen. Is there any way that
I can separate the tracks and put them into a folder and burn them to disk so
that I can play them in the car?
Answer
Yes, it is possible to capture
the streaming audio and then burn a CD for use in the car but I'm not sure about
the legality. In fact there are very many programs that do this. If you open
Google and enter the words capture streaming audio you'll receive over a million
hits and from there you'll be able to select a multitude of programs. I tested
two that had a trial version and both worked well.
Their output when played was indistinguishable from the original.
Having created your MP3 collection, the next step is to be able to play that
music in your car. If your car is relatively new it may incorporate a radio/CD
player that has MP3 capability and even low cost cars such as Hyundai and Kia
have these, but surprisingly some much more expensive cars don't.
If you can play MP3 then you just burn a data CD with your collection and you
should have about 12 hours of music on one CD.
If you car radio doesn't support the MP3 format then you'll need CD burning
software that can convert the compressed MP3 format to the standard music format
for CDs. Several programs that come bundled with the
CD or DVD burners when you purchase the computer will have this capability. Nero
is one such program. All you need to do is to create a new music CD and drag the
MP3 files over. Nero will automatically convert them for you. The only trap is
to look at the options and ensure that
you've selected No Multisession. A multisession CD is one where you can add more
files once
the CD is burned and such a CD will work on the computer but probably not in the
car.
Stopping USB
drives
Question
I've converted both of my USB drives to NTFS (I run XP Professional and
Windows 2000 on my old computer) and things are a lot faster, however
disengaging is as often a problem. After clicking on the icon followed by
"Safely Remove Drive E" I'm confronted with the message: -The device 'Generic
Volume' cannot
be stopped because a program is still accessing it. The above message never
disappears (I've waited hours). It never appeared when the USB's were FAT32.
Answer
There are a couple of actions that you can try. Using Windows Explorer
right-click on the USB drive, select Properties then click the Hardware tab
which will list all disk drives, so you may have to select the correct one. Next
click Properties then on the Policies
tab. If "Optimize for performance" is checked, check "Optimize
for quick removal" instead.
If this doesn't help then Norton Utilities "Protected Recycle Bin" may have that
drive open and turning off Norton's protection for that drive can fix this
problem.
Unfortunately it's possible that even after trying both of these options you may
still see that message. In that case wait at least ten seconds and remove the
drive. In my opinion you have over 99.8% probability that there will be no
problems or corruption of any kind on the USB drive.
Many users aren't aware
that the USB drives should be stopped prior to removal and have been just
pulling out the drive after copying to it without any problems for a year or
more because the default setting is the quick removal option. Note that it's
essential to make sure that the activity LED stops flashing
before you remove that USB drive.
Setting the default
e-mail program
Question
Can you tell me how do I make Outlook Express my email program on my computer?
It has Outlook and I wish to
change it to Outlook Express so I can scan directly to my emails.
Answer
Click on Start, Settings, Control rit Panel, Internet Options and
then click on the Programs tab and there under email you can select your default
mail reader.
Reprinted from the July 2008 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
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