Windows

From 太極
Revision as of 10:58, 15 September 2015 by Brb (talk | contribs) (→‎MS-Office)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Beautiful desktop

License key

Libraries in Windows 7

The full path to the hidden Libraries folder is below.

C:\Users\(User-Name)\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Libraries
# Or
%AppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Libraries

On my Windows 7 machine, the Libraries include

Documents
Music
Pictures
Videos

Note that the Pictures folder in Libraries is not exactly the same as C:\Users\(User-Name)\My Pictures folder. Similarly, the Videos folder in Libraries may not be the same as C:\Users\(User-Name)\My Videos. In fact, each one of folder in Libraries contains more than 1 folder: one is 'My' one and the other is 'Public' one. For example, the Documents folder in Libraries contains My Documents and Public Documents subfolders.

It seems Windows 8 does not have 'Libraries'. On Windows 10, 'Libraries' becomes 'Quick access' and the libraries idea is gone now; for example, the 'Downloads' is actually means the 'Downloads' folder. The 'Quick access' consists of

Desktop
Downloads
Documents
Pictures
Music
Videos

Share files over internet

Testing on <install.sh> shell script. Goal is to use wget to download the file.

  • Github: choose 'View Raw' to get the url for the file. The con is the url will be changed whenever the file is updated.
  • Google Drive: cannot get the raw file, only the html version.

Share files with Android over bluetooth

Bluetooth Android Windows.png

Log on automatically on Windows 7 or 8

  1. Click Start, type netplwiz, and then press Enter.
  2. In the User Accounts dialog box, click the account you want to automatically log on to.If it is available, clear the Users Must Enter A User Name And Password To Use This Computer check box.
  3. Click OK.
  4. In the Automatically Log On dialog box, enter the user’s password twice and click OK.

Why You Shouldn’t Automatically Log Into Your Windows PC

http://www.howtogeek.com/220660/why-you-shouldn%E2%80%99t-automatically-log-into-your-windows-pc/

Network discovery

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/what-is-network-discovery#1TC=windows-7

  1. Start -> Control panel
  2. Network -> Network and Sharing Center -> Change advanced sharing settings.

Convert/Save web pages as ebook format

The ebook device uses e-link. It is friendly to human's eyes. Although these ebook devices are usually small for easy to carry, reading pdf articles are not suitable. However if articles are available online as web pages, we can save these pages and read them on devices.

  1. For Kindle device, we can use bookmartlet from http://fivefilters.org/. After installing bookmarklet, we can click it and send any webpage to kindle device (we have to enter the Kindle email address and add [email protected] to the approved personal document email list from Amazon Account -> Manage Your Kindle. The saved file is in mobi format and it contains images too. However, pages contains tables may be lost (eg this page, but it may be the website's problem). Note that in order to read the article on my kindle device, I still need to go to http://www.amazon.com website -> Your Account -> Manage Your Kindle -> Click 'Actions' from the corresponding book -> Deliver to my Kindle (select one device). No extra charge over this method. See lifehacker's article.
  2. For Kobo device, one option is to use dotepub bookmarklet. However, it has a limit on the number of images in an article to save. In fact, the http://filvefilters.org bookmarklet has an option to output in epub format. It will download the epub file immediately. It works perfectly.

Create epub or mobipocket format by using pandoc

PDF

Convert pdf to ebook format

  • pdf4kindle.com - not work well with pdf files from http://magazine.odroid.com/
  • Calibre - when I test the pdf files from http://magazine.odroid.com/, the conversion does not recognize the 3-column mode. So the conversed article will mess up.
  • k2pdfopt - an article from howtogeek.com. After several tries (command line & GUI), I did not find it particularly useful. The only one case that may be useful to convert an article from multiple-column to a single column.
k2pdfopt xxx.pdf -mode fp -c -col 3

This will generate a new file called <xxx_k2opt.pdf> by converting an article with 3 columns. Note that the new pdf file will have very wide space on two sides.

Trim/Crop pdf using briss

  • briss is available for Windows, Mac, Linux and it depends on Java.
  • It works great when I use it to crop IRanges package vignette.
java -jar briss-0.9.jar -s [SOURCEFILE] [-d [DESTINATIONFILE]]

Convert PDF to HTML format PdfMasher

Convert Kindle azw to other format

http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2013/09/15/how-add-kindle-drm-removal-plugin-calibre/#.U022nHVdWKk

Note: it does not work:(

Install IIS on Windows 7/Vista

Burn Windows 7 ISO to USB

http://www.webupd8.org/2010/10/create-bootable-windows-7-usb-drive.html

Create a bootable USB

Dual boot of Windows and Linux

Uninstall a Linux from dual-boot

Install open-source software

Consider Ninite.

Install ubuntu on my 64GB USB drive

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/

$ df -h
Filesystem Size   Mounted on
/cow       3.9G   /
udev       3.9G   /dev
tmpfs      1.6G   /run
/dev/sdb1  61G    /cdrom
/dev/loop0 672M   /rofs
tmpfs      3.9G   /tmp
none       5.0M   /run lock
none       3.9G   /run/shm

If we check the drive's partition table using gpart, we will see the drive has only a fat32 partition.

Internet connection sharing (ICS)

Suppose a laptop can connect to the internt through wireless. We want to use its ethernet port to share internet on another device (e.g. raspberry pi where the device has only ethernet port).

  1. control panel - network & sharing center
  2. manage network connection
  3. right click wireless network connection and select property
  4. click 'sharing' tab and check 'Allow other network users to connect through this computer's internet connection'. For the home network connection, select 'Local Area Connection'.
  5. reboot raspberry pi.

When my host machine is xubuntu, the guest machine (raspberry pi) shows eth0 has ip 10.42.0.37 and the host machine shows

xubuntu@xubuntu:~$ ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:22:19:ea:10:3d  
          inet addr:10.42.0.1  Bcast:10.42.0.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::222:19ff:feea:103d/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:284 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:383 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:19038 (19.0 KB)  TX bytes:85493 (85.4 KB)
          Interrupt:43 Base address:0x2000 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:972 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:972 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:90336 (90.3 KB)  TX bytes:90336 (90.3 KB)

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:17:c4:62:a0:35  
          inet addr:192.168.1.153  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: 2601:a:3780:6a:217:c4ff:fe62:a035/64 Scope:Global
          inet6 addr: fe80::217:c4ff:fe62:a035/64 Scope:Link
          inet6 addr: 2601:a:3780:6a:a4b9:d314:4790:a0a1/64 Scope:Global
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:6300 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:4812 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:6042745 (6.0 MB)  TX bytes:659980 (659.9 KB)

xubuntu@xubuntu:~$ 

Proxy

Secure web access from anywhere using secure tunnel

http://www.howtogeek.com/68061/setup-ssh-on-your-router-for-secure-web-access-from-anywhere/

Access cloud storage

OneDrive

Mount/map onedrive as a local drive

How to Configure OneDrive to Sync Only Certain Folders in Windows 10

http://www.howtogeek.com/222817/how-to-configure-onedrive-to-sync-only-certain-folders-in-windows-10/

Windows Power Shell

Windows command prompt

  • rmdir foldername /s /q to delete a folder
  • for %I in (.) do echo %~sI to return a short name for the current folder.

Open control panel

  • System properties (including environment variables) - control sysdm.cpl
  • See microsoft.com for a complete list.

Keyboard shortcut

Windows 8

Keyboard shortcut.

  • Win + C: charm bar
  • Win + w: search

VLC

  • +/-: faster/slower speed
  • Alt + arrow keys: skip 10 seconds by forwarding/backwarding
  • Ctrl + arrow keys: skip 1 minute
  • Ctrl + Alt + arrow keys: skip 5 minutes
  • Ctrl + Up/Down: Volume
  • M: mute
  • F: full screen
  • space bar: toggle play/pause
  • A: toggle aspect ratio

Windows 8

Swapfile, pagefile

Windows 10

  • Microsoft quietly woke up update KB 3035583 from hibernation, and thus began a massive effort to get millions of Windows 7 and 8 users to ditch their existing operating system for a free copy of Windows 10. All they have to do is reserve their Windows 10 upgrade within the first year of the OS’s availability, something they can do from the comforts of their desktop via the Get Windows 10 upgrade prompt.
  • Media Creation Tool software

Differences with Win 7

Differences with Win 8

Windows 10 Tips

Upgrade to Windows 10 with Windows 7 or 8 + Ubuntu dual boot

Cleanup

How to Find Out Why Your Windows PC Crashed or Froze

http://www.howtogeek.com/222730/how-to-find-out-why-your-windows-pc-crashed-or-froze/. The article mentions two tools.

  1. Reliability monitor (built-in)
  2. Event viewer(built-in)
  3. BlueScreenView (NirSoft)

Securely transfer files to Linux on Windows command line

PuTTy & PuttyND

Use psftp or pscp with a script.

PuttyND gives a chrome style with multiple tabs for Putty Suite.

Use winscp with script or in command line

See http://winscp.net/eng/docs/feature_index

C:\Program Files\WinSCP\winscp.exe" /console /script=YOUR_SCRIPT_FILENAME 

Example from http://winscp.net/eng/docs/scripting#example

# Automatically abort script on errors
option batch abort
# Disable overwrite confirmations that conflict with the previous
option confirm off
# Connect using a password
# open sftp://user:[email protected] 
# Connect
open sftp://[email protected] 
# Change remote directory
cd /home/user
# Force binary mode transfer
option transfer binary
# Download file to the local directory d:\
get examplefile.txt d:\
# Disconnect
close
# Connect as a different user
open [email protected]
# Change the remote directory
cd /home/user2
# Upload the file to current working directory
put d:\examplefile.txt 
# Disconnect
close
# Exit WinSCP
exit

See http://wiki.vpslink.com/Automate_Backup_Retrieval_with_WinSCP#Test_WinSCP_Backup_Script for use winscp with Windows scheduler.

Putty with tabs

Find public IP address

Create a VB script text file "ip.cbs" with a content like

Option Explicit
Dim http : Set http = CreateObject( "MSXML2.ServerXmlHttp" )
http.Open "GET", "http://icanhazip.com", False
http.Send
Wscript.Echo http.responseText   'or do whatever you want with it
Set http = Nothing

Open a command line and run

cscript ip.vbs

The output will look like

C:\Users\mli>cscript ip.vbs
Microsoft (R) Windows Script Host Version 5.7
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

2601:a:3780:5b:b856:6a09:3ea3:5e26
  • On windows, open a command prompt. Type 'ipconfig' and look at IPv4 Address. But 'ipconfig' cannot show only one adapter. Another choice is netsh
x <- shell('netsh interface ip show addresses "Local Area Connection"', intern = T)
y <- strsplit(x[grep("IP Address", x)], " ")[[1]]
y[length(y)]
# [1] "xxx.xx.xx.xxx"

PATH copy copy

http://pathcopycopy.codeplex.com/

PATH environment variable

In R, by using strsplit() and shell() functions we can quickly get the information of the PATH environment variable.

> x = shell("PATH", int = TRUE)
> strsplit(x, ";")
[[1]]
 [1] "PATH=C:\\Program Files (x86)\\VNI\\imsl\\fnl600\\Intel64\\lib"             
 [2] "C:\\Program files\\MPICH2\\bin"                                            
 [3] "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\VNI\\imsl\\fnl600\\IA64\\lib"                     
 [4] "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\VNI\\imsl\\fnl600\\IA32\\lib"                     
 [5] "C:\\Program files\\MPICH2\\bin"                                            
 [6] "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Intel\\ComposerXE-2011\\redist\\intel64\\mkl"     
 [7] "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Intel\\ComposerXE-2011\\redist\\ia32\\mkl"        
 [8] "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Intel\\ComposerXE-2011\\redist\\intel64\\mpirt"   
 [9] "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Intel\\ComposerXE-2011\\redist\\intel64\\compiler"
[10] "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Intel\\ComposerXE-2011\\redist\\ia32\\mpirt"      
[11] "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Intel\\ComposerXE-2011\\redist\\ia32\\compiler"   
[12] "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Intel\\ComposerXE-2011\\compiler\\lib"            
[13] "C:\\Windows\\system32"                                                     
[14] "C:\\Windows"                                                               
[15] "C:\\Windows\\System32\\Wbem"                                               
[16] "C:\\Windows\\System32\\WindowsPowerShell\\v1.0\\"                          
[17] "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\QuickTime\\QTSystem\\"                            
[18] "C:\\Program Files\\cvsnt"                                                  
[19] "C:\\Program Files\\ActivIdentity\\ActivClient\\"                           
[20] "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\ActivIdentity\\ActivClient\\"                     
[21] "C:\\Program Files\\TortoiseSVN\\bin"                                       
[22] "C:\\graphviz\\i386\\bin"                                                   
[23] "C:\\graphviz\\x64\\bin"                                                    
[24] "C:\\gtk\\bin"                                                              
[25] "C:\\gtksourceview\\bin"                                                    
[26] "C:\\libxml2\\bin"                                                          
[27] "C:\\Users\\USERNAME\\Downloads\\binary"                                     
[28] "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Miktex\\miktex\\bin\\"                            
[29] "C:\\Pandoc\\bin"                                                           


An open source program to edit PATH variable is available from http://sourceforge.net/projects/pathtool/

On my computer, I need to open a Windows prompt with admin privilege and then type 'sysdm.cpl' in order to change the PATH variable.

WinCVS

Difference of "P" and "U" when running an update on WinCVS.

It means "Patched", which in effect is exactly the same as "Updated". The only difference is that the server did not send the complete file but only a diff (aka patch).

Notepad++

Font size

How to increase font size? Just hold Ctrl and use scroll wheel. See here. It even save the status when you restart Notepad++.

Theme

Setting > Style Configurator > Select theme dropdown list > Zenburn.

If we download other themes from internet, those themes do not have a support for R languages so the syntax highlight will be lost.

Default language

And for convenience, we can change the default language to R in Notepad++'s Settings.

Proxy

? > Set Updater Proxy.

Visual Studio 2010

  1. Create simple form using VS C++ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8E4C0zbIHA

Cygwin

For something we cannot find a good Windows version of program; for example, cvs client. See my notes in Linux page.

Youtube

Use desktop client like minitube which can eliminate the ads and allows downloading videos.

Powerful usage of VLC

http://www.howtogeek.com/173222/10-useful-features-hidden-in-vlc-the-swiss-army-knife-of-media-players/

RealPlayer

Toggle mute sound

  1. free utility called nircmd http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.zip
  2. create a shortcut: "C:\Michal\Code\Mute Sounds\nircmd.exe" mutesysvolume 2
  3. set up shortcut key by right click the shortcut and choose property

Mind mapping software

  • Free mind
  • Mindmap (web based)
  • MindMup (web based). It can export to Freemind .nm format. No registration is required.

MS-Office

Excel has detected that filename is a SYLK file but cannot load it

This problem occurs when the file that you’re trying to open has uppercase letters “I” and “D” as the first two characters.

For example, your file contains:

ID, Patient, Name
100, John, Smith
101, Mike, Doe

To fix it, either update ID to lower case “Id”, or you can add an apostrophe at the beginning of the first line of text.

Creating macros

Excel print the header row on each page

http://www.guidingtech.com/17822/print-first-row-column-every-excel-page/

  1. Click page layout tab on the ribbon
  2. Switch to the tab for Sheet and spot the section for Print titles. It hosts a row and a column option.
  3. In the 'Rows to repeat at top', enter '$1:$1'.

Done!

How to Print the Gridlines and Row and Column Headings in Excel

http://www.howtogeek.com/220645/how-to-print-the-gridlines-and-row-and-column-headings-in-excel/

How to freeze a row or column in Excel

http://www.howtogeek.com/166326/how-to-freeze-and-unfreeze-rows-and-columns-in-excel-2013/

Hide rows or columns

Avoid change simple quote to smart quote (autoformatting) in Word

Uncheck two options in Options -> Proofing -> Autoformatting. https://www.simple-talk.com/blogs/2011/11/09/how-to-stop-office-2010-changing-and-to-smart-quotes/

Avoid broken hyperlinks from web address containing space

http://www.howtogeek.com/213624/how-to-create-a-live-hyperlink-from-a-web-address-containing-spaces-in-a-word-2013-document/

Office Mobile

Free for devices less than 10.1 inch screen on Windows 10.

Office 2016 Preview

https://products.office.com/en-us/office-2016-preview. Scheduled 9/22/2015.

Screenshots from different MS-Excel

  • 2016. The quick access toolbar and menu have a green color as the background. The current selected menu item has white background color so its color is consistent with the Ribbon and the worksheets. The top-left has an 'X' icon as Office 2013.
  • 2013. The quick access toolbar and menu have a white color as the background. The current selected menu item has green background color.
  • 2007. The background color of quick access toolbar, menu and Ribbon is blue by default. There is a big circle Windows icon on the left-most quick access toolbar.
  • 2003 No Ribbon. No quick access toolbar and the location is used to show 'Microsoft Excel' and the file name.
  • 2002/XP or this one. It looks the same as 2000.
  • 2000 Simple.

Folder synchronization

cwRsync

https://www.itefix.net/content/cwrsync-free-edition. Just unzip.

VirtualBox + share folder

Pick a light weight linux distribution.

rsync from Rtools

C:\Program Files\R>where rsync
C:\Rtools\bin\rsync.exe

Got an error (tried 3.2 and 3.3)

rsync: Failed to exec ssh: No such file or directory (2)
rsync error: error in IPC code (code 14) at /home/lapo/package/rsync-3.0.9-1/src/rsync-3.0.9/pipe.c(84) [Receiver=3.0.9]
rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (0 bytes received so far) [Receiver]
rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at /home/lapo/package/rsync-3.0.9-1/src/rsync-3.0.9/io.c(605) [Receiver=3.0.9]

rsync from cygwin

Got a permission error when the target is a network drive.

Got an error: connection unexpectedly closed.

Windows sync toy

For some reason, it does not find the missing files so it does not copy files from source to target.

Another bad thing is there is no way to uninstall it.

FreeFileSync

http://sourceforge.net/projects/freefilesync/

For some reason, I cannot download it successfully. If I manually copy it from a linux machine to windows, it just get deleted. Probably there is a security reason.

Unison

http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/

I download Windows binary version. However, it does not work. It depends on GTK but it still complain it cannot find libgtk-win32-2-0.0.dll even I downloaded/installed/change PATH variable.

DirSync

http://sourceforge.net/projects/directorysync/?source=recommended (NO installer is there)

Internet Tricks

View all steps from instructables

Just add ?ALLSTEPS after the url's forward slash. See here

How to Set Up Your Own Home VPN Server

http://www.howtogeek.com/221001/how-to-set-up-your-own-home-vpn-server/

FreeCommander

Keep tabs open from last session

Settings > Folder Tabs > Tab Management tab, check the box "Keep current tabs if open layout" and uncheck the box "Close all not locked tabs when the program ends."

7zip to open zip files

Back up to external drive or another computer

Turn off Ipod nano 4th generation completely

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_KprYnP1hA

The steps are

  1. Center + Menu
  2. Center + Left
  3. Sleep, Deep sleep

Hide a Windows program

http://superuser.com/questions/43206/windows-application-to-hide-an-application-from-the-taskbar.

Especially the RBTray program works well. When it was launched, we can use 'right click' on any program's minimize button to minimize it to the tray. To exit the program, just right click on any tray icon created by RBTray and click Exit RBTray in the popup menu. Or run RBTray.exe with the --exit parameter.

Windows XP mode in Windows 7

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/5460/our-look-at-xp-mode-in-windows-7/

Screenshot Annotation

Evernote Skitch, Snipit, SnagIt (commercial), hotshot GNU written in C++ & Qt, Jing, Picpick (commercial), Paint.net, szoter online annotation, IrfanView, Open office, Shutter for linux.

Evernote backup

Record screens

This howtogeek.com guide tells how to record you screen on different platforms (windows/mac/linux/android/ios).

Inkscape

  • Tutorial basic
  • List of tools shown on the left hand side.
  • Tutorial from youtube (tutor4u)
  • Transparent text
  • Select the arrow key when we want to change an object property (eg enlarge).
  • The straight line tool is located two above the Text tool. When we draw a line, we can use ENTER key to stop continuation.
  • When we want to enlarge an object, we want to hold the CTRL key so the size will be changed proportionally.
  • Keyboard shortcut. For example, Ctrl+d to duplicate selection.

Note Taking

  • KeepNote: cross platform (pro: tab for different notebook, export to HTML)
  • CherryTree: cross platform (pro: still under development, one file only, recent documents)
  • Zim: cross platform

X11 server

MobaXterm

Check web change

For those web sites without RSS feed, we can use the following methods

Screenshot of a big webpage

Screengrab add-on for Firefox

Reminder

ReminderFox is an add-on for Firefox

Tile of webpages

TileView is an add-on for Firefox

Download Bing wallpaper

Audio out recorder

Total Recorder. The standard version ($18) already allows to record by schedule. The Professional version (+$18) allows to capture streaming audio directly without opening another application.

PDF file

Windows Movie Media

I got a message Another program is preventing Windows Essentials from installing when I was installing Windows Essentials 2012 on Windows 7 Enterprise w/ Service Pack 1.

Screencast

This article from PCworld.com.

CamStudio

Camstudio works in Virtualbox guest machine too while Screencasting 101 gives me an error. Also the Virtualbox's built-in video capture function does not create videos correctly (I only got a blank/green screen and the video's length is wrong).

Make sure to install Camstudio lossless codec too.

Useful settings:

  • Region -> Fix region 1024*720 (screen will create 4 corners when you hit the record button or F8)
  • Options -> Video. Camstudio lossless Codec v1.5.
  • Options -> Cursor. Highlight cursor.
  • Options -> Audio.
  • Options -> Program Options -> Keyboard shortcut (F8=record, F9=Stop)
  • Toolbar icon -> 6th one is to toggle flv, avi, mp4. Avi is good.

Screenpresso

How to blue a region.

Camtasia

30 days trial is free to download. It is possible to blue a region with Camtasia. Check out this page or some videos like this.

Linux based software

Kdenlive video editor linux

Caveat: crash in my test

OpenShot

These 480p and 1080p videos teach how to blur out an object using OpenShot and GIMP.

Create a symbolic link

cd "YourDirectoryContainingSymLink"
mklink -d "Foldername" "RealPathToFolderName"

Default location of TurboTax and HRBlock

Documents\TurboTax with a file ext name like .tax2014.

Documents\HRBlock with a file ext name like .T14.

Storage/disk space problem on Windows tablet

Some ideas:

BIOS

Boot from USB on Windows 8

HP stream

Access UEFI Firmware Setting on Windows 8

UEFI and Ubuntu

Convert Fat32 file system to NTFS

It is know Fat32 has a file size limit of 4GB. That means it is impossible to use Fat32 partition to transfer a >4GB virtual machine file (ova) to a fat32 USB drive.

To convert a fat32 partition to NTFS, run the following in the command line prompt (or type help convert to get help).

convert <drive_letter>: /fs:ntfs 

External hard drive

Has an advantage about the size than the internal drive. For example, my Dell Precision 3500 can support up to 2TB.

See http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-2014566/4tb-hdd-problems.html

See the internal link Linux -> GParted.

Hard disk monitor tools

  • HWMonitor (freeware) from CPUID. Need to be run as admin; otherwise it only shows brief info about CPU. It does show temperature from cpu, memory, internal hdd and graphical card. Does not include External hdd.
  • SpeedFan (freeware) from Almico.com. This required an installation. It will be installed under C:\Program Files (x86)\SpeedFan. This can detect my ext 4TB hdd (WD4003FZEX). It shows the temperature 40C for this ext hdd (under the Readings tab or more details under the S.M.A.R.T. tab). My other 2 int hdd temperature is 34C and 40C currently.
  • Crystal Disk Info (freeware). Support USB connection and RAID. This looks very good too and it only focuses on HDD/SSD. It has both installer & portable versions. The source code is on afterdawn.com.
  • smartmontools. Windows can run it through cygwin.
  • HMonitor (shareware).

The hdd temperature is OK in the range of 25C to 46C. See http://www.buildcomputers.net/hdd-temperature.html

Speccy

Fast, lightweight, advanced system information tool for your PC. It also displays the temperature from CPU, MOBO, fan speed, et al.

Hard disk space monitor

WinDirStat

Wireless network watcher

NirSoft’s network tools

Share your wifi with friends

Miracast

Intel Boot Agent GE

Logitech M510

Go to http://support.logitech.com/en_us/product/wireless-mouse-m510 and download 64-bit full installer (not smart installer) of SetPoint.

SetPoint software can be used to re-program forward and backward buttons on the mouse. For example, I can set the forward as 'j' and backward as 'k' for feedly.com website.

Amazon digital credit balance

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/?docId=1000811661#gc

Note that the credit has a short expire date. So go to the email and search "Your Amazon.com Promotional Credit". Good luck keeping track of them.

Watch web videos without flash

http://www.howtogeek.com/223338/how-to-watch-web-videos-after-uninstalling-flash/

Firefox Developer Edition for private browsing

https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2015/08/14/new-experimental-private-browsing-and-add-ons-features-ready-for-pre-beta-testing-in-firefox/

How to Identify a Song on Any Smartphone, PC, or Tablet

http://www.howtogeek.com/226184/how-to-identify-a-song-on-any-smartphone-pc-or-tablet/

Rainmeter

Similar to Conky in Linux.

XAMPP

I downloaded the portable version (without the installer) from More Downloads >> link.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/xampp/files/XAMPP%20Windows/5.5.28/ (xampp-portable-win32-5.5.28-0-VC11.7z).

Note that xampp has to be extracted to the top level directory such as C:\.

When I start the Apache server, Windows' firewall will pop up. Since I am not the system admin, I can only click the 'Cancel' button.

The virtual machine can use the host's IP to get an access to the Apache web site. But the other computer cannot.

More help.