Another thread for boring computer questions

I have a fuckload of names and addresses attached to all my email addresses in Outlook. I want to export them all and turn them into the corerect format for printing onto sticky labels to stick on envelopes. Is there an easy way to do this? Or do I have to copy them all by hand into excel or filemaker or something?

Anyone? Please?

any ideas?
just had a thought, would I be able to copy the file, rename it and amend it then rename it again and delete the original. would this work?

The solution to your problem is to find out what stuff is running at boot, and stop it. Stuff that runs at boot is listed in the Registry somewhere, but I can't remember the exact key name

Uncheck any suspicious looking processes - it'll be one of these.

thanks for the help guys

then convert that selection to mp3 yo!

Not wanted to go down in the "Stupid User" hall of fame, I consulted the online help and found the following:

Using another authoring tool [check-bbedit, nothing exotic]

You can use any HTML authoring tool to create the pages for your .Mac member site.

Prepare your pages using the tool of your choice, then copy the completed site to the Sites folder on your iDisk. [can't seem to accomplish this, at least not by drag and drop]

If you have already created another .Mac site, create a new folder within the Sites folder on your iDisk [done], and then copy the completed site to this new folder.[can't]

If you name your start page index.html and place it at the top level of your Sites folder, your site's address is homepage.mac.com/yourmembername/.
[huh? if my index for the new site is in a separate folder, this shouldn't apply, right?]

IMPORTANT: HomePage uses index.html in the Sites folder as the start page for sites it creates. If you use HomePage to create a page, any other index.html you have placed in your Sites folder will be overwritten. [ditto above]

If you gave your start page a name other than index.html, [no] or copied it to a subfolder within your Sites folder [am trying to but can't] , be sure to include the name and path in your site's address. For example, if your start page is home.html in a folder named School inside your Sites folder, the address is homepage.mac.com/
yourmembername/School/home.html.

Er, help?

What?? Is that some wonky thing they do to UK copies of OS X? I use the command line ftp program in 10.2 all the time to upload. You just cd to the folder your file is in, then "ftp servername.domain.com" then "put myfile.foo" -or mget/mput *.html/*.jpg ....it's not a graphical client, though. Transmit is pretty decent for that, although it is shareware.

Make a Site Menu page for a new site on Homepage, and where you can edit the URL for the link, type "Click here" and put in the URL path to your idisk Public directory, where you put the html files in a folder of your choosing. Viola! (and since I'm using this with URL forwarding, (masked) no one will see the clunky mac.com/idisk address. Woo-hoo!

i'm sure most newer mobos are capable of operating in dual-channel ram mode, which would require two matching sticks of memory. so in that case, it would be much better to have 2x512

Well, that wouldn't be the Finder, then, would it. ;-)

<TT>chsh -s /bin/bash username</TT>

Will I ever get back all the pictures and stories and songs I have on there?

Check the "system protection" setting for that drive, if it's creating regular restore points it could be filling up.

Ta, both. Looking at things I could plausibly uninstall, Microsoft Silverlight is 746MB and I don't even know what that is.

And there are a few things with names like:

Microsoft Visual C++ 2012 Redistributable (x64) going back to 2005.

empty that recycle bin too

746MB is not a lot

I'll look up a few things ito cleanup regime, its handy enough

Better ilxors than i will advise whether you need your music on yr main drive, id have said not

x-post

Ha! That is about the one thing I know how to actually do ...

Windows 10?

Just in terms of using up 11TB, its not going to be a program as such, so install/uninstall aint it

Its either tons of content (which would probably be fine on yr other drive depending on whether you are niche use case like video editing software or not, or whether yr D: is particularly slow) or a program gone haywire (including, as above, windows updates/restore points)

111 Gb, obv

i think leave those c++s alone.

Disk Cleanup, if memory serves, has a button for advanced or admin you'll want to click so that it can clean up Windows Update stuff for you.

Dragging stuff over, the default is to copy rather than move, so hold Shift down while you do it (or like do a cut and paste)

Might want to disable hibernate if it's on, that's probably taking a few GB.

there's a free program, windirstat, that'll give you a good visual of what's using space

Just went and googled windirstat, have used before and its certainly useful

Id still guess restore points and updates.

Right click yr c drive, properties, disk cleanup, option at botton to clean up system files

That will run and you can then select the groups of files to delete, it will take another while to run but you'll be told how much space youll clear

Not sure that even takes out the old restore points tbh but its a good first step

After that, do this

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/how-to-remove-all-system-restore-points-except-the-most-recent-one-d43d697b-09ac-bef6-8a02-1000a18a9b82

If you're still in the red, windirstat will show you (very neatly too) what the jam is

For instance, just in looking that up on my own pc (which i keep pretty trim tbh) the old windows updates alone freed up almost 10GB so if nothing else it will buy you time

Um ... Windows 7.

I'm trying to remember what it was that was eating up a couple of gb daily on my system drive. I think it was the automatic system protection restore points. I disabled it on that drive and just make a restore point before doing anything drastic. The hibernation file can get quite big as well I think.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-power/windows-10-hiberfilsys/1b8de4f7-3a73-4238-aad3-e51194f2075e

what was that about music on the main drive? Nah, that's what the big one is ideal for.

I wouldn't be surprised if Outlook actually retained the space of your deleted mails.... somehow!

Um ... Windows 7.

― djh, Monday, 1 February 2021 21:09 (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Just checked, looks identical process

tbh im itching for a screengrab of yr windirstat run, thats a loooot of space taken up

Is there any reason not to share such a screen grab???

I cant remember if the detail would include a anything incriminating tbh, use yr better judgement tho

Showing anything initially interesting as far as you can tell?

You can probably safely just move the music unless you're using some bullshit like iTunes or Google Music.

x-post

I haven't actually got as far as that bit yet!

Music wise, I use Media Jukebox (probably on the recommendation of someone on here, tbh).

Listen now if you have time to be posting you couldve had the updates and restore points cleared and we'd all be off our tenterhooks

As long as the music files aren't tied to proprietary DRM stuff then moving them *shouldn't* mess anything up. The player might need to reindex them. But take it under advisement, I can't say for sure.

So the biggest things seems to be Outlook Data File (38.6GB), Application Extension (21.4GB), Windows Installer Patch (9.3GB), JPEG Image (8.1GB) and System File (4.4GB).

You could do the two steps above and move all yr content files with no risk and some reward to at least buy space for outlook/OS stuff

Im off to nerd up a bit on how to reduce an outlook data file

No idea if yr mailbox is genuinely that enormous but:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/reduce-the-size-of-your-mailbox-and-outlook-data-files-pst-and-ost-e4c6a4f1-d39c-47dc-a4fa-abe96dc8c7ef#:~:text=Often%2C%20the%20cause%20of%20a,in%20a%20folder%20called%20Conflicts.

Thanks - appreciated!

Dont tell anyone but cleaning c drive space is fuckin catnip to me tbh

Ah, ok.

Mailbox size - 1569680KB.

xp lol

Thats not a huge mailbox tbh but ive no experience with how effective compacting the file using the steps above is or whether that file size is so abnormally large as to point to an issue (but frankly would suspect it)

Like Deems I'm itching for a FolderSizes/WinDirStat screengrab. It will scan your drives and give you a visual presentation of the folders taking up the most space. It's not unusual for this to be a folder of cache/temp/log files, files without a single need.

Having looked at WinDirStat, a lot of it seems to have been years of friends and (in an old job) PRs sending photos that I hadn't bothered to delete ...

Go on, give us some closure, anything!

Any breakdown you feel like sharing?

lolwtf. Random jpegs, let's go!!

Is there a youtube genre for "very satisfying c: drive cleanups".

Was only thinking last night that if dr pimple popper exists then surely....

Why does the shitty £5 WiFi woggle I got off eBay keep crashing?

Update: I have got to 20GB of 111GB free - the first time my computer's memory hasn't been showing as "red" for an age.

I have managed to lose my music, I think (Not really sure how - I'd moved it to the D: drive) ... but that's largely replaceable.

I've deleted at least 60000 emails, possibly more ... though I don't think that made as much difference as I'd have liked.

WinDirStat was helpful - I was bemused that MP4s were taking up so much space. This was random shit video from a Bloggie (slightly pointless Sony camera) that could largely be deleted without any sense of "Oh, awesome memories".

Felt too paranoid to post any WinDirStat detail!

Thats fair

Does the music show up under a windirstat scan, ie is it just gone missing from whatever program you use to access? That shouldve been a very low risk manouevre tbh

Listen i absolutely do mean to bug u but did you do the steps above im mad to know

When im deleting from outlook the single most useful step i make myself take is to sort by size and if its attachments (always is) and i need them (rarely do) then i make myself bother to save the mail in a recognisable folder/name structure

Bit of a slog if youve not done it in a while but ime you delete 90% of the big mails without a second thought this way and can handily enough free up a few gigs

I think I did everything. Will go back and check. There weren't restore points. Disc clean up doesn't seem to make a great deal of difference though maybe because I already do that. I've quite often felt like I've deleted things (and removed from the recycle bin) and the memory had shrunk. Weird.

Did something similar with emails. I put things in "from" order and deleted things from people/organisations I had no interest in until the whole deleting thing actually became quite compulsive ... and then went in for attachments! It's probably only something I would have got around to doing as a failing computer and lock down boredom aligned.

I thought I'd moved music from the C: to D: drive (and had checked that) but might have been over zealous in just deleting *stuff*.

Thanks, btw.

Not at all as i say this stuff is catnip to me after my own limited space c: disasters in times past

I've had a great experience with Avast over the years but the pop-ups are becoming kind of aggressive of late. Do I still need it or is the stuff built into Windows 10 decent enough for the job?

SSL security question here, from someone with at most rudimentary understanding of such stuff:

I have an old Windows Vista box, no longer updated, with a database of various sports results and stats. A couple of times a day, a Python script starts up, makes an HTTPS request to a stats site for a certain JSON file which they use to display the data on the website; this file is scraped by the script and any new data entered in my database.

Just the other day, the script started throwing an error, which on further examination turned out to be a "bad handshake" SSL error, with the report "certificate verify failed". Given the timing, I'm assuming this may be related to the recent expiration of Let's Encrypt certificates.

What I should really do is surely to get around to moving this stuff to a more up-to-date computer. But as a temporary hack, it appears that the library I use for the web requests allows turning off verification by a verify=False keyword. Needless to say, this is heavily discouraged, with warnings popping up all the time. My question is: what exactly am I risking if I turn off verification? I guess a third party could pose as the stats site and feed me bogus replies? I see this as pretty improbable and mostly harmless anyway (my scraping is very conservative and bails at erroneous formats); what, if any, are the graver risks I'm running?

I should add that verification will be turned off only for these specific requests, not across the board on this computer.

I think that turning it off for that specific site, if no sensitive information is transmitted (in either direction), is pretty harmless. By turning verification off, you are basically turning off verification by a trusted authority that you are actually talking to who you think you are talking to. It seems unlikely that somebody would try to spoof your old vista box.

Right, then it appears I haven't fallen victim to any huge misunderstanding. Thanks a lot for your answer! :)